by Peter Cates

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfelloow had a gift for dramatic tension as well as a unique sense of the potential narrative possibilities in a descriptive poetic setting. An example was his 1866 poem, God’s Acre, yet another term for cemetery, and the starker words, graveyard and burial ground. I offer the poem before further comments:

I like that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls
The burial-ground God’s Acre! It is just;
It consecrates each grave within its walls,
And breathes a benison o’er the sleeping dust.

God’s-Acre! Yes, that blessed name imparts
Comfort to those, who in the grave have sown
The seed, that they had garnered in their hearts,
Their bread of life, alas ! no more their own.

Into its furrows shall we all be cast,
In the sure faith, that we shall rise again
At the great harvest, when the arch-angel’s blast
Shall winnow, like a fan, the chaff and grain.

Then shall the good stand in immortal bloom,
In the fair gardens of that second birth;
And each bright blossom, mingle its perfume
With that of flowers, which never bloomed on earth.

With thy rude ploughshare, Death, turn up the sod,
And spread the furrow for the seed we sow;
This is the field and Acre of our God,
This is the place, where human harvests grow!

Gottesacker was the ancient German word for God’s Acre which, as mentioned above, was the burial ground. In time, the Moravians and other groups came to see the term as a field for the sowing of flowers and such, instead of cadaver disposal, i.e. burial ground. The scriptural words, ‘from dust to dust,’ do not have to mean disposal in the cemetery septic grounds but a divine benison or blessing honoring the person that was, at least for the time being.

Longfellow was particularly effective in his use of contrasting imagery. ‘Into its furrows shall we all be cast,’ whether or not we led good lives. And we all have an expiration date and will be transferred elsewhere on that date, whether we like it or not. Yet the poet wrote a positive note; ‘In the sure faith, that we shall rise again/at the great harvest’.

But H.W.L. jolted us immediately back to reality – ‘when the arch-angel’s blast/Shall winnow, like a fan, the chaff and grain.’ The ‘winnowing fan’ is a threshing machine, not a gentle breeze.

In the last two stanzas, Longfellow sums up some eternal hope and faith for the meek and pure in heart – ‘good stand in immortal bloom…..Acre of our God…where human harvests grow.’

This is Longfellow’s gift for dramatic tension and narrative possibilities in a most splendid and truly descriptive poetic setting and the story line for the end of life’s journey .

Another highly recommended Longfellow poem is Excelsior.

by Peter Cates

Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler

Offenbach: Tales of Hoffmann; Barcarolle, “Oh, Night of Love.” Side 2
Arthur Pryor’s Band – Suppe: Fanitza Selection. Victor. 16827. Ten-inch acoustically recorded 78 rpm. Offenbach from November 22, 1909; Suppe, from June 7, 1910.

Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) and Franz von Suppe (1819-1895) are each represented by three minute selections on this old 78 released more than 100 years ago. The Barcarolle comes from Offen­bach’s one opera, Tales of Hoffmann, although he composed about 80 operettas. He was born in Cologne, Germany, the son of a cantor for a synagogue in the city but lived and worked most of his life in Paris, France, where his satirical operettas had great popularity with the Court of Napoleon the 3rd and the Parisian audiences.

The composer also had good instincts for survival and spirited himself, wife and family out of France during the bloody 1848 Revolution and the 1870 Franco-Prussian War.

The Barcarolle is sweetly sung by the husband-and-wife team of William (1875-1966) and Elizabeth Wheeler (1875-1972). They participated in dozens of acoustic records for Victor and, in later years, taught voice at colleges.

Suppe’s comic operetta, Fanitza, deals with a young Russian lieutenant involved in an escapade in which he’s disguised as a woman and is encountered by a superior officer, a hot-tempered elderly General who believes that he’s actually of the feminine gender and is attracted to him/her. Meanwhile, the young lieutenant is in love with the General’s niece. Being a comedy, the story ends on a happy note.

Trombonist Arthur Pryor (1869-1942) and his band left a huge catalog of 78s on the Victor record label where he also served as one of the staff arrangers and conductors. The Fanitza Selection medley is given a spunky performance.

For interested listeners, the Wheelers’ Barcarolle can be heard on the Google link for the ucsb recorded sound collection, entitled the Discography of American Historical Recordings, while the Fanitza is on YouTube.

As for anybody unacquainted with any music by either composer, I suggest the arguably most recognizable piece for each composer; Offenbach’s Can-Can and Von Suppe’s Light Cavalry Overture. Both selections can be heard in a number of different performances on YouTube.

Oklahoma Round-Up!

selections from a Southwest radio stage show. Apollo, A-5, three 10 inch 78s. Recorded January, 1947.

