Lianna Kissinger-Virizlay - Playing to God

P L A Y I N G

T O

G O D

M y F a t h e r a n d t h e S p i r i t u a l i t y o f M u s i c a n d A d d i c t i o n

Lianna Kiss inger-Vir iz lay

A Senior Thesis Submitted to

The Department of Religion, Princeton University In partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Bachelor of Arts

Professor Albert J. Raboteau

April 12, 2010

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This composition represents my own work in accordance with University Regulations.

I authorize Princeton University to lend this thesis to other institutions or individuals for the purpose of scholarly research.

I further authorize Princeton University to reproduce this thesis by photocopying or by other means, in total or in part, at the request of other institutions or individuals

for the purpose of scholarly research.

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For M.E.

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The First Poem

Within that exploding and gaseous cavern from which all life pours itself out in beauty or in terror from that place stares my loved one out. Innocent in this terrifying current, yet not drowning, (not comprehending the breakneck forces, the impending threat of being extinguished) But sending out his own melodious sprout from a beaming soul.

Robin Kissinger October 1979

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements v

List of Photographs vi

Prelude: Playing to God 1-16

First Movement: Death Brings in God 17-26

Second Movement: The Savior of the Family 27-49

Third Movement: The Concert Hall and the Casino 50-73

Coda: A Homily 74-76

Bibliography of Works Cited and Consulted 77-81

Bibliography of Interviews and Ephemera 82

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Acknowledgements

This thesis is a map of my father’s spiritual journey. I am reflecting on music and

gambling and their place in my father’s life—the spiritual freeways he traversed, the

roadblocks he encountered, and the people he met along the way. I have been blessed not

only with the facts that provide directions, but also with the memories that form the

landscape. For such gifts, I am grateful to my father’s inability to throw anything away and to

the Peabody Conservatory and Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Archives for following suit,

and I am indebted to all those who agreed to a conversation (or many) and shared their

memories with me. Without their willingness to lead me on this journey, I never would have

made it to the end.

My Religion Department advisor, Albert Raboteau, has been an invaluable resource

and guide. I’d like to thank him for encouraging me to explore the holy wherever it can be

found. John McPhee also has never been without advice when I’ve asked for it, for two years

and counting, and I feel honored to call him a friend and mentor. My friends have given me

inestimable support and encouragement, especially my pseudo-editor Benjamin Knudsen, my

best friend Anna Heffron, and my beautiful mother. They deserve inestimable thanks.

Finally, here’s to spirit, and to this gift of life.

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List of Photographs

Mihaly Virizlay Cover Baltimore, circa 2000

Janos Starker and Mihaly Virizlay 32

Bloomington, IN, circa 1997

Lianna Kissinger-Virizlay, Robin Kissinger, 36 Mihaly Virizlay, Vilma Virizlay, and Ilona Virizlay

Hungary, circa 1994 Mihaly Virizlay 38

Hungary, circa 1950

Sarolta Kodály, Lianna Kissinger-Virizlay, and 40 Mihaly Virizlay

Hungary, circa 1994

Agi Rado and Mihaly Virizlay 45 Hungary, circa 1955

Domenico Montagnana Cello 53 Tricia Shallin and Mihaly Virizlay 56

Hungary, circa 1970

Mihaly Virizlay and Paula Childress 57 Baltimore, circa 1975

Robin Kissinger and Mihaly Virizlay 59 Baltimore, circa 1990

David Virizlay, Stefan Virizlay, Mihaly Virizlay, and 61 Lianna Kissinger-Virizlay

Baltimore, 1988 Ed Patey, Mihaly Virizlay, and Larry Temple 63

Baltimore, circa 2002

Mihaly Virizlay, Robin Kissinger, and 67 Lianna Kissinger-Virizlay

Baltimore, circa 1990

Vilma Virizlay, Mihaly Virizlay, and 70 Lianna Kissinger-Virizlay

Hungary, circa 1994 Mihaly Virizlay and Lianna Kissinger-Virizlay 73

Baltimore, 1988

Playing to God

1

Prelude: Playing to God

The foundation of my life is three things—

my children, love of fellow human beings…and music.

Mihaly Virizlay, 20001

My father’s relationship with the cello lasted seventy years. It was the longest

relationship he had—longer than those with his wives, his children, his friends, or his bad

habits. Aside from the basic necessities of eating, sleeping, and breathing, music was his most

faithfully practiced activity. The place music held in his worldview becomes clear in

interviews he gave The Baltimore Sun during his forty-year tenure as principal cellist for the

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO). In 2002 he said, “Being in an orchestra is like being

in a church and being a part of a Mass […] to be in the middle of it is an unbelievable

experience.”2 Though he was raised Catholic, my father spent more time in rehearsals and

performances for the Dallas, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore Symphonies than he could

have possibly spent in a church. And if the symphony was his church, then the masters of

composition were his saints. In 2002 this is how he described his favorite composers: “The

Bible was written by Bach […] the foundation for classical culture was laid by Haydn.

Mozart opened the door to heaven. Beethoven opened the door to everybody on this big

planet of ours. And Schubert was sitting on God's lap when he composed.”3

Music was so pervasive in my father’s life that he used it to describe the ineffable

connectedness of people to each other, to the past, and to God. A former colleague said the

1 Mihaly Virizlay, quoted in Tim Smith, “Playing a Different Tune,” Baltimore Sun, September 10, 2000, 8E,

http://www.newsbank.com. 2 Mihaly Virizlay, quoted in Tim Smith, “BSO Honors Cellist for His Endless Enthusiasm,” Baltimore Sun,

June 6, 2002, 1F, http://www.newsbank.com. 3 Mihaly Virizlay, quoted in Tim Smith, “Playing a Different Tune,” 8E.

P r e l u d e : P l a y i n g t o G o d

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cello was “the love of his life.”4 It was also his medium for expressing love. “He had a very

loving heart, and you could hear that in his sound,” said his third wife and fellow BSO cellist,

Paula Childress.5 “His second voice was the cello,” she added.6 In the same article, my

mother, pianist Robin Kissinger, said, “He always had a sound like no one else's. It spoke

straight to your heart.”7 For my father, love and music were so related that he married four

musicians.

There is general agreement among scholars of music and scholars of religion on the

inherent connection between the two—from religious ceremonies replete with or requiring

music to the effects that music has on man—but to ask for proof would be a tall order.

Consider that faith and music are two of the most difficult things to put into words. Perhaps

the inadequacy of words to express how one feels God or hears music is why so few have

attempted to relate the two concretely; however, the rhetoric used to describe music and

spirituality is almost identical, and this thesis will argue that the two were almost identical for

my father.

In their stoutly secular book called The Music Effect, Dorita S. Berger and Daniel J.

Schneck discuss the nature of music and its effect and hold on man. Their analysis uses

physiological, psychological, intellectual, and emotional reactions to describe what they call

“the music effect,” defined like this:

The music effect is about music’s ability to truncate the fear spiral, and to evoke

emotional and intellectual connections both with oneself, and with the creator and

any listeners or other participants. Why? Because music has a profound effect on

4 Calman J. Zamoiski Jr., quoted in Frederick N. Rasmussen, “Mihaly ‘Misi’ Virizlay,” Baltimore Sun,

October 16, 2008 22A, http://www.newsbank.com. 5 Paula Childress, quoted in Frederick N. Rasmussen, “Mihaly ‘Misi’ Virizlay.” 6 Ibid. 7 Robin Kissinger, quoted in Frederick N. Rasmussen, “Mihaly ‘Misi’ Virizlay.”


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human behavior; because it can resonate with basic physiological function to

‘transport me into another state,’ in the words of Leo Tolstoy.8

Berger and Schneck’s definition of the music effect echoes the language used by those who

have found religious faith or spiritual guidance. Many look to religion to overcome fear,

which, for Berger and Schneck, is a programmed response to perceived threats in our world.

Their analysis refrains from drawing connections to religious conceptualizations of fear,

which identify the sensation—as it stems from experiences of suffering, distrust, injustice, or

doubt—as having the paradoxical potential to test faith, to renew or destroy it. As religion

requires a positive reinforcement of faith to overcome fear, Berger and Schneck require the

positive reinforcement of music to reprogram what they call the “fear spiral.” They claim that

music’s physiological effects are able to bypass cognitively programmed responses and that

the sustained influence of music can change these responses in the long-term, just as some say

sustained faith can overcome doubt. In addition, Berger and Schneck’s quoting Tolstoy

indicates at least an understanding that music is similar to religion in that it can “transport me

into another state.”

Berger and Schneck also describe the music effect as bringing those affected into

connection with themselves and others, including the creator. Their use of the word creator,

in following with the rest of the book, is secular. It relates to the musician, composer, and

instrument. I suggest, however, that the word itself hints at another meaning, that of the

Creator. Though Berger and Schneck do not draw this spiritual parallel, I do not think they

would reject it. They clarify that, “Music is the receptacle into which one’s feelings are placed

8 Dorita S. Berger and Daniel J. Schneck, The Music Effect: Music Physiology and Clinical Applications (London:

Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2006), 249.


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in order that one may reveal one’s self to one’s self, as well as to others,”9 a description that

echoes other writers’ conceptions of the role of spirituality for man.

Compare, for example, Berger and Schneck’s description of music to the following

definition of spirituality: “It is concerned with our ability, through our attitudes and actions,

to relate to others, to ourselves, and to God, as we understand Him.”10 This definition could

be a paraphrase of Berger and Schneck’s description of music, though it comes from Jerry

Dollard’s pamphlet Toward Spirituality: The Inner Journey, published by Hazelden Addiction

Treatment Center. In addition, for Dollard the first step towards reaching a positive

spirituality is to move from fear to trust.11 With these two sources, we begin to see the relation

of music to spirituality.

As I use the words “spirituality” and “faith,” I am making a distinction between being

spiritual and being a practitioner of a particular faith. The above definitions of music and of

spirituality are broad, concerned not with practice but with desired effect. What I mean to

say, therefore, when I say that my father was spiritual is that he felt a longing for meaning

and for communion—communion with himself, with others, and with his conception of God.

It is important to note that my father’s spirituality was not rooted in aspirations to

reach a heavenly realm or to experience divine transcendence. His was a remarkably human

spirituality that emphasized connectedness and that saw music as the means for connection.

In a footnote in his book Thresholds: Rethinking Spirituality Through Music, Marcel Cobussen

explores music’s connective potentials:

Certain modes of interacting among musicians might perhaps be considered traces of

the spiritual as well. I am thinking here about musical, interactive and (thus) social

connections based on risk, vulnerability, and trust during the course of performances

9 Ibid., 248. 10 Jerry Dollard, Toward Spirituality: The Inner Journey, Pamphlet (Center City, MN: Hazelden, 1983), 7. 11 Ibid.


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that exceed the conscious technical input of the individual musicians separately […]

In that sense, we should also take into consideration the notion that spirituality is not

about the interior but about the exterior, about departure and, therefore, about a

fundamental instability of personal identity. Spirituality occurs or happens in and

through connections to the world, to other people, to [through] music.12

Cobussen emphasizes connection as the occasion for spirituality. The sentence preceding this

footnote discusses more explicitly the connective potentials of music as they are related to

spirituality. He writes, “Spirituality refers to a relating, a certain relation between a subject (a

listener, a musician) and an object (music), a relation which is at the same time possible and

impossible, necessary and contingent, enforced and unverifiable.”13 According to Cobussen,

spirituality constitutes, creates, and implies not only longing but also fulfillment, and it has as

its foundation a desire for connection.

Spirituality, like music (or as music, as Cobussen would say), can therefore be secular

as well as religious. I believe, however, that both music and spirituality provide an

opportunity to transcend, in that they can lead man to a deeper understanding of himself, of

his relationship to others, or of his relationship to creation. Therefore, for the purposes of this

thesis, the connection sought through spirituality can be with oneself, with others, or with

God. These relationships are similar in nature; they imply a mutual connection that is missing

from associations not based on reciprocity. And though these connections are intangible, they

are also indispensible.

Music’s ability to form these connections is rooted in the nature of music itself. In his

book, Harmonies of Heaven and Earth, musicologist Joscelyn Godwin notes, “It is not necessary to

be so philosophical in order to recognize the existence of an unheard music all around us,

12 Marcel Cobussen, Thresholds: Rethinking Spirituality Through Music (Aldershot, Hampshire, England:

Ashgate, 2008), 143-144. 13 Ibid., 143.


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even permeating our own bodies. All matter is perpetually in a state of vibration.”14 Berger

and Schneck take this idea and explore the physics of music and the physiology of men, and

how the two interact. They claim that “music resonates symbiotically with instinctive

physiological attributes,” meaning that it can bypass cognitive functions, which is the reason

they find music so effective a tool for reprogramming learned responses.15 They link music’s

physiological effects with emotional rather than cognitive responses, an argument that

supports their theory that music can be used to treat mental illness, but there are bigger

implications. If the emotional effects of music are a direct result of vibrational energies

interacting with man’s physiology, then all men are physically predisposed to respond

emotionally to music.

Berger and Schneck write, “In fulfilling the need to emote, to expel, convey, and

share emotional energies with others everywhere, a universal language was necessary, one

that everyone could understand and to which one could instinctively relate. Music is that

language…Music is all about just being—human.”16 Music’s universal ability to elicit

emotional responses in men invests it with the potential power to develop connections.

Similarly, I would argue that faith provides an outlet to fulfill universal needs “to emote,

expel, convey and share emotional energies with others everywhere,” and that it too is “all

about just being—human.” Since neither music nor faith is cognitive, they are each their own

“universal,” emotive language; they can bypass bias and transcend language barriers. In

addition, the language of music and the language of spirituality, though they may be

recorded, are in essence ineffable. They are felt, not thought.

14 Joscelyn Godwin, Harmonies of Heaven and Earth: The Spiritual Dimension of Music from Antiquity to the Avant-

Garde (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987), 14. 15 Dorita S. Berger and Daniel J. Schneck, The Music Effect, 115. 16 Ibid., 248.


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Many people affirm that my father was not religious, and he wasn’t in the sense of

practicing within the institutional structure of his Catholic heritage. I argue, however, that my

father was profoundly spiritual, that music was his spirituality, his access to others, and his

means for overcoming fear. “He used the cello,” Paula said.17 “It was his way of getting along

in life, getting through the good and the bad.”18 My father’s passion was made manifest in

his devotion to practicing, studying, performing, teaching, and bearing witness to music.

But there is another side to my father’s relationship with spirituality. From the sixties

through the early nineties, my father split his time between the concert hall and the casino.

