On a cold Tuesday morning, April 1823

Doc & Lena Selyanina

Closing track from album “Noble, Sentimental & Ambient Waltzes” (mt008). Inspired by Maurice Ravel’s piano music, Franz Schubert’s unlucky lovelife and Ingmar Bergman’s last movie “In the Presence of a Clown”.

The title of the track comes from the mentioned movie where the protagonist is a mentally somewhat unstable but talented and innovative 54-year actor/inventor who is fascinated to the point of obsession by Franz Schubert. In an early scene of the movie he is in a mental hospital where he has a record player and a disc containing a recording of Schubert’s Winterreise (he keeps replaying the first notes of Der Leiermann time after time). Discussing Schubert with his doctor he poses this question: “What do you think Franz Schubert felt like on that Tuesday morning in April 1823? It had snowed that night, and the tiled stove had gone out. What he felt like? He sits on his bed with his nightskirt, large cardigan and woollen socks. He has his chamberpot between his knees and is about to urinate. As this causes him a little pain, he has pulled back the foreskin. Then he spots the sore. It is just below the edge of the glans - a sore and a taut hardening where before there had been a redness, ugly but not tender. It is six in the morning, the bells tinkle in the nearby Trinity Church. At that moment, Franz Schubert realises he has syphilis, and now I want to know what you think about his emotions that April morning as he sits on his bed looking at his sick willie.”