The Golden Pot

Ritter Gluck
A memory from the year 1809
There are usually still a few nice days left in late fall in Berlin. The sun bursts brightly from behind a bulwark of clouds, and the moisture in the balmy air that wafts through the streets evaporates quickly. At such times you see a long row of colorful characters – dapper gents, stolid citizens with the wife and darling little ones all dressed in their Sunday best, priests, Jewesses, law clerks, prostitutes, professors, cleaning ladies, dancers, officers and the like strolling among the Linden trees toward the Tiergarten. Soon all the tables at the Café Klaus and Weber are taken; the coffee is steaming, the dapper gents light up their cigars, people talk, argue about war and peace, about Madame Bethmann’s shoes, whether they were, as recently noted, gray or green, about Der Geschlossene Handelsstaat and counterfeit coins, and so on and so forth, until all chatter dissolves into an aria from Fanchon, wherein an out-of-tune harp, a few untuned violins, a consumptive wheezing flute, and a spasmodic bassoon torment their players and the listeners. Several round tables and garden chairs are pressed up close to the parapet separating the café’s turf from the stately thoroughfare of the Heerstraße. There you can breathe fresh air and observe those coming and going at a far remove from the cacophonous din of that accursed orchestra; there I sit myself down to give free reign to the easy meanderings of my imagination, conversing with imagined friends and acquaintances about the sciences, art, all matters close to a man’s heart. The surge of pedestrians strolling by grows ever more colorful by the moment, but nothing bothers me, nothing can scare off my fantastic conversation partners. Only the confounded trio and their perfidious waltz tears me out of my reveries. All I can hear are the screeching treble of the violin and flute and the bassoon’s buzzing basso ostinato; the sounds swell and fade in octaves played in tandem, bombarding the eardrum, and in a spontaneous outburst, like someone gripped by an acute pain, I cry out: “What manic music! Spare us these wretched octaves!” Beside me, someone mutters: “Confounded fate! Another octave hunter!”
I looked up and only then became conscious that a man had sat down at the same table, his stony gaze directed right at me. I could not take my eyes off him.
Never had I seen a head, never a figure that made such an immediate and profound impression on me. A gently downturned nose adjoined a wide, open forehead with striking ridges that rose over bushy, light gray eyebrows, beneath which eyes blazed with an almost wild, youthful fire (though the man might well have been over fifty). The soft-edged chin stood in stark contrast with the tightly closed mouth, and a strange smile produced by the peculiar play of muscles in his sunken cheeks seemed to revolt against the deep, melancholic gravity spread across his forehead. Only a few gray locks were brushed back behind his protruding ears. A very wide, modern overcoat was draped around his big, haggard figure. As soon as my gaze fell upon the man, he looked down and went back to the business my outcry had probably interrupted. With evident delight he shook tobacco from a few little bags into a jar set before him and moistened it with red wine from a half bottle. The music had stopped; I felt impelled to speak to him.
“Thank goodness the music stopped,” I said, “it was insufferable.”
The old fellow gave me a fleeting glance and emptied the last bag of tobacco.
“Better no music at all,” I spoke again. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
“I have no opinion in the matter,” he replied. “You must be a musician and professional connoisseur…”
“Not so; I’m neither. I learned to play piano and bass as a matter of good upbringing, and was told, among other things, that nothing makes a more deleterious effect than when the bass dominates with treble in octaves. At the time I took it on good authority and have since always found it borne out.”
“Really?” he broke in, got up and advanced slowly and deliberately toward the musicians, often slapping the flat of his hand against his forehead with his gaze turned upwards, like someone seeking to rouse a memory. I saw him talking to the musicians, whom he treated with formidable dignity. He came back, and no sooner did he sit down than they started playing the overture to Iphigenia in Aulis.
With half-closed eyes, his arms crossed on the table before him, he listened to the andante. Quietly lifting his left foot, he indicated when the voice was to start singing; now he raised his head, cast a fleeting look around, rested his left hand on the table with fingers outstretched, as if he were playing a chord on the piano, and raised his right hand in the air. He took the posture of a conductor indicating a change of tempo to the orchestra – the right hand fell, and the allegro began. His pale cheeks flushed a burning red; his eyebrows rose on a ruffled forehead; an inner fury enflamed his wild gaze with a fire that, little by little, displaced the smile that still hovered around his half-opened mouth. Then he leaned back, his eyebrows drawn upwards, the muscles once again began to ripple on his cheeks, his eyes sparkling, a deep inner pain dissolving into desire that gripped every fiber of his being and shook him convulsively. He drew a breath deep from the pit of his chest; drops of sweat formed on his forehead; he signaled the advent of the tutti, when all instruments play together, and other key passages in the composition; his right hand kept time, while with the left hand he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his face. In this way he fleshed out and added color to the bare bones approximation that those violins gave of the overture. I heard the soft, mellifluous lament of the flute once the storm of the violins and bass fizzled out and the thunder of the kettledrum dissolved; I heard the soft striking bow strokes of the cello, the plaintive murmur of the bassoon that filled my heart with a burst of indescribable melancholy; the tutti returned like the footsteps of a giant, the unison sounded large, and the muffled lament died down under its crushing strides.