Especially after the opening of Atlantic City in 1978 and the introduction of the Lottery to

Maryland that same year, my father’s gambling affected the trinity of things he found sacred

in devastating ways. His marriages dissolved, his children’s time was split between him and

their mothers, and he sold at least one cello to pay off debts.

Much of the literature on addiction claims that behavioral and substance

dependencies indicate misguided spirituality. The most famous example of this ideology

comes from Alcoholics Anonymous. Carl Jung, in correspondence with AA’s co-founder Bill

Wilson, wrote that a “craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual

thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in mediaeval language: the union with God.”19

Jung’s letter has been incorporated into the mythology of AA, and his theory has been more

broadly applied to other rehabilitative groups, including Gamblers Anonymous. GA’s website

cites “certain spiritual principles which had been utilized by thousands of people who were

recovering from other compulsive addictions” as having led to the recovery of its founding

17 Paula Childress, in conversation with the author, August 9, 2009. 18 Ibid. 19 Carl Jung, letter to Bill Wilson, January 30, 1961, in Pass It On: The Story of Bill Wilson and How the A.A.

Message Reached the World (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, 1984), 383-385.


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members.20 Their emphasis is on relatively secular traits (“kindness, generosity, honesty, and

humility”), but their mission includes reaching out to other gamblers—it is impossible to

ignore the religious parallels.21

Jung ended his letter to Wilson by drawing a semantic connection between spirituality

and its opposite. He writes, “You see, Alcohol in Latin is ‘spiritus’ and you use the same word

for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison. The helpful

formula therefore is: spiritus contra spiritum.”22 Jung’s understanding of spiritus alludes to an idea

of spirituality that Godwin expounds—that spirit in all its permutations “can mean anything

from the Third Person of the Trinity to the volatile fumes that emanate from brandy.”23

Godwin continues:

In particular, they have been used in two distinct ways by writers belonging to the

Western esoteric tradition. Recently, under the influence of Theosophy, Spirit tends

to mean the most divine part of Man, equivalent to the Greek Nous or Higher

Intellect, hence superior to its companions Soul and Body. The other meaning, which

prevails in earlier texts, is of something far lower on the scale of being that is neither

body nor soul but in some way unites them.24

Godwin uses this latter definition of spiritus in his book, and Jung’s formula spiritus contra

spiritum also implies this usage, for those who seek the “highest religious experience” or “the

most depraving poison” in essence seek the same thing. That both could be related to the

spirit implies not that man’s spirit is a perfect entity at the mercy of man’s imperfection, but

that it is a nebulous entity capable of joining man both with depravity and with

enlightenment.

20 Gamblers Anonymous, “History,” http://www.gamblersanonymous.org/history.html. 21 Ibid. 22 Carl Jung to Bill Wilson, in Pass It On, 383-385. 23 Joscelyn Godwin, Harmonies of Heaven and Earth, 25. 24 Ibid.


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Spiritually based rehabilitation groups all emphasize the presence of an absence, a

longing of which compulsive behavior is a symptom. Inherent in this theory is not an absence

of faith but a need for it, one that gets fulfilled by other, destructive forces. Man’s spirit can

therefore connect the base to the high or the high to the base. It flows in both directions; it is

connective and full of potential. Spirituality can lead man to unity or fragmentation, to

heaven or hell, to music or gambling. When I use the word spirit or spirituality, I wish it to

evoke that indefinable thread between here and there. My father’s spirit led him to both ends

of this spectrum. Thus, whether he was playing a concert or playing craps, I believe my father

was playing to God.

As I said, my father, though raised Catholic, was not observant. His rehearsal and

performance schedule necessarily superseded his regular attendance at Church, but there

may have been other, more theological reasons for his religious disassociation. My mother

said that he felt alienated from the Church because of his four divorces, a practice not

condoned by the Catholic faith. According to a colleague, he also felt residual guilt over the

injustice done to Jews during World War II, especially after meeting and marrying his first

wife, a Jewish-Hungarian pianist whose entire family was killed in concentration camps. My

mother agreed that these two things—not his schedule—led my father to reject the practices

of organized Catholicism, out of guilt and doubt.

Loss of faith in organized religion is one point at which a person can, in an attempt to

compensate for that loss, become susceptible to addictive behavior. One article on addiction

and spirituality cites Percy M. Sessions, who “explains this apparent contradiction by

proposing that the alcoholic often rebels or resorts to agnosticism ‘as a reaction to’ or ‘in flight

from’ certain aspects of what Sessions calls ‘superego’ or guilt-centered religion.”25 Such

25 Howard P. Brown, Orville Cunnin and John H. Peterson, “Rationale and Theoretical Basis for a

Behavioral/Cognitive Approach to Spirituality.” Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly, 5, 1/2 (1988): 52.


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rejection or rebellion also presents a barrier to being open to an “act of grace,” one of Jung’s

solutions to addiction.26 The other solutions he saw were “through a personal and honest

contact with friends, or through a higher education of the mind beyond the confines of mere

rationalism.”27

My father never received an act of grace that I know of. His cure then, according to

Jung, should have come from communion with friends or an education “beyond the confines

of mere rationalism.” Jung placed special emphasis on relationships with others, should an act

of grace not be forthcoming. He wrote to Wilson, “I am strongly convinced that the evil

principle prevailing in this world, leads the unrecognized spiritual need into perdition, if it is

not counteracted either by real religious insight or by the protective wall of human

community.”28 Here, Jung underscores the tendency for man to fall into fear or doubt, and

such a fall’s potential to lead the doubter to addictive behavior. To demonstrate the spiritual

implications, one could call such behavior sin. As psychiatrist Gerald G. May writes in his

book Addiction and Grace, “Theologically, sin is what turns us away from love—away from love

for ourselves, away from love for one another, and away from love for God.”29 The addict’s

physical and mental consumption by the object of his addiction certainly turns him away

from these interpersonal connections.

As my father rejected organized religion, whether consciously or not, his second

chance at filling the spiritual void—according to Jung—depended on his friends. A 1987

article for The Baltimore Sun says, “Affection is central in Virizlay’s life. He has a need to

shower it on his family, friends and audiences. He has just as great a need to receive it.”30

26 Carl Jung to Bill Wilson, in Pass It On, 383-385 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 Gerald G. May, Addiction and Grace (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), 2. 30 Stephen Wigler, “Mihaly Virizlay: Cellist’s Strings Tied to Hungary,” Baltimore Sun (morning edition),

February 8, 1987, sec. E.


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This need for physical reciprocity was key to understanding my father, because I think he

often confused displays of love with love itself. He played music as a demonstration of his

love, and he expected equal amounts of love to be delivered in return—whether through the

cheers of an audience, the accompaniment of a wife, or the embrace of a child. But these

displays are not love; they are acts of love. Acts of love are tangible entities that can be

exchanged, whereas love is a mutual connection that is ineffable. I would say that, as he was

addicted to gambling, my father was also addicted to acts of love—both to giving them and to

receiving them. In order to distinguish between love and its tangible manifestation, I will call

these acts affection.

For my father, even something as simple as a meal became a medium for expressing

and receiving affection. In a profile for The Baltimore Sun’s food section, my father explained,

“I love to make the food and I love to see the success when people love it.”31 Food was love

for my father, and its enjoyment love—but in reality both his act of preparing food and his

guests’ reactions (which my father used to tally the level of his “success”) became displays of

affection first given then returned. Confusing these displays for the ineffable sensations they

represent can propel man from one end of the spiritual spectrum to another without his

realizing it. My father longed for the connection of love, but became consumed with desire

for its tradable manifestation.

My father viewed his every act as affection. One could replace the word “food” in the

above sentence with almost anything else my father cherished—from music, to success, to

love itself. My father’s acts of making music, making money, and making love then became

party to his desire for reciprocated acts of love. With so much affection being given, it is

inevitable that he was sometimes disappointed with the amount he got in return. My mother

31 Mihaly Virizlay, quoted in Scott Duncan, “A Chef of Note,” Baltimore Sun (evening edition), October 30,

1985, sec. C1.


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said he was “always demanding, ‘Show me your love, show me your love, show me your

love,’ and some people get tired of that.”32

In certain Buddhist traditions, there is a word for a being with the kind of insatiability

that my father had for affection. Pretas, or “hungry ghosts,” are depicted with swollen

stomachs and narrow necks that prevent them from swallowing.33 They inhabit the preta

realm, a type of purgatory for previously greedy or jealous people, where they are reborn with

insatiable urges for often disgusting things.34 Of course I am not calling my father’s hunger for

affection disgusting, but I wonder whether his understanding of love was a blessing or a

curse—whether it confused the kind of mutual love that could be called divine with a material

love made up of checks and balances. I know he had access to both.

Here it is necessary for me to clarify what I mean by the words “divine” and

“material,” as I will use them to describe my father’s spirituality. Divine spirituality is that

which travels upwards, towards peace, unity, love, and beauty. Music, as I will define it in the

First Movement, is the ultimate medium for and representation of this divine spirituality. On

the other hand, addiction, as Jung defines it, is the symptom of a confused spirituality to

which all those with a spiritual longing are susceptible. To describe this misguided spirituality,

I will use the word “material.” The choice is calculated. My father’s gambling devoured his

spirit, leading him to seek divine spirituality through material means. The capricious nature

of gambling disrupts concepts of order and harmony, and the quest for money remains a

material, not a divine, impulse. In a similar way I have distinguished between affection and

love—the former is a material entity, the latter divine.

32 Robin Kissinger, in conversation with the author, September 1, 2009. 33 Hungry ghost sketches (images), Hungry Ghosts, http://web.sxu.edu/mdr1/studentwork/hungry

_ghosts/pages/images.html. 34 Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s.v. “hell,” available from Princeton University Library, http://libguides

.princeton.edu/.


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My father’s friends perpetually came to his aid. Former wives balanced his checkbook

and managed his accounts. Financial consultants offered their services for free. Fellow

symphony members, old friends, and even a nurse he met in the hospital during a heart-

bypass surgery gave him rides, took him to lunch, and indulged his most needy tendencies.

What bound my father and these people with such strength? As his child, I am forever bound

to him, as are my two brothers. For the others, was it music? His former wives, colleagues,

and admirers would say so. But for his nonmusical friends—was it love? If it was, was it his

love for them, or their love for him? Or was there something about his enthusiasm for

showering love on everything and everyone that was contagious? Did they feel as if they owed

him something?

My father was rarely alone, though much of his family has said he was lonely. When I

asked her about it, my mother said pointedly, “Gamblers are very lonely.”35 Though my

father would have interpreted his friends’ acts as affectionate, they would by all clinical

accounts be considered enabling. My father’s friends kept his head above water. Most of the

conflicts between my father’s genuinely good intentions and his destructive actions stemmed,

I think, from avoidance of the real problem he faced: spiritual longing. His friends never

stopped supporting him, so he never fully had to confront the spiritual implications of his

loneliness, and he never had to seek one of Jung’s true cures for addiction.

The last of Jung’s theories for reforming addicts is an education that overcomes

rationality, a spiritual education. Though a master of language, my father’s formal education

was exclusively musical. Plato understood the potential of musical education to inspire grace.

In Book III of his Republic, he writes, “Musical training is a more potent instrument than any

other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on

which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly

35 Robin Kissinger, in conversation, Sept. 1, 2009.


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educated graceful.”36 As I will discuss in the Second Movement, my father’s education in

Hungary coincided with a time during which similar ideas of music’s spiritual potential were

being incorporated into the Hungarian musical curriculum. As it developed, my father’s

music—whether he heard, played, or composed it—certainly allowed him moments of grace.

Those who were touched by his musicianship are a testament to this fact; however, since

music was my father’s profession and therefore tied to his material security, it is easy to see

how his conception of music could lead him to a misguided spirituality centered on material

success.

In the last years of his life, my father was silent. A massive stroke in the left

hemisphere of his brain paralyzed his right side and left his tongue mute. It was his second

stroke, one from which he would not recover. My father never took care of his health, so I

cannot attribute his stroke purely to psychological responses. But increasing numbers of

studies on psychosomatic illness demonstrate a link between psychological duress and

physical illness. Berger and Schneck cite prolonged stress, and I would include spiritual stress,

as a cause for strokes and other potentially fatal afflictions. They write, “It’s the stress,

manifesting itself in all of these consequences, that kills.”37

In his last three years, before complications from a third stroke ended his life, my

father was unable to practice music. Listening to it caused him great suffering, so we stopped

playing it. Less than three months before he passed, my mother sent him a letter, which she

asked my brother to read to him. The following passage comes from that insightful and

tender letter:

I also hope that you are able to use this time of great aloneness to go within and

recognize the gifts of your spiritual self. This is work that can only be done alone.

36 Plato, The Republic, trans. Benjamin Jowett (Millis, MA: Agora, 2001), The Internet Classics Archive,

Daniel C. Stevenson, http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html. 37 Dorita S. Berger and Daniel J. Schneck, The Music Effect, 102.


15

Your life has always been so full, with so many distractions. Maybe this quiet time is

God’s gift to you for reconciling your life and your choices and finding the peace and

joy that are more durable (infinite even) than accolades, society and even music—

since all that music flows from the inner cosmos.38

My mother’s words are profound, and they highlight the longing that, I believe, deeply

influenced my father’s life. I can’t know if my father heeded her advice. My brother doesn’t

remember his reaction to the letter, though he guesses it probably “just pissed him off.”39 This

would have been true of my father before the stroke, when matters of faith and spirituality

were inconsequential in comparison to his search for affection and devotion to musical

accomplishment. This period of his spiritual journey is the subject of the Third Movement.

As absent as my father’s voice was from his last three years, so it is from these pages.

With a subject who wrote his thoughts on napkins and brochures more easily thrown out by

our housekeeper than cherished, and who can no longer explain his intentions, many of the

remarks I make are necessarily interpretative—interpretations of behavior, and, even more

subjectively, of memory. To explain my use of and relationship with memory, I turn to

novelist Julian Barnes, who grappled with memory’s potential problems in his recent memoir

on death, Nothing to Be Frightened Of. His brother, a philosopher, argues that “‘on the Cartesian

principle of the rotten apple, none is to be trusted unless it has some external support.’”40

Barnes then reflects, “I am more trusting, or self-deluding, so shall continue as if all my

memories are true.”41 While I’ve tried to check my memories with others’, and those with

what evidence there is, I’ve also invested a certain level of trust in these memories, even when

they conflict. Impressions are subjective. Relationships are subjective. It is my belief that there

38 Robin Kissinger, letter to Mihaly Virizlay, July 31, 2008. 39 Stefan Virizlay, in conversation with the author, February 28, 2009. 40 Julian Barnes, Nothing to Be Frightened Of (New York: Vintage Books, 2008), 7 41 Ibid.


