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Trio: A Novel Biography of the Schumanns and Brahms, by Boman Desai
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The trio comprises three musical geniuses: Robert and Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms. Clara married Robert, with whom she fell in love when she was just sixteen, though it meant challenging the iron will of her father, who wished her to marry an earl or a count, certainly not an impoverished composer. The Schumanns had eight children, and Robert's greatness as a composer was never in doubt, but he was also mentally ill, attempted suicide, and finally incarcerated himself in an asylum, where he died two and a half years later. Johannes Brahms entered the picture shortly before the incarceration and fell deeply in love with Clara but was just as deeply indebted to Robert for getting his first six opuses published within weeks of their meeting. Clara was forbidden to see Robert in the asylum because the doctors feared she would excite him too much. Brahms became a go-between for the couple, ferrying messages to and fro, but both loved Robert too well to abuse his trust. Brahms learned instead to associate deep love with deep renunciation-and, coupling this love with early experiences of playing dance music for sailors and prostitutes in Hamburg's dockside bars, he became a victim to the Freudian conundrum: where he loves, he feels no passion, and where he feels passion, he cannot love. Germany grows in the hinterland of the story from four hundred-plus principalities to one nation under Bismarck. The great composers of the century (Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt, and Wagner among others) have their entrances and exits, and the ghosts of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert are never distant. Though firmly grounded in fact, the book unfolds like a novel, a narrative of love, insanity, suicide, revolution, politics, war, and of course, music.
- Sales Rank: #3015320 in Books
- Published on: 2015-06-29
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.02" h x 1.94" w x 5.98" l, 2.98 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 824 pages
Review
KIRKUS REVIEWS (starred review) A novel that explores the complex relationships between classical composers Johannes Brahms and Robert Schumann,and the latter's pianist/composer wife, Clara.
When Schumann, then a young law student, first meets 18-year-old Clara Josephine Wieck, she's a 9-year-old child.She's already gaining a reputation as a pianist, though, and when he sees her play, he comes to the realization that he must devote his own life to music. He convinces Clara's father, Friedrich, to take him on as a piano student, and he moves in with the family. Gradually, the bond between Clara and Robert becomes romantic, but Friedrich furiously opposes their union and forbids them to see each other. He has reasons to believe Robert is dishonorable, and he also thinks that the musician is incapable of adequately supporting his daughter financially. However, after time apart, Clara and Robert commit to each other and plan to marry against her father's wishes. Friedrich does everything in his power to stop them, including taking them to court. After composer Felix Mendelssohn testifies on Robert's behalf, Clara and Robert wed, but their relationship remains fraught with challenges. Robert wins fame for his original compositions but is unable to make much of an income, and he's emasculated by Clara's superior earning power. Clara, too, becomes frustrated that she's sacrificed her career for his and frets about his deteriorating mental health. When Robert is committed to an asylum after a failed suicide attempt, his friend, Brahms, serves as a messenger between him and Clara--and falls deeply in love with her. Author Desai (Dancing about Architecture, 2013 etc.) has produced a magisterial work, which is clearly the result of astonishingly thorough research. Although the story revolves tightly around the three main figures, there are also fascinating cameos by such musical luminaries as Richard Wagner, Franz Liszt, and Fréderic Chopin, and he memorably depicts the ego-driven rivalries between them. Each has a unique personality, and the author does a lovely job of dramatizing their quirks. Still, the character of Clara steals the show, and she emerges from the shadow of her husband's much grander reputation as a musical genius in her own right.
A riveting dramatization of musical history.
About the Author
Boman Desai was born and raised in Bombay (now Mumbai) but has lived his adult life in Chicago. After studying architecture and philosophy and getting degrees in psychology and English, he was set to become a market analyst when a chance encounter with Sir Edmund Hillary, his earliest hero, brought him back to his vocation: writing novels. He took a number of part-time jobs ranging from bartending to auditing to teaching to find time to write. He got his first break when an elegant elderly woman personally submitted a number of his stories to the editor in chief of Debonair Magazine in Bombay. The stories were all published, but the woman disappeared, and her identity remains a mystery to this day. He has published fiction and nonfiction in the US, UK, and India. His work has won awards from the Illinois Arts Council, Stand Magazine, Dana, Noemi, War Poems, and New Millennium (among others). He has taught fiction at Truman College, Roosevelt University, and the University of Southern Maine.
Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
A novel worth reading by those who love classic music
By Rafael Ducos
Trio, a novel about the Schumanns and Brahms, by Boman Desai
This is a novel that any lover of classic music will enjoy. After Beethoven and Schubert opened the era of romanticism, a constellation of talented young musicians followed their path, and produced perhaps the most beautiful music ever written. This novel follows the lives of Clara Wieck, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms, but Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt and Wagner are as important in this novel, as fellow musicians of the time, that related to each other socially and professionally. The author uses known reliable information sources through the great deal of correspondence available, at a time when letters were the standard of communication. However, Mr. Desai is careful not to overwhelm the reader with academic information. Instead, he shows us the characters as real individuals, enmeshed in the artistic dilemmas of their times, that oddly enough, appear very similar to the present. The central "Trio" story of Clara, Robert and "Hannes" (for Johannes Brahms) is well known, but it is told as in real time. The beautiful love story of Clara Wieck and Robert Schumann is always a sheer pleasure to revisit. The real life adjustments for a talented woman, the foremost pianist of her time, married to a musical genius in the 19th century appears very similar as the conflict that "career" women face today. Her struggles for independence from her domineering father are also well known and are described in a very entertaining fashion by Mr. Desai. The conflict between those musicians who wanted to compose as they felt it versus those who were only pampering to their contemporary audience is made very clear, and sounds eerily familiar with present times. Also the conflict between the proponents of the "new music", as proposed by Wagner, and those who believed in following the steps of Beethoven, Schubert and Mozart, are also shown in a day to day "conversational way", that makes it very entertaining and didactic for those of us who are not experts on the subject.
