I had been chosen for the expedition because of my presence on the original discovery flight. Only when the Admiral noticed sheets of manuscript scattered over my piano did he realize I was a musician. The old boy turned out to have a regular passion for Schubert. I started with the Rosamunde ballet music, then the Opus 90 impromptus. Whenever I play any composer’s works I always become increasingly enthusiastic as I go on. More and more Schubert poured forth, the Schubert of the popular image, with wonderful tunes and rustling accompaniments. Then I remembered the other Schubert, the Schubert of fire and grandeur, a Schubert almost unknown to the world at large. I hunted quickly among stacks of music. At last I found what I wanted, the three posthumous sonatas. I started on the F sharp Minor.
What can one say of the Andantino in this sonata? Why call it Andantino, why refer to a shattering achievement as if it were a child’s piece? How the devil did the man do it? How did the composer of Rosamunde suddenly become the composer of the F sharp Minor? How did extreme subtlety suddenly become combined with a consuming flame of passion and tragedy?
I continued to ponder these questions in the weeks and months ahead. I came at last to understand far more of what I now believe to be the essence of music, more than I ever gleaned from my teachers or from my own endeavours as a pianist and as a composer. Great music has nothing really to do with technique or even with an honest determination. Technique, skill, experience, determination, all these are necessary factors, but they are only peripheral. For every musician who has achieved anything truly great there must have been hundreds with adequate technique and keen determination. The missing component was the inner wellspring of emotion. Unless the inner fires burn with a fierce intensity the rest serves only as a gloss, like an automobile standing there with its paintwork and chrome all polished and shining but without any engine to drive it.
I have always had barely hidden doubts about much of contemporary music. I understand abstract music, I know what composers are trying to do: I have myself written quite a lot of abstract music but always I have had a sense of unease. Now I see why. Abstract music represents an attempt by very highly skilled people to eliminate from music the essential component which they themselves lack, the emotional fires. Abstract music is an attempt to make technique sufficient, an indefensible position I think. For why on this basis should one not be a mathematician? Music is the wrong profession for the purely abstract.
The difficulty of course is that you can’t conjure emotion, sexual emotion perhaps, but not the deeper emotions. Schubert wrote those posthumous sonatas because he was impelled to do so. But not by thoughts of box office or of the plaudits of the world. There must indeed have seemed every likelihood that his manuscripts would even be thrown away, that every note would be lost to oblivion. Yet this was of no consequence, for Schubert wrote in his last year, with the figure of Death standing clearly over him. These sonatas were his dialogues with Death. They were his inquiry, a musician’s inquiry, into the meaning of life and death. The world, in the sense of ‘success’ or of ‘recognition’, had no part in them.
Perhaps here we have a clue to why the Andantino was so named. Perhaps it did seem like a child’s piece when taken in such a grim dialogue. I played the Andantino with very little pedal. At the end the Admiral was so affected that for a moment I thought he had been overcome by a heart attack—in a sense he had, but of a favourable kind.
The evening with Schubert had two consequences. For one, everybody wanted a small piano to be included in the expedition’s equipment. Stowing a piano aboard a ten-ton yacht would create problems but the Admiral was keenly determined on their solution.
Two days went by in which we found ourselves hanging around still waiting for the chaps from intelligence. Cochrane at last told me he was having ‘difficulties’. Intelligence was more than fully occupied in Europe. It was now felt impossible to release anybody for our ‘show’. This brought home very sharply the extent to which I had allowed myself to be shunted on to a side-track, very much confirming John’s warning. Yet the obstinate streak in me was still dominant. I had no thought of withdrawing. I asked the Admiral if he would come along himself. Regretfully, the answer was the same, European commitments. So rather as an afterthought I asked if there would be any objection to a friend of mine, another musician, being included. This was how it came about that Alex Hamilton was aboard when at last we steamed out of Portsmouth Harbour. The second outcome of the Schubert evening.
Our ship was not very prepossessing, it was a workaday ship. It had to be because of the equipment needed to launch our boat. By the evening of September 30th we were off the coast of Portugal. The days slipped placidly away. Beyond Gibraltar now, we steamed steadily east towards the isles of Greece. We would sit on deck until far into the night. The sea was calm. Surrounded by the darkened waters, stars filling the sky, anything seemed possible. Jason and the Argonauts might have glided by.
During the next days we familiarized ourselves with the gear on the yacht. Launching was a somewhat hectic process. We anchored in as shallow water as the captain dared. Then the men built a good-sized slipway. I had visions of the yacht getting out of control as it went down into the sea but everything passed off quite well. Held on powerful ropes, the boat moved slowly foot by foot down to the water, not at all the swift dramatic launching I had expected. With its auxiliary engines started, the crew quickly had it away from the edge of our ship to a safe distance. The last step before we ourselves embarked was to check with our captain on the rendezvous we had arranged for two months hence. Greece might well be flooded by tourists and newsmen long before two months were up. Yet if this should not happen we intended to make our departure as inconspicuously as possible. We would simply reverse the procedure of our arrival. We had sufficient fuel to return to the neighbourhood of Crete where we would be met by our naval escort.
It was early morning when our yacht was launched. By nine o’clock we were on our way. We waved goodbye and within an hour we were alone in an open sea.
Really all we had to do was to run almost exactly due north. Inevitably this would bring us to the Attic peninsula. From there we could navigate simply by eye. Timing was something of a difficulty. Arriving at a modern port in the evening with modern electrical illumination was one thing. Arriving at an ancient port more or less in darkness was another. We decided it would be better not to rush things, to go slowly and to arrive the following morning. This we could easily do by changing to sail. There was a lot of sense in this because we needed practice with the sails. We were distinctly clumsy in our work. We kept the engines running at low revolutions until we got the hang of it.
By nightfall we had been going nine hours. I reckoned we must have come some fifty miles. We took down the sails and started the engines again. Our course now was somewhat to the east of north. Twelve more hours at five knots should put us just about right, providing the weather held. Luckily it did. I slept very well indeed considering the circumstances and the occasion. In a queer way it had all come to assume the aspect of an everyday experience. Saturated by the new and the strange, I was ready simply to accept whatever chanced to come along.
I woke to the smell of cooking bacon. Anna had a primus stove going. Soon I was washed and dressed and munching happily. Then it was time to stop the engines and to go back to sail. This time we managed with less incident and argument. Except that Alex almost got himself knocked overboard by a swinging boom. In the harassment of the moment I reflected that he might keep away from his sudden exits, at least for the next few hours.