Measures for a Funeral

Audrey?

Yeah?

You... you... you were raised like me.

You came out with your eyes open. You...

You were fully aware.

Your father...

Your father dedicated his life to his fiddle.

And that's what he left us. His instrument.

I can't tell you how many times I imagined dismantling it.

Your dad...

He had an incredible disappearing act, didn't he?

Just like my own pops.

Yeah, I know mom, I know.

We managed our moment, but it was... it was tough.

He was on tour.

He was rehearsing.

He was in the studio. He...

He just... he just wasn't around.

You didn't handle that very well.

You know that some people said that half of your personality was missing.

Audrey, are you listening?

Yeah.

When I die,

I want you to

to scatter the violin's ashes

with mine.

Audrey,

when I die, I want you to scatter...

I was walking across my hotel room

and I tripped over a lamp cord and fell.

I was an old woman and something like this

can be the beginning of the end.

The humerus in my left shoulder was torn.

I was so afraid that I might never play again.

After my operation, I sat up in my hospital bed,

feeling the wrenched bones and muscles.

A doctor handed me my violin.

My Guarneri del Gesù.

I tried to place it under my chin, but it fell from my fingers.

Gradually, I felt well again.

I reignited the Parlow String Quartet and I found Cornelius Basilstein,

Stanley Solomon, and my newest recruit, Andy Benak.

I heard Benak play at a senior school recital.

I offered him a play straight away.

In his delight, Andy said that he nearly hit the roof.

I began to teach by hand again.

One exercise consisted of opening and closing it very, very slowly,

sometimes taking me 10 minutes to do it.

I began doing the exercises underwater

and my hands relieved of their own weight,

could resume the remembered positions.

Every day, I tried something more difficult.

And when I realized enduring the agony meant real progress,

I naturally didn't mind.

Some nine months later, in January 1961,

wearing a cobalt blue gown,

I gave a recital.

I played a program that displayed the infinite beauties of the violin.

The staccatos in Mozart, clear and definite, yet delicate.

Brahms' Sonata, rich in tone without muddiness, fine as hair sound.

Respighi, Rontondo's right and long,

sweeping, bowing, giving power and breath.

It was a concert played as if between my life and my release to the heavens.

Three months afterward, I fell when exiting a streetcar

and died in the hospital from the injuries.

Hi, Inez.

Are you familiar with this article?

The Manuscript of the Concerto by Johann Halvorsen, Opus 28?

What's the significance of Kathleen's name being on the cover?

It's her concert copy?

It is her concert copy,

but the concerto was also dedicated to Kathleen when she was 17.

When a concerto is dedicated to a musician,

it is implied that they take it on as a soloist.

What aspect of Kathleen's personality

would have inspired Halvorsen to write for her?

It was described that Kathleen was especially technically proficient

and that she attacked difficulty with a certain gusto.

Audrey...

What happened with your presentation today?

I was brought to the collection by a personal coincidence

when I saw it listed in the archive holdings

and made the connection that Kathleen was my grandfather's violin teacher.

I'd been stuck for what to write my thesis on and

this personal connection tethered me to something.

I worry that if I put her in an academic paper,

I'm just rearranging things or burying them deeper.

Is there a recording?

No, it was performed in the Netherlands in 1909,

but the concerto was lost for over a century.

One of our archivists found it in a shoebox

while for sorting through Kathleen's estate.

After Halvorsen retired as music director of the National Theatre of Norway,

he had a stagehand burn many of his manuscripts.

Why did he burn it?

The concerto wasn't well received.

Critics said it was bombastic and technically difficult.

See here, the phrases of the violin are constructed like opponents,

that the violin cuts through like a sword.

It's ruthless.

Kathleen was single-minded and unsentimental.

She had this enormous success when she was young,

but she was totally neglected later in her life.

But still, she continued to play the violin,

regardless of any external reinforcement.

People can be very put off by a lack of sentimentality or frailty.

