From: avjohn@iiasa.ac.at (Aviott  JOHN)
Subject: mad about mozart
Organization: IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 07:47:28 GMT


Aviott JOHN
avjohn@iiasa.ac.at

A CHRISTMAS MESSAGE:  As most of you readers of alt.prose get
ready to travel on holiday or home to celebrate the Christmas
vacations, greetings from this corner of cyberspace and thanks
for some of the interesting pieces I've seen on this discussion
group.  The following short piece was published in the
(now-defunct) Vienna Life Magazine in July 1985. 


MAD ABOUT MOZART

He was not in Vienna for nothing.  He was mad about Mozart,  
had been from the age of six when he heard the coloratura aria  
from an ancient TV rendering of the Magic Flute, accompanied by  
flimmering images of improbably costumed singers.  Captivated  
for ever from that moment, he listened to everything by Mozart  
he possibly could.  Seven years later the Queen of the Night descended  
to his pubertal bed on a staircase of song and he felt the flood  
of bewildering panic that accompanied his first wet dream. 

Now a young adult, he was intimately acquainted with the  
workings of computers, software, chips and other nonedible silicates.
This newly acquired knowledge did not displace his boyhood adulation.
In contrast to Mozart in his productive prime, Vienna wanted  
him and he gladly accepted the offer. 

In Vienna, he suffered at first from a surfeit of riches. 
There was so much going on all the time; culture pouring out 
of the woodwork, so to speak, in the many theatres and concert 
houses.  The old lady was a nodding acquaintance from the queue 
for the queue for first night standing tickets at the opera.  
They often stood shoulder to shoulder like soldiers marching into 
battle, waiting for tickets, unsung arias in their hearts; undaunted 
by the large and threatening uniformed attendants of the house. 
The attendants eyed the waiting standees as husbands eye prospective 
ravishers of wives; jealously.

They stood for hours in the queue and talked about music. 
She knew a great deal, belonged to an old family of passionate 
Mozart fans.  How old is old? he asked, seeking enlightenment 
in the old world.
     'My grandfather came here long before the world war,' she 
said, and the distant ring of her voice told him that it was the 
unnumbered one.  'He came into a small fortune and travelled across 
the continent to Vienna, having heard that some mysterious manuscripts 
had been discovered in the ruins of an old villa.'
     He was an expert, could perhaps decipher the scrawled signature, 
might from the construction of the bars and phrases of the music 
tell who the composer was.'
     The young man was impressed and whistled softly.
     'No whistling in the queue, please,' said the attendant.
     'What did he do for a living, your grandfather?  Was he a 
musician?'
     'Oh, that's a long story.'
     'Well, we're going to be in this queue for the next three 
hours.'
     'You wouldn't want to hear an old woman's improbable tale.'
     'I'm all ears,' he avowed.
     She was strangely reluctant to begin, but the queue was long, 
his legs ached and he insisted, wondering what manner of skeletons 
lay in her family cupboard.
     'You see, grandfather wasn't a musician, but he knew a lot 
about people.  He felt that composers transmuted bits of their 
soul into music when they wrote their pieces.'
     'Rather like Einstein and relativity?' he said brightly. 
 'E=mc2.  Matter becomes energy; soul becomes music.'
     'I... suppose so,' she agreed doubtfully.
     'I'm sorry, I shouldn't interrupt your story.  Your grandfather, 
you were saying...'
     'Yes, my grandfather was perceptive, something of a 'kenner' 
(a connoisseur) when it came to people and their motives.'
     'Like Freud,' he suggested.  She was really annoyed.  'They 
all relied on intellect rather than intuition,' she snapped.  
 'My grandfather was long dead when Freud's "revolutionary" theories 
gained wide currency.'
     'I won't interrupt again,' he promised humbly.  'Please go 
on.'
     She gave him a belligerent look that made the steel rims 
of her spectacles glint like armour.
     'The manuscripts were discovered the year before the great 
war started.'
     '1913,' he ventured.
     She nodded, in approval this time.  'Yes, 1913.  The Titanic 
sank in 1912, the year that I was born, and the manuscript was 
discovered a year later.  The family moved to Vienna as soon as 
grandfather heard the news, of course.  There was a great controversy 
going on at the time.  Whose work was it really?  It was ascribed 
to several composers, but to relate the work to the style of any 
one of the major composers was extraordinarily difficult.  Grandfather 
was allowed, with some reluctance, to see the hallowed sheets 
of yellowed paper; he insisted on seeing the originals.  In those 
days there were no sophisticated chemical tests as they have now.
     First of all he asked to be left completely alone with the 
sheets of music.  They hesitated; after all, these were valuable 
pieces of paper and he was a stranger, there was no knowing what 
he might do.  They finally allowed him five minutes alone with 
the papers.'  She went on to explain in great detail the tests 
he had made.  'He held it close to his nose and breathed in the 
scents of the composer.  It was extraordinarily difficult, he 
declared later.  Almost as though the music was written not by 
a man but by a ghost.  Sweat broke out, soaking his shirt and 
a few drops fell on the manuscript, smudging the precious scribble. 
 He carefully dried the paper and then called for a piano.  He 
wasn't much of a musician, but he could read notes and pick out 
tunes, which he did.  You see, he was not searching for music 
in the notes, but for the soul of the dead composer.  When he 
played the first few bars, even with his inexpert playing, he 
knew it was music of extraordinary sweetness and purity, like 
all the colours of the rainbow transformed into sound, like fire 
and ice, snow and flame, rivers of molten lava meeting the sea, 
passions and great joys, everything that rages in the red-hot 
core of the earth and beneath the surface of human beings; everything 
was there in superabundance, an extraordinary smelter of sounds. 
 It was mad, it was divine, it was frightening, the utter innocence 
and sheer insanity of it.
     Grandfather gave a great cry and collapsed in a heap on the 
piano keys.  They heard the discordant notes, broke open the door 
in great alarm and found him, pale with terror, sweat pouring 
off his face in a gushing fountain, like water out of the rock 
that Moses struck.  He had fallen on the manuscript, obliterating 
all the notes.  They spent months reconstructing the original 
music, relying heavily on grandfather's photographic memory, for 
he was the last one to have played the music.'
     The queue had been moving like an engorged python, steadily 
but slowly in the direction of the box office.  At this point 
in her story, they were there.  The old lady stepped smartly to 
the window and bought her ticket.
     'Wait, wait,' he cried in despair.  'You can't go in now. 
 I want to hear the end of the story.'
     The attendant grasped him firmly by the arm.  'You have to 
buy a ticket and stop blocking the kassa.  And no talking inside; 
it's Mozart they're performing today, not just anybody.'
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