JAVS Spring 2010

I owe my introduction to Franz to Maurice Riley at the 1975 Viola Congress. Maurice had invited me to take a small part in the bestowal of an honorary doctorate on Primrose at Eastern Michigan University. Actually, it was Primrose who acquainted me with the name “Zeyringer” ten years before when he showed me during a private lesson at his home on Sunset Boulevard a small booklet of viola literature by this Austrian professor. There was Zeyringer in Ypsilanti along with two other pil lars of the fledgling IVG Dietrich Bauer and Wolfgang Sawodny. Franz had no English, but I had German. Communication was therefore immediate, and I like to think on several levels. It contin ued through the ensuing thirty years until Franz’s ability to com municate faded. We were guests in his home, and he in ours, the last time, thankfully, with his wife Linde when the new Primrose and PIVA Rooms were inaugurated at BYU in 2002. I say “thankfully” because Linde had never been to America, and more importantly, she also deserved to be honored because of the hidden role she played in the more visible accomplishments of her husband. Franzl confided in me more than once that what he had done for the viola came at the sacrifice of his wife and their three children. And what were a few of those accomplishments? I ponder how much poorer my professional and personal life, and that of my wife Donna, might have been had there

been no Professor Zeyringer. Think of several possibilities:

On June 10, 1981, I picked Mr. Zeyringer up at the Toronto air port. While we were driving up to the university area where the dele gates’ hotel was, I tried some of my German skills. Franz laughed and then told me what I had really said. Needless to say I was some what embarrassed, but he did so with good humor, which I appreci ated. He was also kind enough to present me with a beautiful little blue wool outfit from Austria, a gift for my young son Karl, then one month old! Unfortunately I was not able to see him very often from then on, but I greatly cherish the correspondence I have from him, some Christmas cards, and so on—ordinary things but also very important to me. Dr. Zeyringer was most influential in the furtherance of viola research, and having the opportunity to meet him has left an indelible mark on me. I feel fortunate indeed to have met and known such a man. I loved this man. I know that he could be irascible, hardheaded, and controlling; he did not suffer fools easily and was sometimes slow to forgive. ( Write those weaknesses in sand. ) But what I admired in him was his single-minded determina tion, devotion to a cause, vision, willingness to sacrifice, loyalty to a friend, and love of homeland. ( Carve those qualities in stone. ) –Baird Knechtel, Honorary President of the Canadian Viola Society

• No International Viola Society with an accompanying yearly congress somewhere in the world • No 1985 then-definitive lexicon with fourteen thousand entries, Literatur für Viola , the galleys of which Franz finger-pecked on his typewriter, and without computer • No PIVA, that is, in its present size of eight thousand scores and enriched with collections, includ ing one he hand-carried piece meal across the communist Czech border • No written and composed books and works from his hand on the viola • And perhaps most importantly, the rich and abiding friendships and associations, engendered directly or indirectly over forty years among so many violists, a result of the Zeyringer legacy Can heaven for him be more beau tiful than the valley in Styria where Franz was born and erected his life’s work? The Pöllauberg, the diminutive town, the friendly inhabitants, his Musikschule—and so essential for Franz—the brooks and the woods. Fishing and hunt ing were the necessary antidote for too much viola!

–David Dalton Professor Emeritus of Music Brigham Young University

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