MORE LIVES OF THE GREAT COMPOSERS

Howard Moss

For, and after, Dana Gioia

I

Maurice Ravel would buy a bag of figs and eat them greedily on his back porch in St. Jean d’Luz. His aunts were mortified. “On summer nights great music drives me mad,” said Richard Wagner to his maid. And yet tonight across the street a piano plays arpeggios of steel. On autumn days, Schubert would work, then take a walk through woods. Outside the snow is falling steadily,

and more’s to come. A man goes by, resembling Schubert in his great frock coat strolling through the autumn woods. Ravel had relatives who almost drove him mad. Tchaikovsky said, “If I could love a maid... ” In fact, he tried. The girl was mortified. And yet across the street a piano plays as if a madman on a summer night were tearing down the stars on his back porch.

In the snow country, Bartok on a sleigh rode toward a castle, and a plate of figs lying on a table by the fire seemed as fine as greatcoats seen through autumn woods. Georges Enesco lost his Spanish maid. “Go back to Barcelona—that back porch! Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ soon will drive you mad.” “Arpeggios of steel... I’m mortified”— a Juilliard student. “Mine are soft as figs.”

“The pentatonic scale? I do not give a fig for it,” Stravinsky said, but no one heard because across the street a piano played arpeggios of steel. “I’m mortified,” said Mozart, “to find my summer nights mistaken by the critics for a light snowfall.” Couperin felt, one autumn day, quite mad, dreamt of his maid, and woke—“That poor old girl!” “I regret nothing,” said Maurice Ravel.

II

“Small talk isn’t Ludwig’s kind of thing,” said Beethoven’s nephew Karl to Meyerbeer. Replied that jolly meister, “So I gather,” though some say what he said was “So I hear.” “Am I doomed to be an orchestrator?” asked Rimski-Korsakov. There was no reply. “Such minstrelsy arises from the sea, I think I’ll orchestrate it.” Claude Debussy.

“La Mer” revives the small talk of the sea, its great-depth grandeur and its coast small beer. “You take some jolly-meister orchestrator, and play a Bach cantata for him, and you’ll see his face go blank with admiration. Me? Oh, I rise early and stroll beside the sea,” said Respighi to De Falla. There was no reply. “I think I’ll poison Mozart.” Salieri.

Madame von Meek, writing to Tchaikovsky: “Why don’t I hear from you?” There was no reply. Domenico Scarlatti walked beside the sea and found the shoreline’s foamy beer not jolly. “Herr Goldberg, I’m feeling very sleepy.” Bach. “I am a great pianist.” Paderewski— “A good cadenza always makes me cry.” “I love the oboes’ small talk.” Offenbach.

“Sleepy, Herr Schumann?” asked Clara, softly— she had a date with someone by the sea; she played Chopin, then Brahms—three intermezzi— to help along the sandman. There was no reply. Said Proust to Debussy, “Though minstrelsy arises from the sea—and yours is heavenly— the world doesn’t orchestrate our wishes neatly, or so we gather as the years go by. ”