1853.
He first met Clara at Schumann’s house.
Love at first sight.
Thereafter never married.
Brahms was 20 years old in that year. Talented, handsome and picturesque. He was known far and wide as a beautiful boy.
He was invited to Schumann’s home as a guest of honor.
During the dinner, he played a piano sonata in C major, which he had composed himself.
The piece surprised the audience.
Schumann was so excited that he stood up and shouted.
“I’m going to ask Clara to come and hear it too.”
Clara pushed in the door.
As soon as the door opened
It was a dazzling beginning.
He lifted his head.
Feeling the heat and light of the moment.
Like nitrate paper meets phosphorus fire.
A lifetime of burning, a lifetime of brilliance.
Clara was dressed in a homely dress, hair pulled back, big eyes holding two lakes of water. Smiling if there is nothing.
There was a wind passing through the house.
The notes and flowers, together, came to life.
He thought of a saying.
The long day will end, you and a dream of mine seem.
That year, Clara was 34 years old.
Fourteen years older than Burjames.
She was already a wife.
Her husband was none other than Schumann. She was also the mother of several children.
But she was a great woman.
Piano playing is also first-class.
She stood among the guests, together with the crowd, watching the beautiful young man on the stage.
What a melody it was!
Between the light and dark of the notes, the thoughts flowed long.
Low and distant.
The tune was introspective, too.
Meticulous.
Even the variations are careful, like a child who does not dare to go far away, always looking back at his hometown.
She knew that this young man was no ordinary person.
That night, Clara wrote in her diary.
“Today from Hamburg came a remarkable man …… who is only 20 years old and was sent by God.”
She had no hate for talent.
And as far as Brahms was concerned, Clara was a goddess. A combination of beauty, glory and grace.
The silent, silent faith of his life began this night.
“It is an honor to meet you.”
He reached out his hand to the mass of light.
Never really turned around after that.
Later generations would say of Brahms, that it was a genius.
If you add the adjective.
It would be, “A melancholy and introspective pianist of genius.”
He was born in a poorhouse and grew up in the chaos of Hamburg.
As a teenager, he played in what was always a mishmash of bars.
All his life he was self-conscious, introverted, and walked ascetically in solitude.
The same was true of his love affairs.
Because Clara was Schumann’s wife, and Schumann was his mentor, and he had been treated with kindness.
He could not say anything.
He buried his deep feelings in his heart.
But some emotions, like a burning quilt, no open fire, no sound. Only the people in the bureau know that it burns so hot that it hurts.
When he could not stand it, he began to write love letters.
From 1853, to 1896, he wrote countless love letters to Clara.
Not a single one was sent.
It was his war alone.
A man’s snow, a man’s silent practice.
Years later, someone sorted through the love letters he left in the world.
One of them, with these hopeless words.
“I long to sit beside you in silence. I dare not, for fear my heart will leap to my lips ……”
Another one reads.
“I have been alone.
Beloved to be alone.
Some words are silly, but I still want to say that you are as a lily and as an angel.”
He was 60 years old at the time.
He was gray and blessed. He had never married a wife in his life.
He had achieved fame and fortune.
He was even world famous.
He made a lot of money and became an authority in his own right.
But he was still unlucky.
He could not forget Clara. The light of his bright moon, always shining. As always, never dusty.
Clara was destined to be missed.
She was too elegant.
She was the daughter of a famous family. From childhood to practice the piano, a biting temperament, gorgeous and cold.
How many people, back then, treated her as a goddess.
And how many talented people, under her pomegranate skirt a drunkenness.
And Brahms, he was the son of a peasant.
Had coarse habits.
Not good with words and lacking in manners.
Even if he became famous, he still felt inferior as long as he stood in front of Clara.
She was destined to be his robbery.
Like a destiny.
But Brahms did not say it all his life.
He could not say.
Nor could he speak.
Before he met Schumann, no one had ever heard of Brahms.
He sold in street bars and wrote music that seemed to the mediocre to be a bunch of nonsense and inexplicable. He was lonely and had no one like him.
Schumann saw him.
When he met Schumann, he was like a horse in the dust who was finally about to begin his legend.