The overture came to an end; the man let both his arms sink to his side and sat there with eyes shut tight like someone physically and emotionally drained by too great an effort. The bottle before him was empty; I filled his glass with a white Burgundy which I had ordered in the meantime. He breathed a deep sigh of relief and seemed to rouse himself from a dream. I urged him to drink; he did so without much ado, and after downing a full glass in a single gulp, he cried, “I am pleased with the performance! The orchestra did an admirable job!”
“And yet,” I spoke up, “yet they only gave a faint outline of a masterpiece conceived in brilliant colors.”
“Am I right in supposing that you are no Berliner?”
“Quite right; I only reside here on occasion.”
“The Burgundy is good, but it’s getting cold out.”
“Then let us go inside and polish off the bottle.”
“A splendid suggestion. I don’t know you, but you don’t know me either. Let us not ask each other for our names; names are betimes burdensome. I’m drinking Burgundy, it isn’t costing me a penny, we’re having a fine time together— so be it!”
He said all this with good-natured geniality. We stepped indoors; upon sitting down, he flung open his overcoat, and I was surprised to see that beneath it he wore an embroidered cardigan, a shirt with long shirttails, black velvet leggings, and a very small silver dagger. He promptly buttoned the coat back up again.
“Why did you ask me if I was a Berliner?” I began.
“Because in that case I would have had to take my leave of you.”
“A puzzling reply.”
“Not in the least, it’s not puzzling at all, as soon as I tell you, that— well, that I’m a composer.”
“I still don’t follow.”
“Please forgive my outburst before. I see that you haven’t the faintest notion of Berlin and Berliners.”
He got up and paced intently several times back and forth; then he went to the window and sang a hardly audible chorus from Iphigenia in Tauris, every now and then knocking on the window pane to denote a tutti. I noticed to my astonishment that he sang several alternate variations of the melodies all striking in their verve and novelty. I let him continue. He finished singing and sat back down. Completely taken by the man’s odd behavior and the fantastic utterances of a rare musical talent, I held still. After a while he started talking again:
“Have you never composed music?”
“Yes, I have dabbled in the art; but all the music I jotted down in bursts of inspiration sounded flat and dull after the fact, so I stopped trying.”
“You did wrong; for the very fact that you would scrap your own attempts is a not untrustworthy sign of your talent. You learn music as a boy because Mama and Papa want it, so you strum and fiddle away; but unbeknownst to you, little by little you become more attuned to melody. Perhaps the half-forgotten thread of a ditty with which you took unintended liberties was your first original musical idea, and this embryo, painstakingly nourished by extraneous influences, gave birth to a giant who lapped up everything around it, sucking it up and transforming it in his marrow and blood. Hah, how in heaven’s name is it possible to even intimate the thousand some odd paths to musical composition! It is a broad thoroughfare, which all romp along, whooping and crying: ‘We are the anointed ones! We’ve made our mark!’ Passing through the ivory gate, you reach the realm of dreams; there are precious few who see the gate even once, and far fewer that ever pass through it! The gate might appear a bit bizarre. Madcap figures float back and forth, but they have character – some more so than others. They keep a low profile on the high road; you can only catch sight of them on the far side of the ivory gate. It is hard to ever leave that realm; monsters block the way as they do before Alzina’s fortress[1]— everything whirls— everything turns— many are entrapped by their reverie in the realm of dreams, they dissolve in their dreams, they no longer cast a shadow, or else from their shadows they would become aware of that radiant beam that shines through this realm; but only a handful, awakened from their dream, rise and stride through the realm of dreams— they arrive at the truth— the supreme moment has come: contact with the eternal, an unspeakable experience! The sun looks on, it is the tonic triad, from which chords, star-like, shoot down and spin around you with flaming filaments. Enmeshed with fire, you lie there, until Psyche swings herself up to the sun.”
