Discovering Wagner in Upstate New York

Troy, N.Y., Fall 1968.

One of the first things I had to do upon arrival at Rensselaer Polytechnic was deal with the foreign language requirement. Until the U.S. came onto the chemical scene in the 20th century, the big names in the field were mostly German. So, RPI insisted that any chemist worth his or her salt had to know German, six credits’ worth. Within a few weeks of arrival, I made an appointment with the chair of the foreign languages department, the German-born Herr Professor Livingstone, to see if I could be exempt from the requirement. I learned many years later that Livingstone had really been Levinstein, raised in Berlin until 1938 when, after Kristallnacht, he escaped to Venezuela, became a Lutheran, and ultimately ended in Troy. That unlikely corner of the world is where our paths crossed: two wandering Jews uprooted from their homelands.

As I walked into his office, I extended my hand and, in German, said "Guten Tag, Herr Professor Livingstone, ich bin Georg Goldstein,” pronouncing it Goldshtine not Goldsteen, to make the right impression. “Ich möchte über die Fremdsprache Anforderung mit Ihnen sprechen." Word by word: I would like about the foreign language requirement with you to talk. I made sure the verb sprechen, to talk, was at the end, so he could see that I had an inkling of German grammar, where the verb is often at the end. I sat down.

He looked up at me, his Beethoven-like long hair adding interest to his studious face. He took off his glasses, smiling. Vell, vell, vhat have ve here? he seemed to be thinking. He invited me to tell him about my background and of my love for Chemie, chemistry. I explained that my vocation had developed as a young boy on Sunday mornings when Dad would take me to the industrial laundry where he was employed as an accountant, and showed me the labs. More than anything else, however, I focused on my European parents, who were both German speakers and how they had raised me first in German, then in Spanish, and finally in English. I then pleaded my case not to have to sit through basic German lessons but to please figure out some creative way of meeting the requirement.

"How about you take Französisch, French, instead, the other possible foreign language?" he said. I argued that this would not fit with the right to choose one or the other, as the curriculum promised, and, in essence, penalize me for being a polyglot.

He looked up in thought for a few seconds, one eyebrow raised. "I've never heard that one before," he said.

"Well," I said, "how about a deal then? You approve my foreign language requirement, and I will still take six credits but in something else, say, another humanity."

He shook his head, and said, presciently, "Are you sure you want to be a chemist and not a lawyer?" I didn’t want to be a lawyer in those years, so I smiled and replied, “Yes, I’m sure . . . a chemist.”

Having a conversation about family matters was one thing, he added, but I needed to show him that I had good reading comprehension, and that I could answer questions and enter into a discussion about scholarly material. He thought about it for a few more seconds and proposed that I come back in two weeks. He would give me a chapter from a German book, I would have thirty minutes to read it, and then he and I would have a conversation about the content. If I convinced him that I had abilities beyond simple Kaffee Klatsch, small coffee talk, I could pass the requirement.

"Deal," I said, "vielen dank," and we shook.

If I thought this would be a breeze, I was wrong. I imagined that he would give me a German chemistry textbook of some sort. That would have been easy. Nope. . . Dr. Livingstone was no fool. As I walked in two weeks later, he handed me a book on music, asked me to open it to the chapter on Mozart, and to study it. He left me with a German-English dictionary and a pad of paper, and said, "You can look up words in the dictionary, that's fair, and you're free to take notes, but they have to be in German." He added, eyes sparkling with mischief, "I'll be back in an hour," and closed the door behind him.

I sweated that hour more than any other test in memory. Well, maybe not the test I had to take in Chem 101 in Argentina before leaving the country when, after the coup d’état of 1966, the University of Buenos Aires was occupied by military forces. I took that exam with three Uzi-armed soldiers observing us from the back of the classroom. But that is a tale for another day.

Mozart did not produce as much anxiety as taking a test under a machine-gun watch,  but still. Discussing the incorporation of Baroque musical structures into Mozart’s late classical period was no breeze.  Afterward, we talked for an hour in German about the composer, with me answering his questions and elaborating on his comments. At the end, he got up, smiled, and said in Germ/English, "You have just earned your six credits. Glückwunsch Herr Goldstein," and shook my hand.  He then invited me to take his music course.

The man was an erudite musicologist and a highly skilled pianist. He had a baby grand in his classroom and played during class. That's where I heard Wagner for the first time ever. My parents never played Wagner at home. They followed a Jewish tradition to ignore Wagner’s work, given that he had written some nasty anti-Semitic stuff and, also, because Hitler liked his music. When, sitting in Dr. Livingstone’s class, I first heard Wotan's farewell aria to his daughter Brünhilde at the end of Walkyrie, I was overwhelmed with emotion. I still am every time I hear it. Deep down the aria surely evokes Dad’s own farewell to me the last time I saw him, on his deathbed in Buenos Aires,

So, what if Hitler liked this beautiful music? Even genocidal madmen can have good taste. Livingstone (née Levinstein) adored Wagner. Although he was a Lutheran when I took his class, his having been Jewish earlier in life somehow gave me permission to like Wagner too. Livingstone had the ability to play anything written by anyone as though Wagner had written it, or at least may have arranged it in his grandiose romantic style. He would play Mozart's Little Night Music with Wagnerian chords. Or he would play the theme from Siegfried’s Death March in Bach's counterpoint.  Livingstone would sit at the piano and demonstrate, the louder and more complex the harmony, the merrier. “Listen to zose chords!” he would roar over his banging at the keyboard. “Vat a genius, Herr Wagner!”

***

Next to the many variations of chemistry and later of law, the musical ones I discovered in Professor Livingstone's class were the best I learned, perhaps anywhere, ever. I have grown to be a devoted Wagnerian and have traveled far from home to see The Ring Cycle, the sixteen-hour opera played over four days that has some of the most moving harmonies ever created. It doesn’t matter to me that Hitler liked them too.

Oh, by the way, my taste for Mozart is -  let’s say - more limited.