An Arrangement that Conjures the Past; Beethoven's Op. 104 in "An Equal Music"

In "An Equal Music," by Vikram Seth," Beethoven's arrangement of the Op. 1 No. 3 Piano Trio (which was published as his Op. 104), becomes an integral part of the storyline.

Soon after his memory of Julia is triggered by the C minor trio, Michael hears about the arrangement that Beethoven did in 1817 of the trio for string quintet. “But that’s crazy. That’s at the wrong end of his life.” In his obsessive pre-internet search for the score and parts he also finds a specific an actual recording of the quintet:

“There are two Beethoven string quintets on the LP: my C minor, so desperately sought, so astonishingly found; and one in E flat major, another complete surprise, though I recall the librarian mentioning in passing its opus number, 4. They were recorded (with an extra viola player) by the Suk quartet and issued in 1977 under the Czech label Supraphon. . . .Bravo. Bravo Suk. Bravo Supraphon. What would I have done if it had not been for you? In twenty minutes I will be back in my flat, but I won’t listen to it immediately. Late tonight, after the rehearsal, I’ll come home, light a candle, lie down on my duvet, and sink into the quintet.”

This LP was re-released on CD in 1999 by Supraphon Archive [SU 3447-2 111]. The specific reference to hearing the trio through Michael’s past its symbolism are developed when Michael hears the transformations made in the arrangement:

"The sound fills the room: so familiar, so well-loved, so disturbingly and enchantingly different. From the moment, a mere ten bars from the beginning, where it is not the piano that answers the violin but the violin itself that provides its own answer, to the last note of the last movement where the cello, instead of playing the third, supports with its lowest, most resonant, most open note the beautifully spare C major chord, I am in a world where I seem to know everything and nothing.

 

(Fine Arts Quartet with Gil Sharon playing the fourth movement of Op. 104)

"My hands travel the strings of the C minor trio while my ears sing to the quintet. Here Beethoven robs me of what is mine, giving it to the other violin; there he bequeaths me of what is mine, giving it to the other violin; there he bequeaths me the upper reaches of what Julia used to play. It is a magical transformation. I listen to it again from beginning to end. In the second movement it is the first violin—who else?—who sings what was the piano’s theme, and the variations take on a strange, mysterious distance, as being, in a sense, variations one degree removed, orchestral variants of variations, but with changes that go beyond what could be explained by orchestration alone."

The musical references harmonize the changes in Michael’s life in relation to Julia. Later, Michael’s quartet is joined by a guest violist to read through the quintet. Julia’s personality as represented by the piano part in the trio is transformed into string parts that now represent Michael’s present. This story now creates a context in which hear Op. 104 as a personality transformed. The first violin sings what was the piano’s theme in Op. 1 No. 3. From the standpoint of personality this allows Michael to visit Julia like only a musician can.

“We play the first movement without stopping, and do not get entangled once. It ends with Piers playing a tremendously zippy set of ascending and descending scales, followed by a huge resonant chord from all five of us, ebbing swiftly away I three softer chords.
We look at one another beaming.”

These passages give us opportunity to hear the trio through the characters, to make contact with how specific passages fit into the lives of its characters. We hear the affect of the music as it intertwines with the circumstances and the strangeness of living. We can hear the exact recording, we can observe and make contact with the exact notes and specific passages that take on or transmit the personality of those who played and loved it. It is also an emblem of a difficult time in his life that he is trying to interpret and transcend.

Vikram Seth vs. Berlioz: Op. 1 no. 3

In "An Equal Music," by Vikram Seth, one of the major figures in the book, the pianist Julia, loves the Opus I No. 3 piano trio in C minor.

"She particularly loved the minor variation in the second movement, though it was almost as if the cello and violin were, in that calm melancholy, robbing her of her own prominence. Whenever she would hear it or play it or even read it in the score, she would move her head slowly from side to side. And she loved the unflamboyant close of the entire work."

(Amelia Piano Trio )

The "unflamboyant close" refers to the ending of the finale, worthy of attention because Beethoven has so many triumphant endings. An unusual figure [Db-C] sounds restlessly [5:12], and we are deflected into a picardy ending in the major with a series of rising scales in the piano part [5:21]. It is an eerie and somewhat unresolved ending. Julia favors design above technique. She is a likable character.