16

is as much value in two conflicting accounts as in one definitive account, though their values

are of very different natures. For chronology and detail, definitive accounts are essential, but

for illuminating the dynamic between the rememberer and the remembered, conflicting

accounts are precious.

My father was not a world-renowned cellist, though, of course, I think he should have

been. I would therefore like this introduction to serve not only as an outline of the ideas to be

explored in this thesis but also as my chance to introduce others to my father, Mihaly “Misi”

Virizlay, a man whose story deserves to be told again and again. He was a person who

required and demanded attention; he also deserved it, for what his life has taught me is

valuable for anyone attempting to find meaning in the world. Over the course of conducting

the interviews and research that I will reference in these pages, I have invested an immense

amount of time in understanding those three things—love, family, and music—that my father

found so sacred. This thesis will hold its place in the long spiritual tradition of filial piety, but

it strays from that tradition in that in the end, such loyalty will not be the greatest testament

to my father. What will be the greatest testament is that, in the process of writing my thesis, I

have come closer to my family, to music, and to my own sense of spirituality. I hope his story

will do the same for all those who meet him hereafter.

Princeton University

February 2010

P.S. My father would like you to remember—in addition to love, children, and music as the

three most important things in life—the five Ls: Love, Live, Listen, Learn, Laugh.

17

First Movement: Death Brings in God

My husband and I had the opportunity to attend the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s performance of

Mozart’s Requiem. Because Misi was the principal cellist, we had a clear view of his face from our box seats

above the stage. It seemed as though Misi was transported as he performed that night, once again his face

becoming a canvas of a myriad of human emotions as he played through each phrase of the Requiem.

Immediately following the performance, my husband and I were invited to go backstage to see Misi.

As we entered the backstage area, we could see him sitting alone on a chair with his cello still perched against

his shoulder. We were alarmed as we approached him and found that he was quietly weeping. When we

inquired as to the reason for him being upset, he looked up at us and in a voice cracking with emotion, he softly

told us what he was feeling. “He never had the chance to finish the Requiem,” Misi said, “And when he died,

he was thrown into a common unmarked grave.” Not knowing how to respond, my husband and I placed our

hands on his shoulders and stood there with Misi as he continued to cry. It was clear that what he was feeling

transcended anything we could truly comprehend, and we were in awe of the depth of emotion that Misi was

experiencing as a result of the performance he had just completed.

Carol Jean Young, March 201042

My father died what Julian Barnes would call “a modern death, in hospital, without

his family, attended in his final minutes by a nurse,” which is how Barnes’s own father died.43

In an interview about the memoir this quote comes from, Barnes, a self-proclaimed agnostic,

said, “I covered love and stuff in my earlier books. This one's about death. And death brings

in God, and how you spend the period before death brings in art. And then there's how you

42 Carol Jean Young, e-mail message to author, March 23, 2010. 43 Julian Barnes, Nothing to Be Frightened Of, 10.

F i r s t M o v e m e n t : D e a t h B r i n g s i n G o d

18

got here, which is family.”44 Barnes worked in reverse from death, to God, to art, to family—

a progression that seems logical to me after thinking for so long about my father, perhaps

because, as my father’s last child and the only one not to have reached legal age by the time

of his death, my strongest memories of him have been as he approached the end. And,

because this has proved to be my spiritual journey as much as a parsing of my father’s—one

that has led me from reflections on his last years, through his spiritual struggles and artistic

passions, to his family (my family)—that’s where I’m beginning: the end. Because only once I

knew what things he had lost did I understand what those things meant to him.

My father died alone around breakfast time in room 230 of the Merwick Care Center

in Princeton, New Jersey. Room 230 was next to the “Casino Corner,” an ironic though

innocuous locale for a bedridden, reformed gambler. My brother Stefan had left his bedside a

few hours before—and I had left a few hours before that—to get some sleep. My father had

been unconscious for a little less than a day.

I was then a junior at Princeton and had just finished acting in a production of

Shakespeare’s Richard III. Two days before my father’s death, Stefan pushed his wheelchair

the few blocks from Merwick to the theater for the matinee, but my father didn’t see me

perform. He was audibly uncomfortable, and, out of consideration for him and for the

audience, my brother sat with him outside in the fall sun for the entire show.

Inside was a much darker scene. I was playing Queen Elizabeth, a character whose

sons and husband fall victim to Richard’s murderous plot through the course of the play.

Luckily, my tears over my father’s absence weren’t so out of place. I spent intermission

holding his hand outside in Victorian clothes of mourning—a strange and eerily prophetic

44 Susannah Herbert, “The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival 2008: Julian Barnes—Not Dead Yet,

Just Dying,” Times Online (UK edition), March 16, 2008, http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/ tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/ article3533651.ece.


19

sight. I couldn’t stop crying, and to put into words why is as difficult to express now as it was

then. I missed my father. He had always clapped the loudest and now couldn’t even sit in the

theater. He couldn’t lift his right hand to applaud.

I didn’t walk back to Merwick with my dad and brother after the curtain call. In fact,

I didn’t see my father again until the next evening, when I got a call that he was unconscious,

though “still with us.” I didn’t understand the phrase. My father hadn’t been “with us” for

almost three years. He hadn’t played the cello, composed, conversed, cooked, or lived at

home since the stroke that disabled him in early 2006. His spirit, however, hadn’t left him

until that evening. The unconscious body I sat with all night was not the man who had used

his functioning hand to flip off a teasing friend, or who had flirted with the nurses when he

couldn’t speak by winking his left eye. His unrelenting spirit is what I miss today. I listen to its

manifestation in recordings of his performances or compositions. I sense its renewal when I

reread letters he sent me at summer camp or the articles written about him. I taste it in my

mother’s approximation of Hungarian chicken paprikás and cucumber salad, made with the

spirit of improvisation that prevented my father’s recipes from being recorded. (It’s a

common saying in my family that my father “cooked the way he lived life: he improvised.”45)

But like those non-existent recipes, I feel the need to capture his spirit in these pages before I

forget the combination of spices that made up his irresistible—even at its most distasteful—

personality.

His spirit is why those last three years with my father contain my most cherished

memories of him, my most meaningful interactions, and perhaps the reason I pursued a

degree in Religion. With no words and little movement available to him, all I could engage

with was his spirit. They were often sad engagements, full of shared longing, pain, and desire.

In a strange reversal of parent-child dispositions, I longed for a chance for emotional and

45 Paula Childress, in conversation.


20

physical reciprocity. I wanted him to say, “I love you”; I wanted a hug. He simply longed for

everything he had had before the night of January 18, 2006, the night of his stroke.

He’d returned that day from the hospital—a relief after a week of treatment for

unexplained internal bleeding. Although he’d used a cane since his first stroke in 2002, I

remember clearly his triumphant march up the front stairs of our home in Baltimore, where

he’d lived for over four decades. It was a bright, if windy, afternoon. Our dog Fred nipped at

his feet, and, gesticulating with the cane as he climbed the stairs, my father shouted, “Oh, it’s

good to be alive!” The next day he could not speak.

In an email I wrote after my first visit to the hospital following the stroke, I said with

certainty that my father recognized me, though he may not have been able to comprehend

words. The stroke had occurred in the left hemisphere of his brain, the center for speech and

communication. Although it paralyzed much of his right side, I was hopeful. I went on in the

email to say, “He understood ‘I love you,’ though, and he waved goodbye when we left […]

PT will hopefully reverse some of his paralysis.”46

His body seemed deflated, and his mind disoriented. Though I’m sure he was lying

on his back during my first visit, he had the vulnerable look of a lost child in his eyes, and to

this day I imagine him in a fetal position—all the more so because, to help the nurses insert

an NG tube, I cradled his head in my arms. I ended my email, “The shock of what happened

yesterday was magnified all the more by the short-lived relief of his hopeful return home the

day before. I hope you will, if not pray, keep him in your thoughts. We are all hoping for the

best.”47

Everyone did hope and work for the best. From the beginning we kept music playing,

made attempts at verbal or written communication, and encouraged him to move parts of his

46 Lianna Kissinger-Virizlay, e-mail message to Henry Lord, January 20, 2006. 47 Ibid.


21

unresponsive right side. In one of the last of these attempts that I remember, I opened a large

music manuscript notebook to a blank page, positioned a pen in my father’s non-dominant

left hand, and asked him if he could compose something.

We had noticed by then, several months after the stroke, that music was becoming

more and more difficult for him to bear. When friends and students came to play for him,

tears pooled in his right eye that he couldn’t stop from falling. Sometimes when he heard a

recording—of Mozart, say—he would shout out loud, a sound that became a visceral, almost

animalistic, rejection with no words to tame it. Since he couldn’t play music, and couldn’t

tolerate listening to it, the notebook was our final attempt to reconnect my father to his life-

long love by giving him the tools to invent it. The scribbles he left on that page—and the

force with which he eventually pushed the notebook away—still haunt me.

I tried to imagine my life without music—unbearable enough. Then I thought about

the effects of such a loss on a musician, whose relationship with music is not passive, but

active, participatory, and creative. The musician exists as both a creator of and medium for

that ineffable connective power conjured by music. His is a strange role; it is at once powerful

and submissive. Marcel Cobussen discusses the role of the musician, particularly the

composer, as being “in a double inbetweenness as they are suspended on a putatively

existential level situated between heaven and earth while at the same time existing on the

level of consciousness somewhere between the initiates and the laypersons.”48 Cobussen

places great emphasis on locating music as well as spirituality “inbetween,” as connective

tissues whose function is to bond concrete spheres (heaven and earth) without themselves

becoming concrete. He is harkening to a long and enduring tradition of music as a gift from

and reflection of God.

48 Marcel Cobussen, Thresholds, 44.


22

The idea dates back to the origin of the word itself, which derives from the Nine

Muses of Ancient Greece, divine beings revered for inspiring the creation of art in general

and music in particular. The mother of the Muses is Mnemosyne, Goddess of Memory, and

their overlord is Apollo, God of Harmony. Joscelyn Godwin explains, “The Memory of

which Mnemosyne is patroness is not the everyday memory that recalls things from the past,

but the power of recapturing our other modes of being: of remembering whence we came,

who we really are, and where we are going.”49 He adds that the artist cannot rely on this

Memory alone, but must be able to compose music that others can interpret. The composer

thus requires the “blessing” of Apollo, “god of order and beauty, supreme wielder of the bow

and lyre,” in order to transcend himself and deliver his message of Memory to an audience.50

Conversely, having the faculty of Apollo without a sense of Memory will lead to technically

proficient works, but not to art or music that bridges the gap between this world and others;

technical music lacking a divine Memory cannot touch the spirit.

Cobussen notes that music itself has a double potential, like spirit. He agrees with

Godwin, writing that music “is—or at least was—a strategy running parallel to religion.

Primordially, music as well as religion has as its function the creation, legitimation, and

maintenance of order. […] Both music and religion honor harmony and are produced to

make people believe, to believe in order.”51 Cobussen then cites economist Jacques Attali’s

claims in the book Noise: The Political Economy of Music, to point out the power of music to

subvert such an order. Cobussen writes, “Music has another facet as well, a dark side, marked

by subversion and ambivalence. For Attali, music is always already permeated by noise, that

is, internal and external powers that threaten and finally undermine the existing (musical)

49 Joscelyn Godwin, Harmonies of Heaven and Earth, 82. 50 Ibid. 51 Marcel Cobussen, Thresholds, 25-26.


23

order.”52 Truly, dissonance can be an unsettling sound, and minor keys can be depressing

indeed. (As classical musician Benjamin Zander quips about the minor interval between the

notes B and C, “The job of the C is to make the B sad…composers know that. If they want

sad music, they just play those two notes.”53)

Music’s potential to drive human emotion has been developed in stories ranging from

religious myths to scientific and cultural folklore. One such story, which beautifully

demonstrates music’s emotive powers, concerns Pythagoras, the classical philosopher known

for possessing and encouraging awe for numerical order. For Pythagoreans, music is directly

and naturally related to the soul, for both “share a basis in number.”54 The belief that music

is akin to and able to influence the soul is illustrated by Godwin’s retelling of a simple story of

Pythagoras himself:

Walking out one night to contemplate the heavens, he came upon a young Sicilian

who had been jilted by his woman, and incited by the Phrygian music of a nearby

aulos-player, was preparing to set fire to her house. Instead of accosting the crazed

youth, Pythagoras approached the musician and asked him to change his tune to a

slow and solemn spondaic one. The youth, his emotions already in thrall to the music,

responded instantly by calming down, and soon went home.55

The youth in this story reacts strongly to the quality of both pieces, demonstrating the

potential for music to access and augment a range of emotions, from distress and rage to

peace and solemnity. This story also hints at the immense power inherent in music. The link

between music and the soul invests music with a power that can be damaging or

rehabilitating, and it implies that the musician has a certain power over his listeners’ souls,

52 Ibid., 26. 53 Benjamin Zander, “Benjamin Zander on Music and Passion,” TED, February 2008, http://www.ted

.com/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passion.html. 54 Joscelyn Godwin, Harmonies of Heaven and Earth, 29. 55 Ibid., 30.


24

that he can drive his listeners’ spirits across the ineffable space between the divine and

material planes.

As stated above, Cobussen claims that musicians, like priests, exist between heaven

and earth. He describes them as having a paradoxical interaction with the connective forces

of music in that they act simultaneously as a guide and as a bridge; they are at once powerful

and submissive. What’s more, making music itself can be symbolic of the two realms to which

music has the potential to connect listeners: the divine and the material. Musicians, according

to Cobussen, “introduce us to an inbetweenness of music evoking divine feelings using human

means.”56 He explains that the relationship between the human and the divine qualities of

music is symbolic of the “inbetweenness”—the unnameable location—of spirituality, which

opens the tangible sphere to the divine sphere:

The world in which music exists is a spiritual world…But even when we thus assume

a close connection between music and spirit, this spiritual dimension needs to be

incarnated in order to sound, which means that this incarnation is no accidental

supplement, but an inevitable necessity. Not only do we need our ears to hear music,

the musician needs his body and/as an instrument to awaken music. Ears, drumming

hands, stamping feet, the bow that moves the strings of the cello: these are all part of a

bodily world. Music is born in a space that connects a spiritual and an embodied

world.57

When my father lost bodily function, he lost his ability to perform the “double

inbetweenness” of the musician. And for the musician, this inbetweenness is an expression of

spirituality. Though my father’s spirituality was that of a double-edged blade—the kind of

spiritus that opened him both to sin and to salvation, dissonance and harmony—I wondered

56 Marcel Cobussen, Thresholds, 44. 57 Ibid., 45.


25

what could remain of his spirit, helpful or harmful, after the loss of his access to that opening.

