Chamber Music

by Doris Grumbach

"I believe Chamber Music will be a classic. It deserves to be." ―Alice Walker Caroline Maclaren, the ninety-year-old widow of a famous American composer, reaches back into her memories to tell the story of their life together. In setting the stage for her extraordinary tale, she recreates the aura of turn-of-the-century Frankfurt, Boston, and Saratoga Springs and of an age when private passions were hidden below the surfaces of private selves. She recalls her marriage as a sheltered young woman to the brilliantly promising Robert Maclaren, his swift rise to international musical fame, the darker story of his angry silences, and eventually, the grim details of his illness and death. In the final phase of her story she tells of the late-blossoming passion she discovers with Anna, the serene nurse who tended Robert in his dying days, and about the artists' colony they found as a tribute to his life and work.

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Music, Lesbian, Novels, American

224 pages, Paperback

First published March 20, 1979

About the author

Doris Grumbach is an American novelist, biographer, literary critic, and essayist. She taught at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York, and was literary editor of the The New Republic for several years. Since 1985, she has had a bookstore, Wayward Books, in Sargentville, Maine, that she operates with her partner, Sybil Pike.

Reviews

[Mmars · Rating 5 out of 5]

Caroline McClaren has been asked to give permanent record to the life of the fictional famous composer, and her long-deceased husband, Robert McClaren. Instead she decides ".... to write this account because, long as my life has been, it has given me no opportunity before this to say what I wish to put down here. Perhaps the time was not right to do it before.... For the representation of truth, old age is a freeing agent. No one should write of her life until all the witnesses and acquaintances, family and lovers, are dead. In addition it helps to outlive the mode of one's time until it has changed beyond recognition.... I write this, then, because I am freed by my survival into extreme old age [90] and because I write in the air of freer times. Whether this air is entirely salutary,whether the old must of chests, of closets, bell jars, and horsehair sofas is not a better climate for the storage of the private life, I do not know. But I tire very quickly these days and must speak openly, for once. I am now free. Extraordinary for me, and for one of my time, I intend to put down extraordinary truths."

She was born in 1877 and would have recorded this account in the liberated late 1960s. And when she says survival, she is 100% correct. She has no father and leaves her mother in her late teens for marriage. A marriage that is without spousal passion and perhaps ever more tragic, her husband eventually withdraws entirely from her and is absorbed into his music, to the point of hardly speaking and needing total silence in their home. After she cares for him and he dies from what she learns, in its late stages, to be syphilis (thankfully, this is rare today, because it's devestating) she finds true love with the live-in nurse hired to care for her husband.

There is much more tragedy, including fire and the great influenza after WWI. Caroline's story is tinged with sadness, and there's lots of unanswered questions, but she is not angry. She looks back with acceptance of its travails, appreciation for having found love, and some regret. Written in 1979, this fictional memoir is a literary social commentary on the century - how it began and how it changed. I highly recommend it.

[Candy Tiley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book to be very interesting. It is a fictional memoir about a young woman who marries a man who becomes a famous composer and musician but their life together is not filled with the excitement she expected from her early knowledge of him. It is a portrait of a woman who learns many lessons in life and who is now in her nineties sharing that wisdom.
Despite the fact that the book was written decades ago and talks of long gone limitations on how people in society live their lives, I felt that many of the revelations that happen to her are still part of the difficulty of living life today. Most prevalent is the subject of same sex attractions.
I also found the writing to be very beautiful. The personality of the narrator and main character is felt as well as described by the author's skillful way of crafting her story.

[Robert Wechsler · Rating 3 out of 5]

I finally got around to reading Doris Grumbach’s fiction after her recent death. This is a well-written summary of the first-person narrator’s life, primarily the years with her composer-husband. It’s pretty conventional, except that it’s from the wife’s point of view and goes beyond his death. It must have been a bit shocking at the time of publication, but is now tame. A good, quick read.

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This rich novel is cast as the memoir of 90-year-old Caroline Maclaren, being written in the late 1970s at the request of her late husband's charitable foundation. Robert Maclaren was a a composer who was dubbed "America's Orpheus" for his use of American themes in his classical music. The marriage was rich in the world's admiration for his genius, but bereft of emotional depth between husband and wife. As his demands for the silent, solitary conditions he needed for composing became more extreme, Caroline's life became almost unbearably isolated and barren. Even her desire to accompany a singer on piano was thwarted by the increasingly-irascible Robert.

