Liszt and Cleo

All right, then. With my other writerly duties temporarily fulfilled, it's time to get back to the thick of things: to a certain monkey, that is, and her ongoing attempt to teach us the rudiments of toddler logic.

So: did you know that, in July and August of 1847, Franz Liszt was invited to Istanbul, where he played repeatedly at the Tchirigan Palace, before Sultan Abdul-Medjid, and was decorated with the diamond-encrusted Order of Nichan-Iftikhar. Big deal, right? Admittedly, Liszt was not the first Westerner to play in the Ottoman court; after all, the sultans had long been interested in, and alert to, European tastes. In fact, while in Istanbul, Liszt was hosted by Giuseppe Donizetti, an Italian bandmaster who had served as the Ottoman instructor general of music since 1828. But, still - the leading lights of Istanbul rarely got to listen to a top-flight performer, and Liszt clearly thrilled them.

You could think of Liszt's visit, I suppose, in several ways: as one in a series of cross-cultural encounters that occurred regularly in the Ottoman capital; as a symbolic cessation, in artistic circles, of ancient animosity between Hungarians and Turks; as an intriguing late moment in the touring life of Liszt, who traveled less ambitiously in later years. But today I'm enjoying thinking of it as a simple ambassadorial moment between two very different cultures. Liszt, the technical virtuoso, his hands dancing on the keyboard, playing for the so-called Sick Man of Europe - and yet marveling, reportedly, at the fact that he could, simply by turning his head while playing, see both the Bosporus and the Sea of Marmara. What he could offer, they had never seen, and what he saw there struck him as wonderful.

Cleo is Liszt; I'll be the Ottoman court. I don't always understand the phrasings, the references, the cadences - but I've been around long enough to know that what I'm seeing is special. And Cleo, meanwhile, marvels at what I now merely take for granted: moving ants on the ground in this direction, and a pile of sand over there, in that.