Oklahoma Round-Up was broadcast from the Oklahoma City radio station, KOMA, but heard on the CBS radio network nationally during the mid-to-late 1940s. This 78 album features performers from the show – the Gruesome Twosome of banjo and harmonica players, Lem Hawkins and Hiram Higsbee; and the Cimarron Kids, Mary Lou, Dick and Ann who sing and yodel. The selections are two musical categories, hillbilly and western swing, with such titles as I’m Brandin’ My Darlin’ With My Heart, Rock Me to Sleep in My Saddle, the Sons of the Pioneers hit Cool Water, and My Blue Ridge Mountain Home. Old-fashioned, charming, hokey 78s of country music.

by Peter Cates

Soprano: Mirella Freni

On Sunday February 9, the soprano Mirella Freni died from the combination of strokes and a degenerative disease she had been suffering for a number of years. I have been a fan of her records ever since first hearing one of her singing a Verdi aria over 50 years ago while still in high school. Her good looks, the power and beauty of her vocal chords and the magnificent acting she brought to bear in her various stage roles set her apart from the other sopranos (to take nothing away from the great ones among them such as Maria Callas, Renata Tebaldi, Virginia Zeani, Victoria de los Angeles etcs.).

She and tenor Luciano Pavarotti (1935-2007) were born in the same town, Modena, Italy, about six months apart. Their mothers worked in the same cigar factory, were friends themselves, and, because of the toxins from their jobs, gave their babies to the same wet nurse. Pavarotti later happily attributed Freni’s beautiful rosy cheeks to her getting more of that nutritious milk from their nurse.

Pavarotti’s 1965 La Scala debut in Puccini’s La Boheme under conductor Herbert von Karajan (1908-1989) had him paired with Freni. As I write this column, I am listening to the YouTube of the 1974 recording of the opera that all three of them did for London records, which I highly recommend as a beginner’s set. For those who want more Freni recommendations, I will simply state I have never heard a Freni recording, with or without Pavarotti, I didn’t like and leave it at that, especially with so many examples of her on YouTube.

Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess delayed and recorded Met February 15 link at Waterville Opera House!

I first saw George Gershwin’s 1935 opera, Porgy and Bess, in 1977 through a touring Houston Grand Opera production at Boston’s Opera House, one that has been preserved on an RCA Victor set. The composer (1898-1937) called it a folk opera and explained his reasoning in a 1935 New York Times article:

Porgy and Bess is a folk tale. Its people naturally would sing folk music. When I first began work on the music, I decided against the use of original folk material because I wanted the music to be all of one piece. Therefore, I wrote my own spirituals and folksongs. But they are still folk music-and therefore being in operatic form, Porgy and Bess became a folk opera.

The Met production starred Eric Owens as Porgy, Angel Blue as Bess, and a fine supporting cast. Mention should be made of Alfred Walker as Bess’s evil ex-boyfriend, Crown; Frederick Ballentine as the unsavory drug dealer, Sportin’ Life; Latonia Moore as the righteous woman of prayer for everybody, Serena; Denyce Graves as the feisty cookshop owner, Maria, etcs.

The opera contains the old favorites Summertime, It Ain’t Necessarily So, Bess You Is My Woman Now, I Got Plenty Of Nuthin’, I’m On My Way, and several other less known but equally good musical numbers.

The very gifted David Robertson conducted a magnificent performance and all visual aspects of the staging were very good.

The next live Met link is George Frederick Handel’s opera, Agrippina, on leap year, February 29.

by Peter Cates

Shostakovich

Symphony No. 13, “Babi Yar”

Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) based his 13th Symphony on the poem, ‘Babi Yar,’ by Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1933-2017). Babi Yar is the ravine near Kiev, Ukraine, where over 34,000 Jewish men, women and children were murdered by Nazi Einsatzgruppen death squads during late September 1941. However, poet Yevtushenko used the massacre as a jumping off point in his denunciation of the anti-Semitism that had continued to exist in Russia.

Meanwhile, Shostakovich had read Babi Yar and other poems by the author and used it and four others – Humour, In the Store, Fears and Career – as sub-titles for each of the four movements in this Symphony, which he completed in the summer of 1962; movements 2 – 5 were finished in six weeks. It lasts just over an hour and is scored for bass male singer, chorus of basses, three flutes, piccolo, three oboes, English horn, three clarinets, E flat clarinet, bass clarinet, three bassoons, contra bassoon, four French horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, tympani, triangle, castanets, whip, woodblocks, tambourine, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, bells, tam tam, glockenspiel, xylophone, two harps, celesta, piano and full string contingent of violins, violas, cellos and double basses.

