the throat. I think it pleased the childless man to receive a young kinsman in his far too spacious house. Also I have heard that he let his brother in Buchel pay the school fees, but took nothing himself for board and lodging. Altogether he treated Adrian, on whom he kept an indefinitely expectant eye, like his own son, and greatly enjoyed having this family addition to his table, which for so long had had round it only the abovementioned Frau Butze and, in patriarchal fashion, Luca, his apprentice.
That this young Italian, a friendly youth speaking a pleasantly broken German, had found his way to Kaisersaschern and to Adrian’s uncle, when he surely must have had opportunity at home to improve himself in his trade, was perhaps surprising, but indicated the extent of Nikolaus Leverkühn’s business connections, not only with German centres of instrument-making, like Mainz, Braunschweig, Leipzig, Barmen, but also with foreign firms in London, Lyons, Bologna, even New York. He drew his symphonic merchandise from all quarters and had a reputation for a stockin-trade not only first-class as to quality but also gratifyingly complete and not easily obtainable elsewhere. Thus there only needed to be anywhere in the kingdom a Bach festival in prospect, for whose performance in classic style an oboe d’amore was needed, the deeper oboe long since disappeared from the orchestra, for the old house in Parochialstrasse to receive a visit from a client, a musician who wanted to play safe and could try out the elegiac instrument on the spot.
The warerooms in the mezzanine often resounded with such rehearsals, the voices running through the octaves in the most varied colours. The whole place afforded a splendid, I might say a culturally enchanting and alluring sight, stimulating the aural imagination till it effervesced. Excepting the piano, which Adrian’s foster-father gave over to that special industry, everything was here spread out: all that sounds and sings, that twangs and crashes, hums and rumbles and roars—even the keyboard instruments, in the form of the celesta, the lovely Glockenklavier , were always represented. There hung behind glass, or lay bedded in receptacles which like mummy cases were made in the shape of their occupants, the charming violins, varnished some yellower and some browner, their slender bows with silver wire round the nut fixed into the lid of the case; Italian ones, the pure, beautiful shapes of which would tell the connoisseur that they came from Cremona; also Tirolese, Dutch, Saxon, Mittenwald fiddles, and some from Leverkühn’s own workshop. The melodious cello, which owes its perfect form to Antonio Stradivari, was there in rows; likewise its predecessor, the six-stringed viola da gamba, in older works still honoured next to it; the viola and that other cousin of the fiddle, the viola alta, were always to be found, as well as my own viola d’amore, on whose seven strings I have all my life enjoyed performing. My instrument came from the Parochialstrasse, a present from my parents at my confirmation.
There were several specimens of the violone, the giant fiddle, the unwieldy double-bass, capable of majestic recitative, whose pizzicato is more sonorous than the stroke of the kettle-drum, and whose harmonics are a veiled magic of almost unbelievable quality. And there was also more than one of its opposite number among the woodwind instruments, the contra-bassoon, sixteen-foot likewise—in other words, sounding an octave lower than the notes indicate—mightily strengthening the basses, built in twice the dimensions of its smaller brother the humorous bassoon, to which I give that name because it is a bass instrument without proper bass strength, oddly weak in sound, bleating, burlesque. How pretty it was, though, with its curved mouthpiece, shining in the decoration of its keys and levers! What a charming sight altogether, this host of shawms in their highly developed stage of technical
That this young Italian, a friendly youth speaking a pleasantly broken German, had found his way to Kaisersaschern and to Adrian’s uncle, when he surely must have had opportunity at home to improve himself in his trade, was perhaps surprising, but indicated the extent of Nikolaus Leverkühn’s business connections, not only with German centres of instrument-making, like Mainz, Braunschweig, Leipzig, Barmen, but also with foreign firms in London, Lyons, Bologna, even New York. He drew his symphonic merchandise from all quarters and had a reputation for a stockin-trade not only first-class as to quality but also gratifyingly complete and not easily obtainable elsewhere. Thus there only needed to be anywhere in the kingdom a Bach festival in prospect, for whose performance in classic style an oboe d’amore was needed, the deeper oboe long since disappeared from the orchestra, for the old house in Parochialstrasse to receive a visit from a client, a musician who wanted to play safe and could try out the elegiac instrument on the spot.
The warerooms in the mezzanine often resounded with such rehearsals, the voices running through the octaves in the most varied colours. The whole place afforded a splendid, I might say a culturally enchanting and alluring sight, stimulating the aural imagination till it effervesced. Excepting the piano, which Adrian’s foster-father gave over to that special industry, everything was here spread out: all that sounds and sings, that twangs and crashes, hums and rumbles and roars—even the keyboard instruments, in the form of the celesta, the lovely Glockenklavier , were always represented. There hung behind glass, or lay bedded in receptacles which like mummy cases were made in the shape of their occupants, the charming violins, varnished some yellower and some browner, their slender bows with silver wire round the nut fixed into the lid of the case; Italian ones, the pure, beautiful shapes of which would tell the connoisseur that they came from Cremona; also Tirolese, Dutch, Saxon, Mittenwald fiddles, and some from Leverkühn’s own workshop. The melodious cello, which owes its perfect form to Antonio Stradivari, was there in rows; likewise its predecessor, the six-stringed viola da gamba, in older works still honoured next to it; the viola and that other cousin of the fiddle, the viola alta, were always to be found, as well as my own viola d’amore, on whose seven strings I have all my life enjoyed performing. My instrument came from the Parochialstrasse, a present from my parents at my confirmation.
There were several specimens of the violone, the giant fiddle, the unwieldy double-bass, capable of majestic recitative, whose pizzicato is more sonorous than the stroke of the kettle-drum, and whose harmonics are a veiled magic of almost unbelievable quality. And there was also more than one of its opposite number among the woodwind instruments, the contra-bassoon, sixteen-foot likewise—in other words, sounding an octave lower than the notes indicate—mightily strengthening the basses, built in twice the dimensions of its smaller brother the humorous bassoon, to which I give that name because it is a bass instrument without proper bass strength, oddly weak in sound, bleating, burlesque. How pretty it was, though, with its curved mouthpiece, shining in the decoration of its keys and levers! What a charming sight altogether, this host of shawms in their highly developed stage of technical
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