Meet Me in Strasbourg: A Romance Novel from which You Can Learn a Lot about Music

I recently posted an essay about the Stan Rice novel Meet Me in Strasbourg.

 

 

To many people, music is just a pleasant background noise. Occasionally a good tune will stick in a person’s mind. But in this novel, Tony’s experiences will show you how the more you know about music, the more meaningful it becomes, until it encapsulates your life. Examples include:

• The novel is centered around Die Winterreise, a song cycle by Franz Schubert which, like other Schubert song cycles, is about a lovelorn wanderer mourning the rejection of his love. Die Winterreise begins with the wanderer going to his love’s house to bid farewell to it. Then he sings about one thing after another that reminds him of how miserable he is. At the end, he gives up and joins with a penniless organ-grinder (Der Leiermann) on the street. Only Schubert’s astonishing music can rescue this poetry from utter depression. As the principal characters Tony and Aimée develop their friendship and love, their direction is certainly not that of Schubert’s wanderer. They swear that there will be no Leiermann for them! Then circumstances beyond their control intervene and crash their comfortable love.
• Tony composes band music, just good enough to perform. Having composed wind ensemble music myself, rather indifferently, I can testify that it is a very difficult task.
• Tony plays the recorder, and this music plays an essential role in bringing him and Aimée together.
• In a concert, the band plays an arrangement of the medieval hymn Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence, which has (as many of you can attest) an almost magical effect upon the mind. Its climax verse is “And the powers of Hell shall vanish as the darkness fades away.” Is this really true? The stirring music forces the question upon the minds of Tony and Aimée. I will write about this in my other blog, the one devoted to religion [https: christianagnostics.blogspot.com]. 

One could almost believe that, in Meet Me in Strasbourg, by Stan Rice, music is not a background but a character.

I Am Not Afraid to Die

I am not afraid to die, even though I am agnostic about the afterlife, if there is one—about judgment, bliss, suffering, and all the other elements that tradition has accreted onto the afterlife, creating Heaven and Hell.

I am afraid of dying, the process of life coming to an end. If it occurs by gentle decline, I will be okay with it; I am already trembling and weak and have many old-man emergencies. Nobody escapes these things. I just don’t want to die in any of the spectacularly painful and outrageous ways that we hear about on the news literally every day all over the world, whether it is a kid getting shot at school in America or a kid dying of malaria in Africa.

A quiet death at the end of a good life does not bother me. What makes me and almost everyone who thinks about it furious is an untimely death, for example, of a young person (a child, or a soldier, or in a death camp). An example is the Franz Schubert song Death and the Maiden, which he wrote into a quartet. Why should death come to a young woman who has done nothing to deserve suffering? The thought of this made Schubert furious. The Death and the Maiden quartet is one of the few places in Schubert’s music in which his fury makes him totally lose control. Usually he weaves his musical motifs together beautifully, even when the subject is depressing (as many of his songs are). But if you listen to this piece of music you can hear a couple of measures where the musical structure just falls apart into clamor. It was Schubert’s brief excursion into insanity.

I refuse to continue this list of examples. But if the end of my life can be quiet, then I can slip into death. I have no fear of this, for several reasons.

First, I won’t know I’m dead. I won’t be caught in blankets of darkness and silence, but with a conscious mind telling me, oh no, I’m dead, and I have to be aware of being dead forever. Literally nobody believes this. I won’t wake up dead some morning. It’s like the song set to the tune of Irish washerwoman:

McTavish is dead and his brother don’t know it

McTavish is dead and his brother don’t know it

They’re both of them dead, they’re in the same bed

And neither one knows that the other is dead.

If this seems bloody obvious, I merely point out that it is also comforting.

Second, the story has to come to an end sometime. I finished an academic career, and I figured out a lot of things about life during my journey from fundamentalism to agnosticism, and about the world of science. What an exciting journey it has been, from the top of Mt. Whitney to the bottom of Badwater, from the tropical forest to the desert, seeing the large and small wonders of the natural world that most people walk right past without noticing. I have written books in which I have shared my excitement about the world with my readers. But I retired and am preparing for the final phase of my life, primarily as a grandfather. There is no plot if there is no conclusion. I want to draw my life into a conclusion that makes sense and makes sensible all of the things I have thought and experienced, in such a way that I can help other people make sense of their lives.

