When I was a very young man, just beginning to make my way, I was invited to dine at the home of a distinguished New York philanthropist. After dinner our hostess led us to an enormous drawing room. Other guests were pouring in, and my eyes beheld two unnerving sights: servants were arranging small gilt chairs in long, neat rows; and up front, leaning against the wall, were musical instruments. Apparently I was in for an evening of chamber music.
I use the phrase “in for” because music meant nothing to me. I am almost tone deaf- only with great effort I can carry the simplest tune, and serious music to me was no more than an arrangement of noises. So I did what I always did when trapped: I sat down and fixed my face in what I hoped was an expression of intelligent appreciation, closed my ears from the inside and submerged myself in my own completely irrelevant thoughts.
After a while, becoming aware that the people around me were applauding, I concluded it was safe for me to unplug my ears. At once, I heard a gentle but surprisingly penetrating voice on my right.
“You are fond of Bach?” the voice said.
A writer, I knew as much about Bach as I know about nuclear fission. But I did know one of the most famous faces in the world, with the renowned shock of untidy white hair and ever-present pipe between the teeth. I was sitting next to Albert Einstein.
“Well”, I said uncomfortably, and hesitated. I had been asked a casual question. All I had to do was be equally casual in my reply. But I could see from the look in my neighbor’s eyes that the owner was not merely going through the perfunctory duties of elementary politeness. Regardless of what value I placed on my part in the verbal exchange, to this man his part in it mattered very much. Above all, I could feel that this was a man to whom you did not lie, however small.
“I don’t know anything about Bach”, I said awkwardly. “I’ve never heard any of his music.”
A look of perplexed astonishment washed across Einstein’s mobile face.
“You have never heard Bach?”
He made it sound as though I had said I’d never taken a bath.
“It isn’t that I don’t want to like Bach”, I replied hastily. “It’s just that I’m tone deaf, or almost tone deaf, and I’ve never really heard anybody’s music.”
A look of concern came into the old man’s face. “Please”, he said abruptly. “You will come with me?”
He stood up and took my arm. As he led me across that crowded room I kept my embarrassed glance fixed on the carpet. A rising murmur of puzzled speculation followed us out the hall. Einstein paid no attention to it. Resolutely he led me upstairs.
On the floor above, he opened the door into a book lined study drew me in, and shut the door.
“Now”, he said with a small, troubled smile. “You will you tell me, please how long you have felt this way about music?”
“All my life”, I said, feeling awful. “I wish you would go back downstairs and listen, Dr. Einstein. The fact that I don’t enjoy does not really matter.”
He shook his head and scowled, as though I had introduced an irrelevance.
“Tell me please”, he said. “Is there any kind of music that you do like?”
“Well”, I answered, “I like songs that have words and the kind of music where I can follow the tune.”
He smiled and nodded, obviously pleased. “You can give an example perhaps?”
“Well”, I ventured, “almost anything by Bing Crosby.
He nodded again, briskly. “Good!”
He went into a corner of the room, opened a phonograph and started pulling out records. I watched him uneasily. At last he beamed. "Ah!"He said.
He put the record on and in a moment the study was filled with therelaxed, lilting strains of Bing Crosby's "When the Blue of the NightMeets the Gold of the Day." Einstein beamed at me and kept time withthe stem of his pipe. After three or four phrases he stopped thephonograph.
"Now," he said. "Will you tell me, please, what you have just heard?"
The simplest answer seemed to be to sing the lines. I did just that,trying desperately to stay on tune and keep my voice from cracking. Theexpression on Einstein's face was like the sunrise.
"You see!" he cried with delight when I finished. "You do have anear!"I mumbled something about this being one of my favorite songs,something I had heard hundreds of times, so that it didn't really proveanything.
"Nonsense!" said Einstein. "It proves everything! Do you remember yourfirst arithmetic lesson in school? Suppose, at your very first contactwith numbers, your teacher had ordered you to work out a problem in,say, long division or fractions. Could you have done so?"
"No, of course not."
"Precisely!" Einstein made a triumphant wave with his pipestem. "Itwould have been impossible and you would have reacted in panic. Youwould have closed your mind to long division and fractions. As aresult, because of that one small mistake by your teacher, it ispossible your whole life you would be denied the beauty of longdivision and fractions."
The pipestem went up and out in another wave.
"But on your first day no teacher would be so foolish. He would startyou with elementary things-then, when you had acquired skill with thesimplest problems, he would lead you up to long division and tofractions. So it is with music."Einstein picked up the Bing Crosby record. "This simple, charminglittle song is like simple addition or subtraction. You have masteredit. Now we go on to something more complicated."