Hector Berlioz reported his reaction to this piece in the quasi-fiction of "Evenings with the Orchestra." But it is amped-up prose; passion bent to the point where it is louder than the music:

“One evening I heard Beethoven’s Trio in C minor: I open wide the door--come in, come in and be welcome, proud melody! Heavens! How noble and beautiful it is! Where, oh where did Beethoven find all those thousands of phrases, each more poetically characterized than the rest, each different, each original, and without even the family resemblance one finds among the melodies of masters that are known for their fertility? And what ingenious developments! What unexpected turns! How swiftly the indefatigable eagle flies! How he hovers poised in his harmonious sky! He dives into it, loses himself in it, soars, swoops again, disappears; then returns to his staring place, his eye more brilliant his pinions stronger, intolerant of rest, quivering, thirsting for the infinite!”

A violinist “sick with memory” and a pianist who gently sways. Vikram Seth; An Equal Music

The plot of "An Equal Music," a book of fiction by Vikram Seth, is built around a core of musical repertoire integral to the storyline itself. References to the Beethoven Piano Trio in C Minor, Op.1 No.3 and the String Quintet Op. 104 operate within a network of symbols about a broken past.

Central character Michael Holme is a violinist “sick with memory,” focused ten years in the past. He frequently muses on a time prior to a breakdown that created chaos in his life. Back then he was a student in Vienna learning the C minor trio with Julia McNicholl as pianist. His musical breakdown interrupted his relationship with jarring suddenness; “Love or no love, I could not continue in that city. I stumbled, my mind jammed, I felt the pressure of every breath.” The trio is a symbol of his relationship with Julia and also of his futile fight not to succumb to the musical personality of Carl Käll, his teacher, “that stubborn musician, brutal and full of suffocating energy,” who believes that Michael spends too much time on chamber music and “could have a better career.”

As Michael observes Julia learning the music her personality stamps itself into details of the score. We make first contact with the music itself as Michael listens to a CD of the work and rethinks his past.

“What wonderful things are his first self-numbered works, a trio of trios that say to the world, yes, these I could bear to be known by. Of them, this is the gem: the Opus I number 3. Carl, of course, disagreed with me; he thought it the weakest of the three.

"It was Julia’s favourite among all Beethoven’s trios. She particularly loved the minor variation in the second movement, though it was almost as if the cello and violin were, in that calm melancholy, robbing her of her own prominence. Whenever she would hear it or play it or even read it in the score, she would move her head slowly from side to side. And she loved the unflamboyant close of the entire work.”

The opus one trios are well known to musicians, and it is entertaining to think of the set as a “trio of trios.” Each trio [Eb, G, C minor] has four movements instead of three, and in many other ways they also strive toward symphonic expression and expansion of materials and forms that later became a Beethoven trademark. Written in 1794 soon after his arrival in Vienna, there is a famous allegation that Haydn took issue with the C minor, feeling that it should not have been published. Seth refashions this historical debate to illustrate opposing preferences between Michael and his teacher Carl Käll.

The jewel of the passage is the reference to the fourth variation, the so-called minor variation. Subjective and descriptive, the passage does not attempt to explain in analytical terms, but deeply personal glimpses of Julia’s personality are revealed through her attachment to traceable references in the music.



This performance from 2009 is by the Daniel Piano Trio: Aleksandr Snytkin, violin, Francesco Mastromatteo, violoncello,and Elena Zyl, piano.

Beethoven patterned the variations by alternating the orchestration. The piano is prominent in variations one [1:20] and three [3:45], the strings in two [2:33] and four [4:51]. The final variation is tutti [6:06], and there is a coda at [7:13]. Julia’s part in variation four is a rhythmically vital syncopation marked differently in both hands. It is a complex way to interact with the primary melodic parts played by the strings.

“Calm melancholy” seeks the affect of the striking color of sound in this dark variation in E-flat minor. The variation is a rounded binary form, but the return at the close of the second section [5:39 and again at 5:56] is altered by inverting the primary melody and changing the piano and cello parts.

Moving her head slowly from side to side seems to reflect thinking in phrases; hearing deeply, and absorbing complex layers of pattern and invention. It shows her to be a sympathetic musician more interested in the total product than in her own role exclusively—a real chamber music player. From a symbolic viewpoint her favorite places involve an awareness of Michael, and parts that of the music in which the violin is significant.