When Shostakovich finished the work, he sang the entire Symphony for Yevtushenko in a private meeting, accompanying himself on the piano. The poet later wrote, “If I were able to write music, I would have written it the way Shostakovich did. His music made the poem greater, more meaningful, and powerful….In a word, it became a better poem.”

Shostakovich commented most tellingly about the anti-Semitism that continued to exist in Russia that was alluded to in an earlier paragraph:

“People knew about Babi Yar before Yevtushenko’s poem, but they were silent. And when they read the poem, the silence was broken. Art destroys silence.”

The composer also shared his feelings about Yevtushenko’s writing and its underlying themes:

“Morality is a sister of conscience. And perhaps God is with Yevtushenko when he speaks of conscience. Every morning in place of prayers, I re-read or repeat by memory two poems by Yevtushenko – Career and Boots.” (Time and space do not allow room to print them here.)

Needless to say, the fact that this Symphony was in preparation caused a firestorm among the Soviet leadership, with Nikita Kruschchev going ballistic (and the October ’62 Cuban missile crisis just a few short months later). But the concert took place and caused an absolute sensation. Three or four more followed and then it was suppressed. One of Shostakovich’s greatest interpreters, and close friend, Yevgeny Mravinsky, bowed out for unknown reasons so the great conductor, Kirill Kondrashin, stepped to the podium and his performances were released on LPs. There were several years of waiting but the score was eventually smuggled to the west where it received its American premier and first recording in January 1970, from bass soloist Tom Krause and Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra.

The Symphony has received a number of distinguished recordings during the last 50 years and some of them can be heard on YouTube, including those of Kondrashin, Ormandy, Haitink, and Barshai, which I recommend highly.

The February 1 Met Opera Porgy and Bess of George Gershwin has been postponed by the Waterville Opera House until February 15 due to another event held there. I heard the broadcast on the radio, via the WQXR radio station computer link, and plan to see it then!

by Peter Cates

Les Majorettes De Shawinigan

MG-4853; 45 vinyl record, release date unknown.

This record came into my possession because of its inclusion in boxes of records doomed otherwise to the dumpster. It doesn’t have the name of any record label, just the listed catalog number, and features the enthusiastic pounding notes of a marching band of majorettes playing woodwinds, brass and percussion.

Their concert consists of Johnny Mercer’s Autumn Leaves, Artie Shaw’s Begin the Beguine, Glenn Miller’s In the Mood and Franz von Suppe’s Poet and Peasant Overture; the tunes might be recognized if the titles aren’t. This recording session may also have been paid for by the school sponsoring the band, if not from donations of folks in the community, with the 45 rpm aimed at families and friends of the musicians.

What drew my interest was not so much the listening experience as the name of Shawinigan, which is a city in the Province of Québec, on a set of natural falls along the Ste. Maurice River. It is 248-miles northwest from our Waterville and 90 miles southwest of Québec City and has been a major industrial hub in the Québec province since the late 1890s, when it attracted the interest of two wealthy entrepreneurs, themselves gentlemen of historical interest and worthy of digression for a couple of paragraphs.

The first, John Edward Aldred (1864-1945), was president of Baltimore Gas and Electric and the owner of a vast estate in Nassau County, Long Island, New York, which is listed as a historical site, because of its exquisitely sculpted grounds by the famous Olmsted brothers (that family’s firm was involved in the design of Acadia National Park and those in the cities of both Portlands, in Maine and Oregon, and in Shawinigan’s own parks). That estate is now a monastery.

The second individual was Hubert Biermans (1864-1953), the Dutch-born director of the Belgo-Canadian Paper and Pulp Company, who also amassed a fortune with his involvement in this firm, based in Brussels, Belgium, and its projects in other parts of the world such as Leopoldville in the Belgian Congo. He owned several homes and spent much time during his last years on the island of Monaco.

Both saw potential in the hydroelectricity that could be generated by the falls and spear-headed the establishment of a power grid infrastructure, through a Montréal firm, for Shawinigan’s economic future. They were proved right. The paper, electrical power, and different chemical and textile industries boomed.

Allowing for downturns during the Great Depression of the 1930s and the gradual dwindling of industry starting in the 1960s through the ‘80s, the quality of life was high, jobs were plentiful and the wages among the best in Canada. Shawinigan was the first Canadian city to see the installation of electrical streetlights.

During the 1950s, there was a proliferation of independently-owned men-only bars and taverns that prevailed until the early ‘80s, when women broke that gender barrier.

Another source of income since the early 1900s has been the city’s hospitality industry due to tourism and it has received major boosts and construction of tourist attractions in the last 30 years from the Canadian government.

I noticed the absence of any books on the city’s own history and on Aldred and Biermans, and hope that some talented historians and/or biographers might get attracted to them as subjects.