Early in the relationship, Caroline sensed that Robert had secrets that she could not define. There were hints of incest in his mother's behavior, and letters from a young man whose anguish and passion disturbed her. As time passed, his health and abilities deteriorated in a manner that others understood, even as she remained ignorant. She only learned the name of the illness after Anna, the nurse hired to help with his care, told her: syphilis.

Caroline spares nothing in her description of Robert's horrific decline, but says she only realized what it meant in the light of those old, passionate letters when Anna explained how the disease is transmitted. She found that she did not feel grief, as other widows do: " I felt none of that, for wife I was only in a sense, and woman I had not yet learned to be."

After Robert died, people from nearby Saratoga Springs helped to create the Maclaren Foundation, building six cabins on the wooded property to house a summer community for young composers. Anna remained and continued to plant flowers and vegetables according to science and ancient gardening lore.

It was Anna's comment about planting turnips and barley while naked that opened Caroline's lifelong repression of her need for love, physical and spiritual. She wooed Anna slowly, hardly understanding how two women can love.

Then, she writes, "I think of the first, soft spring rain; she was moisture to my dried roots... the way a certain configuration of notes played on the flute alone... can bring tears to one's eyes." They held hands and untangled the delicate roots of a wisteria vine. They were happy.

And yet, they never talked about their love: "a fitting vocabulary for such discussions did not exist." She knows now, as she writes, that women can walk together in daylight, but in her own time, "the world would not have sanctioned it, nor, for that matter, believed it of me." In fact, she writes, she is not entirely certain that such freedom is "...entirely salutary, whether the old must of chests, of closets, bell jars, and horsehair sofas is not a better climate for the storage of the private life."

Ah, but Doris Grumbach has no such hesitation. This delicate yet unflinching novel begins with the privileges of a talented man, and ends with the last thoughts of a woman who transcended the confines of her time. Books like this, and Ms. Grumbach's The Ladies , remind the modern readers that walks in the sunlight are the product of struggles and courage. Caroline Maclaren writes that the Foundation may delete parts of her story, but she will continue to write her extraordinary truth.

Thanks to NetGalley for the book. This is an honest review.

[Mandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aged 90, at the end of a long and often turbulent life, Caroline Maclaren decides to tell her life story, the story of her marriage to a famous musician, her loneliness within that marriage, the artists’ colony that she founds, and her ultimate fulfilment in a new relationship. It’s a straightforward narrative told in a straightforward way, and none the worse for that. It’s a realistic portrayal of a life and a marriage, more so as it’s based on the real life American composer Edward MacDowell and his wife Marian. Grumbach tells us however that the details of their lives are conjecture or invention and that the book is indeed a work of fiction. Nevertheless real people and events feature in the book and that gives it an added authenticity. I thoroughly enjoyed this compelling and often moving novel and am delighted to have discovered Doris Grumbach, a writer I’d never heard of before.

[Rosie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was quite grim. It was compelling and realistic, shedding light on the experience of the wives of many “great men”, women whose lives were made subordinate to their husbands and who never (or, in Caroline’s case, not until her husband’s death) experienced anything beyond a shackled, muted existence—but it wasn’t brilliant, and I didn’t particularly like anyone in this novel. I did hate someone, though: Robert. Especially for the way he treated that pupil of his, the brilliant boy who Robert basically drove to madness earlier on in the novel, and also, of course, for the way he drew the narrator, Caroline, into a gray, joyless life as his perpetual servant. I’m not sure exactly how to feel about this novel, ultimately. It was well-done, very subtle, and told with a consistent, steady voice, and I thought the eventual relationship between Caroline and Anna sweet and heartening, but the ending was intensely nihilistic in the thoughts expressed. If this sounds appealing, go ahead and read it. If it doesn’t, avoid this book.

