Novels about musicians: Pt 2
I finished Part 1 by looking at Kingsley Amis’s novel, The Alteration, an alternative history which imagines an England in which the Reformation has not happened. Before going on to a closer look at An Equal Music by Vikram Seth, I want to give a quick mention to two short detective novels which are in a gentler way also alternative history. Dead, Mr Mozart and Too Many Notes, Mr Mozart, both published in 1995, are novels by Bernard Bastable, alter ego of prolific crime writer, Robert Barnard. Set in the early part of the 19th century, their narrator is a “Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart” (he prefers the German version of his name), who stayed in England with his father after George III gave them a handsome fee for the seven-year-old prodigy’s concert. Now in his sixties and still in London, he makes a chancy living mainly from lighter music theatre and directing a theatre orchestra from the fortepiano.
The composer of the Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni has largely been forgotten, Cosi Fan Tutte was a failure, and he is mainly known in England for his orchestration of Handel’s Messiah. He depends heavily on patronage from the aristocracy, rarely connoisseurs of music, who regularly confuse him with other composers, and compare him, to his detriment, to the up-and-coming, Italian, Rossini. All of this makes him a waspish and cynical figure, an ideal commentator on musical and political intrigues as George IV takes the throne in 1820. Mozart can mingle with actors and singers, generally regarded, with the exceptions of the occasional prima donna, as among the lower orders, as well as with the theatre owners and the nobility. So he makes a suitably inconspicuous go-between to investigate indiscretions and even murder.
The second novel takes place ten years later, shortly after William IV becomes King, when the 73- year-old Mozart is employed as the piano teacher for the young Princess Victoria, who is gradually being accepted as William’s likely heir. The bluff, garrulous and gaffe-prone William is portrayed affectionately, (Mozart had a soft spot for his late mistress, the actress, Mrs Jordan) and the astute eleven-year-old princess is also an engaging character. The novels are light and humorous, with good jokes about musicians, and a keen eye for the upstairs-downstairs world of George III’s sons still reaping the scandalous fruits of their irregular earlier lives. Great fun! Out of print but only £2.49 each on Kindle.
Curiously unavailable on Kindle is Vikram Seth’s An Equal Music, and I had to wait for a delivery to re-read it. Meanwhile I listened to the audiobook, which I would recommend, even if you have read the book. It’s ably narrated by Alan Bates and has useful musical extracts. I also enjoyed the double CD of the music mentioned in the novel, very nicely played, including a premiere CD performance of the mysterious Beethoven Quintet.
This novel about musicians could not be more different from the Mr Mozart ones! Seth’s 1999 novel was and remains a very popular work of literary fiction. Many of its readers would class it among their favourite books. The love story between Michael and Julia, a youthful romance damaged and then rekindled, is told sympathetically and compellingly. It is also acknowledged as one of the most perceptive novels ever written about the lives of musicians, and I know I regularly think about it when listening to chamber music. Some people reading this will know the novel well and might expect me to deal with the major relationships in the novel. But I would also hope to encourage others to read it, and definitely don’t want to introduce “spoilers”. So I will concentrate, as I did in my review of Grace Notes in Part 1, on Michael the main character, as a musician.
Unlike Catherine in Grace Notes, Michael is a first-person narrator. The novel is written in the present tense. Both techniques give a sense of immediacy, which pulls us into the story, but also exposes us to Michael’s vulnerability. He is introspective, often careless of others’ feelings, and, as the novel begins, he’s aware how badly he is treating his pupil and lover, the much younger Virginie. In his late thirties, he is the second violin in the Maggiore Quartet. He was the last member of the quartet to join, six years previously. The others are Piers, first violin, and Helen, viola, brother and sister, and Billy, who plays cello and is the only married member of the group. They’re successful and well-established on the chamber music circuit.
For music-lovers, Seth, I think gets two things right. First the business aspect of their lives, their relationship with their agent, the personnel at concert halls, and their audiences. Despite their success, it is still an insecure way of life (for instance, Michael can’t get a bank loan when he wants to buy another violin), and they are dependent on fitting their repertoire to the wishes of their clients. “Bloody Edinburgh,” says Michael at a rehearsal as he rebels against the Festival’s choice of their programme. The unusual piece of quartet repertoire which they use as an encore, and which comes to dominate the later part of the novel, would certainly make an interesting recording, but it’s a gamble – a financial one as well as an artistic one.
Secondly – and in many ways the best part of the book – is how much we understand about what it is like being a player in a string quartet. Michael describes it at one point as being like six “marriages” – each player’s relationship with each of the other three. But there is also the chemistry within the group.
“Every rehearsal begins with a very plain, slow three-octave scale on all four instruments in unison. No matter how fraught our lives have been, no matter how abrasive our disputes about people or politics, or how visceral our differences about what we are to play and how we are to play it, it reminds us that we are, when it comes to it, one.”
The minutiae of rehearsals form a great part of the novel and hold the attention: the nitty-gritty of how music and musicians work is of interest to anyone who enjoys live performance.
