Brahms’ Andante

The power of music: How a familiar melody initiated a bittersweet recalling of a dear childhood friend…

by: Matias Travieso-Diaz

I was at the dentist, resting as I reclined on my chair and the assistant cleaned my teeth. Classical music from a local radio station was playing out of the intercom. I was ignoring it until a familiar tune streamed out of the tinny speaker. It was the second movement of Brahms’ Fourth Symphony, a piece of music that triggered — like the taste of Proust’s madeleine — an unending flow of bittersweet memories. I normally do not listen to Brahms anymore because, in my mind, his music is intimately tied to my childhood and adolescence and the memories of growing up in the 1950s and early ‘60s in Cuba. I listened to Brahms almost constantly then, most of the time in the company of my best friend Angelo.

Angelo and I belonged to different social strata — he was a child of the upper middle class, his father being the manager of a refinery of one of the major U.S. oil companies. I was the penniless son of a blue-collar taxicab driver, living in one of the poorest sections of the city. Our association arose from attending the same private school, he as a full paying student, I as a recipient of a scholarship that allowed me to attend tuition-free a learning institution that otherwise would have been unaffordable.

Angelo was in a class one year behind mine, so normally we would not have had much contact, but we shared daily bus trips between our respective homes and the school. We became friends during those trips and soon discovered that we shared a passion for classical music. One day, Angelo told me that his parents had bought him a new record player on which to listen to his collection of classical records. Would I want to come to his home some afternoon and listen to some Brahms (his favorite composer)? I jumped at the opportunity and, for the next six or seven years, Angelo and I became inseparable. I would come to his house, we would listen to one record after another, and then engage in naïve but earnest discussions about the music, the orchestras, and the performing artists.

When it came to Brahms, we had somewhat different predilections. We both liked his symphonies, the violin concerto, and some lesser works. I was, however, particularly fond of his Third Symphony, and Angelo preferred the Fourth (which, eventually, I came to appreciate as Brahms’ greatest work). On the Fourth, we both agreed that the most memorable passage was a tender melody that unfolded in the Andante, a tune unlike most of the austere ones that populated Brahms’ oeuvre.

It was listening to that gentle tune, which came into my ears as my teeth were being drilled, that brought my friendship with Angelo to the forefront of my mind. It was an unlikely friendship, since he and I were as different, and yet somehow as similar, as our favorite Brahms’ symphonies. He was opinionated, impulsive, assertive, and self-assured. I was reticent, shy, mild-mannered, and self-contained. He often came across as arrogant, I seemed mealy-mouthed, even though neither of us was quite like the public image that we displayed. He was athletic and had a good singing voice. I was a couch potato and only sang in the shower. We were both smart, however, and respected each other’s views. While music was the first common ground between us, over time we realized that our sympathies and views of the world were very similar. Politically, we were opposed to the ever-encroaching Castro regime. We were agnostic on matters of religion. We appreciated art, literature, and foreign movies. And we were rabid fans of the blue “Alacranes” (Scorpions) professional baseball team. We both loved science and saw ourselves as becoming engineers or physicists later in life.

By May 1963, we were twenty-years old and fate had directed that our respective destinies proceed in different ways. My parents and I were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to leave Cuba for the United States. He, however, had started efforts to emigrate too late and his escape from the island’s communist regime had become nearly impossible. Moreover, he had fallen in love with the cousin of a classmate and was pursuing his passion with the same vigor that guided other aspects of his life.

I will never forget our last conversation, the night before I left Cuba. He had come to my house to bid farewell. We were sitting across from each other on rocking chairs in the living room, reminiscing about old times and sharing concerns about the uncertain futures that awaited us. I was about to become a refugee, a stranger in a strange land, driven out of my country by the need to escape oppression. He, one of the most brilliant minds of our generation, was reluctant to sell out to the government but was faced with potentially a lifetime of servitude, only tolerable by the prospect of marrying the girl he adored.

I remember his final words: “We know each other as well as two humans can. I accept you for what and how you are, and will cherish our friendship as long as I live. Good luck in America.” I think I mumbled something along similar lines, the details of which are blurred because I was overcome by tears. We embraced and he walked out the front door and into the night, without ever looking back.

Months later I learned that, faced with opposition from the girl’s family, he had eloped with her to the other end of Cuba and married her. His life took a series of tumbles from that point on — their marriage fell apart months after the wedding, he had to take a menial position with the government, and his great mind went to waste. He ultimately had a nervous breakdown and died young in his mid-thirties.

Since the last time I saw Angelo, I have been unable to listen to Brahms — particularly the Andante from his Fourth Symphony — without feeling stricken by the great loss Angelo’s passing represented for me, and the capriciousness of a destiny that marked me for relative success and doomed him to an obscure early grave.

Born in Cuba, Matias Travieso-Diaz migrated to the United States as a young man. He became an engineer and lawyer and practiced for nearly fifty years. After retirement, he took up creative writing. Over two hundred of his short stories have been published or accepted for publication in one hundred and thirty anthologies, magazines, blogs, audio books and podcasts. A novel, an autobiography entitled “Cuban Transplant,” and four anthologies of his stories have also been published.