Schumann invited him to his home.
At the same time, he accepted him as his pupil and introduced him to the famous.
Ten years ago, Schumann had already closed his book.
But for Brahms, he put pen to paper again and wrote his famous music review “A New Way”, which was published in the influential “New Music Magazine”.
In the article, Schumann recommends the young genius to the world.
The language was passionate.
— “He is beginning to uncover truly magical territory.”
— “He is the genius of a hundred years.”
This was the last music review of Schumann’s life.
Brahms understood this kindness.
He respected Schumann.
He even felt that Schumann was divine and had in him the noblest spiritual qualities of mankind.
He said.
“Before I met you, I even thought that people like you existed only in the rarest of crowds.”
“Whenever I think that people worship you, I feel uplifted.
I even hope that the world would be better off forgetting you guys.
That way, you would be able to have a more complete holiness.”
During that time, he lived in Schumann’s house, learning composition from Schumann and spending time with the couple. Talking in the morning and practicing at sunset.
It was the most tender and sweetest time of Brahms’ life.
I can’t tell you the endless scenery.
I can’t tell you how much love and beauty there was.
When the love flooded, the young man, restrained and shy, set up a strong dam with his reason. It is not allowed to have the slightest breakthrough.
He transformed deep feelings into melodies.
For 20 years, Brahms did one thing, completing the Piano Quartet in C minor, dedicated to Clara.
He said, “All my best melodies come from Clara.”
And Clara knew nothing about it.
The mountain has trees and the wood has branches.
The heart is pleased with the gentleman, and the gentleman does not know.
In Clara’s eyes, Brahms was just a young man. An up-and-comer with unlimited talent.
But she had no idea that he would choose a completely different fate because of her.
At that time, her life had already taken a turn for the worse.
Schumann was ill.
Life was in shambles, everywhere.
Clara had to play, take care of the children, and take care of Schumann at the same time, which was too much to handle.
In the winter of 1854, Schumann’s mental illness returned.
He had sleepless nights.
Terrible hallucinations occurred.
One day, while Clara was out to get a doctor, he left home without even wearing his hat and committed suicide by throwing himself into the Rhine.
When he committed suicide, a boat passed by and rescued him and sent him to the hospital.
Clara was devastated.
During this time, Brahms stayed by her side.
He took care of her.
He also took care of her and Schumann’s seven children.
He gave up many opportunities to do so.
His reputation was on the rise and he was asked to play everywhere. But he turned them all down.
Some people said he was foolish, but in all the world, a thousand reasons, a thousand truths, are better than one “yes”.
In 1854, Schumann was admitted to the Endenich Asylum.
The situation was getting worse.
Brahms and Clara took turns to visit him.
On one occasion, Brahms went to see Schumann alone. He gave Schumann a picture of Clara.
Schumann was very lucky.
He looked at the person in the photo and his face suddenly lit up.
Brahms stood there, feeling that he had dried up his tears.
On July 29, 1856, Schumann passed away.
At his funeral, Clara was dressed in black.
Her head was pinned with white flowers.
A look of grief.
Brahms watched from afar.
He had no standing to go over to her and comfort her. Nor was he qualified to wipe away the tears on her face.
Only on the eve of the funeral, he said in a wooden, panicked voice: “I will comfort you with my music whenever you want.”
Clara did not respond.
Perhaps she was deliberately evasive.
Or perhaps it was out of place.
Or perhaps she simply didn’t understand what the 22-year-old Brahms, exactly, was saying.
Thereafter, Brahms, in his capacity as a student, joined Joachim for Schumann’s funeral.
At the end of the funeral, Brahms left without saying goodbye.
No one knows where he went.
Nor did he say hello to anyone.
Like a gust of wind, he disappeared into the wind. From then on, he never saw Clara again in his life.
For 40 years, from 1856 to 1896, he never saw her again.
He once told a friend, “I can’t stop thinking about her for a moment.
He had been sponsoring her.
Cared for her.
For every piece of music he wrote, he would send the score to Clara.
His deep love and restraint were out of place in those days.
It was a frenzied time.
The artists were radical and extremely rebellious.
