Vienna awakens in each of its inhabitants. In an apartment you can inhale the smell of Marseille coffee. It is inhabited by someone who breakfasts quietly in a dreamy attitude. Weeks ago she lost her mother and in the steam from the cup her impossible feminine comes together.
Brahms is a musician who still does not enjoy international recognition. Far from his native Hamburg, he loses the daily heartbeat of a family shaken by his parents’ divorce. His obligations in Vienna included guiding Christiane Brahms in her solitude, the only woman who loved him before she met him. He has thought long and hard about writing a requiem based on biblical texts and already has the first sketches of the composition. If the seed of the German Requiem was the death of Robert Schumann, the ideas of life and death typical of the longing for the mother will fuel this latent project for years.
Memories bring Johannes back to the day he met Clara. The same determination with which he knocked on the door of Schumann’s house in September 1953 with the sole shield of a letter of recommendation from Joseph Joachim, seated at the piano, impressed the famous Saxon composer. From then on, Robert Schumann treated the young Brahms as an equal and asked his wife to join them in the meeting that so influenced his fate.
The smile and look with which Clara reassured the excited young man created a special attraction between them with an immediate and profound knowledge of the other. Johannes at the keyboard interpreted his own works and those of Beethoven as he had never done before. Robert’s presence was blurred by the rhythm of Clara’s breathing, which did not lose concentration as she turned the pages of the score. The inner impulse that awakened in Johannes that evening clashed from that day on with the veneration for Schumann.
Brahms enters the daily life of the Schumanns in complicity with the children of the marriage. The hours the three spend together at the piano are interrupted by insistent invitations from the couple to develop their talent for orchestral composition. Robert Schumann recommends him to Breikopf publishers so that they publish his scores and decides to write the famous article in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik in Leipzig, announcing that Brahms at the age of twenty is an absolute reality and must be considered music as the chosen one, as the new Messiah.
Shortly afterwards, Robert Schumann attempts to commit suicide by throwing himself into the river Rhine. Brahms travels without hesitation to Düsseldorf to help Clara, who is in an advanced state of pregnancy, in resolving the new family and the economic responsibilities resulting from her husband’s admission to the Endenich sanatorium.
Installed in Schumann’s house, Johannes looked tirelessly at Clara. The fact that they played the piano together, if possible, united them even more, and the mutual complicity led to an intense love that was only hampered by the deplorable situation in which Schumann found himself. Clara notes in her diary the peace and pleasure she feels with Brahms’s natural presence, his way of understanding music and the moving steadfastness with which he accompanies it.
Brahms composed the variations on a Schumann theme from the fourth piece of the Bunte Blätter, where Robert inserted the Clara theme consisting of the notes CBAG#-A (CLARA). She had not expected such a special present on her birthday. Johannes had managed to unite his three existences in sixteen variations, and Clara showed him that by confirming that he was already part of it.
The composition was entirely to the liking of Schumann, who undoubtedly captured the inner conflict between Clara’s love and respect for her person. Brahms went to visit him in Endenich and they walked to the statue of Beethoven installed in Bonn. Robert confessed his inner concern over a personal problem that had not been resolved and once again insisted on the need for him to write music for orchestra.
Just as Brahms was about to confess his love for Clara, he had run out of coffee in his cup. After a refreshing breakfast it was time to get to work.
(to be continued)
Source: La Verdad
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
