A very fine Liszt

Franz Liszt, 1811-1886, is certainly Budapest's golden boy and champion but, other than knowing that most pianists would rather have a root canal than attempt one of his pieces (I speak for myself--they scared the hell out of me) and that he created the first superstar screaming mania which rivaled the Beatles', what do we know about this handsome Hungarian?

I spent today wandering around his apartment 

 

(he came back to Budapest after the horrific floods here of 1838 which put Pest under about 8 ft of water) and was able to put an order together and one continuous principle stuck out--he was generous.  Really generous.  

He left Hungary in his early 20s to study and perform in Paris which he did til he created such a fervor he decided to back off and take a break eventually.  His original plan, after hearing the stunning virtuousity of Paganini, was to become as magnificent on the piano as Paganini was on violin.  Problem was there were quite a few outstanding pianists during that time but Liszt embodied everything they all had and more...and big, ridiculously powerful hands.  It was exhausting. He did over 1,000 concerts in 8 years and a good portion of that money, he donated to charities.  

During that time he hooked up with Baroness Marie d'Agoult.  She bore him 3 children during their 8 years together.  He left her to do a series of benefit concerts in vienna, again donating most of the proceeds.  He spent a few holidays with Marie and the children and when he left her for good, he made sure the children were financially settled.  

He met Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstien who became his partner in life, love and music til his death. Unhappily married for years, she tried unsuccessfully to get a divorce first from her husband and then the marriage annulled by the church.  No go on both ends.  
She lived with Liszt until the church debacle, being Liszt's librettist for his songs and ghost writing all of his books.  Not just his lover, she was a highly respected writer during her day.  She and Liszt remained close for the rest of their lives and she passed very shortly after he did.  

Liszt, always a very devote Catholic, took holy orders in his later years and also received and honorary doctorate degree.  He went on to donate all proceeds from his performances to charity and was a tremendous sponsor of Wagner and many of the new composers. He dressed as an abbe, wearing this small embroidered sacred heart inside his coat at all times.  

He continued to travel non-stop during his later years.  He returned to Budapest and established a music foundation in his name which still runs successfully today.  He taught privately from this room and composed from this table many of his last works. 

Too much work and strain took its toll and he contracted pneumonia, dying after helping his daughter manage a music festival. He is buried in Bayreuth.  

Probably my favorite part of today was there was an outstanding pianist performing Liszt in the next room for a private concert.  Being in his house, listening to his music, I felt I was very near this generous genius.  

Love from the road.  

Finding Ludwig

When I was here in Wien 35 years ago, I went on a pretty serious quest for Beethoven sites; where he lived, loved, performed.  It wasn't easy back then as it wasn't as popular a sport: composer stalking. 

Nowadays here there's whole piles of articles about where/what/how/when and why the great maestro ate, ranted (all the time), screwed (all the time), made money (not all the time) and all the devout stalker need do is follow the well marked trail.  

But that doesn't mean it's correct. 

Because I have a special connection with the Ludster, I wanted to revisit some old spots and dig deeper into some new ones.  And it's been a blast.  
Beethoven spent most of his adult life in Wien and he lived in over 80!!! spots around town....mostly due to the fact he was a TERRIBLE tenant; wouldn't pay the rent, broke stuff, tortured his neighbors and basically was evicted from every place he rented.  But a couple of kind hearted souls wanted to help the B out and were willing to put up with the constant abuse. The most famous is the Pasqualati house

 where B lived for over 8 years, writing a good number of his famous symphonies and the opera Fidelio and "fur elise" (and of course you know it's really FUR THERESE ....MALFATTI BRUNSWICK.  aka nastly teenage prim who turned our boy down. It was misnamed by a bad French editor but Baroness Therese kept the original composition til she died).  

Walking up that old staircase to the 4th floor, one is very much aware of walking in Beethoven's footsteps and that's about as close as you'll get to him on this one.

  You pay to see what they tell you is B's apartment but REALLY it's the apartment (#20) next door that is where he lived.

  The museum you see is really a sad mess now....nothing's left but B's piano.