We all know this. We all know that, as we grow older, certain investments are ridiculous. I take hikes and eat moderately in order to maintain health in my remaining days, for my own comfort but also so that I do not make myself a decrepit nuisance on others who will take care of me. A few years ago a dentist tried to interest me in straightening my lower teeth. Nobody can see them. This might be a sensible investment for someone who is just entering a profession, to put a good face on things, but for a fifty-year-old man, as I was at the time, it is like decorating something that you will soon discard. There is a relief in knowing that old things, such as old bodies, do not need to be maintained in pristine condition

The story has to draw to a conclusion. Can you imagine the tedium of playing harps and singing hymns forever? To explore this idea further, you should read Mark Twain’s Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven.

Third, suppose there is an afterlife? There are lots of fundamentalists who think that if you disagree with them on even the tiniest theological point, even from ignorance, you will suffer infintely forever. Yet they also claim that God is love. This is utterly ridiculous. I have chosen to live a life of love. Every day and every year I look back and evaluate myself: Have I made the best use of my opportunities? Have I made life better for other people (maybe not everyone, but most people)? These are not vague thoughts. I keep a very detailed diary, which is separate from my journal. Nobody will ever read them; there are too many millions of words in them. Their main function is to focus my mind on the way I am living, to be consciously happy about the blessings I receive each day, but also to plan ahead. I plan ahead to accomplish things that will make the world better; and if I fail in some of those things, I try to let go of them. As John says in the New Testament, “He who loves is born of God and knows God; he who does not love does not know God.” It’s pretty simple. If there is an afterlife, I am ready for it, by any reasonable standard

I do not want to die before I have finished my work. I may not have a choice in this, but I try to keep my body and mind healthy so that I can finish more books, for example. I do not want an untimely death.

 

In many cases, dying is a tragedy. But timely death is not.

Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (4). The Winter Journey

Before I take you out of the vale or vail or veil of depression, I want to bring you back to Franz Schubert’s Die Winterreise. It is 24 songs, based on poems by the now obscure Wilhelm Müller (Bill Miller in English, just like Giuseppe Verdi is Joe Green in English). The traveler, like Schubert himself, was tormented by love and set out on a winter journey to nowhere in particular looking for meaning in life, but not very hard. He could easily have seen things that might have uplifted him, but he looked only for what was depressing.

You can listen to samples of Die Winterreise at Amazon.

The first song begins in D minor, with a marchlike rhythm. I paraphrase the wanderer: “You maiden, you said you loved me, your Mom even talked about you marrying me. And now? I will set out on a journey through the forest, through moon-shadows and along deer tracks. So why should I stay here? Dogs are growling all around your house!” Then he grew momentarily philosophical: “Love ever loves to wander, from one to another; God has made it so.” But he has not convinced himself. He cannot resist saying, Fein liebchen, Gute nacht! Dear lover, good night! Then Schubert switched to D major. The traveler said, in paraphrase, “I will not disturb you, but upon your doorpost I write, Good night! When you wake up you will see that I was thinking of you.” Without this last stanza in a tender major key (although the song ends in minor), there would have been no journey. Otherwise it would just have been, She doesn’t love me, ah nuts, I’ll just go somewhere else. But because he could not stop loving the unnamed Mädchen, he does not go somewhere else, but wanders aimlessly.

Then he gets really depressed. Song 2: He sees the weathervane over the woman’s house; the wind blows it in all directions, just like her fickle soul. Song 3: Frozen Tears. Song 4: Chill.

Then in Song 5 he finds the linden tree (this is the only song in this set that has gained independent fame, and the only one that Schubert’s friends liked) in whose smooth bark he and his lover had carved their initials, I suppose, the previous summer. In E major, the tree lures the wanderer to commit suicide and rest forever in the pleasant shade. But the wanderer loved his depression so much that he kept going. The song begins and ends in E major, with periods of E minor in the middle, as the traveler is tortured by memories of lost love.