It's a contradiction in terms, isn't it?

To dedicate something to someone and then destroy it.

When you're looking at the objects left behind by a person

who has died, you can obviously assign significance to what was kept.

Then there's also the importance of the objects that are missing,

such as Kathleen's famous violin, the Guarnerius del Gesù,

that was unaccounted for in her estate.

But in terms of how the deceased wanted those objects to be seen or used,

you'll find that in your attraction to a particular object,

you're actually encountering your own will.

The Guarnerius del Gesù was purchased for Kathleen

by the Norwegian nobleman, Einar Bjørnsson.

Throughout the daybooks, you can see "E.B. arriving", "E.B. leaving".

It's funny to see what may have been a love

affair described in only arrivals and departures.

On the day of their last meeting, E.B.'s sailing is underlined with a hard dash.

She never married, you know.

She alleged that marriage and an artistic career were incompatible.

I read that she'd marry another musician if he were superior to her

in ability, because then she'd have to strive to be as good as him.

But if he were worse than her, then she'd have to take care of his feelings.

In fact, she said that most women didn't have

the dedication required to be a great violinist.

Perhaps she meant that most women are unwilling

to give up on the possibilities of love.

Her life was occasioned by these Norwegian men.

Bjørnsson with the del Gesù, Halvorsson with the concerto.

But there was a point where their support came

with these weighted conditions and she had to free herself.

Still, she carried the experience of it with her in her hands.

Audrey, you know I like talking to you, but I'm your thesis supervisor.

It's irritating you expect me to keep making allowances for you.

You've presented no tangible work toward your thesis

and you're coming toward the end of your degree and your funding.

I can't support you continuing to accumulate.

I need you to bring your research into some kind of action.

I know I'm frustrated with myself too.

Are you?

Kathleen once said, music begins where love leaves off.

The Titanic was wrecked on her maiden voyage.

The whole world was shocked and the city of New York was in a state of mourning.

A benefit concert at the Met was organized for the survivors.

I played Tchaikovsky's Serenade Melancholique.

I felt a disparity between my own happiness and the face of catastrophe.

What happened?

I left him.

I didn't know you two were close to breaking up.

I don't even know there were problems.

I don't know what they were, but I can't feel that they matter now.

When I was explaining it to him, I suddenly had this feeling

like I was lying and maybe everything was fine.

Maybe this pull I was feeling is something I made up.

Such an absurd effort to change your life.

You follow an impulse and something of that impulse is lost.

And your mother?

There's still time.

Is that what you're reading?

I folded the corner of a page actually because it made me think of you.

Do you know the story?

No.

Basically, this young American woman leaves for Europe

with the sort of imprecise purpose of gaining knowledge and experience.

And early into her trip she's proposed to by a man who has a social position,

is intelligent, and is expected to have a very important career.

Okay, here.

He had conceived the design of drawing her into the

system in which she rather individually lived and moved.

A certain instinct, not imperious but persuasive, told her to resist.

Murmured to her that virtually she had a system in an orbit of her own.

It told her other things besides.

Things which both contradicted and confirmed each other.

That a girl might do much worse than trust herself to such a man.

And that it would be very interesting to see

something of his system from his own point of view.

That on the other hand, however, there was evidently a great deal

of it which she should regard only as a complication of every hour.

And that even in the whole there was something

stiff and stupid which would make it a burden.

Isn't that amazing?

Yeah, it is.

It's that she's interested in understanding

the boundary between herself and the world.

And were she to include him, it would be a completely different organization.

Probably a cumbersome one.

I admire her decisiveness, or the clarity she seems to get out of it.

I have this feeling like a decision doesn't really matter.

That it doesn't impact or change anything.

I thought making a decision would feel like more.

The spring of 1912 was a time of special success for me.

I had recently met Thomas Edison,

who had just invented the cylinder phonograph.

Edison and I met several times and he asked if

I would be willing to have my playing recorded.

"Eager and willing." I responded.