From the Archives: Moscow Nights
Sometimes life makes it impossible to write blog posts on a dependable basis. This is one of the those times. For the next little while, I’m going to run pieces from September and October in years past. I hope you enjoy them, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.
Next up, a post from October, 2016:
In 1958 the Cold War was at its height–or perhaps its depths. Think Sputnik, Krushchev’s overthrow of Stalin, backyard bomb shelters, and bomb drills in schools.* Not to mention Elvis Presley’s induction into the army–a Cold War weapon of a different kind.
Culture was as much of a battlefield as space. In April, Soviet Russia hosted the first Tchaikovsky Competition: an international music competition designed to demonstrate Russia’s cultural preeminence to the West. The competition was rigged. The Soviets had identified the Russian winners of the violin and piano competitions before the foreign contestants arrived. To everyone’s amazement, a twenty-three year old pianist from Texas named Van Cliburn won over Russian audiences and Soviet judges with a lush playing style and a love of classical Russian music that rivaled their own. Popular pressure from Russian audiences in favor of Van Cliburn forced the Soviet judges—with Nikita Khrushchev’s blessing—to award first prize to the Texas prodigy.
In Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story—How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War, historian Nigel Cliff brings to life Van Cliburn’s unexpected triumph and its continuing implications for Soviet-American relations through the end of the Cold War.** Cliff sets the story of the competition firmly in its historical context of political paranoia on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and both Russian and American use of culture as a diplomatic weapon. At the same time, he never loses sight of the musician and the music at its heart: Cliff’s Van Cliburn is eccentric, driven, politically innocent, big-hearted, and and wholly charming.
Moscow Nights is an engaging account of an extraordinary historical moment, best read with Van Cliburn’s recording of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 playing in the background.
*By the time I reached grade school, we were carrying our chairs to the all purpose room to watch rocket launches and enduring occasional tornado drills based on the same principles as bomb drills. Good times.
**A scene in the Reagan White House brought me close to tears.
The guts of this review first appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers.
From the Archives: Climbing Brunelleschi’s Dome
Sometimes life makes it impossible to write blog posts on a dependable basis. This is one of the those times. For the next little while, I’m going to run pieces from September and October in years past. I hope you enjoy them, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.
Next up, a post from October, 2016:
One of the first things My Own True Love and I did in Florence was visit Brunelleschi’s dome.* I suspect we are not alone in making that choice.
The first thing you need to know about visiting the Duomo is that it is part of a complex of impressive buildings, made up of the cathedral, of which the dome is a part, the baptistry,** a bell tower designed by Giotto, and a museum on the site of the original works of the cathedral (think construction office and artist workshops.) Depending on what you decide to do, you could spend the better part of two days on the complex—there’s a reason the ticket is good for two days. We decided to climb into the dome, tour the museum, and see the dome from inside the cathedral. Here are the highlights:
- If you know me in real life, you know that climbing up into the dome is a Big Deal. I have a bum knee and a bum lung and don’t much like heights. I have refused to climb many many staircases over the years, including fire towers, lookout points,and the Washington Monument. My Own True Love asked several times to be sure I understood what line we were in and what we were planning to do. The hour and a half wait** and the 463 steps were worth it. The stairs are narrow, some of them are spiraled, and the last bit was more like a ladder than a staircase. But it was very cool to see the structure between the inner and outer dome and breathtaking to see Giorgio Vasari’s frescoes of the Last Judgment up close.
- The cathedral interior is awe inspiring, even though we didn’t get a good view of the dome from below. (The central aisle was blocked off. ) The simplicity of the space surprised us. We had Gothic cathedrals and Baroque churches in our heads.
- The museum was a mixed bag. In my nerdy way, I had expected a museum named after the works of the Duomo to have exhibits on 14th and 15th century construction techniques. The entrance to the museum reinforced that impression: a long marble wall with the names of some of the thousands of men who worked on the Duomo over the years, masons and carpenters as well as architects and painters. Once inside, the focus shifted from “humble tradesmen”**** to architects and from construction to design. Much of the exhibition was illuminating. But by the end, I was too brain dead to appreciate the artistry behind embroidered Renaissance vestments and silver and gold altar pieces. I’m not sure I would ever have cared about 19th century arguments over restoring the facade to its original Gothic style. On the other hand, seeing Ghiberti’s original bronze doors to the baptistry was thrilling.