  But the fun part for me was proving the exhibit manager wrong and to beg him to stop lying to visitors about the space.  
How did I figure it?? 2 things.  1.  Beethoven needed/wanted decent light so he got really pissed off one day and knocked out an outside wall to expand one window to two.  And boy, the concierge was furious! But Pasqualati calmly got the joiner to come in and make a double window WHICH IS STILL VISIBLE AT APT 20.  
2. Beethoven wanted to see the Vienna hills out said new window and he wanted to see the BIGGGG park below him.  
based on this picture, B's apt had to be #20 to face the view he wanted.  Sadly, I couldn't get into #20 this time (I did last time).  But at least I could pin down his home.  

Next one.  I lOVEEEEEEE this story.  Beethovens stone deaf, half whacked and FINALLY has finished his 5 year late Symphony #9.  Of course he was a monster to the orchestra and chorus for this epic to the point he had to have another conductor step in to lead the orchestra.  Beethoven was no where to be seen for the performance til over half way thru it, he just marched up on to the stage and stood there.  He then proceeded to basically fling himself all over the place 'conducting' what he could only hear in his head.  Fortunately the orchestra was only paying attention to the other conductor. BUT when it was all over, our B boy was still just standing facing the orchestra.  The solo soprano very gently tapped his shoulder to turn him around to face and audience that was out of their minds with joy for this masterpiece!  Of course Beethoven couldn't hear the thunderous applause but he finally got the appreciation he had sought his whole life.  
BUT WHERE WAS THIS PERFORMANCE?? and the bigger question to me: why didn't anybody really know....TIL TODAY. 

Digging deep into the original advertisements for this concert, I found it was to be premiered at the Karnnertor/Hopopertheater which stood from 1709-1870. 

Looking it up I found it was supposed to be where the current Sacher (yup, the place where those evil chocolate cakes come from) Hotel and cake factory.

  I waltzed in to the hotel this morning and found the head concierge to ask some questions but he said it wasn't there, it was across the street...and it was private property now so I couldn't get in.  BUT he suggested I look at the old Sacher history book and maybe it might give me some info.  BINGO.  
Inside said book was a plat drawing of where the original theater was which was right smack inside Vienna's most famous coffee house, the Cafe Mozart.

  

Realizing the old theater was probably deep in this famous restaurant's kitchen, I stopped in and introduced myself to the maitre'd who was so interested that he took me thru the kitchen, the back offices and the basement!! And so I felt that the 9th Symphony was in great company because of course, Cafe Mozart was the place where Graham Greene wrote the most famous movie screenplay from Wien....the Third Man.  

And to say thank you for supplying them with this oh so important history (not), I got a prime table AT LUNCH TIME and enjoyed myself immensely.   

We'll never know who Beethoven's "Immortal Beloved" really was but I left him my hankie tied to his gravestone (he did love a lady's hankerchief) to remind him that we hear his final words which he repeated over and over in the last movement of the 9th....

"Be embraced, ye millions!
This kiss for the whole world!
Brothers, beyond the star canopy
must a loving Father dwell.
Be embraced, this kiss for the whole world!
Joy, beautiful spark of the gods,
daughter of Elysium,
Joy, beautiful spark of the gods."

Love from the road. I'm off to Budapest tomorrow.  Wien has been an amazing return, a long lost love.  I am blessed. 

SEX AND MUSIC

Most of you know that I'm over here doing research on a new documentary about the LOVERS OF THE ROMANTIC COMPOSERS ie; Chopin, Lizst, Mozart' Beethoven, Schubert, Schuman, Smetana, Dvorak.  Tracking down the hot trail of these randy geniuses hasn't been easy but one thing is clear:
THEY ALL HAD THE BUG!!

No, not the creative genius, uber-brilliant composer/performer bug....the SYPHILIS bug!
It's actually so much quicker to say who DIDN'T have syphilis than who did.  And for reasons I can't quite explain, it really got going in the 19th century, particularly with artsy types.  Not just composers but certainly just about every single famous painter;
Van Gogh, Gauguin, Toulouse Latrec, Manet, Munch to name just a few... and how about these guys: Hitler, Columbus, Napoleon, Abe Lincoln and JFK.  The old motto was: A night with Venus, a life with Mercury.  What??

