I’d worked late, finishing up a podcast for the Dallas Wind Symphony and polishing up material for Cliburn Conversations, the pre-concert talk for pianist Stephen Hough’s Van Cliburn Concerts Series piano recital the following night. With a head filled with lofty thoughts about the glories of music history, especially Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade and the piano sonatas of Beethoven Liszt and Scriabin, I stopped at the barn, ready to apologize to the critters for their late supper.
There stood Chester, our two-year old Great Pyrenees. Only he didn’t look like Chester. He looked like a cream-cheese ball encrusted in pecans. The pecans, in this case, were sticker-burrs, the big, oval kind about the size of a bloated almond. I don’t know why God made sticker-burrs, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t intend to couple them with long-haired dogs.
The time was fifteen after midnight, but what could I do? Down on my knees, I began to persuade Chester to let me pry these nasty things out of his fur. As I did, I wondered if Scriabin ever had a moment like these. Nah, I decided. Alexander Scriabin was famous for his obsessively fastidious mannerisms, his delicate health, and (fortunately for us) his transcendent, unfathomably bold music. He could not have engaged in de-burring a dirty dog.
What about Liszt, I wondered? Well, he was a superstar at a young age. If he had a dog, it would have slept on a satin pillow. And he’d have had a valet tending to it. No sticker burrs for Liszt. Besides, neither he nor Scriabin would have allowed their treasured fingers to be pricked over and over.
Beethoven? Now that’s different. Beethoven kept a peasant side to him all his life. He didn’t grow up with a silver spoon. Nor did he have an easy path. He changed apartments so much during his life in Vienna (sometimes to avoid paying rent), he probably couldn’t have kept a dog. But if he did, had it shown up looking like Chester, he’d either have been too absorbed to notice, or would have dug those things out with authority!
Who really knows? But it’s great fun to speculate. And it’s one of the ways we can bring cultural history alive for our children. Sometimes we should elevate “the Great Men” to the exemplary status they deserve. Go ahead and extol their intellectual prowess and artistic genius.
But other times, let’s ask: how much of a regular life did they live? My daddy used to say, “Every man puts on his trousers the same way: one leg at a time.” It took a long time before I had any idea what that meant.
Does anything in Liszt’s, or Beethoven’s music tell us whether they willingly knee on a barn floor and tend to an animal? If so, would they sing themes from their latest compositions to calm the antsy pup?
After the 10th burr, Chester seemed to understand I was bringing a solution to those burrs digging into his skin. Pretty soon, he thought I was giving him a massage. And by the end, I was humming him the lyrical motif from the Liszt B Minor Sonata. Not sure if Liszt would have approved, but Chester seemed to like it.
I have often thought about this. The contemporary listener tends to revere “the Greats” so much that they become infallible, or above reproach, or squeaky clean, or ultra-glamorous. Especially as regards their “spiritual lives”, but that is another post.
The last time I taught Wagner, I did a terrible job. By the time I was finished with his biography, the class felt that he was such a petulant human being that they were completely closed to the idea that such a reprehensible person could write anything that would be worth a listen. While I believe their assessment was fairly accurate regarding his personal life, I resolved to find a way to make him human for the next time I have to teach about him. Father Lee is, I think, right when he argues that whatever else one can say about the man, the composer of Die Meistersinger really did know what it meant to be a wonderful human being. I’m thinking that the next time I teach him, I will begin with the dogs. Dog #1 was a giant Newfoundland named “Robber” that adopted Richard around the time he was running out of Riga to escape creditors. Richard, Minna, and Robber escaped across the border at great personal risk. It says something when you are running for your life across a border, hoping guards don’t shoot you, and you bring your dog along. Dog #2 was Peps who comforted Wagner greatly on walks when music critics were at their most malicious. Wagner credited Peps for helping to write Tannhäuser. The dog died in his arms, and he wrote about weeping bitterly over it. Though he had a few other dogs, perhaps the most important was Dog #3, Russ. Russ was with him toward the end of his life but was unfortunately poisoned. Wagner buried the dog in his own tomb with the effigy, “Hier ruht und wacht Wagners Russ”. Wagner was eventually buried beside him. I’m not suggesting that it excuses the business of wearing children’s gloves to conduct Mendelssohn, attempting to combine vegetarianism, Christian sacraments, and hatred of Jews, or even cheating on your wife. However, it does seem that underneath all the filth, there was a real, dog-loving human being.
What a refreshing perspective! Thanks, Professor Carol!