Music: Alfred Brendel, one of the greatest living pianists, is that rare thing, a self-confessed intellectual. Indeed, in The Veil of Order he even refers to himself as an aesthete, and his unapologetic adoption of the term is a measure of his position as an undaunted defender of high culture in a debased age. As well as being a superb musician, he is an elegant essayist, and a witty and original poet. We should treasure him, for we may not see his like again, writes John Banville.
In an afterword to this entertaining and profoundly stimulating collection of dialogues, Brendel tells us that when the idea of doing such a book was put to him, he knew at once that the only possible "conversation partner" would be Martin Meyer, culture editor of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and the author of works on Ernst Jünger and Thomas Mann. He was right. Meyer really is a partner in these exchanges, acting not merely as an interviewer but as a provoker and even contributor of ideas. Also, although he does not say as much, Meyer must be a practising musician, for his knowledge of and familiarity with the European canon of what is loosely called "classical" music, from behind as well as in front of the keyboard, are almost as extensive as Brendel's. Indeed, there are certain pauses detectable here, certain hoverings over a note, when it seems the pianist has been startled into momentary silence by the profundity of the question that has been put to him. All the more credit to Brendel, then, that he should have chosen such a challenging counterpart for these discussions.
The title of the book comes from a very beautiful dictum by Novalis: "Chaos, in a work of art, should shimmer through the veil of order". Brendel declares himself very much in favour of chaos, which he goes on at once, not unprovocatively, to identify with, or as, "feeling". He is, he says, very orderly - as how could such a scrupulous interpreter of late 18th-century and early 19th-century music not be? - but there is another aspect of his personality which delights in the comic, the absurd, and the disruptive. It is this Dadaist Brendel, "my anarchic doppelgänger", who has written perceptively on humour in music, and who, sleepless on a plane trip to Japan, found himself, "suddenly, almost automatically", writing down the first of what would eventually become a volume of poems, Fingerzeig, published in English a few years ago as One Finger Too Many.
Brendel's poetry is unique and entirely characteristic of the man. It is witty, undemonstrative and playfully profound - he would probably approve of the oxymoron - a kind of gift from the gods, since it seems to write itself, at least in the first draft. He makes no grand claims for his poetry as literature, seeing it more as a medium through which to explore his fascination with the absurd - he adopts the philosopher Thomas Nagel's definition of the absurd as a state of being "simultaneously involved and detached", a description that could equally be applied to irony - but obviously he regards it as a significant aspect of his life's work, since he has published a not-so-slim volume of it, and may publish more.
It is Brendel the anarch who will most fascinate the non-musicians among his readers. The wonderful ridiculousness of life and the world is a constantly recurring theme. In the opening, biographical pages he tells us that from "various youthful experiences"
I had already subconsciously realized that the world was absurd. The existentialists, who appeared after the war, only confirmed this, providing me with a name. This idea of the absurd can of course seem utterly depressing, but one can also try to see it as something as comic as can be, and savour the laughable aspects of incongruity.
More, he acknowledges that some form of transcendence is possible, since "there are within this very inadequate world islands of rapture and harmony . . . " This relaxed and accommodating attitude is all the more remarkable when we consider that, born in 1931 in the Austrian city of Graz, he passed the years of his childhood and youth in one of the worst periods of turmoil and terror that Europe has ever known.
As a musician he is, many will be surprised to learn, almost entirely self-taught - "I just picked up this and that!" - aside from attendance at some masterclasses given by Edwin Fischer and Edward Steuermann. He retains the autodidact's surprise that he should be taken so seriously by the world. "Given that I do not have a photographic memory, that I was not a child prodigy, that I cannot play quicker or louder than other pianists, that I only cancel concerts when I'm ill, and that I've been involved with quite a few things other than music, I find it impossible to explain why I've been, and am, successful."
He made his debut in Graz in 1948, in a concert devised and prepared by himself, and received broad critical acclaim. He looks back on the occasion with amused perplexity. "I didn't have a clue. When my piano teacher said that it was time for a recital, I did what she told me, and my father hired a tailcoat for me and fastened a stiff collar round my neck. He then fixed my bow tie, and I went on stage." Next came concerts in Vienna, to where he moved in 1950, living with an aunt in a flat without running water and, worse, with no room for a piano, so that he had to practise at other people's houses. Despite these privations, however, he looks back on his early years with gratitude and what seems serenity.
The bulk of the conversations in The Veil of Order concentrate, as one would expect, on the intricacies of musical performance, but also range widely over the broad field of music and musicians. Brendel has strong opinions on and approaches to the various composers in whose work he specialises, particularly Beethoven, Mozart, Liszt and, of course, Schubert, of whose piano music Brendel surely must be the greatest living exponent.
Those without technical knowledge of music and musicianship - including, assuredly, the present reviewer - may find the middle stretches of the book hard going at times, but even the tone-deaf should persevere. In the midst of teasing out the technicalities of this or that piece of little-known Liszt or Busoni, he will suddenly come up with a luminous aphorism - Lichtenberg is one of his favourite authors - or a self-deflating anecdote, as when he talks about the rat that ran across the stage during a recital in San Salvador, or the cat that miaowed in Istanbul.
The epilogue to the conversations contains, in compressed and glancing form, some of the most striking ideas in the book. He speaks fascinatingly, but all too briefly, of his interest in kitsch, that inexplicably neglected by-road of aesthetics, which provokes one of his more elegant aphorisms: "Kitsch is self-confident: where the heart speaks the intellect must keep silent". In this area he is at one with Milan Kundera, who has written passionately in defence of the saving head against the destructive heart; indeed, he refers to Kundera on the "dictatorship of emotion" and aptly quotes his observation that the brotherhood of man is only possible on the basis of kitsch. Brendel confesses that in the past he had thought of writing on the subject, and one cannot help wishing he might do so in the future.
My own dealings with kitsch have sharpened my ability to distinguish between what is genuine and false, the comic and the ridiculous. To begin with I prized kitsch as a source of amusement, of largely involuntary humour, until I came across a collection of postcards from the First World War. One of them depicted the branches of a Christmas tree hung not with apples and nuts, but soldiers of the enemy.
The Veil of Order is a wonderful testament by a supremely gifted but unassuming man, "gregarious, in moderation", who, with Nietzsche, considers that "the world outside aesthetics is frankly absurd", but who refuses todespair; as he says, "we live in a mad world, but these madnesses will not make us tear our hair out or take our life, but rather make us understand and forgive". Such conviction is, surely, the essence of sanity.
John Banville's most recent novel, Shroud, was published last year
The Veil of Order. By Alfred Brendel, in conversation with Martin Meyer; trans by Richard Stokes. Faber & Faber, 275pp. £25
