Johannes Brahms_ A Biography - Jan Swafford [54]
His life had been incredible that year. It had been like one of those puzzles of little steel balls that have to go into holes: sometimes you set things in motion and before your eyes every ball falls into place, one after another. It is a haunting experience, because you know things like that have more to do with luck than volition, and they never happen again. For Brahms the last part of the puzzle was about to fall into place.
He rang the bell.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Eagle’s Wings
AROUND NOON on September 30, 1853, on Belkerstrasse in Düsseldorf, Robert and Clara Schumann’s daughter Marie ran to answer the bell. She opened the door to find a young man with long blond hair, staff in hand and pack on his back. Despite his travel-weary air and worn alpaca jacket, Marie found him handsome as a picture. He said his name was Brahms and he would like to see Herr Schumann. Poppa and Mamma are out, Marie said.1 Brahms hesitated—he had planned to stay in town only the day—but then asked if he could come back tomorrow. Marie told him to ring at eleven: they always go out at noon. He agreed and turned away. When her parents got home Marie reported the visit, and that night Robert Schumann noted in his diary, “Herr Brahms from Hamburg.” He had been expecting the call. Joachim had come through Düsseldorf at the end of August and preached the gospel of Johannes.2
Brahms rang the bell next morning and the door was opened by Robert Schumann, in dressing gown and slippers. Shyly, diffidently, the young man introduced himself. Awkward moments followed, the youth tongue-tied and Schumann mumbling. As most people had been that summer, the older man was enchanted by Brahms at first sight. He was so appealing to look at; there was something burning in his eyes that belied the delicate features and the shyness.
Schumann roused himself to be hospitable. He was forty-three then, music director in Düsseldorf. Even as he held that public post, for some time he had been lapsing inward, glazing over, sitting in company with lips pursed as if whistling silently while people waited for him to say something. Well, if conversation was hard with this stranger who came so well recommended, music could speak. Schumann invited Brahms into the narrow parlor where the Graf piano waited, and asked him to play.
Brahms sat down and struck into a piece he thought might make a good impression, the C Major Piano Sonata. Schumann listened to the Beethovenian opening, reminiscent of the Hammerklavier Sonata, quickly modulating down a step like the Waldstein. Schumann would have noted these echoes of Beethoven, not mistakable for their models but rather a meditation on the past as a new starting point. With rising excitement he heard the brash theme of the beginning break up into ingenious contrapuntal elaboration, every idea growing organically from the opening measures.
Brahms felt Schumann’s touch on his shoulder. “Please wait a moment. I must call my wife.” Schumann rushed from the room as Brahms sat staring at the keyboard, his heart pounding. He may never have heard Clara Schumann play, but he knew about her. Clara had performed only sporadically since her marriage in 1840, but her teenage years were still spoken of with awe. When the two Schumanns entered the room, Brahms must have risen to greet her struggling with the kind of anxiety that had made it impossible for him to play at Liszt’s. This was not the palatial Altenburg, though, but a cozy bourgeois parlor, and Clara greeted him with a smile that lit up her dark-blue eyes.
“Here, dear Clara,” Schumann said, “you shall hear music such as you have never heard before. Now begin your sonata again, young man.”3
Brahms played, with