- I got a giggle over the fact that Donatello’s sculpture of the Prophet Habakkuk—considered one of the most important sculptures of the period— is popularly known as Zuccone (Pumpkin Head). Evidently the impulse that led Chicago’s citizens to call Anish Kapoor’s beautiful sculpture The Bean (instead of its official title Cloud Gate) is not new.
*Several weeks ago, I mentioned in passing that I planned to re-read Ross King’s book about the dome on our trip to Florence in anticipation of seeing the Duomo in real life. The book traveled with me to Florence, but I haven’t opened it. Instead I’ve been reading Sarah Gristwood’s newest book about sixteenth century European queens, coming soon to a blog post near you.
**One of the oldest buildings in Florence and predating the Duomo by hundreds of years/
***There are ways to skip the line, none of which worked for us. The steps are not avoidable. Think twice is you have heart trouble, claustrophobia or other ailments.
****Their phrase, not mine.
From the Archives: The Blackbird Sings
Sometimes life makes it impossible to write blog posts on a dependable basis. This is one of the those times. For the next little while, I’m going to run pieces from September and October in years past. I hope you enjoy them, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.
Next up, a post from September 2017:
Several weeks ago My Own True Love and I had the pleasure of hearing a musician* play the oud and talk about its role in the multi-cultural mixing pot that was Islamic Spain. I sat and nodded my head in agreement as he talked about the spread of the oud through the Islamic world, and the transformation of oud first to lute then to guitar.** When he mentioned Ziryab, one of my favorite figures from the golden age of Islam, my head nodded even faster. This is the way blog posts are born.
Ziryab, nicknamed “the Blackbird” because of his sweet voice and dark complexion, was a trendsetter and fashion arbiter in the ninth century–the medieval Islamic equivalent of Beau Brummel.***
He was a freed slave who began his career as the talented student of a prominent Baghdad musician and composer, Ishaq al-Mawsili. Ziryab was so successful that many preferred the student to the teacher. Al-Mawsili appears to have been unaware of his student’s popularity until the caliph, Harun al-Rashid,**** asked if him if he had any particularly promising students. The teacher proudly introduced Ziryab, saying he might be a famous musician one day. The caliph was so taken with Ziryab’s music that al-Mawsili decided Baghdad wasn’t big enough for the two of them. He gave Ziryab two choices: leave town immediately (at al-Mawsili’s expense) or suffer his teacher’s enmity.
Ziryab chose the all-expenses paid tour of the Islamic world.
In 822 CE, he arrived at the Islamic court of Cordoba, the capital of Muslim Spain. He brought with him the latest styles from Baghdad, which was the political and cultural center of the civilized world.
The ruler of Cordoba, ‘Abd al-Rahman III, was determined to bring Muslim Spain into the ninth century. He welcomed Ziryab to his court, and gave him an official position as court musician, unofficial influence, a handsome salary, and furnished mansion.
In his role as court musician, Ziryab introduced the oud, turned it into the lute, founded a music conservatory and wrote songs that were performed in Andalusia for generations. He introduced new instruments and new forms of musical composition.
In his role as cultural ambassador from Baghdad, he changed the way Spain lived. He introduced the idea of wearing different fabrics in different seasons. He transformed personal hygiene, introducing soap, toothpaste, and better ways to clean clothes. (All already familiar in Baghdad.) He introduced new dishes, including asparagus, the idea of serving meals in courses, and the concept of the tablecloth. He is even given credit for bringing the game of chess to Spain.
Ziryab died in 857 CE, after 35 years of helping Cordoba (and ultimately Europe as a whole) clean up its act.
*His name is Ronnie Malley. If you’re in the Chicago area and interested in world music, he’s worth keeping an eye on. I’ll make it easy: http://www.ronniemalley.com
**In all fairness, not all musicologists agree that the guitar had its roots in Muslim Spain. I find their arguments unconvincing. But then, I would.
***For those of you who haven’t spent a lot of time, in Regency England, Beau Brummell was for a brief time the undisputed ruler of high society as a result of his impeccable taste in clothing, his biting wit, and his friendship with the Prince of Wales, the actual ruler.
****I first encountered Harun al-Raschid while reading the Arabian Nights as a nerdy child. In many of the stories, he disguised himself and wandered about his city at night, and then trapped his subjects with the information he learned while incognito. As a child I was indignant at the unfairness of his justice, even while acknowledging that it was, in fact, just. (Children understand abuse of power even when they don’t know the term.) Imagine my surprise when I learned that he was a real, much-admired, historical figure.