In each moan and tear, I sensed he was losing faith, not just in his ability to overcome, but

also in his deepest held beliefs. Music had become so enmeshed in his being that it was his

means for communicating love. Everything he loved, from food, to women, to children, to

astronomy, he had throughout his life described, understood, or related to through music.

Now, he was silent, invalided, restricted to a diet of thickened liquids, and mostly alone,

unable even to call a friend. His loss was profound, the deepest spiritual challenge I could

imagine. He had lost that entity through which he expressed love and explored spirituality,

that ineffable bridge that could relate the chaotic world to a divine order.

My father’s first teacher and eventual colleague, Janos Starker, has said, “If I don’t

hear music or I don’t make music, it has the same effect on me as being starved.”58 He

diagnoses how my father must have felt after the stroke: starved. The sensations that music at

its best evokes are of peace, order, harmony, and connectivity, those sensations that provide

relief and security in the face of doubt, fear, or pain. How could one live without such support

in the time of greatest doubt, fear, and pain, with death at its most imminent?

In those last years, I spent as much time with my father as possible. His move from a

nursing home in Baltimore to Merwick in Princeton occurred so that, as a student here, I

could visit him after classes. I watched his detachment grow, but I also felt my attachment

strengthen. This attachment manifested itself in music. I sought catharsis outside of the

nursing home by replaying recordings of his that I had hoarded, by attending concerts, and

by recalling memories of the times I had felt his spirit without realizing it—that is, those

moments when whatever angst I was feeling as a spoiled toddler, as a self-important

adolescent, or as a detached teenager dissipated, and I loved him absolutely.

58 Peter P Jacobi, “The Starker Story: A Life in America Since 1948,” unpublished pamphlet, i.


26

Tears often identified these moments. Before the stroke, they would be marked by a

sense of resentment for the manipulative powers of his music. In 2003, for example, I

attended a performance of his orchestral composition based on the story of “The Emperor’s

New Clothes.” I sat next to my father in the audience and cried while holding his hand and

listening to the magnificent piece, which, as legend has it, he composed on a bet. My tender

reaction was at the age of fourteen, when I could barely stand to sit through dinner with my

parents. At the end of the concert I wiped my eyes and hardly looked at my father when he

thanked me for showing him that I loved him, a sentiment he inferred from my reaction. For

weeks I held a grudge against him for making me so vulnerable, but today I consider those

moments to be dear indications of his music’s beauty, proof that his music could bridge gaps,

heal wounds, and connect souls. My father’s music always served to remind me that I felt

connected to him. In fact, I am certain that music will always be able to bring me into

connection with my father, even now that he is gone.

27

Second Movement: The Savior of the Family

On a tour of Albania, I performed at a gala concert in Tirana, the capital, which was attended by the

premier and a large number of soldiers. During an encore, I glanced up to find several soldiers arguing and

gesticulating wildly. To my astonishment, the commotion soon erupted into a full-scale brawl. Shaken, I

thought about leaving the stage, but decided to continue playing. When I finished, the soldiers shouted and

lunged toward me. I grabbed my cello and somehow managed to out-run them. Only later, when the manager of

the theater finally caught up with me, did I learn that the rival garrisons of soldiers were fighting to determine

which would carry me out on its shoulders. Since then, I haven’t played a concert that could match “the

Albanian Success.”

Mihaly Virizlay, undated59

He who does not love others cannot be loved by others; at most they can marvel at him. And woe to

those great men who command only wonder and not love! Love is eternal, like God; wonder is transitory, like the

world.

Sándor Petöfi, July 184760

My father’s music—in training, performance, character, quality, and composition—

was inextricably tied to his native Hungary. Hungary has a vast musical tradition, but his

connection to his homeland went even deeper. Even after he became a citizen of the United

States, my father never forgot his Hungarian roots. A constant reminder of this fact was in his

accent and intonation, which rumbled and soared through glottal stops and sung vowels and

maintained the Hungarian’s inability to discern between “he” and “she.” He embraced

59 Mihaly Virizlay, undated ephemera. 60 Sándor Petöfi, Rebel or Revolutionary? Sándor Petöfi as Revealed by his Diary, Letters, Notes, Pamphlets and Poems, ed.

Béla Köpeczi, trans. Edwin Morgan and G. F. Cushing (Budapest: Corvina Press, 1974), 147.

S e c o n d M o v e m e n t : T h e S a v i o r o f t h e F a m i l y

28

America and all she offered; a former student remembered “his pride and joy of being an

American and religiously watching and falling asleep during Orioles’ games.”61 But his love of

America, at its root, came from the idea that the true American is allowed—required even—

to remember his past and to be proud that his country is made of people like him who come

together to share their history and create their future. My mother remembers him saying,

“When I go back to Hungary, I go home. When I return to the U.S., I come home.”62 From

the music he created, to the accent he maintained, to the lace and china gifts he imported, to

the food he cooked and the literature he read, my father shared Hungary with America.

The above lines from Hungarian poet Sándor Petöfi come from my father’s collection

of his writings, which I have inherited. Petöfi lived and wrote during the Hungarian

revolution of 1848, and, though his revolution occurred more than a century before my

father’s, there is a kinship between my father and his favorite poet—a Hungarian artistic

sensibility. Petöfi used his art to express romantic, ideological, political, and national

sentiments—his art was inseparable from his beliefs, and he recognized the potential for his

art to allow him to connect with others.

The Hungarian artists that my father grew up studying and admiring expressed any

and all ideas with a level of idealism, romanticism, and fervor I’ve never seen replicated.

These artists—from 19th Century Petöfi to my father’s future teacher Zoltán Kodály—shaped

my father’s character, not just in how he approached art but also in how he approached life

through art. Only by knowing them too can one attempt to understand the origins of my

father’s music and character, his life and spirit.

A Hungarian musician is never alone. I can’t find a period in my father’s life when he

wasn’t associated with another musician imported from Hungary nor a time when reviewers

61 Sam Matthews, “Mihaly Virizlay,” Alumni Association, Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University,

http://www.peabody.jhu.edu/alumni/tributes/virizlay. 62 Robin Kissinger, telephone conversation with the author, April 11, 2010.


29

didn’t jump at the chance to mention the “grand Hungarian tradition of the early 20th

century,” as demonstrated by his playing and composing.63 The Hungarian tradition is hard

to shake, not that anyone would want to. Marked by a combination of romanticism and

technical proficiency—the extreme both in feeling and in physical feats—Hungarian music

has a certain charm, which is now a part of its history. In addition, Hungarians offer each

other a community that is strong, passionate, and, though teased sometimes for its dalliances,

ultimately respected—especially when it comes to music.

My father was born into this community on November 2, 1931. His father, an

electrician by trade but a violinist at heart, began teaching him the violin at age four. Three

years later, he took my father to the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, where he

began taking private cello lessons with 14-year-old prodigy Janos Starker. For an instrument

that became so important to my father, the cello’s initial appeal for him makes a curious

story. At the Academy, he was told there were too many violinists and was asked to switch. As

he told a journalist, “I said, ‘Sure, why not?’ I got tired of standing all the time.”64 Although

ending up with a cello rather than a violin seems like it was an arbitrary choice—a matter of

circumstances—the cello surpassed every other instrument in my father’s mind by at least

1987. That year he asked a Baltimore reporter, “‘You know what the cello possesses that the

[more powerful] piano and the [more brilliant] violin don’t? That magical middle range that

has the power of the human voice.’”65 That fated decision at the start of his musical career

gave my father his second voice.

Starker doesn’t remember much from when he was a 14-year-old Academy student

with a seven-year-old former-violinist under his wing. “I was only busy trying to tell people

63 Stephen Wigler, “Mihaly Virizlay,” sec. E. 64 Mihaly Virizlay, quoted in Jill R. Yesko, “Baltimore Cellist Enjoys Life-Long Love Affair with Music,”

Encore, August 17, 1994, 23. 65 Mihaly Virizlay, quoted in Stephen Wigler, “Mihaly Virizlay,” sec. E.


30

the right thing to do,” Starker said when I asked him about it at his home in Indiana.66 He

did add that he remembered enjoying working with my father because he was, “as we say in

the music world, a digitally, aurally, and mentally gifted person.”67 He meant he had the

dexterity, the ear, and the mind to be an accomplished cellist.

Starker left Hungary after World War II and would later play an integral part in my

father’ immigration to America. He told me, “When the war was over and I left Hungary,

from then on [your father] started being the shining star of the cellist generation.”68 Although

Starker was gone for most of my father’s rise through the Eastern European musical circuit,

as the person who introduced my father to the cello and in whose footsteps my father

followed more than once, I look to Starker for an understanding of the Hungarian musician’s

mentality. Luckily, he’s good with words.

Starker’s autobiography, The World of Music According to Starker, is full of parallels to my

father’s life—from smoking to gambling to playing to teaching. His writing demonstrates that

for him, artistic passion runs deep. His art is the lens through which trials and successes are

viewed, through which philosophy is spouted and ideas spread. The following excerpt from

The World of Music demonstrates his perspective:

In the [concert] halls, wherever I was, a spirit of unity prevailed—the love of

music brought together individuals of totally different backgrounds, regardless of their

color, religion, and nationality. But outside of the halls, under the guise of religion or

nationality, the same people went on killing their fellow human beings, as if God

commanded them. […]

I cannot belong to any party, nor does a Sunday sermon give me solace or answer

these questions. I pray to my God that the day will dawn when not only cures for

66 Janos Starker, in conversation with the author, June 4, 2009. 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid.


31

cancer and AIDS will be found, but also a common chord will be sounded to

eradicate the exploitative nationalism that serves only the few. […]

Then maybe more and more members of society will sit in concert halls around

the world and praise the beauty given to them by the likes of Bach, Mozart,

Beethoven, and their contemporary counterparts.”69

Starker’s God—the same as my father’s, I believe—resides in and presides over the peaceful

concert hall, wherein beauty and love compose the atmosphere; however, as much as Starker

protests “exploitative nationalism,” I believe his own national identity strongly influenced his

worldview. As became clear when I met with him, as tenacious as the Hungarian accent is, so

is the Hungarian culture. In a short profile about him, a biographer writes, “Cellist Starker

emigrated to the United States, a country that took him in and that he then gratefully and

wholeheartedly accepted as his home. He would never forget his Hungarian roots; they would

be proudly displayed in his habits, his conversation, and his music making.”70 In fact, visiting

Starker was the closest I’d felt to having my father back since I’d lost him. With the disparate

threads of personal memory, staunch opinion, political commentary, and playfulness that he

wove seamlessly into our discussion of music and my father, Starker exemplified a familiar

trait. Namely, that it is never one thing or the other with Hungarians; all topics are related.

They lead into one another with an apparent lack of rhyme or reason, only to come together

in the end to tell a single story, like music.

Starker and my father’s musical education came at a time of renaissance in the

Hungarian music curriculum, focused on building national character and independence. In

1945, around the time my father would have been entering the Franz Liszt Academy, the

69 Janos Starker, The World of Music According to Starker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 33-34. 70 Peter P. Jacobi, “The Starker Story,” 6.


32

Janos Starker with my father

Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály wrote an essay titled “Hungarian Music Education.” In

it he places special emphasis on the importance of uniquely Hungarian music, not only to

create consummate Hungarian musicians, but also to invest Hungarian citizens with a strong

sense of national identity, pride, and independence. He writes, “When all is said and done,

we must make a choice: shall we continue to be a colony or shall we become an independent

country not only politically but culturally, in asserting our own personality, too? If this is what

we want we must find the roads that lead to the freest and fullest possible expansion of our


33

musical individuality.”71 For Kodály, as for Petöfi a century before, a country’s art and its

national identity were reflections of each other. One had to exemplify the other for Hungary

to be truly free.

With his views on music education, Kodály did not wish to alienate others from

Hungarian music or culture; rather, he wanted a dialogue wherein national traits would be

shared among a broad and educated global community through music. In the introduction of

his biography on Kodály, Percy M. Young summarizes the themes of Kodály’s national and

musical mission. He writes, “When one looks at Kodály’s works it becomes apparent that

their character can only be understood in relation to the whole life of the Hungarian people

and to the progress, hitherto sadly chequered [in 1964], of their musical tradition.”72

Kodály’s reform of music education began by refusing to “teach people the music by

ignoring, by throwing aside, what the people know of their own accord,” which is why he laid

such emphasis on the Hungarian folk tradition.73 In his 1929 essay, “Children’s Choirs,”

Kodály describes the devastating effect that a curriculum of strictly foreign music, music

devoid of relatable characteristics, can have on young students: “When it is from this

outwardly more cultured but inwardly emptier music that he receives the spiritual

nourishment he has been craving for, he loses his faith in better music and remains in this

state of musical infantilism for the rest of his life.”74 By allowing musical education to reflect

Hungary’s national character, a child’s first exposure to music could touch him deeply,

because it would be relatable and full of meaning.

71 Zoltán Kodály, The Selected Writings of Zoltán Kodály, ed. Ferenc Bónis, trans. Lili Halápy and Fred

Macnicol (Budapest: Corvina Press, 1964), 154. 72 Percy M. Young, Zoltán Kodály: A Hungarian Musician (London: Ernest Benn, 1964), xiv. 73 Zoltán Kodály, quoted in Ibid., 91. 74 Zoltán Kodály, Selected Writings, 125.


34

Kodály’s emphasis on instilling youth with a love for music stemmed from his idea

that good music nourishes spirituality, that it opens the soul. He emphasizes this point in

“Children’s Choirs,” when he likens bad music to spiritual disease:

Bad taste in art is a veritable sickness of the soul. It seals the soul off from contact

with masterpieces and from the life-giving nourishment emanating from them without

which the soul wastes away or becomes stunted, and the whole character of the man

is branded with a peculiar mark.

