“a Lot of pleasure,” has desired Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1929-2016) to the readers of his actually, for private use, written family history. But even as a non-family member to read these notes and memories that brought out his widow Alice Harnoncourt now, with actually very a lot of pleasure.
Because there are special families, one of which is reported here. Because the mothers side of the family Merano, the age of Austrian nobility, on the furnace, will be in Styria, the little Niki with cold water was poured, when he roared again for a reason. And since paternal the Luxembourg-Lorraine house of the counts de la Fontaine and d’Harnoncourt-Unverzagt: this is also the age of nobility, table manners were important, the rank order had to be observed. Him compelling even today, “magic power”, to stand up when a lady enter the room, writes Harnoncourt. He was then still in short trousers to the civil registration of his marriage with the violinist Alice Hoffelner: That tells you something about the anarchic energy that drove him.
glue in the bag
Perhaps it is the legacy of his mother, the “wild Laja”, which was a good dance, the teacher, fish glue, poured into the hand bag and as a unerziehbar was, until you decided to hide your edges behind a perfectly balanced facade: in any case, the first word that Nicholas Harnoncourt said was, “no.” A splendid word that he found when he was Writing his family history: “Why is familiar with the art, no? Immediately, it would be Kitsch.”
the Real art is always Opposition, he writes, and his art, it was, without a doubt: What Harnoncourt as an Old music pioneer has triggered, it will still reverberate for a long time. But in this book it is not a question, but to his parents and his grandparents, who were received with varying degrees of happiness and character through life. The Palais in Graz, or the phenomenal furnace, roof floor, where there were bats and German helmets from papier mache. And to all the Relatives that you met here, or there.
Since about of the about two-Meter-high uncle, René: a Viennese art dealer, who set off in 1925 after the failed transactions, and with the financial help of the family in the United States, made a career, with care packages for the relatives returned the favor, several years as a Director of the New York Museum of Modern Art had, and shortly after his Retirement from a Drunk to death.
Pray for uncle Karl
aunt Isabelle receives a Chapter of its own: “The sentiments, the strongest and bravest Nazi opponent of the whole family” – as a widowed mother of two sons – 1942 arrested because they listened to foreign Radio. In the process she said she could not suffer, Hitler, and took in purchase that they disappeared until the end of the war in prisons.
the relationship to the Nazis is a Central theme in this book, and Harnoncourt treated it remarkably calmly. Because the grandmother, who voted in 1938 as the Only one of the family in addition to the maid Luisi against the new rulers – was a test of courage, because you had to put the cross in the open for a Commission. Since uncle Karl, the enthusiastic early for Hitler, and “the man in the furnace, always had to pray, so he was again good but” He “was my favorite uncle (I just had to cleverly dispense with his Nazism), that’s funny – I don’t understand it”.
Harnoncourt himself was selected in the Hitler youth “because of “Pure racial purity” and blue eyes, very quickly, as a “leader candidate””. But his sympathy for the no remained as it was, by a four-Meter-high water tank to jump down: “with Pride I don’t think, jump in at any time, but not on command (when all of the, I!).”
wit and warmth
There are many such stories in this chronicle. Harnoncourt does not lecture about the big picture, he tells with wit and warmth, in a narrow, strikingly rhythmic language with which he draws into his world, a world in which there were servants, and sudden poverty, boys, pranks, and war – and a creativity that is not only musically.
Already Harnoncourt’s Grandfather was a gifted cartoonist (as you can see in the pretty collages of photos and drawings). And Harnoncourt himself has built as a youth, a puppet theater, but also ship models, exactly according to the plans of the German Navy, at a scale of 1:200 – ran his father when the Russians Graz conquered: you could have the wrong conclusions.
the Rest of Harnoncourt’s childhood and youth of the world is long gone. But thanks to this book, you will almost three years after his death, once again, alive and well.
Nikolaus Harnoncourt: My family; ed. Alice Harnoncourt. Residenz Verlag, Salzburg, 2018. 238 p., CA. 37 Fr. (editor-in-Tamedia)
Created: 12.02.2019, 16:55 PM