He found another record and set it going. The golden voice of JohnMcCormack singing "The Trumpeter" filled the room. After a few linesEinstein stopped the record.
"So!" he said. "You will sing that back to me, please?"
I did-with a good deal of self consciousness but with, for me, asurprising degree of accuracy. Einstein stared at me with a look on hisface that I had seen only once before in my life: on the face of myfather as he listened to me deliver the valedictory address at my highschool graduation.
"Excellent!" Einstein remarked when I finished. "Wonderful! Now this!"
"This" proved to be Caruso in what was to me a completelyunrecognizable fragment from "Cavalleria Rusticana." Nevertheless, Imanaged to reproduce an approximation of the sounds the famous tenorhad made. Einstein beamed his approval.
Caruso was followed by at least a dozen others. I could not shake myfeeling of awe over the way this great man, into whose company I hadbeen thrown by chance, was completely preoccupied by what we weredoing, as though I were his sole concern.
We came at last to recordings of music without words, which I wasinstructed to reproduce by humming. When I reached for a high note,Einstein's mouth opened and his head went back as if to help me attainwhat seemed unattainable. Evidently I came close enough, for hesuddenly turned off the phonograph.
"Now, young man," he said, putting his arm through mine. "We are ready for Bach!"
As we returned to our seats in the drawing room, the players weretuning up for a new selection. Einstein smiled and gave me a reassuringpat on the knee.
"Just allow yourself to listen," he whispered. "That is all."
It wasn't really all, of course. Without the effort he had just pouredout for a total stranger I would never have heard, as I did that nightfor the first time in my life, Bach's "Sheep May Safely Graze." I haveheard it many times since. I don't think I shall ever tire of it.Because I never listen to it alone. I am sitting beside a small, roundman with a shock of untidy white hair, a dead pipe clamped between histeeth, and eyes that contain in their extraordinary warmth all thewonder of the world.
When the concert was finished I added my genuine applause to that ofthe others. Suddenly our hostess confronted us. "I'm so sorry, Dr. Einstein," she said with an icy glare at me, "that you missed so muchof the performance.”
Einstein and I came hastily to our feet. "I am sorry, too," he said."My young friend here and I, however, were engaged in the greatestactivity of which man is capable."
She looked puzzled. "Really?" she said. "And what is that?"
Einstein smiled and put his arm across my shoulders. And he uttered tenwords that-for at least one person who is in his endless debt-are hisepitaph:
"Opening up yet another fragment of the frontier of beauty."
I use the phrase “in for” because music meant nothing to me. I am almost tone deaf- only with great effort I can carry the simplest tune, and serious music to me was no more than an arrangement of noises. So I did what I always did when trapped: I sat down and fixed my face in what I hoped was an expression of intelligent appreciation, closed my ears from the inside and submerged myself in my own completely irrelevant thoughts.
After a while, becoming aware that the people around me were applauding, I concluded it was safe for me to unplug my ears. At once, I heard a gentle but surprisingly penetrating voice on my right.
“You are fond of Bach?” the voice said.
A writer, I knew as much about Bach as I know about nuclear fission. But I did know one of the most famous faces in the world, with the renowned shock of untidy white hair and ever-present pipe between the teeth. I was sitting next to Albert Einstein.
“Well”, I said uncomfortably, and hesitated. I had been asked a casual question. All I had to do was be equally casual in my reply. But I could see from the look in my neighbor’s eyes that the owner was not merely going through the perfunctory duties of elementary politeness. Regardless of what value I placed on my part in the verbal exchange, to this man his part in it mattered very much. Above all, I could feel that this was a man to whom you did not lie, however small.
“I don’t know anything about Bach”, I said awkwardly. “I’ve never heard any of his music.”
A look of perplexed astonishment washed across Einstein’s mobile face.
“You have never heard Bach?”
He made it sound as though I had said I’d never taken a bath.
“It isn’t that I don’t want to like Bach”, I replied hastily. “It’s just that I’m tone deaf, or almost tone deaf, and I’ve never really heard anybody’s music.”
A look of concern came into the old man’s face. “Please”, he said abruptly. “You will come with me?”
He stood up and took my arm. As he led me across that crowded room I kept my embarrassed glance fixed on the carpet. A rising murmur of puzzled speculation followed us out the hall. Einstein paid no attention to it. Resolutely he led me upstairs.
On the floor above, he opened the door into a book lined study drew me in, and shut the door.
“Now”, he said with a small, troubled smile. “You will you tell me, please how long you have felt this way about music?”
“All my life”, I said, feeling awful. “I wish you would go back downstairs and listen, Dr. Einstein. The fact that I don’t enjoy does not really matter.”
