Jan Kjærstad - The Conqueror

And so it was in that legendary year of revolution, with students all over the Western world seething with unrest, Jonas Wergeland had his — oh, why not: revolutionary — musical vision, and it struck him with such force that he almost fell of his stool. For once he was alone at home, sitting at the piano, running his fingers over the keys when he — or rather: his fingers, his body — suddenly began to produce rhythmic patterns, he tried alternating between the white keys and all the black ones; the resultant effect went straight to his head, he produced increasingly electrifying tones, kept repeating the chords, building them up into a crescendo while continually altering the rhythm; it was amazing, he got more and more carried away, discovered new harmonies, new rhythms, felt his body all but lifting off the piano stool, felt himself becoming hypnotized by what he had created, rhythms that grew more and more frenetic, according with everything going on inside him, the turbulent events of the last few years, not least an upsetting incident that had occurred only a few weeks earlier — we’re getting there, Professor, we’re getting there — one which was in no way eclipsed by the sight of a piano crashing to the ground from a fifth-floor window. He also understood, for the first time, the extract he had copied down earlier from one of the books sitting disregarded in the bookcase — a legacy, a score of old volumes — from the postscript to Hector Berlioz’s memoirs, to be precise, which said that, as Berlioz saw it, music comes down to passionate expression, inner intensity, rhythmical drive and a quality of unexpectedness. All at once Jonas felt strong, full of self-confidence, like a Hector, a hero, a giant.

From then on he gave himself up to composing. He was only fifteen, but pretty well schooled in musical notation. He learned the most complicated passages by heart anyway, if they did not simply stick in his memory after a few playings. That whole year, spring, summer, autumn, he was obsessed with this, he was convinced, in the mind-reeling way one can only be at the age of fifteen, that he was in possession of an explosive idea, something that had never been heard before, nothing less than a brand-new path for music to take, an incredibly bold concept, and one which called, above all, for courage. By God, it would have consequences for the whole concept of what music is, Jonas thought.

He knew it would take time, that it would take him years, but he wanted to proclaim his discovery now, as if he were anxious to take out a patent for this sensational invention as quickly as possible. And so he devised a way of trying out his magnificent vision in a simplified form: a piece for the piano he called ‘Dragon Sacrifice’, to be played on Pupils’ Night, the concert that rounded off the autumn term.

I do not know if the words ‘Pupils’ Night’ make you shudder, Professor, but you can take it from me that such evenings were pure torture, even at Fru Brøgger’s, a kind of purgatory that had to be undergone before one attained the paradisiacal state of the holidays. On such evenings the mums and dads made up the audience, and the bunch of spruced-up children had, as it were, to show their parents that their money had been well spent or, what was far more difficult, that all that fractured pounding on the keys which had disturbed their newspaper reading had actually borne fruit. As I say, most people’s idea of a nightmare.

But not for Jonas Wergeland, or at least not on this December evening, because he was about to give the assembled company a foretaste of his triumph, something which they would recall as a milestone, a work which maybe — he thought, he dreamed — even at this stage would be seen for what it was: a change of course, the cutting of the first sod for a totally new road.

Pupils’ Night arrived. In the one half of Fru Brøgger’s L-shaped living room sat the expectant parents — from Jonas’s family his father, Haakon Hansen — and at the other end, out of sight, the nervous pupils huddled together in panic-stricken solidarity. In the middle, for all to see, stood the grand piano, which was only used on such grand occasions, that in itself a responsibility — one which was further underlined by the fact that the lid was raised, like the sail of a majestic black ship. Fru Brøgger, almost unrecognisable in evening dress, introduced her pupils with a few kind words meant to lighten the mood — to no avail, of course.

The youngest children played first, little more than scales really, to loud applause no matter how often they stumbled. And so it progressed, in ascending order of difficulty rather than age, perhaps. Fru Brøgger was saving Jonas for last, even though she had not heard his piece, he had simply asked if he could play one of his own compositions. ‘It’s better than that blasted Rachmaninoff prelude,’ he declared. A tolerant and in truth rather curious Fru Brøgger yielded to this shameless show of bravado.

It went well; children played études and minuets, some very well, others making ghastly mistakes, one of them even had a total mental block — the one thing everybody dreaded. And then it is Jonas’s turn, the audience know he is good, son of the organist, they have heard him play before, remember the time he played the second movement of the ‘Pathétique’ sonata so beautifully that it brought a lump to the throat, they nod and whisper to one another; Jonas steps out, catches a glimpse of the whole Grorud Valley spread at his feet and glittering like the promise of a reward outside the window, before he bows and people clap; he is a conqueror, he is about to present his new kingdom, he sits down at the grand piano, as if at a gigantic lacquered casket, from whose lid he will call up a dragon. Or — the thought suddenly strikes him — a radio play.

He is trembling with excitement. But also with self-confidence. He feels the approving eyes of ‘the four greats’ on his back.

He strikes the keys. A shock attack. An explosive clang, varied and repeated in unconventional rhythms. He is aware, even though he is concentrating on his playing, of the jolt of surprise that runs through the audience — many of whom he knows. For this is no safe invention by Bach or a nice little sonata by Mozart and most definitely not an old chestnut like the second movement of the ‘Pathétique’ sonata, but Jonas Wergeland’s own bold composition; it is Pupils’ Night and one of the darkest days of the year, aptly enough, since Jonas Wergeland is playing ‘Dragon Sacrifice’ on a black grand piano: an evocation of the battle between weak, waning light and vast darkness. The music has to do with harvest, with people holding a sense-inflaming sacrificial ceremony: Vikings perhaps, pagans who worship the forces of nature; a savage ritual designed to compel the light to return, or to achieve complete and utter darkness, who knows; a ceremony which will grow wilder and wilder. Rhythm is the cornerstone: rhythm and not much else. It is music for a new age. Jonas has created startling, jangling chords that he builds into a variety of rhythmic progressions, at the same time alternating between different tempos. Now and again, particularly towards the end, he plays the same discordant — to the listeners’ ears, that is — tone again and again, at a furious tempo for over a minute, he feels people starting to squirm in their seats, clearly ruffled, or riled, as if this is like torture to them, or a kind of rape. He has also discovered something he calls ‘laughter harmony’, a combination of two different, conflicting chords played high up on the descant, a glorious, devilish dissonance which he slams out at regular intervals, like a spark in the darkness, wanting to give the audience a sensation, through their hearing, of something very, very primitive, something revoltingly immoral, something which is going totally berserk. And yet, as he sits there, conscious with one part of his mind of the gleaming, black surface of the piano, so like the lacquer on his grandfather’s old casket, he is suddenly overwhelmed by the beauty of this barbaric piece of music. With something close to alarm he notices how it becomes more and more beautiful — to his ears, that is — how an inexplicable, ecstatic sense of well-being spreads throughout his body as he hammers out these dissonant chords, producing a sound which borders on the threshold of pain, the whole thing culminating in a crescendo that goes on and on, one which, in his own mental picture of the music, does not stop at one lousy fortissimo but has an ffff written into it; and finally, with both forearms and the pedal, he bangs out a chord that sounds like something huge and heavy, enormous black wings, crashing to the ground — a dragon. It’s marvellous, it’s crazy. It’s brilliant, he thinks to himself. He stands up, bows. He knows what they will say when they get home, or when they tell their friends about it: ‘You should have heard that chord!’