Prague Journal

Sunday, July 24, 2005.

Rick spent much of the morning consolidating the remaining vitamins to fit in the fewest and smallest containers. We had brought more than a large full suitcase worth; we’re taking back a small (heavy) suitcase full.
This afternoon, Rick worked on math while Vojta, our landlady’s son, put slats on the metal fence that borders the front of our building. Vojta was not happy about his work. His mother thinks it is good for him to learn these carpentry skills, but Vojta prefers accounting.
I spent the afternoon downtown. I finally went to the Czech Museum of Music, which I had wanted to see since Charles and Claudia’s visit in March. The museum is now housed in a reconstructed old Palace in Karmelitska Street in Malostrana (“Lesser Town”), which originally was the Church of St. Magdalene, built in the seventeenth century in Baroque style according to a design by Francesco Caratti. It was owned by a Dominican monastery until 1783, at which point it was remodeled in stages, serving successively as a post office, a police barracks, and, from 1948, the headquarters of the State Central Archives. So this building has an unusual mix of early Baroque church architecture with functional modifications in Classical style and a recently-completed remodeling for the museum.
The atrium is immense, set up as a concert hall, with Petrof pianos and a biography of Anthony Petrof, who took classes about the construction of pianos in Vienna, and made the first concert piano in the Czech Republic in Hradec Králové in 1864 before moving to his hometown of Brno to convert his father’s workshop to a piano factory. The rest of the main floor hosts an art exhibit. The amazing collection of instruments is on the first floor (second level).
The entry hall of the tour is a strange visual/aural composition by Milan Cais titled The Four Elements, of the diversity of popular music of the twentieth century as preserved in film, television, photographs, and sound recordings. Proceeding to the instrument displays, there are pianos, clavicords, harpsichords, and organs of many shapes and sizes, stringed instruments dating from the thirteenth century. During the early 20th century, master musician Alois Haba found a piano maker—the Forster company—to make a piano with quarter-tones and even sixth-tones. There were only two ever made. One of them disappeared somewhere in Egypt before the war, so the quarter-tone grand piano in this museum is the only existing example of a quarter-tone piano.
There are “glass harmonicas,” which resemble nothing I had seen before. They are not blown or strummed, they are rubbed. There are no-pedal, single-action-pedal and double-action-pedaled harps. There are wooden wind instruments from the sixteenth century, which were very fashionable at the time, but disappeared in the baroque era, when they were overcome by more modern types. There are “bombards” and windcap shawms in a collection from the Rosenberg family in South Bohemia. There is also an extensive collection of old string instruments: lutes and zithers that are not used in contemporary music anymore, as well as predecessors of modern-day violins and violas. There is a violin made in the 17th century by the famous Italian violin maker Nicolaus Amati.
There are displays of woodwinds, brass and a few percussion instruments. There is also a small display of musical devices, one of which is a “flute clock,” another a manual synthesiser from the Prague Radio & Television Research Institute, made in 1967. Most of the rooms have headphones set up to listen to some of the instruments played by famous Czech musians. I walked through the exhibits several times – I think I would have been happy to stay all afternoon.
I walked from the museum to Malostrana, across the Charles Bridge to Old Town, and eventually made my way to the Muncipal House at Republic Square. I then took the tram back to Malostrana, and took the metro to Hradčanská, and boarded the bus home. I didn’t realize until I got out at our stop that Rick was on the same bus, returning from the gym. We had a nice dinner together and watched the news (about the terrorist attacks in Sharm El-Sheik) and were able to see some coverage from Lance’s 7th victory in the Tour de France.
Armstrong’s new record of seven wins confirmed him as one of the greatest cyclists ever. Although riders were still racing, with eight laps of the Champs-Élysées to complete, organizers said that Lance Armstrong had officially won the Tour de France. The course was wet from the rain, and several riders had already fallen. Armstrong took the podium with his three children, Luke, 5, and twin daughters, Isabel and Grace, 3. Both girls wore yellow dresses to go with their father’s jersey while the boy was in blue with a yellow logo. In a brief speech after a French military band played “The Star-Spangled Banner” and the American flag was raised on the Champs-Élysées. Armstrong had barely caught his breath amid the cheers of his record victory in the Tour when he took a call from President Bush, who told his fellow Texan how proud he was of him. The White House said the president called Paris from his retreat at Camp David to congratulate Armstrong for “a great triumph of the human spirit.”

posted by JWinn @ 11:18 PM