Excerpt from The Schubert Treatment by Claire Oppert, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Prologue

Schubert, Piano Trio no. 2 in E-flat Major, op. 100
Andante con moto
Exposition

april 2012. paris, korian jardins d'alésia.

The leaves of the tall oak quiver in spring's new light in front of the windows of the EHPAD, the établissement d'hébergement pour personnes âgées indépendantes, an assisted-living retirement facility.

On the floor for the residents with dementia, the door to the common room we call l'Espace is wide open.

Espace—space—is a funny word. The dictionary defines it as the span of the physical universe, the vacuum between the planets, the stars, and the galaxies.

I walk into the common room and turn off the television, just as I do every Monday, a ritual.

The television stays on all day long even though no one is watching. When I click it off, the set makes a peculiar noise, like a machine being swallowed, and leaves a flicker of grey in the silence.

The floor for the twenty-one patients with dementia is a closed, protected unit. You need a code for the elevator, which I always forget when I'm standing in front of it. It's funny.

In a corner of the common room, a woman is screaming and struggling. There are two nurses with her, holding her to keep her from sliding down into the chair as they dodge her blows.

The wound on Madame Kessler's arm is starting to fester, and the nurses have to change the dressing.

I can't see her face, hidden behind the tense, towering nurses, their furrowed brows. She stops screaming, so that she can try to bite them.

I don't know what compels me to go over there. I don't say a word. I sit down and I just play, the andante from Schubert's Piano Trio no. 2 in E-flat Major, op. 100.

Three seconds go by, no time at all, two measures maybe, and her arm relaxes, and drops. The screaming stops. The room goes quiet. Now I can see her face: she looks surprised, and she's almost smiling.

The nurses are so quick that I don't play for very long. It's more than surprising, it's phenomenal. The nurses smile too. "You'll have to come back," one of them laughs, "for the Schubert treatment."

The phrase is clever, and utterly appropriate. The phrase "Schubert treatment" has been coined, and will remain.

As I walk away, I already know that something significant has just taken place. For the first time, I have seen evidence of dramatic relief in a person in considerable pain. A year after that spontaneous experiment, when I develop the Schubert treatment protocol, working with over one hundred patients in end-of-life care at the palliative care unit of Sainte-Périne hospital in Paris, the department chief comes up with a pithy, eloquent formula: "Ten minutes of Schubert is the equivalent of five milligrams of oxy."

There will be Schubert, as well as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich, bits of Puccini and Ver- di, Édith Piaf, crooners like Claude François, Michel Sardou, Salvatore Adamo, even some Johnny Hallyday, waltzes and tan- gos, Jewish, Arab, and African music, folk songs from Brittany and Ireland, movie soundtracks, jazz, rock and roll, pop, heavy metal…

That same week, I come back twice to play for Madame Kessler as the nurses change her dressing, with the same results. There's no other way to alleviate her pain. She sits in her chair, ramrod straight, holding her arm out for the nurses, and as I play the andante from Schubert's Trio over and over again her face glows, so intensely luminous that it lights up the whole room, the nurses, and me. Outside, the wide branches of the oak are bathed in light. At least, that's how it looks to me when I bid the tree farewell.

A Musical Ballet

Bizet, Carmen
"L'amour est un oiseau rebelle" ("Habanera")

december 2012. paris, korian jardins d'alésia.

Excerpted from The Schubert Treatment by Claire Oppert. Copyright © 2024 by Claire Oppert. Excerpted by permission of Greystone Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.