Schubert’s Requiem
Publisher
:
Mercure de France
Parution date
:
2009
EAN
:
9782715229273
Number of pages
:
109
Description
***Winner of the Prix Claude Fauriel, 2009***
In his latest novel, Pierre Charras, using Franz Schubert’s voice and the requiem form, creates a final ode in words for the composer. Chapter by chapter, from the Introit to the Lux Aeterna, we hear the themes of Schubert’s life: family and friends, lost love, the music he wrote and did not write, all a prelude to his approaching early death.
Franz Schubert has been weakened by syphilis and perhaps from its treatment with mercury. In addition, he may be suffering from typhoid fever. He knows his time is coming to an end. In Schubert’s Requiem, a fictional Franz chronicles his last days with flashbacks to earlier, sometimes happier, times. His greatest regrets are his love, Thérèse, who married another man, and that he never wrote a requiem. He is certain that if he had, he would have earned a place in the history of music, a place that was not to be secured by his “minor works”: hundreds of lieder, octets, quintets, operas, masses, sonatas, an unfinished symphony . . .
The Franz of the novel is an awkward, plump, and funny man, generous with his many friends and much liked by the intellectual community. Life is full for the young composer in the Vienna of Beethoven (whom he jealously admires) and Salieri (of whom he is a disciple). When his true love rejects him, he settles for a succession of prostitutes, one of whom passes along the disease that is killing him. In the final throes of death, at the age of 31, he is under the glorious illusion that he is recovered and at the première of the requiem he never wrote. Mozart, Handel, and Goethe are a part of the audience, appreciative of him and his talent. Franz is amazed and overjoyed . . . his life is complete.
Author
Pierre Charras : Pierre Charras has written several novels, including Comédien; Dix-neuf secondes (Prix du Roman FNAC, 2003); Bonne nuit, doux prince (Prix Amic, 2007); and Quelques Ombres (Le Dilettante, 2007).
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