[Javier Cobo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probablemente este es uno de los libros más maravillosos que he leído en mi vida. Según iba avanzando en sus páginas, sabía que era una de esas lecturas que dentro de unos años desearía poder volver a leer por primera vez y que me despierte todas esas sensaciones que me ha despertado.
La sensibilidad de Doris Grumbach en sus descripciones, metáforas y alegorías te hace olvidarte de que lo que estás leyendo es ficción y empatizar con el personaje protagonista de una manera impresionante.
Toca tantísimos temas y de una manera tan perfecta...
No entiendo cómo este libro no goza de la popularidad que se merece.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fantastic read-- almost like a lesbian fairy tale with a bittersweet ending. The main character, Caroline, marries a promising young composer in late 19th Century Boston. She is neglected due to his demanding creative personality and verbally abused by his stormy moods. What happens next after his terminal illness, delighted me although the book does end on a sad note. It is beautifully written.

[Tom Musbach · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved everything about this novel that reads like a memoir. The wife of an accomplished American composer in the early 20th century looks back on her life, her marriage, and the composer’s legacy. The spare writing is so effective and drew me in. How has this not been adapted for film or TV? (10)

[Pablo Calvo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutamente increíble, delicado y emocionante. ¿Por qué ya no se edita a esta autora en castellano? Incomprensible.

[Marcy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a sad, melancholy, and beautiful story about a woman named named Caroline, who lived most of her life alone. Caroline's father died when she was young, leaving a bereft mother who spent all of her time in mourning for her lost love. When Caroline met a young man in Boston, an aspiring American composer and respected conductor of symphonies, she looked forward to a life of love...They moved to Germany to their mother's house, where Caroline learned that mother and son had shared the same oversized canopied bed before they were married. In time, Caroline learned that her husband had an affair with another male musician. When Caroline and Robert moved back to Boston, and then to a farm in Saratoga, New York, Caroline devoted her life to Robert's public image, living "quietly" alone, for fear of disturbing her husband's creativity. They lived together, sleeping in the very same oversized canopied bed, yet Caroline remained very much alone. Robert contracted syphilis. A young woman named Anna came to be his aide and caretaker. Caroline and Anna became close friends. "The deep emotional freeze in which I had lived for so long, the ice age of my heart, would take a long time to melt, even beside the glowing flesh and warm heart of Anna Baehr." Robert died in his oversized canopy bed. "I mourned my wasted life in Robert's service, I grieved for his long absence from my conscious life, and mine, I think, from his." Anna and Caroline became lovers, residing in the very same bed. Until Anna's death, Caroline had finally found a partner to love, sharing each others physical and emotional needs. An exquisite "memoir!"

[Carol - Reading Writing and Riesling · Rating 4 out of 5]

My View:
Reflective, with a quiet voice.

This narrative is very touching, reflective and paints a sad picture of life, a limited life for women in the early 1900’s. Choices are narrow, navigated by social status, wealth and the husband’s career… and it was not the “done thing” to share to discuss feelings and personal insights, discretion was imperative – discretion which really equaled suffer in silence. “Secrets were surely no better kept than they are now, but they lived quietly, under the breath. They never appeared in public print or were reported by professional gossips on the airwaves…this we called decorum and we lived securely under its warm protection.”

However this is not a negative story – it is one told quietly as if in deep reflection, of a life mostly spent selflessly bent to the will of others but a story that does ultimately rejoice in a union of like minded souls.

Along the way Grumbach make some very pertinent points regarding the writing of autobiographies (though this isn't one). She talks about timing, about aging. “Old age is a freeing agent. No one should write of her life until the witnesses and acquaintances, family and lovers, are dead…So what one tells is unavailable to verification or correction.” I agree, after all aren't we the interpreters of our own life? I think so. We don’t need to be challenged on our personal perspectives, they belong to the individual.

[Kerfe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an old fashioned book, and I mean that in the best way. Just a good story; no gimmicks either in style or narrative.

The simple unembellished prose suits the narrator well. Caroline Newby is a late 19th Century middle class Boston girl, raised with the morality and expectations of repressed New England Puritanism. She marries a pianist and composer who, after years of study in Europe, finds success back home in the United States. It is a loveless union, lonely and confusing to Caroline.

With growing discomfort, Caroline is forced to confront her husband's homosexuality and agonizing death by syphilis. Once widowed, she both protects and promotes her husband's musical legacy and finds her own forbidden love.

In detailing the missed opportunities and truncated lives of closeted sexuality, Grumbach not only reflects the life of early 20th Century gay men and women, but also the human cost of that pretense, one that still must be maintained by some in 2013.

If her story took place today, a century later, I think Caroline would be stronger and more able to have a good life of her own even after her lover's death. She would not dwell in mourning for 45 years "alone and afraid in the great bed", unable to reveal the hidden secrets of her husband's life and her own until she faced her own death.