In grown-ups this sickness is in most cases incurable. Only prevention can help. It

should be the task of the school to administer immunization.75

Young summarizes Kodály’s technique: “Bad music, where there could be better music, bad

teaching, where there could be good teaching—those were wrongs which he himself could

right. And in so doing, for his view is comprehensive, other evils could be overcome. At the

end of the road was the vision of a unity in human relationships, of which music could be at

once the catalyst and the outward symbol.”76 The goal, therefore, always was to instill a love

of music in children that could develop into profound spirituality with age. Young describes

Kodály’s views on a national music culture not as exclusionary or radical, but as a

demonstration of his profound understanding of human nature—of man’s interconnectivity

with and dependence on his fellow man—as it can be accessed through and represented by

music. In Kodály’s view, this fundamental human characteristic has the potential to

overcome barriers of race, nationality, religion, and politics, but it cannot do so if the

individual’s soul has not been opened to the universal qualities of music. That opening is best

achieved at first with a familiar music, one rooted in national character, which is why a

national music education was tantamount for Kodály. It is such a view that he strove to instill

75 Ibid., 120. 76 Percy M. Young, Zoltán Kodály, 91.


35

in the pupils of the Franz Liszt Academy. From this standpoint came his national agenda, his

abhorrence for the oppression of culture and national difference, and his vision of a national

music culture and education.

These political ideals became particularly relevant during my father’s first years as an

official student of the Franz Liszt Academy, when Hungary became involved in World War

II. The country was first occupied by German troops in the summer of 1944, and as the year

turned came the Soviet siege of Budapest, one of the bloodiest events of the war. Although it

marked the end of the German occupation of Hungary, it was only the beginning of a

Communist rule that would persist until the late eighties, and Hungary’s Soviet liberators

were all but freeing. Their defeat of the German forces included the slaughter or expulsion of

many pro-German Hungarians as well as Hungarian civilians with Germanic backgrounds.

The Soviets’ celebration when the siege finally proved successful sparked fear into the hearts

of the remaining citizens, who had never been evacuated. The Soviet troops looted what

remained in buildings devastated by one hundred days of intense warfare, and they raped

civilian woman indiscriminatingly. As Historian James Mark writes, “During these months,

for the majority of the inhabitants of the city, rape was a common occurrence that might be

suffered by family, friends, acquaintances or neighbours”;77 my father’s household was no

exception to such a threat.

My father’s father died in the middle of the war, during an unnecessary medical

procedure in a time when medical supplies and technology were lacking. Left without a

patriarch were his wife Vilma and her sisters, his daughter Ilona, and my father. About his

father my father once wrote, “During my early years, our daily practice sessions together and

frequent visits to rehearsals and concerts had an enormous influence on my musical

77 James Mark, “Remembering Rape: Divided Social Memory and the Red Army in Hungary 1944-1945,”

Past and Present, no. 188 (Aug. 2005): 133, http://muse.jhu.edu.


36

development. His early death when I was twelve left a tremendous void in my life.”78 Not

only did his father’s death leave him without the musical guidance he had provided, it also

deprived him of the protection that an adult male could lend in a Hungary under siege. At

twelve years of age, my father became the sole male figure to protect his sister, mother, and

aunts.

Visiting my father’s father’s grave.

It is one of the stories I’ve been told time and again in different permutations—it has

become legend now, in my family. What remained of the Virizlays stayed hidden in their tiny

apartment day after day. “They were starving,” my father’s third wife Paula told me. Some

accounts say the women hid in boxes, others say there was nothing to hide behind. Either

78 Mihaly Virizlay, undated ephemera.


37

way, the Russian conquerors soon arrived at their building. “It was a disaster,” Paula said.79

“They could hear the Russians going from apartment to apartment knocking on the doors,

and they’d hear screaming, and they’d hear, you know—they didn’t know if they were going

to be raped. There was no man there to defend them.”80

All the retellings agree on what happened next. My father had continued his cello

training throughout the war, and in a moment of desperation, foolishness, brilliance, or all

three, his mother told him to get his cello. “When they come through that door,” she said,

“you start playing your Russian folk songs.”81 He did, and, “According to Misi they stopped,

put down their guns, and they listened. And some of them cried, and they offered them some

of their rations—whatever they had.”82 Ironically, the lack of a Hungarian music culture had

blessed my father with the tools to win over his Soviet oppressors: the music of their

homeland. The soldiers stole nothing, and they left the apartment without laying a finger on a

single woman. It was a miracle.

My mother gives “The Story of the Russian Soldiers” a special emphasis in her

account of my father’s development, especially as concerns his relationship to women. Not

only was he now the only male in the household, my mother said, “He was a musical prodigy,

gifted, so all of the doting of everybody went on him. And then he was the savior of the

family. You know, who wouldn’t grow up a little imbalanced?”83 She quickly added, “And

truly he could just move people so much with his playing.”84

My father was by then a thirteen-year-old virtuoso, spoiled by the attention of the

women in his family and heralded as a shining young star. “He didn’t have to battle anything

79 Paula Childress, in conversation. 80 Ibid. 81 Composite of multiple retellings. 82 Paula Childress, in conversation. 83 Robin Kissinger, in conversation, Sept. 1, 2009. 84 Ibid.


38

over there. He didn’t have to prove anything over there. He was just adored for who he was.

There was nothing better than that,” said his second wife, Tricia Shallin.85 Opportunities to

meet women came hand and hand with my father’s role as a performing musician who

played solo concerts and toured across Eastern Europe. He was young, promising, and

talented, and he took full advantage of the fact. I have a hunch that the stories he told me

were tamed for my benefit. One involved an intimate hayride under the stars. My father told

me he blushed to hold the girl’s pinky finger. (In later years he would admit, “Okay, we were

necking.”) Still another recounted something lost in translation after a concert in Albania. He

was sitting with an Albanian girl by a fire. He didn’t speak Albanian, but somehow I doubt

they were talking. Suddenly, the girl’s mother burst in with a huge smile and kissed my father

on the cheek; apparently “alone time” in Albania was then equivalent to an engagement.

Needless to say, my father got the hell out of Albania.

My father as a student in Hungary

85 Tricia Shallin, in conversation with the author, September 13, 2009.


39

My father’s charm was not unbreakable, however; once at a fair, he took his date on

the Ferris wheel. Stuck at the top, his motion sickness got the best of him, and he ruined her

dress. “She never spoke to me again,” I remember him saying dejectedly, even at seventy

years old. His musical magnetism still needed time to develop the strength his future wives

would describe.

My father continued his studies at the Academy during the relative peace of Soviet

political control after the war. After Starker’s escape, Adolf Schiffer and then Leo Weiner

became my father’s teachers. Of Weiner, Starker writes, “From the 1920s to the ’60s all

Hungarian musicians of any future consequence attended his classes,” so my father was in

good company, but from the beginning he distinguished himself.86 His first public appearance

was a year after he began lessons with Starker, and his professional debut came the same year

as he saved his family from the Russian soldiers, “after winning a contest to perform Haydn’s

‘D Major Concerto’ with the Budapest Symphony Orchestra.”87 While pursuing his Artist’s

Diploma at the Academy, he won the Hungarian International Youth Competition and

received a solo contract with state-owned concert management, the Philharmonia. But there

was one distinction during the years of Russian occupation that would impact my father’s

professional and personal development more than any other. He was asked to play the

Kodály “Sonata for Cello and Piano” on Radio Bartók. The very next day, he met the

composer for the first time in the halls of the Franz Liszt Academy. According to my father,

Kodály’s “first comment was, ‘So, that’s what you look like. It’s rather pleasant to sip wine

and hear my music when it’s not badly performed.’ I later learned that ‘not badly’ was one of

his superlatives.”88

86 Janos Starker, The World of Music, 15. 87 Mihaly Virizlay, undated ephemera. 88 Ibid.


40

My father and I with Mrs. Kodály

That meeting began a mentoring relationship that would permanently influence my

father’s musicality, nationality, and personality. “We discussed everything from breathing

correctly and my diet to painting, folklore, cello and my own compositions,” wrote my father.

“During a very difficult period in Hungary, he made certain that I had a beautiful cello and

an apartment, and often, before important concerts, he had me sent to the State’s artists’

retreat.” My father cited Kodály as the second most influential person in his life, after his

father.89

Starker commented that my father could never “shake the influence of Kodály,”

referring to the compositions he would come to write in the United States.90 More than just

affecting his compositions, however, I think that Kodály’s views on music and education

89 Ibid. 90 Janos Starker, in conversation.


41

instilled in my father some of his deepest held beliefs—that music can be a language through

which all of life is understood and communicated, and that it can be used as the form and the

means for expressing self, nationality, and, finally, that most universal quality of human

nature, love. In fact, both Kodály and Petöfi—at the same time as they allowed their works to

express their ideology and culture—wrote numerous love songs and poems. I’m sure these

odes had an equally strong influence on my father’s understanding of the purpose of and uses

for his own art.

In addition to presenting the opportunity for my father to impress, befriend, and

become the protégé of Kodály, my father’s relationship with Radio Bartók would have one

other significant effect. In the early fifties, he received a letter from the station asking him to

play a program with the already well-established solo pianist, Agi Rado. Agi remembers, “All

of a sudden I got a letter from the radio and so did he. […] We met, we rehearsed, and six

months later we were engaged, for better or for worse.”91 As my father’s first wife and the

only Hungarian he married, Agi holds a special place in my father’s story and its complicated

narrative of love and music.

Unlike my father, Agi was raised Jewish. Her experience during World War II

deserves its own story, but it has its place in this one too. Despite Hungary’s late entry in the

war and its slow and lenient adoption of anti-Jewish regulations, Agi and her entire family

were interned in concentration camps. She was the sole survivor, and this in itself is a miracle.

In her short memoirs, she describes the journey back to Hungary: “On the way, entering a

deserted German house, I found an old upright piano. I sat down and tried to recall

Beethoven’s Sonata OP. 110. It seemed like heaven.”92 When she finally arrived home and

91 Agi Rado, in conversation with the author, November 25, 2007. 92 Agi Rado, “Autobiography of Agi Rado,” unpublished.


42

learned of her entire family’s death, the only solace she had were an old family friend whom

she calls her “auntie” and her piano. She calls them “the two anchors in my life.”93

Both Agi and Starker have commented that my father felt tremendous guilt over the

injustices committed during the war. “There was not one bone in his body which would be

discriminatory,” Agi said.94 “He was always very, very touched by my past.”95 Starker’s

perspective was even broader, and it linked directly to my father’s sense of musicianship. He

said, “You have to project yourself or imagine that the musicians, all the musicians he

admired—except for Kodály and Bartók and so on—all the other instrumentalists were Jews.

And if there’s something which is difficult to explain to somebody two generations later,” he

added, “he was one of those persons who felt guilty of what happened to the Jews.”96

Although their war experiences were very different, Agi and my father had much to

bond over, especially when it came to music. “We were so compatible in music,” she told me

in a conversation at her apartment in Baltimore, “because I am an emotional person who

puts soul in the music, not just notes.”97 For both Agi and my father, music and feeling were

inextricable, and certainly this sensibility was a large part of their marriage, but not to the

extent that it would be in my father’s future affairs. That is, Agi was already my father’s

musical equal. Their styles and sentiments were similar because of their Hungarian musical

education. While other women have said my father’s attraction was his music, for Agi his

music did not have the same magnetism. “I could make the same kind of music,” she said, “so

music didn’t have any magic over me.”98 Instead, Agi was drawn to another aspect of my

father’s life: his family. “I was yearning to have a family,” she said.99 “That was almost the

93 Ibid. 94 Agi Rado, in conversation with the author, September 6, 2009. 95 Ibid. 96 Janos Starker, in conversation. 97 Agi Rado, in conversation, Sept. 6, 2009. 98 Ibid. 99 Agi Rado, in conversation, Nov. 25, 2007.


43

only reason besides the music. I loved his family, and since I had none of my own except my

auntie, I was very glad that I could become part of a very gentle and loving family.”100 Not to

mention—though Agi has, time and again—”it was very romantic.”101

But it was not easy. Kodály helped them to find a one-room apartment in Budapest,

but it was not ideal. “You would call it an efficiency apartment, but it wasn’t very efficient,”

Agi said.102 The living room held Agi’s grand piano, their double bed, a table, and chairs.

“The sad thing was that I had to practice where the piano was, and Misi had to find a place

to practice for which he was forever sore.”103 This marked the beginning of a competitive

relationship that would persist throughout their marriage. Their musical career as a couple,

however, thrived. In 1956 Kodály asked my father to record two of his compositions, the

“Sonata for Cello and Piano” and the “Sonata for Unaccompanied Cello.” One of my

father’s enduring regrets was that, “Unfortunately, after signing the contracts, the October

political events put a halt to the recording, and I left Hungary shortly thereafter.”104

According to Agi, in October 1956 she and my father attended a performance of

some of Kodály’s Choral Works, of which he wrote many. I don’t know which pieces were

performed that night, but some of Kodály’s most recent compositions at the time were,

unsurprisingly, in reaction to the oppression first of the Germans, then of the Russians. Two

titles from 1944 compositions were “The Son of an Enslaved Country,” and “Still, by a

Miracle, Our Country Stands.” As one researcher of Kodály’s life and work writes, ”His

chorus ‘Wish for Peace’ (1953) expresses the most universal human desire.”105

100 Agi Rado, in conversation, Sept. 6, 2009. 101 Ibid. 102 Ibid. 103 Ibid. 104 Mihaly Virizlay, undated ephemera. 105 János Breuer, A Guide to Kodály (Budapest: Corvina Press, 1990), 215.


44

The choral work composed and premiered closest to the Revolution was called

“Hymn of Zrinyi,” based on the political writings of a 17th Century Hungarian nationalist.

This mixed-part chorus is instilled with “the wish for freedom and patriotic sentiments.”106

Young calls it “a prophetic work,” alluding to the impending political events.107 But unlike

what was to come, Young writes that in “Hymn of Zrini,” “the end is in hope, in a nine-part

chord of D major.”108 Whichever of Kodály’s choruses were played, this is how Agi described

their reception: “At the end, the audience was screaming. It was a few days later that the

Revolution started.”109

My father had received his Artist’s Diploma by 1956, but he always prided himself on

having taken part in the student-initiated uprising that awoke Budapest on October 23 of that

year. At the time, he was partaking in a revolutionary tradition whose precedent was set a

century before by Sándor Petöfi; parallels were drawn even then, with some students

organizing into “The Petöfi Club.”110 At the time, however, my father could not have known

how different the outcomes of the two revolutions would be. In his retelling of the events of

October and November 1956, journalist Reg Gadney quotes the words Hungarian writer

Tibor Meray used to describe the unimaginable escalation of violence: “The Hungarian

Revolution of 1956 began as a student demonstration, like that which had taken place one

hundred and eight years earlier; it was followed by an armed uprising against a foreign power

possessed of crushing military superiority, and it ended with the execution of its leaders.”111

My father and Agi’s apartment was in the middle of a busy boulevard. When Soviet

tanks arrived in Hungary on November fourth to put down the Revolution, they shot at every

106 Ibid. 107 Percy M. Young, Zoltán Kodály, 141. 108 Ibid. 109 Agi Rado, in conversation, Nov. 25, 2007. 110 Reg Gadney, Cry Hungary: Uprising 1956 (New York: Atheneum, 1986), 25. 111 Tibor Meray, quoted in Ibid., 18.