Well, these guys and their drs tried everything and most of what was supposed to cure it, did...by killing the patient.  Leeches, extreme heat, weird voodoo mixes of semi poisonous plants and venom.  But when they started with Mercury/Salvasan (who thought that up?) it all turned for the worse.  Most people now know that Mozart died of Mercury poisoning...by his own hand.  And poor Smetana, Prague's hero first lost his hearing and then went insane (very common with syphilis).  The ones that died of other causes (Hitler, Lincoln, etc) were showing pretty clear signs of the disease advancing and all were taking mercury.  It just didn't work.
And before you go blaming the girls for all this decimation of glorious men, do remember that most of these girls were having to go thru weekly/monthly medical check ups to stay clean.  They were trying to do everything they could just to keep working.  In fact, working girls had the original Brazilian wax job (to try to avoid lice).  But some gentlemen?? wanted that furry experience so the ladies would don a "merkin"  yup, just like some folks say here...I'm proud to be a "merkin"....trust me, you'll never hear it the same again.

 A merkin was a tuft of hair the ladies could strategically place for that home grown feeling.  But it did prevent lice and these girls tried using protection.

  No, the worst culprits were the belle monde ladies...society girls who actually reveled in the fact they had the disease!  All those adorable Boucher paintings with the ladies all primped out and face painted with that oh so desirable black face patch to cover a syphillis pustule.  How romantic!

So, just another reason to be grateful we live in the age of penicillin.  Perhaps these great composers would've produced more masterpieces had they not all gone insane and died so brutally.  Perhaps syphillis made them reach another realm.  We'll never know.   But now you know there was plentyyyyyy of nookie goin on.    
Love from the road.

AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU

"WHAT A PIECE OF WORK IS MAN..."  Shakespeare

Probably THE most dubious item on my bucket list has been to make what I feel should be the mandatory trek to see one of man's biggest atrocities...the Nazi German death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau.  Of course I heard about it from my ww2 flying uncles, studied it in school, went to Ann Frank's house in Amsterdam and cursed the non-believers and neo-nazi thugs but I still needed to SEE it.  Kind of like dreading a colonoscopy...ya gotta do it, don't wanna do it and are soooo glad once it's over.  And so today I went....to Auschwitz. And I'll tell you right now that all of the pix here were taken by my trembling hands.

So I guess that answers the question-why go? But let's answer some other questions.

Probably the biggest question people ask is WHY DID THE NAZI'S HATE THE JEWS SO MUCH?  A bunch of reasons but the two main are:
1.  the Aryan dream- Hitler was obsessed with purifying Germany's bloodline to make it all blond, blue-eyed yodeling darlings and the Jews, gypsies, Catholics, gays, French, Polish....hell, anyone who didn't look like the von Trapp family was earmarked by Hitler for annihilation.  And the German's bought it because economically the country was seriously struggling and guess who was making the money?  and that bring me to

2.  Jews in Germany and all the surrounding countries made up a huge portion of the population and they typically weren't very patriotic or State supporting.  Their focus was their religion and their own people which would've been fine if they also weren't raking in all the dough and giving none of it back to the government.  Drove Hitler crazy.  Eliminate the Jews and the money goes back to the government and his people.  Again, the Germans bought the idea because they were on the losing end and wanted to end that pronto.


Why Auschwitz Poland?  Once the "Jewish question" (extermination) had been answered, the Reich needed a place they could carry this all out as quietly and as cheaply as possible.  Oscweicim (Auschwitz) had long been a German barracks and small scale extermination camp of Poles and Russians.  Now they just needed to build it up a bit (A LOT!!!!) and of course 1.5 million starving Jews etc became the cheap labor with the average worker lasting about 3 months (if they made it past the first cuts).

The site itself is HUGEEEEEE!!! row after row after row of 3 story reddish brown brick barracks.  There's a pretty serious body and bag check getting into the site and as i went solo, I didn't have anyone pushing me along or holding me back.  I got there at 8:30 am. It was very cold, very foggy and very crowded.

