Real Tchotchkes, Real Stories
I have seen this coffee mill for as long as I can remember. Growing up it sat on the counter never used. It traveled with my mother and I from Italy to the US in 1953 when we emigrated to the USA aboard the Andrea Doria. I was a few months shy of 5 years old at the time. Why did my mother choose to pack that in our trunk? A small memory of her life in Italy. Since no one used it, of course I experimented trying to grind all sorts of things in it, acorns, peanut, etc. It was just there.
When I married and had my home(s), my mother gave it to me and it traveled again. As an adult, I tried grinding coffee but it didn't work so well. It sat on the shelf. When I went through one of many periods of trying to integrate being an immigrant from Italy and being an American, this coffee mill became a sort of portal into a time and place now gone for me, the bouncing off point of vivid memories filled with wide ranging emotions. It now sits on a wall shelf in our dining room with a few Italian lira resting inside and glancing at it brings me warmth and a smile.
-Nanda, Wenham, MA
The Tchotchke in the photographs is a painted ivory image of composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827). (The identity of the subject can be confirmed by an inscription on the bottom of the 21/4-inch figurine. See Fig. 2.) It was a gift from a Chinese student in one of my music history courses at the New England Conservatory of Music.
This object is important to me for several reasons. For one, it testifies to the global reach of Beethoven and his music. People from an ancient and far different civilization half a world away have embraced this Titan of Western culture, moved like occidental connoisseurs by the power of his compositions. The Chinese--along with the Koreans and the Japanese-- have in recent years even taken possession of this art so alien to their native musical traditions, presenting Beethoven's works in performances of dazzling virtuosity and depth of feeling.
The angry scowl on the face of the figurine reflects a mood often displayed by the
composer, according to his contemporaries and later biographers. It seems in tune with the world Zeitgeist in the Corona Epoch. That behind the scowl lie triumphant, hopeful, and uplifting emotions is reassuring. Beethoven's life and œuvre teach us that strength and hope can transcend adversity and a transient surface mood.
There are puzzling mysteries to "Angry Beethoven." What is one to make of the detachable head covering two barred sixteenth notes (see Fig. 3)? Why that rhythm? Why no pitches? And what is the meaning of the three enigmatic inscriptions on the back of the composer's neck?
Knowing that Beethoven sits scowling on the shelf behind me, allows me to relax from time to time the tension in my own facial musculature while I seek inside a scrap of enlightened optimism of the sort that excused Beethoven's sour disposition.
Freude trinken alle Wesen!
-Dr. Gregory E. Smith, PhD, Faculty Emeritus, New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, MA