The New Frontier of Beauty

Jerome Weidman

When I was a young man, I was once invited to dine at the home of a distinguished New York gentleman. After dinner our hostess led us to an enormous hail, where an army of servants was arranging chairs in long rows. Up front, leaning against the wail, were musical instruments. Apparently I was facing an evening of chamber music

I sighed. Music meant nothing to me; I am virtually tone-deaf. So I did what I always do when trapped: I sat down, closed my ears from the inside and submerged myself in a sea of thought.

After a while, becoming aware that the people around me were applauding, I concluded it was safe to unplug my ears. At once I heard a gentle voice on my right. "You are fond of Bach?" the voice said.

I knew as much about Bach as I know about nuclear physics. But I did know one of the most famous faces in the world: I was sitting next to Albert Einstein.

"I don't know anything about Bach," I said awkwardly. "I've never heard any of his music."

Amazement washed across Einstein's face. "You have never heard Bach?" He made it sound as if I'd said I'd never taken a bath.

"It isn't that I don't want to like Bach," I replied hastily. "It's just that I'm tone-deaf, and I've never really heard anybody's music." A look of concern came into the old man's face. "Please," he said. "You will come with me?"

He stood up, took my arm and led me upstairs. He obviously knew the house well. On the floor above he opened the door into a book-lined study, drew me in and shut the door.

"Now," he said with a smile. "You will tell me, please, how long you have felt this way about music."

"All my life," I said. "I wish you would go back downstairs and listen, Dr. Einstein. The fact that I don't enjoy it doesn't matter."

He shook his head. "Tell me, please," he said. "Is there any kind of music that you do like?"

"Well," I answered, "I like songs that have words."

He smiled and nodded, obviously pleased. "You can give me an example, perhaps?"

"Well," I ventured, "almost anything by Bing Crosby."

He nodded again. "Good!" He went to a corner of the room where an old phonograph stood waiting, and started pulling out records. I watched him uneasily. "Ah!" he said at last.

He put a record on and in a moment the study was filled with the relaxed voice of Bing Crosby. After three or four phrases he stopped the phonograph. "Now, tell me, please, what you have just heard."

The simplest answer seemed to be to sing the lines. I did just that, trying desperately to stay in tune. The expression on Einstein's face was like the sunrise. "You see!" he cried with delight when I finished. "You do have an ear!"

I protested that this was one of my favorite songs, something I had heard hundreds of times, so it didn't really prove anything. "Nonsense!" said Einstein. "It proves everything! Do you remember your first arithmetic lesson in school? Suppose, at your very first contact with numbers, your teacher had ordered you to work out a problem in fractions. Could you have done so?"

"No, of course not."

"Precisely!" Einstein was overjoyed. "It would have been impossible and you would have reacted in panic. You would have closed your mind to fractions. As a result, because of that one mistake by your teacher, it is possible your whole life you would be denied the beauty of fractions. But on your first day no teacher would be so foolish. He would start you with elementary things—then, when you had acquired skill with the simplest problems, he would lead you up to fractions.

"So it is with music," Einstein picked up the Bing Crosby record. "This simple, charming little song is like addition. You have mastered it. Now we go on to something more complicated." He found another record and set it going. The golden voice of John McCormack filled the room. After a few lines Einstein stopped the record.

"So!" he said. "You will sing that back to me, please." I did—with a good deal of self-consciousness but with, for me, a surprising degree of accuracy.

"Excellent!" Einstein remarked when I finished. "Wonderful I"

McCormack was followed by at least a dozen others. I could not shake my feeling of awe over the way this great man, into whose company I had been thrown by chance, was completely absorbed by what we were doing, as though I were his sole concern.

We came at last to recordings of music without words, which I was instructed to reproduce by humming. When I reached for a high note, Einstein's mouth opened and his head went back as if to help me attain what seemed unattainable. Evidently I came close enough, for he suddenly turned off the phonograph. "Now, young man," he said. "We are ready for Bach!"

As we returned to our seats in the drawing room, the players were tuning up for a new selection. Einstein smiled and gave me a reassuring pat on the knee. "Just allow yourself to listen," he whispered "That is all."

When the concert was finished I added my genuine applause to that of the others. As the musicians bowed, our hostess approached us. "I'm so sorry, Dr. Einstein, that you missed so much of the performance."

Einstein and I came hastily to our feet. "I am sorry, too," he said. "My young friend here and I, however, were engaged in the greatest activity of which humans are capable."

She looked puzzled. "Really? And what is that?"

Einstein smiled, put his arm across my shoulders, and spoke the ten words that became his epitaph: "Opening up yet another fragment of the frontier of beauty."