45

building their vehicles passed. The window in the apartment Kodály had helped Agi and my

father to find became a gaping hole, so the Virizlays took shelter in their neighbor’s

basement. “Ours was on one side of the circle and his was on the other. And in the middle,

the tanks,” Agi said.112

My father with Agi Rado

Agi told me a story about “the shooting time,” as she called it.113 She and my father

never had children, but they did keep a small parakeet. “That bird was an important part of

the family,” she said, “because it was taught to say, ‘Misi, Agi, practice. Misi, Agi, you are a

crazy bird.”114 Agi said that my father left the relative safety of their neighbor’s basement to

112 Agi Rado, in conversation, Nov. 25, 2007. 113 Ibid. 114 Ibid.


46

retrieve it, though their apartment was “right on the front line.”115 My father held the cage in

his hand, and the bird in his inside pocket. It was the bravest and stupidest thing I’ve heard of

him doing during this period, but I admire him for it. The story reminds me that for him,

family was worth saving.

My father reveled in retelling how he threw paving stones and Molotov cocktails in

support of the uprising, the truth of which is hard to say. Regardless of his pride, the failure of

the Revolution and the brutality of its suppression left his and Agi’s future equally destroyed.

“When the Revolution was totally wiped out, everything seemed to be in ruins, and I thought,

‘There won’t be any musical life here. I don’t want to stay here,’”116 Agi said. She began

making plans for their escape.

She was able to secure visas for the two of them to go to Vienna as performing artists,

under the pretense that they would play a concert. The night before they left they slept with

his family in a tiny hotel room next to the train station. Early in the morning on December

fifth, they said their goodbyes to Hungary and to the family they held so dear—including the

parakeet.

It would be a harrowing journey. The train itself was overrun, and the platform was

swarming with anxious civilians, police, and Soviet soldiers. By then the quota of citizens

allowed to leave Hungary had been filled, and the soldiers pulled visa-less would-be refugees

off the train through its windows. Between the Hungarian drop-off and the Austrian border

there were five kilometers of no-man’s-land, which everyone had to cross on foot. My father

carried his state-issued cello on his back, in keeping with the story that he and Agi were to

play a concert. “We were totally out in the open where anyone could shoot us,” Agi said.117

Agi and my father’s reputations may have provided the means for their escape from

115 Ibid. 116 Agi Rado, in conversation, September 6, 2009. 117 Agi Rado, in conversation, Nov. 25, 2007.


47

Hungary, but their departure meant losing the comfort of their homeland and the security of

their local renown.

On the other side of the border, things were different. Some confusion almost cost my

father and Agi their safety, when, out of fear their visas would be revoked, they insisted they

had arrived as musicians. According to my mother, the guards replied, “No, you are

refugees.”118 The couple relied on what connections they could make, receiving slightly more

comfort here and there than their fellow, unknown expatriates. They even managed a

broadcast with Radio Vienna. The idea of going to America was forefront in Agi’s mind,

though it took more maneuvering to secure what would be a dangerous and uneasy passage,

which Agi describes in her memoirs:

When I realized that a small number of Hungarian refugees were being allowed entry

into the United States, I immediately sensed that this would be the opportunity of a

lifetime for both of us. The quota was already full, but some people who worked at

the emigration offices knew of us and managed to get us on the list. We left by bus for

Munich—a three-day trip—and in Munich we boarded a big old-fashioned propeller

plane belonging to the Army. Before departure, we were briefed on how to use shark

repellent powder in case we had to ditch the plane, and we were also instructed to

sign our last will and testament. After this “comforting” beginning, there followed a

very rough 24-hour flight, during which we had to make an emergency landing

because of the loss of one engine. Finally, we arrived at our destination: the U.S.A.!

We had to spend three miserable days at Camp Kilmer, a former detention camp for

war prisoners, but not even this difficulty could dampen our happiness at starting a



48

new life, happiness that superseded our anxiety over all the unknown elements of this

new life.119

Starker acted as their sponsor in the States, though they were held at Camp Kilmer in

New Jersey until they could reach Starker to confirm their story. No one believed that two

Hungarian refugees with barely any English between them could have such a well-established

sponsor. Starker was at that point principal cellist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under

fellow Hungarian and master conductor Fritz Reiner. So Agi and my father went to Chicago,

where they began to look for work.

Agi recalled, “I had no particular goal as to where to go other than the United States.

That was every European’s dream. Let’s go to America. The wondrous country where

everything grows on trees, and you just have to pick it up, and it’s gold.”120 My father also

had big dreams. According to Starker, “He imagined that he was going to make it, because in

Hungary he was a star musician. That’s not the way it works when you come to America. It

takes a little longer. The question comes up that you have to make a living.”121 Luckily, a

living came, though under circumstances that were nothing like what my father and Agi had

hoped.

A member of the cello section in the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, where Starker had

been employed before joining Chicago, lost an arm. “The Dallas Symphony called me to ask

if I could recommend a cellist for the job,” Starker said, “and I said ‘Yes! I have one sitting in

my room in Chicago!’”122 He added that the timing was “a miracle in some sense,” though it

119 Agi Rado, “Autobiography of Agi Rado.” 120 Agi Rado, in conversation, September 6, 2009. 121 Janos Starker, in conversation. 122 Ibid.


49

was a somber beginning to what would be a series of short-lived stints in symphonies across

the country that were less than ideal, for my father and for Agi.123

By their arrival in America, Agi and my father’s marriage was troubled. Their

professional competitiveness, augmented by the fact that Agi had to follow him wherever

symphony positions were available, put tremendous strain on their relationship. He would ask

her, “‘Why aren’t you satisfied, just to sit and enjoy my playing and accompany me at home

and at practice?’ Like a servant,” she said.124 Despite her anger in such moments, Agi felt tied

to my father for reasons that went beyond the security of his paychecks. She was afraid to

leave the only person who, after losing her family in the war, she said represented “that thin

line of family.”125

From their arrival in America in 1957 until 1962, Agi followed my father from Dallas,

to Chicago (where my father briefly succeeded Starker as first chair), to Pittsburgh, and finally

to Baltimore, where they made their divorce official. Their marriage had lasted over ten years

because, Agi lamented, “I was petrified of being totally alone.”126 I don’t know whether my

father had the same fears after their divorce or not, but his musical reputation was growing in

every city, as was the admiration of audiences, musicians, and women. With this admiration

came great temptation.

123 Ibid. 124 Agi Rado, in conversation, September 6, 2009. 125 Agi Rado, in conversation, Nov. 25, 2007. 126 Ibid.

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Third Movement: The Concert Hall and the Casino

The next Misi story at our house was another holiday. He and Robin were going to do a concert for

us in the house. We borrowed a cello for him from the university where I taught, and he got it and tuned it, and

they started to play.

At some point—he just was playing really exquisitely, beautifully, as he always did, and at one

point—he stopped, and he looked up, and his face was very angry. He said, “I understand why universities

have to buy cheap instruments, but why do they have to buy cheap strings?” And then he kept playing until his

fingers bled.

It was just beautiful.

Louis Florimonte, August 2009127

By 1962, my father had learned English and had secured himself the position of

principal cellist of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. The English he picked up in Dallas

from soap operas and from the lyrics to the musical Texas, Li’l Darlin’, for which he played in

the pit orchestra. I attribute credit to these influences for the dramatic and romantic lilt that

would mark my father’s English for the rest of his life, giving him a poeticism that would

endear him to women. Two of his future wives recalled the beauty of his language without my

asking. My mother remembered, “He could spontaneously write poetry in English,”128 and

his third wife Paula recalled, “He was always great at expressing himself verbally as well as

musically, which always amazed me about him.”129

At the time he was offered the position with the BSO, he had also auditioned

successfully for the Metropolitan Opera’s first chair, but he refused it. The contracts were

127 Louis Florimonte, in conversation with the author, August 17, 2009. 128 Robin Kissinger, in conversation, Sept. 1, 2009. 129 Paula Childress, in conversation.

T h i r d M o v e m e n t : T h e C o n c e r t H a l l a n d t h e C a s i n o

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drawn and are still among his papers, unsigned. I never learned why he turned it down,

though the busy schedule of a Met musician would have made a solo career implausible. My

mother added, however, that he may not have wanted to be stuck in a pit for the rest of his

career, out of the view of an audience—even if it would have been with as prestigious an

orchestra as the Met’s. Instead, my father took up the position of principal chair with the

BSO, where he would sit at the front of the stage for forty years. At the end, when he was

awarded the title of Principal Cellist Emeritus, he said, “When I first came here, I fell in love

with the symphony, with Peabody and with Baltimore. And since I came here, no other city,

no other conservatory and no other orchestra has changed so much for the better.”130

Things had changed in the forty years my father was with the BSO. In 1962, when

the symphony went on tour, they went in two buses: the first bus and the smokers’ bus. My

father, by then a pack-a-day smoker, chose the latter. By chance, the smokers’ bus was also

the poker bus, and, to take his mind off the motion sickness that had plagued him since that

fated Ferris wheel ride in Budapest, my father joined in the games. He was not a good

gambler. “I think that people used to prey on dad,” said his oldest son, David.131 “People

would take advantage of dad’s good nature.”132

He made an easy target. “He didn’t play with thoughts,” Agi said.133 “He was

curious. He wanted to see what the next move would be. I mean, the orchestra members said

he was doing crazy things. […] He would lose in one sitting before a concert.”134 That the

games sometimes continued into the concert venues, where games would be played on the

tops of grand pianos, most likely didn’t help. His losses among symphony members never

affected his playing, however, and his reputation as a master cellist only grew.

130 Mihaly Virizlay, quoted in Tim Smith, “BSO Honors Cellist.” 131 David Virizlay, in conversation with the author, August 28, 2009. 132 Ibid. 133 Agi Rado, in conversation, September 6, 2009. 134 Ibid.


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In the early sixties a wealthy woman discovered my father and offered him a beautiful

cello made by Domenico Montagnana and previously owned by another Hungarian cellist,

Emanuel Feuermann. My father would play on this cello for the next twenty years. The

relationship between a musician and his instrument is serious. They, like a couple, must be

compatible. In a letter written to the Federal Republic of Germany, Lev Aronson—the

principal chair of the Dallas Symphony while my dad played in its section—detailed every

loss he had suffered during World War II, including that of his ideal musical mate, made by

Nicholas Amati. His request for reparations makes clear that nothing could compensate for

the loss of his family, but his letter ends with this thought: “I am convinced that somewhere in

Germany or Austria someone is playing that priceless Amati cello…”135 For fifteen years

Starker played on a cello made by famed luthier Antonio Stradivari, but he relinquished his

right to it in 1965. Later, he described his heartache when he found it had been mutilated for

marketability by the dealer Henry Werro: “When I looked at my partner of fifteen years, I felt

sick. I ran away from Werro’s shop and never saw him or it again.”136 He sounds like a lover

betrayed.

I can see why. Consider that from the shape of the cello itself to the position in which

it is held, the instrument requires a close, intimate, and tender relationship. When my father

held his cello, his cologne-heavy neck nestled next to hers. Wrapping his left fingers around it,

he pressed dexterously and lovingly down to summon her sweetest tones. Her shoulders

rested on his chest, and her well-crafted curves fit within his warm embrace. He straddled

her. They made music and were good at it. The cello and cellist can exist in this bond for

decades when a good match is found.

135 Lev Aronson to the Federal Republic of Germany, 1986, quoted in Frances Brent, The Lost Cellos of Lev

Aronson (New York: Atlas, 2009), 8. 136 Janos Starker, The World of Music, 40.


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My father’s Montagnana

The cello’s body curves in all the right places.137 Its 76-centimeter body is glued and

pressed together in the familiar, female hourglass shape from pieces of pine, maple, or

poplar—ordinary woods proportioned perfectly. Perfect, because for centuries the shape has

137 This short section on the history of the cello—first written in 2008 for John McPhee and with minor

edits—is made of a composite of information taken from the following sources: Sarah Bullock, “Musicians create sensual mood in nude,” All State, September 6, 2006, http://www.theallstate .com/2.10100/musicians -create-sensual-mood-in-nude-1.1343487; Elizabeth Cowling, The Cello (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975); Sarah Freilberg, “Howling Wolf,” Strings, May 2005, http://www.stringsmagazine.com/article/129/129,3240,YourInstrument-1.asp; “Instruments: The Little Wooden Song Box,” Time, December 30, 1966, http://www.time.com/time/ magazine/article/0,9171,901941,00.html; Robert Jesselson, “The Etymology of the Words ‘Violin’ and ‘Violoncello’: Implications on Literature in the Early History of the Cello,” Strings Magazine, Internet Cello Society, http://www.cello.org/Newsletter/ Articles/celloetymology.htm; Dimitry Markevitch, Cello Story, trans. Florence W. Seder (Princeton: Summy-Birchard Music, 1984); Annette Morreau, Emanuel Feuermann (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002); Carlos Prieto, The Adventures of a Cello, trans. Elena C. Murray (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998). Any direct quotes or information specific to one source have been cited.


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remained the same for its ability to focus sound. The hollow body of the cello acts as an

amplifier. The shape took centuries to evolve and has remained relatively unchanged since

the 1500s, for changing it would cause some notes to swell and others to shake. A square box

will not produce an even sound; it takes the delicate balance of an hourglass to give the cello

its range, a type of golden ratio. Many musicians note the sensuality of the instrument.

Sexxtet, a nude cello ensemble, embodies the connection of body to instrument, music to sex,

by putting it on display for audiences across America.138

The cello’s body—top and back fastened together by six thin strips of maple

manipulated over a hot iron mold and shaped into the rounded shoulders—work in

conjunction with the other parts, beginning with the ƒ-shaped orifices on either side of the

body’s narrowest point, where, on a woman, the waist recedes from the bust and hips. Strong

resonance and clear tones are the result of these well-placed ventilators. The ƒ-holes allow air

and sound to escape from inside the body, but even the most well crafted cellos can falter.