They were crazy, bringing out the talents, desires and vices of people. Then geniuses emerged one by one.
Brahms, however, remained as rigorous as ever.
He did not make mistakes, he did not indulge, he was always quiet, always self-reflective. He knew how to stop, and avoided the bizarre.
In the 19th century, Brahms was all alone.
He lived a long life of seriousness and restraint.
He never married.
Nor did he have an affair.
He traveled a lot.
When he traveled, he stuffed his pockets with candy and gave it to his children at each stop. Children always chased him.
But he never had any children of his own in his life.
He wrote to Clara repeatedly, but did not send them.
In his later years, he burned all his letters. Only a few leaks remain, allowing us to recover his abiding love.
In a letter dated August 1855, Brahms writes.
“…… I have experienced supreme peace in my love for you.”
He praised her for lifting the world rare.
“My dear Clara, you are so precious to me, more precious than my words can express ……”
When he learned that Clara needed money for her concerts, he secretly financed her.
He always sent the sheet music to her first.
He wanted her to be the first to listen to him.
He always believed that in this world, only Clara understood him.
But he could not be near her.
Could not speak of love.
He spent decades of solitude to protect Clara’s reputation for life.
More than 40 years later, he was old.
Clara was also dying.
She became a terminally ill old woman.
The years shortened.
The remaining years were only a handful.
In 1896, Clara died of an illness. She was 77 years old when she died.
When Brahms learned the news, he burst into tears: “From now on, there will be no more crybabies!”
He boarded a train for Frankfurt.
He was so grief-stricken that he sat in the wrong direction.
He spent two days on the road in a daze.
Sometimes the windows were open, and the wind came in and swept him away, wrapping him in heat.
It was like he had been stripped of layer after layer, leaving only a core that ached in the chaos.
By the time he arrived, Clara was already in the ground.
At her grave, he played the music he had written for 43 years.
A piece called “Because It Went to Earth”.
a piece called “I Turned and Saw”.
and “How Cold Is Death” and “I Use the Language of Men and the Language of Angels”.
All written for her.
The songs are like sobs.
Sadness rages.
The sunset of that dusk turns into a pale yellow basket.
The moon in the water, the man in the mirror, without exception, leaked straight into the abyss of infinity.
Soon after he finished the piece, Brahms died suddenly.
His death came just 11 months after Clara’s. His servant said that before he passed away, he had been a good friend.
His servant said that before his death, he had spent three days playing the piano piece he had written for Clara, with the door of his room closed.
At the end of the piece, he wept long and sadly.
A century later, Lize Muller wrote a poem in her collection “Living Together”.
It is called “Romance”.
Dedicated to a relationship that was difficult to define.
Whenever I listen to that interlude, poignant, yet blooming with tenderness, I imagine the two of them, sitting in the garden in the late blooming roses and the dark flowing shadows of the leaves, letting the landscape speak for them, leaving us no whispers to eavesdrop on.
Like a song that has been sung.
Their story, too, has finished its final chapter. There is no other melody to speak of.
The world will always ask why he did not come closer, take her hand and walk together for the rest of their lives?
The actual world will be someone, willing to suffer a lifetime, rigorously guard in their own order. No disturbance, no infatuation.
The soldiers are their own.
The darkness of the darkness is also their own.
He can not allow a stain in life.
The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services.
So tightly closed lips, in front of the years, will be all surging, all to hear themselves.
The deep feelings are always like no feelings. It is always like that.
That year, Brahms was at the beginning of his fame.
He took the train and went to Italy.
In the orange groves of Suliento, he sat, drinking champagne, watching dolphins playing in the Bay of Naples under the cliffs.
Suddenly tears streamed down his face.
Someone asked him, “Mr. Brahms, is something wrong?”
He grimaced.
“I just thought of someone.”
When asked again, nothing was said.
What else could be said. To bring it up again is to be lonely for all eternity.
Everything has become a cloud of smoke.
The sorrow and happiness of the past, the final return to the silence of the wilderness. Like a big dream has gone, everything is gone.
There is only a fold of music left, in the long night 100 years later, to tell what once happened. (Author: Zhou Chong)
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