You see that "WORK WILL SET YOU FREE" entrance sign and you...well I....just froze.  This was that point where 95% of 1.5 million of these people would never see the front of that sign again.  It's profound and EVERYBODY just stops there and stares. ..in complete silence.  That was the other thing about today.  NOBODY talked. You could hear the guides talking softly into the headsets but you could hear a pin drop in a room with 100's of people just.looking.  Hell, what do you say anyway???

Right after the gate, to the left is a barracks now an office BUT I happen to know that it was used as the cat house during the war.  In order to get the workers to put out more?? (gee, a 16 hour day on a shitty bowl of gruel and bread made of sawdust slow you down??)  the Nazi's would give tokens to the cat house.  The poor guys who got the tokens were too tired to use them but the soldiers weren't.  Yes, the girls (never jewish girls!) working the cat house got food, a bed and maybe lived a bit longer but they were all sexually mutilated before they could start.

Across from that was where the prison musicians would play each and every morning.  The German's figured out the prisoners would march better off to the ovens with perky music.  ugh.

Out of the 26 Barracks, #4-7 are the most visited.
Block 4= Welcome to Auschwitz!  the torture of these poor people; scared, angry, confused.  Only 20% made it past the front gate...the old, crippled, young, Roma, on and on...they went directly to the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

 The rest were stripped, shaved, numbered and shoved into rooms with beds on the floor (3 to a mattress. Only later you might get a bunk or one of the latrine rooms (check out those cute kitties on the wall!)

Block 4 also shows the photos SS took of the prisoners being forced into the "showers" where they stripped, were bolted into the room and told they were going to be disinfected with a fumigant and to breath deeply.  Zyklon B (hydrogen cyanide...and it smelled like sweet almonds) canisters (here are the empties) were then dropped into the vents.

  It took about 20 horrible minutes.  Afterward, the 'sonderkomandos' --prisoners forced to take the dead bodies, remove any gold teeth and shave all heads--would then move the dead to the crematorium....about 4,400 per day....7 days a week.

I think the hardest building for me was Block 5 where the displays of things that just shouldn't be displayed are.  The building in Auschwitz where all the goods went...clothes, paintings, jewelry, valuables was called Canada.  I won't attempt to explain.

The first room was the worst.  I literally thought I was going to throw up.
 Photography of any kind isn't allowed (why?? ) but I snuck one....
1,100 lbs of human hair...............50 feet long and 10 feet tall pile of it.  Just let that sit a minute.  And THIS is only a SMALL PORTION of what wasn't sold off to make....?????

The next room was an entire 15 ft squared exhibit of kid's shoes. And, trying to take a picture of it, I just started to cry.

  I couldn't see very well but the next room was 50x10x10 X 2!!! of more shoes!!!!! Pretty shoes, manly work shoes and business shoes, slippers and clogs and a million million more shoes.

The SS told people to mark their suitcases with their name and "kind" if it as a child's suitcase.  That way, those heading directly to the gas chamber wouldn't panic.

Eyeglasses....weird... all the same style.

On and on it went.  All the precious things these frantic people had grabbed that mattered to them the most.....a room of combs and brushes,  an entire building of snapshots of loved ones.  Shoe polish tins by the 100's.

I had to take a break after that.  sit someplace quiet. eat some nuts.

I honestly wanted to go but needed to honor these souls I could feel all around me.
Off in a corner of the complex is a place where 10,000 prisoners were shot, the wall brick so pulverized the SS put up straw backing.  It was really touching to see this large group of Jewish kids and their Rabbi lighting candles at that spot.

I saw them over at Birkenau later, wayyyyyyyy off by the train car which is basically all there is at Birkenau as the German's blew the whole thing up near the end.

(Birkenau was built a year after Auschwitz got going because the means of exterminating large numbers of people was too slow at Auschwitz.  Once you passed thru the tower gate at Birkenau, you were unloaded at a ramp.  Split into 2 groups of women/kids and men, the SS dr would either point you Right=gas chamber now or Left=gas chamber later.

 But the flowers are starting to grow.

I spent 4 hours there but I will never forget it. I'm sorry if this post upsets you...it should.  Share it and upset some others.  If we EVER forget or deny this, we will repeat it.

Love from the road.