Vibrations from the top and back of the cello sometimes meet within the hollow body, crash,

and cancel each other. When this happens, the cello sputters a note or screams it in a hissy fit

that musicians have tagged the wolf note. The most well adjusted cellos, Montagnanas

especially, can have the most pronounced wolfs—the more head-on the collision, the greater

the crash.139 My mother said that the work required to get these temperamental instruments

to sing makes the effect even more beautiful.140

Vibrations travel across the bridge, set between the ƒ-holes. This relatively thin cut of

maple, mere millimeters at its base, requires a maker of precise and delicate touch to balance

it upright and achieve the desired setting; the bridge is secured not with glue but with string:

the cello strings—four—cross the bridge, keeping it in place with roughly 100-pounds of

138 Sarah Bullock, “Musicians create sensual mood in nude.” 139 Sarah Freilberg, “Howling Wolf.” 140 Robin Kissinger, in conversation, Apr. 11, 2010.


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pressure, unyielding. As it happens, Starker invented a more resonant bridge many years after

emigrating to the United States by drilling conical holes into the base of his bridge’s feet. The

holes act as “tiny megaphones,” to use Starker’s own words.141 He patented the idea and

began marketing it. The cello’s shape and form, however, have remained essentially constant

for centuries.

Italian cello-makers of the 18th century produced the greatest, most coveted cellos in

the world. Though the Stradivari-made cello is most exalted, his disciple Montagnana created

large, well-cut cellos, instilling them with a full, warm, and powerful tone that in performance

seems to radiate from the cello—though the exteriors are also coated in varnish “of a

beautiful, rich quality.”142 As one cello historian writes, “His wide robust cellos bear his

distinctive personal touch, and their characteristics […] produce a marvelous tone,

distinguished by its power and masculinity.”143 A Montagnana was my father’s perfect match.

Throughout his career, he was praised most for his full tone, as in this 1974 review by Elliott

Galkin for The Baltimore Sun: “He breathes with the cello, molding phrases which are ever-

vibrant and pulsating. The sound he produces is luxurious, the vibrato warm and capable of

intimately personal modifications.”144 My father was able to seduce with the Montagnana.

His playing moved him and those who heard him, pulsing through the audience.

And seduce he did. My father’s fingers flew down the neck of his Montagnana while

he courted each of his next three wives. To most people, especially those with a Catholic

upbringing like my father’s, the history of his love affairs will seem, to put it mildly,

unorthodox. In explaining it to me, my mother said, “You have to recall that in those days,

we’d just come through the days of free love and the pill, and of course musicians are

141 “Instruments: The Little Wooden Song Box.” 142 Dimitry Markevitch, Cello Story, 43. 143 Carlos Prieto, The Adventures of a Cello, 31. 144 Elliott W. Galkin, “Beauties of Cello Realized in Recital,” Baltimore Sun, January 28, 1974, sec. B.


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always…” she trailed off, settling on this summary: “There was a different attitude towards

free sex and relationships.”145

My father with Tricia Shallin

In the midst of the sexual revolution, my father met and married cellist Tricia Shallin,

with whom he had a son, David. Just a few years after David’s birth, however, the two

divorced. Tricia, while playing in the cello section of the BSO along with my father, fell in

love with the symphony manager, and after the divorce she moved with him to New Orleans,

taking David with her. My father fell in love with a different cellist in the section, Paula

Childress, whom he would marry that same year. Their son Stefan came a year after in 1974.

Paula and my father remained married until 1988, when I was born, though I was merely

proof of the ten-year affair he’d been having with my mother, Robin Kissinger, a pianist who

had been accompanying his master classes at Peabody. “They had kind of an open



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arrangement,” my mother said.146 Paula married a BSO bassist shortly thereafter, and my

mother and I moved in with my father.

My father with Paula Childress

As opposed to the things that drew Agi to my father, Tricia, Paula, and my mother

admit that his musicianship was a huge part of their attraction to him. “He could charm with

the cello,” Paula said.147 More than its just being romantic, however, his knowledge and

understanding—as well as his willingness to share his gifts with his wives—was invaluable and

seductive. “It was kind of like it was part of the bait,” my mother said, “that he played with

146 Ibid. 147 Paula Childress, in conversation.


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me and worked with me.”148 Paula agreed, “He was a fabulous teacher […] I didn’t study as

his student, but I’d be in the living room practicing, and he’d make a suggestion. He was able

to explain things to me that nobody else could. He was an outstanding teacher, and he loved

to teach.”149 Tricia took private lessons with my father, and it was at his recommendation

that she performed for the first time with the BSO.

I find it no coincidence that all of his wives and most of the other women my father

dated were musicians. There was something symbiotic in his romantic relationships. Perhaps

with a life so absorbed by music, he was bound to associate almost exclusively with fellow

musicians, but there was no lack of opportunities to meet fans and admirers, musical or not. I

remember that even into his sixties, women would approach him when we were out to dinner

to compliment his performance in a concert the night before. Still, my father fell in love with

musicians, and they fell in love with him. In a note written in 1968 at the beginning of her

relationship with my father, Tricia wrote, “God Bless You. We Are One as you play. Music is

the bond which brought us together and will always be ours.”150 My mother wrote a similar

note fifteen years later that said, “You are my everything in music and life.”151 The

implications of their sentiments are profound when considering the role of music in

spirituality—how it can open the soul, as Kodály would say. Is it that two souls opened to and

by music will inevitably find each other, connected as they are by this powerful spiritual

entity? And with so many female musicians around him, how could my father resist loving

more than one?

After stating, “The only complaint I ever had about your father was that he’s too

loving,” Starker rephrased: “I correct myself that it’s not being too loving; wanting to be

148 Robin Kissinger, in conversation, Sept. 1, 2009. 149 Paula Childress, in conversation. 150 Tricia Shallin, ephemera, March 27, 1968. 151 Robin Kissinger, ephemera, June 25, 1983.


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loved.”152 My father’s intense and seemingly boundless love for women was a major factor in

the deterioration of his marriages. “He loved women,” Paula said. “He flirted with everyone.

He just loved the attention—loved women—and women loved him.”153 What my father

demanded of his lovers was more than any of his wives could give. “I don’t think he was

unhappy with our marriage,” Tricia said, “but what he wanted I couldn’t provide. I’ve never

been able to share.”154 Paula added, “He gave a lot and he was disappointed if he didn’t get

that back from someone.”155

My father and mother

Tricia noted that the same way my father was with women, he was with music: “It

never seemed to be enough; he always wanted more. It was the same way with playing. He

152 Janos Starker, in conversation. 153 Paula Childress, in conversation. 154 Tricia Shallin, in conversation. 155 Paula Childress, in conversation.


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needed the janitor to applaud him for it to be enough.”156 Tricia attributed such insatiability

to insecurity. The desire for security is a basic human urge, one that, according to Gerald

May, is ideally satisfied by trust in God but is all too easily misguided by the realities of the

material world. May writes, “In our culture, the three gods we do trust for security are

possessions, power, and human relationships. To a greater or lesser extent, all of us worship

this false trinity.”157 May emphasizes that in all the monotheistic traditions and in his personal

opinion, “we can and should trust in God for our ultimate security,” though he admits how

difficult it is to have that kind of trust in a world that worships a “false trinity” and where bad

things frequently happen to good people.158

In this material trinity, my father had great security. He was “one of the highest paid

principal cellists in the country,” according to Starker, and he had a precious Montagnana

cello to demonstrate his worth as a musician.159 He led the cello section of the BSO with

authority and confidence, and his presence invested him with tremendous power. “He

probably was kind of the star of the orchestra,” Paula said. “It could be the concertmaster, it

could be the principal flute, it could be the principal horn, but it was Misi.”160 Finally, my

father placed great emphasis on receiving demonstrations of love and affection from his

wives, his children, and his friends—his human relationships. Truly he worshiped the

material trinity, though at his fingertips was access, through music, to divine spirituality.

May points out, “We will never really turn to God in loving openness as long as we

are handling things well enough by ourselves,” and at the beginning of his career in

Baltimore, my father had a handle on things, at least in the material sense.161 His success

156 Tricia Shallin, in conversation. 157 Gerald M. May, Addiction and Grace, 32. 158 Ibid., 31. 159 Janos Starker, in conversation. 160 Paula Childress, in conversation. 161 Gerald M. May, Addiction and Grace, 19.


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allowed him to see no harm in his attachment to possessions, power, and relationships,

though May claims that attachment, as the force behind addiction, is the most dangerous

human tendency to lead spirituality astray.

My father with his children

During his time in Baltimore, my father became attached not only to his material

possessions, professional power, and human relationships, but also to something that had

started as a seemingly harmless distraction and had quickly developed into a dangerous


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addiction: gambling. May presents a unique interpretation of the psychology of addiction,

one that interestingly mirrors other authors’ perceptions of music and spirituality. It is a view

based on concepts of duality and universality—the double potential for these things (music,

spirituality, and addiction) to lead us to our best or worst selves, and the inclination towards

them that is innately human. May writes:

I mean in all truth that the psychological, neurological, and spiritual dynamics of full-

fledged addiction are actively at work within every human being. The same processes

that are responsible for addiction to alcohol and narcotics are also responsible for

addiction to ideas, work, relationships, power, moods, fantasies, and an endless

variety of other things. We are all addicts in every sense of the word […] Addiction,

then, is at once an inherent part of our nature and an antagonist of our nature. It is

the absolute enemy of human freedom, the antipathy of love. Yet, in still another

paradox, our addictions can lead us to a deep appreciation of grace. They can bring

us to our knees.162

May first points out that we are all victims of addiction. As I am attached to my friends, my

things, and my habits, so are you. My father, as an addict, however, too easily became too

attached, unable to let go. He became truly controlled by his misguided spirituality, and he

continued on its path searching for fulfillment from winning, ownership, and control. As his

gambling worsened, so did his need for affection, indulgence, and praise. He began to view

everything through this material side of spirituality. Even those relationships that were

founded in a shared connection—to music, for example—became things he wanted to

control, own, and keep, even when the bonds became broken and the love unshared.

162 Ibid., 4.


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My father with friends Ed Patey and Larry Temple

Misguided and dangerous as they were, my father’s addictions did not spell certain

doom. In the passage above, May alludes to what is implied by the ideology of AA and other

spiritually based rehabilitation programs: that addiction can itself provide an opportunity to

open the addict’s soul to divine spirituality. The natures of addiction and spirituality are

related, and the longings they inspire have the potential to move in two directions. The

longings of an addict are a misplaced spiritual longing, so becoming aware of their nature can

correct the addict’s path. Thus, the first step of AA is acceptance, which requires awareness.

May also clarifies Jung’s formula, spiritus contra spiritum, which implies that addiction to alcohol

pushes spirituality out, and visa versa, when he writes, “Addiction, then, displaces and

supplants God’s love as the source and object of our deepest true desire. It is, as one modern

spiritual writer has called it, a ‘counterfeit of religious presence.’”163

163 Ibid., 13.


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It would not be an easy road to awareness for my father. From backstage games he

moved to private, illegal poker parties, which kept him dealing with a dangerous crowd

through the seventies. Tricia remembers once while she was pregnant with David having to

collect him from jail. “He was getting in deep, and he knew it, but he couldn’t stop,” she

said.164 My mother remembers hearing that he stopped once, out of fear. “He had gotten into

debt, and somebody wanted to collect, and they threatened that they would break his

arms.”165 Broken arms would have meant the end of his career as a concert cellist and the loss

of his material security; his cello would become worthless to him, his position in the

symphony would be lost, and the musical ability that attracted women to him would be gone.

So he found the money to repay his debts, and there was a period of time during which he

didn’t gamble.

I wonder if it was fear of losing these material things that stopped him—his

attachment to them trumping his attachment to gambling—or if he felt afraid, on any level,

of simply losing his ability to play music. I wonder if he was aware that broken arms could

mean more than the loss of material security—that for someone who’s soul had been opened

to and through music, not being able to participate in the ritual of playing could mean the

loss of spiritual security as well. I don’t know if he was even aware of how deeply music

affected his worldview, something I’ve only come to see by looking for it. All I can know is

that fear of something drove him to stop during this time.

Then gambling went public. Atlantic City and the Maryland Lottery meant my father

no longer had to gamble illegally. My father began spending entire weekends in Atlantic City

when it opened in 1978 and up to a thousand dollars a week on the Maryland Lottery, which

my mother said started that same year. She also asked, “Can you imagine having to go

164 Tricia Shallin, in conversation. 165 Robin Kissinger, in conversation, Sept. 1, 2009.


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through all those tickets to find out that you lost?”166 Through the eighties, his addiction only

worsened. He would sometimes gamble through rehearsals, turning up to the concert hall just

in time for a performance. My mother remembers him missing the dress rehearsal for a

recital she had set up at the Community College where she taught. She told me, “Your dad

didn’t show up, and it’s getting closer and closer to the time of the concert. Finally he comes

in, and he’s a wreck from not sleeping and was all unshaven, but of course he played well.”167

His ability to play in his sleep kept him from being reprimanded by the BSO. It was as if, by

swinging from the most material side of the spiritual spectrum to the most divine—going from

the casino to the concert hall—my father was never forced to face the consequences of his

addictions.

My mother remembers the frustration of managing a gambler’s money. She said, “I’d

look through the checkbooks to try to reconcile everything and there would be missing

checks—this check for $500, and that one for $1,000—stuff right and left, and then the credit

card debt. Trying to manage the household became a nightmare, an amorphous blob of

stuff.” Despite the frustration, she, along with the symphony, continued to help him. My

mother explained, “The thing about addiction is that you think if you give the person enough

support they can—they will—stop,” adding later, “I didn’t understand what enabling was.”168

While she stayed, things only got worse.