Part of Seth’s skill is to take us so completely into Michael’s life that we are swept along with his fixations, such as his obsession with finding Beethoven’s transcription Quintet of his early piano trio, which he played with Julia in Vienna as a student. The apparently casual nature of Michael’s narrative makes his life seem very real to us. But at the same time the novel is carefully structured so that we are led deliberately through his successive finds and losses. There are eight sections, each about 60 pages long, and divided into short chapters of a few pages (numbered 1.1, 1.2 etc) Many of the sections end on a cliff-hanger with a sudden change in Michael’s fortunes. This novel is rarely spoken of as a page-turner, but it certainly is.
Something else which gives the novel its intensity is the narrow focus of Michael’s musical life and tastes. A high percentage of music referred to is chamber music from the classical period, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms. So much so that the eventual importance of Bach to the quartet and to Julia seems like a strange aberration! His initial music education with his mentor Mrs Formby was broader – their trips to the Free Trade Hall to hear the Messiah and orchestral music - and he plays the Lark Ascending for her on the violin she loans him when he returns to his home town, Rochdale. And yet a novel about music set in London, Vienna and Venice in which no-one mentions opera, or orchestral music? My partner thinks it’s realistic, that serious musicians are bound to have a narrow range, but I think it’s a choice that Seth makes. Nicholas Spice in an LRB review of 1999 goes further, believing that Seth “sets his face against any exploratory attitude to music” and concentrates on what it provides in the way of “feel-good experiences.” On balance I think that paring down the musical focus of the novel works in convincing us of the intensity of Michael’s musical life as well as his emotional life. Despite minor misgivings, twenty years on from publication it’s still a “must-read.”
Sue Gee’s Trio (2016) is another novel about chamber musicians, this time told mostly from the point of view of a listener to the music. It’s set in Northumberland in the late 1930s, when Steven, a widowed grammar-school teacher, is introduced to the members of the Hepplewick Trio, through a colleague, the charismatic, Frank. Sue Gee deserves to be better known. I got to know her work when I was given a present of her 1996 novel, Earth and Heaven, about artists in London and Kent after the First World War. She combines a feeling for history (an early reviewer said, “You can smell the Woodbines”) with a sense of place, and descriptions of the natural world which don’t ever become sentimental. The Mysteries of Glass (2004), another historical novel set in rural Hertfordshire in 1860, is probably her finest book, and is memorable for its depiction of a harsh winter in which an unlikely passionate love-affair occurs.
Wintry scenes also feature in Trio. Steven and his first wife have chosen to live in a remote cottage in the countryside in a bleak landscape where they are much at the mercy of the elements. Gee makes us understand its attractions too, the call of the curlew, the arrival of spring. But Margaret contracts tuberculosis, and neither wants her to go into a sanatorium, which might have saved her life. She dies in the cottage, and after her death, Steven continues to live there, still walking down to his job in the local boy’s grammar school. The routines of the classroom, his interest in his subject, History, and his affinity with the boys, help him with his grief. Frank Embleton, his head of department, is well-off and different from other staff – you might have expected him to work in a public school. He introduces Steven to his sister, Diana, and two friends from childhood, George Liddell and Margot Heslop, who play together as the Hepplewick Trio.
This is a different world from the professional musicians in Seth’s novel. All three are from the monied classes, and only George has been to music college. But although they play for local audiences in country houses and churches, they play to a high standard. Steven, who has no knowledge of classical music, is immediately swept away by his enjoyment in hearing them play. “And then the Brahms began. Nothing could have prepared him for the effect. The gentlest tune. Something instantly inviting, so lyrical and tender that he felt tears prick his eyes.” Steven is intrigued by the music itself but also by the dynamic within the group, the “delicate precision of that glance between the three of them” as they start to play, the whole piece “as a conversation between their instruments”, the “hugely demanding physicality” of their playing. “He began to wonder at what it must do to you, to play like this. And who you must be, to want to make it your life.”
These thoughts occur to Steven during the trio’s playing of Schubert’s Piano Trio No 2 in E flat. Gee always gives the reader precise information about the works played. There isn’t a CD to go with the novel, but you can easily find recordings to listen to as you read. The piano version of Elgar’s Childhood Dreams, which becomes significant later in the novel, was a discovery for me.
Steven’s father is a cabinet maker, a craftsman, but not well-paid. Steven has more sympathy with the boys he teaches than with his new-found friends. “Me uncle’s on National Assistance” says one, and another collapses in the classroom, coughing up blood, as his wife had done. Frank acts as a bridge between these worlds. He is wealthy – the boys are fascinated by his little sports car – but he is a wonderful teacher, keen to broaden his pupils’ experiences. He is also politically committed, arguing with his father and Diana about his left-wing views. Increasingly he disappears on a regular basis for meetings in London.
Major issues of the 1930s form a backdrop to the events in Northumberland. Steven scarcely notices the Abdication happening in the December just after his wife’s death. He has returned to work before the 1937 Coronation is celebrated by the school. As worklessness and poverty increasingly affect the boys’ families, the staff are encouraged to provide enrichment through outings and additional lessons - Margot comes in to teach some boys piano. In Europe Fascism is on the rise, but Chamberlain’s visit to Munich is celebrated. As the War in Spain develops, Frank argues that as historians they must teach what has happened in Guernica. Steven meanwhile is drawn into the world of the Trio. The music and his relationships with Frank and the players, especially Margot, change his life.
It’s a well-written novel, with a keen sympathy for the characters and the period. Lovers of history and of music will find much to enjoy here!
Read the London Review of Books article on An Equal Music.