Upon speaking these last words, he leapt up, gave me a piercing look, and threw his hands in the air. Then he sat back down again and downed the glass of wine he’d been served. A silence followed which I did not deem it seemly to break, so as not to set this extraordinary man off-track. Becalmed after a while, he continued:
“When I wiled in the realm of dreams, a thousand aches and terrors tormented me. It was late at night, and I was at my wit’s end with fear of the grinning larvae of the monstrosities that besieged me, now dragging me down to the ocean bottom, now lifting me up to the heavens above. Beams of light pierced the dark night, and those beams were musical tones that enveloped me with mellifluous clarity. I woke from my aches and saw before me a big bright eye peering into an organ, and as it peered, sweet sounds arose, glimmering and getting entangled in glorious chords the likes of which I would never have conceived. Melodies streamed up and down, and I swam in this musical current – would gladly have drowned in it – when the eye looked at me and lifted me up above the roaring waves. Night fell again, and two giants in glimmering suits of armor approached me: Key Note and Fifth! They hurled me up, but the eye smiled and said: ‘I know that your breast is filled with longing. The gentle, soft-voiced youth Major Third will join the giants. You will hear his sweet song, you will see me again, and my melodies will be yours.’”
He paused.
“And you saw the eye again?”
“Yes, I saw it again! For years I sighed with pleasure in the realm of dreams— here— yes, here! I sat in a lovely valley and listened to the flowers singing together. Only one sunflower kept silent and sadly turned its closed calyx to the ground. Invisible ties drew me to her— she raised her head— her calyx burst open, and from it the eye beamed at me. Notes streamed forth like beams of light from my face to the flower, which thirstily sucked them in. The leaves of the sunflower grew bigger and bigger— embers spilled from its surface— they enveloped me— the eye disappeared and I found myself in the calyx.”
He jumped up at these last words and rushed out of the room with rapid youthful steps. I waited in vain for his return, resolving after a while to return to the city.
I had almost reached the Brandenburg Gate when I made out a tall figure striding toward it in the darkness and immediately recognized my curious companion from before. I spoke to him:
“Why did you rush off so suddenly?”
“I felt too hot and the sweet-voiced euphony rang out.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“All the better.”
“All the worse, as I really want to completely grasp your meaning.”
“Don’t you hear it?”
“No.”
“It’s over now! Let’s go! Ordinarily I am not fond of company; but— you’re not a composer— you’re not a Berliner.”
“I cannot fathom what you have against Berliners. Here, where art is so respected and practiced at such a high level of accomplishment, I would rather imagine that a man of your artistic inclination would feel at home.”
“You’re mistaken. To my great distress I am damned to haunt its streets like a dead man’s ghost in a desolate realm.”
“A desolate realm, here, in Berlin?”
“Yes, it all feels desolate around me, since no kindred spirit ever comes my way. I stand alone.”
“But what about the artists! The composers!”
“A pox on them! They carp and carp about the inconsequential – keep refining everything down to the most minute measure, keep mulling over everything just to pan out a single pitiful idea. They are forever blabbering about art, art appreciation, and what have you – they never get down to creating anything, and should they ever actually find themselves in the mood, as if impelled to bring forth a couple of artistic notions into the light of day, the terrible chill of their temperament reveals how distantly removed they are from the sun – you’d swear the stuff they churn out hailed from Lapland.”
“Your judgment seems far too harsh. You must at least find the theater productions up to snuff.”
“I finally forced myself to go again to the theater to see the opera of a young friend – can’t remember the title. Hah, the whole world was packed into that opera! The spirits of Orcus come charging through the motley throng of well-heeled folks – every single one with his own voice and almighty tone – for heaven’s sake, of course, I mean Don Juan! – But not the overture, which came bubbling forth prestissimo all in a big muddle, which I could suffer through; I prepared myself through fasting and prayer to endure it all, because I know that the euphony is overemphasized by these large-scale productions.
“Even if I must admit that Mozart’s masterpieces for the most part are inexplicably neglected here, Gluck’s works surely enjoy a worthy rendering.”
“You think so? I once wanted to go hear Iphigenia in Tauris. As I entered the theater, I heard them striking up the overture. Hm— I think to myself, must be a mistake; this is how they do Iphigenia! I’m stunned when the andante starts up, at the beginning of Iphigenia in Tauris, and the storm follows hot on its heels. Twenty years lie in-between! The entire effect, the whole perfectly calculated effect of the tragedy is lost. Still water— a storm— the Greeks are flung ashore, that’s the opera in a nutshell!— What? Did the composer write the overture in a mad fit, so that you can blast it off like a trumpet piece any way you want?”
“I grant you the blunder. Nevertheless, every effort is being made nowadays to valorize Gluck’s works.”
“Well, yes!” he responded in brief, smiling ever more bitterly. Suddenly he leapt up, and nothing could stop him. It was as if he’d disappeared in a flash, and for days I sought him out in vain in the Tiergarten.

[1] A reference to the witch in Ludovico Ariosto’s (1474-1533) epic poem Orlando Furioso (The Raging Roland).