The reading of Trio was an extremely enjoyably experience. I wish the follow up is coming soon, to show us more of the lives and times of Brahms and Wagner with their genius in full bloom and their divergent approaches to the art of music, a conflict probably alive today.
rafducos@bellsouth.net
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
A Masterpiece!
By Wilma Steffes
TRIO - by Boman Desai
A Masterpiece! I am not literate in the classical music field or knowledgable about the lives of the composers. But I don't have to be to admire and enjoy this novel.
In my opinion, this book is poetry. If poetry is defined as "beautiful expression of beautiful impression" - it measures up.
Sometimes the writing is condensed, similar to a very few other authors I admire. I mean that there is so much meaning in a few sentences that you can read it and then think about it for a long time to get all the goodies in it.
There are great philosophical ideas expressed (and sometimes hidden) in the ordinary (maybe I should say extraordinary) conversations.
Another adjective that applies is "profound." I love the exercise it gives my mind.
There are a few things in life that give me a thrill - I mean a physical thrill, like goosebumps - watching beautiful horses - watching highly skilled performances (acrobats, the Blue Angels, certain musicians) or listening to excellent speakers. I'm getting that reaction while reading this book.
The conversations are so convincing - and the sensitivity and understanding of the girls and women - and how they think and feel - and the descriptions of how they look. The reader is right there with them.
How Robert's mind worked, how he thought about conducting, what his mental and emotional weaknesses were. Fascinating! I thoroughly enjoyed it.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
More truthful than the historians
By Abelard2
The love story of Robert and Clara Schumann is so dramatic, that it practically leaps off the page of the dryest history text. Seldom have a man and a woman been blessed with such an exalted spiritual communion, as the marriage of great composer and great performing artist -- and seldom has such an ideal union been subjected to such trials, including the fanatic, demented opposition of Clara's father (the piano pedagogue Friedrich Wieck), and then, once that obstacle had been surmounted, the painful descent of Robert into madness and death. Add to this, the fascinating context of the Schumanns' circle of friends and collaborators, comprised of the leading lights of European and American art and politics -- including, most significantly, the young composer whose career they fostered, and who loved them both, Johannes Brahms -- and you have a tale which is both captivating and instructive.
Mr. Desai has chosen to tell this tale in the form a novel. As he emphasizes in his "Author's Note," he "wanted to combine the veracity of a biography with the dramatic impact of a novel, but nothing happens in the book that might not have happened historically."
In a recent address to the Russian Academy of Sciences, Lyndon LaRouche said the following: "Turn back to the relationship between the tragic principle and the sublime in the composition and performance of Classical forms of tragedy, such as the Classical Greek, Shakespeare, and Schiller. These are not to be considered as mere fiction, but as scientific studies of the principles of history." Novels, as well, can serve as a scientific study of the principles of history: take, as an example, James Fennimore Cooper's The Bravo, which, while not based on a specific historical incident, provides an uncanny depth of insight into the inner workings of the Venetian "serene republic."
Likewise, Desai's novel should be considered a fully truthful and scientific account of the historical figures and conflicts he depicts. Even in those cases where he consciously deviates from the historical record -- dutifully noted in his "Author's Note" -- he remains faithful to the ideas of the protagonists, and his portrayal of the battle of ideas during the period he depicts, just as in Shakespeare's Histories, is truthful in a more profound sense than a merely accurate record of historical events could be.
It is also the case that his novel provides a wealth of detail about the actual historical events. For example, the reader learns that Clara's close friend from childhood, Emilie List, was in fact the daughter of the great German-American economist and republican, Friedrich List. Other historical figures appear, often in scenes known to historians: the author recounts famous episodes, such as the visit of Felix Mendelssohn to the young Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who were talented amateur singers, with Albert being a capable organist as well; the dinner party at the Schumanns', shortly after the death of Mendelssohn, where Robert and Liszt almost came to blows, after Liszt made a remark deprecating Mendelssohn; the famous first visit of Brahms to the Schumanns, where Robert stopped him from playing after only a few measures of his first piano sonata, so that Robert might run and bring Clara to hear it as well. Dozens of other historically important moments are brought to life, involving a cast of characters which includes Chopin, Jenny Lind, Joseph Joachim, many other famous musicians, and numerous monarchs.
However, the most striking achievement of this novel, is to provide a compelling glimpse into the emotional world of the artists, the quality of passion required to create and interpret real art, and the world-historical sense of identity that arises from that passion. Desai shows us how this sense of identity varies with different philosophies of art, contrasting the Schumanns and their allies, with their factional opponents, the "futurists" such as Liszt and Wagner. These latter might be viewed as useful clinical studies, in contrast with the paradoxical Robert Schumann, who went mad, but was philosophically the sanest of them all.
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