In a study published in 1989, researchers Joseph Ciarrocchi and Ann A. Hohmann

found, though it seems obvious, that “addiction, whether alcohol or gambling related, creates

dysfunctional family environments.” More specifically and importantly, the researchers also

found that the families of addicted persons tend to, due to the dysfunction, spend their energy

on “basic survival needs while higher-order family needs diminish.” According to the study

166 Ibid. 167 Ibid. 168 Ibid.


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these “higher-order” needs include relationship development and “personal growth,” which

the subjects measured by the extent to which they perceived themselves and their families as

participating in “intellectual, cultural, and social activities.” Gamblers were also found to feel

a loss of their sense of independence.169

Ciarrocchi and Hohmann’s results are intriguing because of their implications. If my

father felt the decline of his loved ones’ interest in intellectual, cultural, and social activities—

such as music—how would he react? As my mother focused more and more on simply

making ends meet, how did her musical relationship with my father, upon which their love

was founded, suffer? My mother has said that during this time when she would think about

leaving, “He would play the Kodály ‘Adagio’ or the Bach ‘Sarabande’ from the Sixth Suite,

and I’d think, ‘Oh, how can I give this up?’”170 It’s clear to me from this that my father was

still able to connect with others through his music, but was he aware of it? My mother doesn’t

think so. “Especially gamblers,” she said, “their minds are always on the game. So they stop

being present as a partner, as a mate, as a conversationalist, as whatever—a friend.”171

Because she continued to support him, hoping she could get him to stop and still loving what

his music could bring, my father was “handling things well enough,” and he continued to

gamble.

Paula and my mother, who remained friends despite their involvement with my

father, worked with the BSO to stage interventions, but they didn’t work. A gambling

counselor even came to the house. My mother said that though the counselor “knew how to

kind of flatter him a little bit,” she couldn’t get my father to accept that he was addicted.172

169 Joseph Ciarrocchi and Ann. A. Hohmann, “The Family Environment of Married Male Pathological

Gamblers, Alcoholics, and Dually Addicted Gamblers,” Journal of Gambling Behavior 5, no. 4 (Winter 1989): 283-291.

170 Robin Kissinger, in conversation, Sept. 1, 2009. 171 Ibid. 172 Ibid.


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“He wasn’t serious about it,” my mother said.173 “He just wanted to sort of charm everybody

because he was charming. So, it didn’t work.”174 He remained with his material security—he

continued to receive financial allowances, he remained in a position of power and celebrity in

the symphony, and he still had my mother and I as sources of affection.

My father with my mother and I

It is said, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”175 In the

late eighties, my father lost his Montagnana. The details are unclear, but I understand that he

needed the money to pay off gambling debts. I’ve found nothing in my father’s papers that

describes how he must have felt making this sacrifice for his addiction, but he seemed

overwhelmingly positive in 1987—after the loss—when interviewed for The Baltimore Sun. He 173 Ibid. 174 Ibid. 175 Proverbs 16:18 (English Standard Version).


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said, “They say good things always come in twos…Last year I gave up smoking and got a

new cello. This year I lost weight and my new concerto will be played.”176 He had every

reason to be proud of these accomplishments—his Concerto would be broadcast on the

classical music radio station to great success—but his new cello was in reality a failure to

overcome his addiction. This he refused to admit. The article ends with his buoyant (if

hollow) words: “‘Other things come in twos, too. In Hungary, we say there are two suns in

the sky—Mozart and Bach—and two moons—Bartok and Kodaly. Maybe all things come in

twos: two hands, two legs, two ears and two eyes.

“‘All things human come in twos except for one […] There is only one heart.’”177

This innocent statement seems, in hindsight, eerily prescient. In the decade to come, my

father would learn that for a gambler, if good things come in twos, bad things come en masse,

and the bad things will do more to harm a human’s one heart than he could have guessed.

My parents married in 1990, and that’s when my mother discovered the true state of

my father’s finances. By 1993, he had filed for bankruptcy. Sometime in the intervening years

(most likely in 1991, based on the postmark of the envelope I found it in) my father wrote the

following tale on an Amtrak napkin:

The Dawn of Gambling […]

It was always there—came with the primeval gas, the germ of evil. God created

the beauty of the Soul. The Devil gave us the gift of gambling. The Horror of it is

that, like the forbidden fruit, sometimes you even enjoy it.

I certainly did! […]

The Casinos are the Temples of Doom. You breathe poison. You are slowly

dying…but where is the skull and the cross bones or even just a sign: Beware, it is

176 Mihaly Virizlay, quoted in Stephen Wigler, “Mihaly Virizlay.” 177 Ibid.


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hazardous to your health? Oh, curse on you—you sold us all out for more than 30

pieces of silver in your temple of lies. […]

I am sad. I am terrified. I must stop now. I have to learn to think again, unfry my

brain, collect my thoughts and start with my life without gambling. The very idea

frightens me. What kind of a life will it be?

It can’t, it won’t be Death and Transfiguration.

It has to be Life and Transformation.178

Where was my father when he wrote this, and what happened to incite it? Was he going to or

coming from Atlantic City on that Amtrak train? Did he play a concert that night? Had he

fought with my mother about the missing checks beforehand? Did he come home to my

mother and I ready to confess, just to find us asleep? Now, I lose sleep wondering. He is so

aware in these scribblings of the spiritual implications of addiction, so sensitive to the

relationship between God and gambling. A gift from the Devil, he calls it—wherein addiction

supplants grace. And he is so full of fear. But the worst was yet to come.

My father may have been humbled by his bankruptcy, the loss of his cello, the stern

admonishments and pleas of my mother, but he did not quit gambling. He managed to

remain financially stable even while bankrupt, and he was still attached to the show of

financial security. He continued to eat, spend, and live as lavishly as possible. These were the

years I remember eating brunch at the five-star Polo Grill every Sunday. My mother and I

were spoiled with presents, and in return, my father still expected and craved tremendous

affection. Despite his notes on the napkin, my father had not reached acceptance. There were

a host of enablers, among them my mother, who needed to stop fueling my father’s

addictions, shake his security in the false trinity of material things, and force him to face the

full consequences of his addictions. As May emphasizes, “Our failure is necessary, for it is in

178 Mihaly Virizlay, undated ephemera.


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failure and helplessness that we can most honestly and completely turn to grace.”179 My

father had to hit rock bottom in order to turn around and walk back along the line of

spirituality towards divinity.

My grandmother, my father, and I

Four things happened in 1995. First, my father lost the support of his mother and

sister in Hungary; they both died that year—two extraordinary losses. Then my mother

finalized her and my father’s separation by moving out, applying for a divorce, and seeing

another man. These were not the only beatings my father’s heart would take in 1995. Finally,

and quite literally, my father’s heart failed.

The discovery of congestive heart failure meant a six-bypass surgery, which is enough

to make anyone scared. “Having your heart operated on makes people a little bit weird,” my

179 Gerald M. May, Addiction and Grace, 16.


71

mother said.180 “It really can be very, very upsetting to the whole person—to the being—to

have heart surgery. And apparently it’s something very specific to heart surgery.”181 For my

father, heart surgery led to a spike of addictive behavior. “Your dad was like the way he is,”

my mother said, “wanting to force everybody to do what he wanted, me in particular in this

case.”182

One scene, which I don’t remember, occurred in the hospital not long after my

father’s surgery. My mother told me she had been seeing a behavioral therapist to figure out

ways to relieve the pressure of my father’s needs, and one idea was to avoid all contact with

him. So, when she took me to visit my father, she had nurses take me into his room rather

than go in herself. When it was time to leave, however, he wouldn’t let me go. She said,

“Finally I went in, and I said, ‘Look, we’ll talk about these things another time, but I’m just

not going to be seeing you.”183 She got him to let me go, but when she tried to leave, he

followed her down the hall. She remembered, “He was ranting and raving, going down the

hall saying, ‘You’re going to kill me.’ He was going down the hall with this thing: ‘You’re

going to kill me. I’ll have a heart attack.’”184 After he attempted to grab me, my mother got

me into the elevator—crying by this point—and security took my father back to his room.

Throughout this time I suppose I was aware, at least in part, of the nature of my

father’s fear and longing. I could never write him off, though, as I changed from a confused

child to an unmoved teenager, I had very little sympathy for what I interpreted as desperate

and often manipulative behavior. Looking back, what he wanted and found wanting is as

clear as day, and I cannot hold it against him.

180 Robin Kissinger, in conversation, Sept. 1, 2009. 181 Ibid. 182 Ibid. 183 Ibid. 184 Ibid.


72

In the months of recovery—which for health reasons forced serious restrictions on all

of his former addictions—my father surely faced the reality of his lifestyle and of his

misguided spirituality. He could not play in the symphony and therefore could not receive

accolades. Gone were the fatty and indulgent meals. The affection of beautiful women had

also disappeared; my father was now a sixty-four-year-old recovering heart patient. Most

importantly, his heart failure also meant the end of his gambling. He could no longer drive

himself to private poker parties, nor could he run the risk of a heart attack by journeying to

and absorbing the high-pressure environment of Atlantic City.

My father would eventually return to the BSO, healed but much humbled. He would

play for six more years, at which point he was named Principal Cellist Emeritus. A minor

stroke in 2002 combined with nerve problems in his left hand made it impossible for him to

uphold the standards and meet the responsibilities of a principal cellist, so he eventually sat in

on auditions for his replacement. He still asked more from my mother and me than either of

us felt able to give, but he was working towards recovery. The moments I felt true love for my

father—a connective love, not some form of submissive affection—like when I heard “The

Emperor’s New Clothes” in 2003, happened more frequently.

My father’s stroke in 2006 posed a final spiritual challenge to him. It challenged his

access to divine spirituality—which he had been able to open during his life and career by

playing music—by removing it. As I said, I don’t know if he overcame this challenge or if it

overpowered him. Either way, he departed. I am lucky. I can still feel connected to him by

listening to the recordings of his playing and his works that every so often increase with a

discovery of a new tape, reel, or broadcast. Though I cannot know, I prefer to think he

followed the path my mother laid out in her final letter to him, which ended with these words:

“Now is the time for you to be like the butterfly—dissolve your caterpillar past in the cocoon


73

of this illness and emerge with your most radiant wings!”185 Now every time I see a butterfly, I

think of my father and his music, and I am filled with love.

My father and I

It is not the worst thing, to be filled with love at the sight of something so

ephemeral—something like a good meal, or a warm embrace, or a moving performance.

These things end. They are hard to describe. They can be experienced, but not owned. This

is what my father taught me: not to let these moments pass unnoticed. It is through these

moments that man can know God.

185 Robin Kissinger, letter to Mihaly Virizlay, July 31, 2008.

74

Coda: A Homily

God created us to be with Him. The love of God is so immense that He wanted to share that with

others and created us to include us in that love. Just as God wanted to share His love with others, we too,

having that love of God well up in our hearts, need to share it with those around us; it is not meant to be kept to

ourselves.

Misi shared that love in many ways. He shared that love with his children Stephan, David, and

Lianna; he shared that love with his friends and colleagues. He could be tender and loving, but also

passionate—fighting for others and for what he believed in. Certainly he shared that love with countless people

through music.

Pope John Paul II, an artist himself, wrote his Letter to Artists on Easter Sunday in 1999. In that

letter he said,

It is in living and acting that man establishes his relationship with being, with truth, and

with good. The artist has a special relationship to beauty. In a very true sense it can be said

that beauty is a vocation bestowed on him by the Creator in the gift of “artistic talent.”

Certainly, this is a talent which ought to be made to bear fruit…Here we touch on the

essential point. Those who perceive in themselves this kind of divine spark which is their

artistic vocation—as a poet, a writer, a sculptor, an architect, a musician, an actor, and so

on—feel at the same time an obligation not to waste this talent but to develop it, in order to

put it at the service of their neighbor and of humanity as a whole.

The Pope went on to say,

Within the vast cultural panorama of each nation, artists have their unique place. Obedient

to their inspiration in creating works both worthwhile and beautiful, they not only enrich the

cultural heritage of each nation and all of humanity, but they also render an exceptional

social service in favor of the common good.

C o d a : A H o m i l y

75

How many people throughout the world has Misi touched? How many people has he embraced with the love

and passion that came from his music? By using His God-given talents, Misi served others, and he served the

Lord. He accepted his responsibility, endured the hard work of cultivating his talent, and assumed the task of

lifting up and renewing people. On that level there was a spirituality of artistic service.

Rev. Louis A. Bianco, October 2008186

Writing this on Easter Sunday, one of the only holidays for which I remember

attending church services with my father, I find myself reflecting on the nature of rebirth, of

salvation, and, most of all, of communal memory. For me, this thesis has been a resurrection

and salvation of the memory of my father. Never have I felt I understood him as well as I do

now. And now, I can join others in remembering him for the love he showed, the beauty he

created, and the efforts he made, able to forgive his transgressions, weaknesses, and fears. If

anything, this thesis has taught me that his fears are my own, that his struggles will be and are

my struggles, that I do not have all the answers. Nor should I.

What matters in the end is not whether music was my father’s source for divine

spirituality or whether his addiction served to attach him too much to this material realm.

What I believe with all my heart is that the only thing that matters is how he is remembered.

Our memories of people shape the story of their lives and invest them with whatever meaning

we so choose. That so many find hope in Jesus’ resurrection has little to do, I think, with

whether or not it happened. The communal choice to believe it did is what has brought so

many to church this morning to worship the memory of a miracle together. Memories can be

false or true, but they are most importantly strong.

186 Louis Bianco, homily delivered at the funeral mass of Mihaly Virizlay, October 17, 2008, Cathedral of

Mary Our Queen, Baltimore, MD. Transcript received in personal email to the author, April 8, 2010.

C o d a : A H o m i l y

76

At my father’s funeral, the presiding priest gave the above homily, which speaks

almost exclusively of love. God’s love, yes, but also my father’s love—the abundance he had

of it, and the urge he had both to share and to receive it. The priest spoke of how my father’s

music was a reflection of that love and of God. Those who attended the mass agreed to share

in the priest’s definition of love, that most divine expression of spirituality, and to present it as

a gift to my father’s memory.

I have been convinced now that my father was—like me, like all of us—always

searching to access and express his divine spirit, to connect with others through and with that

spirit, and to witness his vision of God in that holy spirit. He had moments of absolute

success, of grace. He also had moments of failure, moments when he fell. But I believe that he

never stopped searching while he was alive; I doubt that any human can. Those who do stop

searching will surely perish—as my father did in the end—because it is the search that makes

us human. Knowing what we humans long to know is reserved for immortals.

I cannot know whether my father finally discovered an expression of divine, eternal

love, if he found peace in some symphony hall in the sky, or if his spirit is watching, proud

and in love, while I compose this testament to him. The destination he has reached is

somewhere I have not been, somewhere I have no right to be while still on this earth,

searching in my own way for what I hope he has found.

I do know, however, that my father has left a legacy of divine spirituality, of

passionate striving for and in the name of love. He has helped me to see that, one way or

another, we are all playing to God, and I am glad to be a part of the game. Give me my

addictions, my music, my family and friends. Oh, I say, it’s good to be alive!

Princeton University

April 4, 2010

77

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