A Fine Young Violinist and a Shaggy Black Dog

For a couple of months we were planning to host a recital for Ivan Abedelmalak, but then Israel and Iran started firing missiles at each other, and we thought we would have to cancel the concert. Fortunately, the ceasefire ended this round of hostilities, so we went ahead with the recital.

Ivan is a Roman Catholic Palestinian from the Old City of Jerusalem who has been fostered by the prominent Israeli violinist, Robert Canetti since he was seven. Ivan played an ambitious program with well-deserved confidence, though when he's not holding his violin, he is a shy young man with a sweet, bashful smile.

Canetti and his wife Bella, an energetic musician and educator, have worked for years with young musicians from East Jerusalem. Ivan is far from their only success story.

We squeezed about twenty-five people into our dining room, and everyone was swept away by Ivan's performance. Strangely, our dog was responsible for the recital, and he lay quietly at Ivan's feet while he played, making his concentration ever more impressive.

The Canettis have two dogs, and I met Robert with his dog at the dog park near the Liberty Bell Garden. He's a modest man, and I didn't know that he was a great musician. Through Yaron, a high school teacher and dog walker, our dog connected with theirs, they mentioned the possibility of holding the concert to Yaron, and that's how it happened.

Many things can connect people, both dogs and enthusiasm for music. We feel privileged to have such fine musicians play for our friends in our house. We provide the venue and refreshments after the concert, the audience makes a contribution to the artist, and we are all enriched.

Music, Ironies, and Tragedies

 Before removing a crown, beneath which my tooth was decaying, my dentist asked me what music I'd like to hear during the process. At first I wanted to say I didn't care, but then I asked for string quartets. "Which ones?" he asked. I opted for Haydn. 

The quartet his program chose contained the beautiful tune that eventually became the German national anthem. How ironic, I thought. Music originally written by an Austrian court composer for a Hapsburg emperor before there were nation states in Europe became the anthem of an aggressive nationalist state (and remains the anthem of a liberal democratic state). 

However, irony isn't the right term, at least if you attribute an ironic intention to History, with a capital 'H.' History, an entity that only exists in human minds, cannot have intentions and clearly can't be ironic.

Music is composed and performed at specific historical moments, and we hear and play it at different historical moments. That's a truism that applies to every sort of art. Artists live human lives and undergo historical events. Biographies are written about them, often trying to link their works to the events of their lives, personal and historical. But those links are surely speculative at best, irrelevant to the deep pleasure we get from art and the meaning we find in it.

As for speculation, what if Schubert, Mozart, Schumann, and Mendelssohn has lived as long as Haydn? What wonderful music they would have given us, and how different the history Western classical music would have been. The early deaths of these important composers were tragic for the men themselves and their families and friends, but not because History was writing a tragedy. Perhaps we appreciate their music more, knowing that they died too young.

We listen to their music our historical vantage point and may be puzzled that German culture, which produced a regime so monstrously evil that it's become iconic, should also have produced such profound and brilliant musicians. We are stuck with our vantage point and its puzzles. Art, however, can raise us out of history and present us with its own puzzles.