At least I hope so.

[Mystica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Caroline is ninety and looks back on her life, especially her married life with a world famous music composer. Very matter of fact and written starkly the emotional feel of Caroline's feelings come through very strongly without the gushing sentiment.

Robert is a clever man but with many eccentricities that the naive Caroline as a young woman cannot see and does not understand till very much later. She adopts an attitude of servitude to him, giving in to his needs, his orders and most importantly his way of life. Everything seems subject to this.

Caroline goes from a sheltered childhood to this life as a wife - a wife more in name than in anything else. Her passionate feelings only surface with the finding of a companion who comes in as a nurse when Robert is dying and this relationship is the only bright spark in her life. Caroline comes to life during this phase of her life story and the contrast of this short period as against her previous life seems so bright and vivid as against the dullness of all that goes before.

A bit slow at the beginning this is a story you have to persevere at, the rewards of reading this is right at the end.

[Nairne Holtz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written with a delicate precision and by turns beautiful and grotesque, Grumbach examines women whose lives revolve around service to others. The first-person narrator, Caroline Maclaren, is a ninety-year-old widow reflecting upon her marriage to a brilliant and secretly homosexual composer, and the passion she discovered with Anna, the serene nurse who tended to her dying husband. Her composer husband’s public life was a brilliant performance while his private one was full of silences and mental and physical torment. When Caroline is invited by the National Endowment for the Arts to write a history of her late husband and the institution created from his legacy, she decides to reveal what has been hidden. In her account, secret passions abound and erupt into disease, violence, and death. These passions are, for the most part, decidedly unsexy, ranging as they do from the inappropriate love Caroline’s mother-in-law felt for her son to a male musician’s obsession with Anna, Caroline’s de facto wife. This is a queer book in all senses of the word.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

My sister and I like to sit together to knit and watch medical shows or detective shows. When we guess the malady or the "perp," we gleefully congratulate each other.
So one reason for my liking this book is that I very early made a medical diagnosis which proved to be correct. Congratulations, Dr. Styrsky!

Another reason to like it is that this edition has a back-cover blurb by Barbara Pym, an author by now long deceased, whose work I love.

And in addition to these personal sidelights, the book itself has a pleasant narrative voice with just enough description to seem like the autobiographical letter it purports to be. It held my interest.

But now that I've set it aside--

***SPOILER ALERT***

I find that it boils down to yet another historical fiction whose narrator is surprised to find that she is in The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name which is nevertheless perfection. Perfection.

[Peter Eze · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find it to be a subtle critic of a certain cultural conventionality that is pretentious as it inhibits our sensitivity. How about being married yet duty rather than love or companionship is the unions life wire? To love or not to love may not be the question, but to be in the arena of love(marriage) and not find love or feel loved, is terrible. Perhaps, we don't find love, it is love that has to find us in it own way. And love came, and it found the one who needed love and was willing to love.....!

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book at the farmers market in Blue Hill, Maine. The man who sold it to me said he'd give me triple my money back if I didn't adore it - not like it, adore it... he made this clear. This made me instantly intrigued... and, so, okay, there was a bit of hype up front, but I have to say that he's not going to be sending any money all the way to Oakland anytime soon. I thought it was just lovely, with particularly inspired use of the parenthetical...

[Bethany · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. I am rounding up for the last third of the book that contained a sweet love story between two women that had me audibly "awww-ing". That was the whole reason I read this book, really. So naturally I thought too much of the story was devoted to Caroline's life with her unhappy (and rather unlovable) gay husband. I did enjoy Doris Grumbach's writing, though! I shall just sit back and imagine how great a book solely about Caroline and Anna could've been...

[Melinda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Even though this was a short book, it took me some time to read it. Just an okay book for me. The story of an unhappy marriage has been told, and told better, in other novels. I didn't find the writing to be anything special. I probably wouldn't recommend it.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished this lovely book. The wonder of this book is that the narrator, a 90 year old woman, tells her story with great clarity and restraint, yet the effect of reading it was visceral and powerful. Chamber Music is beautifully written. Highly recommended.

[Lynn Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. It gave me a sense of life lived at the turn of the century. It's a quiet, introspective novel written as memoir.

[Mark Spano · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is her best.