The traveler runs as fast as he can, but cannot help looking back (Song 8). He sees mists and thinks they are ghosts (Song 9). He rests in someone’s cabin, and awakens to see intricate leaves carved by frost on the window, and imagines himself in a springtime of life—ha, you laugh at the dreamer who saw flowers in winter? (Song 11) He hears a posthorn, and thinks maybe there is a letter for him, then he remembers that nobody knows where he is (Song 13). He awakens with frost on his head and thinks, Ah! I have gray hair! I’m old and I can die soon! (Song 14) A crow follows him as if he is about to die (Song 15, the most splendid minute of music ever written). He passes a graveyard, and thinks it is a hotel (Song 21). He has a brief moment of courage (Song 22), then sees the sun and two sundogs and thinks about his fate (Song 23).

And then he finds his purpose in life. What is it? It is something that Solomon also discovered in Ecclesiastes. No, not God. I’ll tell you what it is later, unless you want to go find a CD with Die Winterreise on it and find out.

Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (3). More agnosticism from Ecclesiastes

Today’s Bible Reading: Ecclesiastes 1:12–2:23.

The author of Ecclesiastes was apparently pretending to be Solomon, and claimed unsurpassed wealth, power, and wisdom. Who else, then, could be in such a perfect position to try to find out what is truly fulfilling in life? This reveals an astonishingly modern aspect to Ecclesiastes: its writer submitted this question to what we would today call a scientific test.

The writer (we will, for literature’s sake, call him Solomon) said that he accumulated tremendous riches and indulged in every pleasure that a man could imagine. He lacked only liquor (distillation had not yet been invented, I think) and electronic devices. He certainly had more sexual opportunity than any man today, with the possible exception of Tiger Woods. Were he living today, he would probably be one of the few private citizens to have gone into outer space. In this sense, Solomon was like his later namesake, Suleÿman the Magnificent, a medieval sultan of Asia Minor. Solomon’s conclusion: It was all vanity and striving after wind. Some people say that whoever dies with the most toys wins. Solomon would say, whoever dies with the most toys dies.

Next the writer tried wisdom—what we would today call intellectual pursuits. He found that intelligence was far better than ignorance: “Wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness.” But he encountered the same problem with wisdom as with riches: when it’s all over, the wise man dies just like the fool.

And then he thought about future generations. Some people say, “What has posterity ever done for me?” Nevertheless, most humans think about posterity a lot. Solomon realized that whatever riches he accumulated and whatever wisdom he gained would all be left to whoever would come after him, “and who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool?” You work all your life for riches, or for wisdom, then you leave it all to someone who has not had to work for it.

There is one option Solomon apparently did not consider. It was Andrew Carnegie’s philosophy: Nobody should die rich. Andrew Carnegie was extremely wealthy, but gave most of it away to build libraries and research institutions, many of which are still going strong almost a century later. But Solomon might just have said, maybe all the people who go into those libraries will go out just as stupid as they were when they went in.

So Solomon got himself into a deep depression. You work all day, and you worry about whether there is any point to doing it. And then at night you lie awake and worry about it some more. Were Solomon alive today, I am not sure that even trazodone or doxylamine or hypnosis tapes or valerian root would help him get to sleep. If “even in the night his mind does not rest,” nothing can help. If you believe that, no matter how hard you work, luck is the empress of the world, how can you ever feel satisfied?

This was the same feeling that the wanderer had in German poet Wilhelm Müller’s Die Winterreise (Winter’s Journey). No one would remember this mediocre poem were it not transformed into utter beauty by the music of Franz Schubert. In song number 17 (Im Dorfe; In the Village), the traveler hears dogs barking and the villagers are sleeping away in their beds. Schubert’s music depicts not only the growling of the dogs and the snoring, but also the traveler’s disdain at how these people could be so stupid that they could just sleep through the night without existential angst. They dream, and then in the morning they forget their dreams. The music then shifts from growling dogs and depression to the most beatific music I have ever heard! You gotta hear it. The traveler says, Je nun, je nun—and yet, and yet! The people have, in fact, seen splendid visions in their dreams, and what is so bad about that? If only Solomon could have done this. But Solomon, like Müller’s and Schubert’s traveler, trudged on in his bleak journey. I will tell you more about Die Winterreise in future posts.

I must stop here. Please come back, because I don’t want to leave you on this depressing note. There is a way to be happy despite these things, as Solomon subsequently wrote. I warn you, though, that there will be a few more depressing posts before that.