He shook his head and scowled, as though I had introduced an irrelevance.
“Tell me please”, he said. “Is there any kind of music that you do like?”
“Well”, I answered, “I like songs that have words and the kind of music where I can follow the tune.”
He smiled and nodded, obviously pleased. “You can give an example perhaps?”
“Well”, I ventured, “almost anything by Bing Crosby.
He nodded again, briskly. “Good!”
He went into a corner of the room, opened a phonograph and started pulling out records. I watched him uneasily. At last he beamed. "Ah!"He said.
He put the record on and in a moment the study was filled with therelaxed, lilting strains of Bing Crosby's "When the Blue of the NightMeets the Gold of the Day." Einstein beamed at me and kept time withthe stem of his pipe. After three or four phrases he stopped thephonograph.
"Now," he said. "Will you tell me, please, what you have just heard?"
The simplest answer seemed to be to sing the lines. I did just that,trying desperately to stay on tune and keep my voice from cracking. Theexpression on Einstein's face was like the sunrise.
"You see!" he cried with delight when I finished. "You do have anear!"I mumbled something about this being one of my favorite songs,something I had heard hundreds of times, so that it didn't really proveanything.
"Nonsense!" said Einstein. "It proves everything! Do you remember yourfirst arithmetic lesson in school? Suppose, at your very first contactwith numbers, your teacher had ordered you to work out a problem in,say, long division or fractions. Could you have done so?"
"No, of course not."
"Precisely!" Einstein made a triumphant wave with his pipestem. "Itwould have been impossible and you would have reacted in panic. Youwould have closed your mind to long division and fractions. As aresult, because of that one small mistake by your teacher, it ispossible your whole life you would be denied the beauty of longdivision and fractions."
The pipestem went up and out in another wave.
"But on your first day no teacher would be so foolish. He would startyou with elementary things-then, when you had acquired skill with thesimplest problems, he would lead you up to long division and tofractions. So it is with music."Einstein picked up the Bing Crosby record. "This simple, charminglittle song is like simple addition or subtraction. You have masteredit. Now we go on to something more complicated."
He found another record and set it going. The golden voice of JohnMcCormack singing "The Trumpeter" filled the room. After a few linesEinstein stopped the record.
"So!" he said. "You will sing that back to me, please?"
I did-with a good deal of self consciousness but with, for me, asurprising degree of accuracy. Einstein stared at me with a look on hisface that I had seen only once before in my life: on the face of myfather as he listened to me deliver the valedictory address at my highschool graduation.
"Excellent!" Einstein remarked when I finished. "Wonderful! Now this!"
"This" proved to be Caruso in what was to me a completelyunrecognizable fragment from "Cavalleria Rusticana." Nevertheless, Imanaged to reproduce an approximation of the sounds the famous tenorhad made. Einstein beamed his approval.
Caruso was followed by at least a dozen others. I could not shake myfeeling of awe over the way this great man, into whose company I hadbeen thrown by chance, was completely preoccupied by what we weredoing, as though I were his sole concern.
We came at last to recordings of music without words, which I wasinstructed to reproduce by humming. When I reached for a high note,Einstein's mouth opened and his head went back as if to help me attainwhat seemed unattainable. Evidently I came close enough, for hesuddenly turned off the phonograph.
"Now, young man," he said, putting his arm through mine. "We are ready for Bach!"
As we returned to our seats in the drawing room, the players weretuning up for a new selection. Einstein smiled and gave me a reassuringpat on the knee.
"Just allow yourself to listen," he whispered. "That is all."
It wasn't really all, of course. Without the effort he had just pouredout for a total stranger I would never have heard, as I did that nightfor the first time in my life, Bach's "Sheep May Safely Graze." I haveheard it many times since. I don't think I shall ever tire of it.Because I never listen to it alone. I am sitting beside a small, roundman with a shock of untidy white hair, a dead pipe clamped between histeeth, and eyes that contain in their extraordinary warmth all thewonder of the world.
When the concert was finished I added my genuine applause to that ofthe others. Suddenly our hostess confronted us. "I'm so sorry, Dr. Einstein," she said with an icy glare at me, "that you missed so muchof the performance.”
Einstein and I came hastily to our feet. "I am sorry, too," he said."My young friend here and I, however, were engaged in the greatestactivity of which man is capable."
She looked puzzled. "Really?" she said. "And what is that?"
Einstein smiled and put his arm across my shoulders. And he uttered tenwords that-for at least one person who is in his endless debt-are hisepitaph:
"Opening up yet another fragment of the frontier of beauty."
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