Diana Adams (March 29, 1926 –
January 10, 1993) was a principal dancer for the New York City Ballet from 1950
to 1963 and favorite of George Balanchine, later becoming a teacher at — and
dean of — the School of American Ballet. Diana Adams was one of George
Balanchine’s “muses” at New York City Ballet and he created roles for her in a
series of ballets: Western Symphony, Ivesiana, Divertimento #15, Agon, Stars
and Stripes, Episodes, Monumentum Pro Gesualdo, and Liebeslieder Walzer.
Balanchine also created roles on her in Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, Figure in the
Carpet, Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Movements for Piano and Orchestra,
although she did not dance in the premieres due to illness or injury.
Welcome
John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC
Ajax and Cassandra
The painting above is Rape of
Cassandra featured in Virgil's Aeneid. Having spurned Apollo's advances,
Cassandra is punished to never have her prophecies believed. This leads the
Trojans to reject her warning that Troy is in imminent danger from the Greeks.
When Troy falls, Cassandra flees to the Temple of Athena where she encounters
Ajax. He is later killed by Athena and the sea god Poseidon for his crime.
Ajax is a Greek mythological
hero, the son of King Telamon and Periboea, and the half-brother of Teucer. He
plays an important role and is portrayed as a towering figure and a warrior of
great courage in Homer's Iliad and in the Epic Cycle, a series of epic poems
about the Trojan War.
Cassandra was a woman in Greek
mythology cursed to utter true prophecies, but never to be believed. In modern
usage her name is employed as a rhetorical device to indicate someone whose
accurate prophecies are not believed.
Cassandra was reputed to be a
daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy. The older and most common
versions state that she was admired by the god Apollo, who sought to win her
with the gift to see the future. According to Aeschylus, she promised him her
favors, but after receiving the gift, she went back on her word and refused the
god. The enraged Apollo could not revoke a divine power, so he added to it the
curse that though she would see the future, nobody would believe her
prophecies. In other sources, such as Hyginus and Pseudo-Apollodorus, Cassandra
broke no promise; the powers were given to her as an enticement. When these
failed to make her love him, Apollo cursed Cassandra to always be disbelieved,
in spite of the truth of her words.
Some later versions have her
falling asleep in a temple, where the snakes licked (or whispered in) her ears
so that she could hear the future. Cassandra became a figure of epic tradition
and of tragedy.
Hans Rott
"A musician of genius ... who died unrecognized and
in want on the very threshold of his career. ... What music has lost in him
cannot be estimated. Such is the height to which his genius soars in ... [his]
Symphony [in E major], which he wrote as 20-year-old youth and makes him ...
the Founder of the New Symphony as I see it. To be sure, what he wanted is not
quite what he achieved. … But I know where he aims. Indeed, he is so near to my
inmost self that he and I seem to me like two fruits from the same tree which
the same soil has produced and the same air nourished. He could have meant
infinitely much to me and perhaps the two of us would have well-nigh exhausted
the content of new time which was breaking out for music." Gustav Mahler on
Hans Rott.
Hans Rott ( August 1 1858 – June 25 1884) was an Austrian composer and
organist. His music is little-known today, though he received high praise in
his time from Gustav Mahler and Anton Bruckner. He left a symphony and Lieder,
among other works.
Rott was born in
Braunhirschengrund, a suburb of Vienna. His mother Maria Rosalia (1840–1872,
maiden name Lutz) was an actress and singer. His father Carl Mathias Rott (real
name Roth, born 1807, married 1862) was a famous comic actor in Vienna who was
crippled in 1874 by a stage accident which led to his death two years later.
Rott began to evidence
persecutory delusions. In October 1880, while on a train journey, he reportedly
threatened another passenger with a revolver, claiming that Brahms had filled
the train with dynamite. Rott was committed to a mental hospital in 1881, where
despite a brief recovery he sank into depression. By the end of 1883 a
diagnosis recorded "hallucinatory insanity, persecution mania—recovery no
longer to be expected." He died of tuberculosis in 1884, aged 25. Many
well-wishers, including Bruckner and Mahler, attended Rott's funeral at the
Zentralfriedhof in Vienna.
Some of his music manuscripts have
survived in the music collection of Vienna's national library. This includes
Rott's Symphony in E major, and sketches for a second Symphony that was never
finished. The completed symphony is remarkable in the way it anticipates some
of Mahler's musical characteristics. In particular, the third movement
prefigures the second movement of Mahler's First Symphony. In his last years, Rott wrote a lot of music,
only to destroy what he wrote soon after writing it, saying it was worthless. Other
recordings of the symphony have since been issued, and other Rott works have
been occasionally revived, including his Julius Caesar Overture, Pastoral
Overture and Prelude for Orchestra.
Mae West. A poem by Edward Field
Mae West
She comes on drenched in a perfume called Self-Satisfaction
from feather boa to silver pumps.
She does not need to be loved by you,
though she’ll give you credit for good taste.
Just because you say you love her
she’s not throwing herself at your feet in gratitude.
Every other star reveals how worthless she feels
by crying when the hero says, Marry me,
or how unhoped- for the approval is
when the audience applauds her big number,
but Mae West takes it as her due:
she knows she’s good.
She expects the best for her self
and knows she’s worth what she costs,
and she costs plenty –
she’s not giving anything away.
She enjoys her admirers, fat daddy or muscleman,
and doesn’t confuse vanity and sex,
though she never turns down pleasure,
lapping it up.
Above all she enjoys her self,
swinging her body that says, Me, me, me, me.
Why not have a good time?
As long as you amuse me, go on,
I like you slobbering over my hand, big boy,
I have a right to.
Most convincing, we know all this
not by her preaching
but by her presence – it’s no act.
Every word and look and movement
spells Independence:
she likes being herself.
And we who don’t
can only look on, astonished.
Edward Field is the recipient of the W.H. Auden award, the Bill Whitehead lifetime achievement award, the Lambda Literary Award, and is the author of ten books of poetry, including After The Fall: poems old and new, in which can be found his poem, “Mae West,” published by University of Pittsburgh Press, © 2007.
Battle of Hohenfriedberg - Attack of the Prussian Infantry and Attack of the Prussian Infantry in the Battle of Leuthen, 1757
Carl Röchling (May 21, 1855 – May 6, 1920) was a German painter and illustrator known for his representation of historical military themes. While in Berlin, he was a pupil of the great master painter Anton von Werner, with whom he participated in the creation of various panoramic paintings such as Der Schlacht von Sedan ("The Battle of Sedan"). Later he became well known for his independent work of historical and military paintings in the turn of the 19th century. He died on May 6, 1920 in Berlin.
Art stolen by the nazi's (most were stored in salt mines) and eventually recovered by the US ARMY
German loot stored in church at Ellingen, Germany found by troops of the U.S. Third Army.
Durer engraving, found among other art treasures at Merker
An unknown Rembrandt recovered safe in Munich
Elgar - Cello Concerto
Elgar - Cello Concerto. The only
cello concerto that Edward Elgar wrote, and one of the most famous concertos of
all time. Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85) as well as his last notable work
and the cornerstone of the solo cello repertoire. It was composed in the aftermath
of the First World War, when his music had already gone out of fashion with the
concert-going public. In contrast with Elgar's earlier Violin Concerto, which
is lyrical and passionate, the Cello Concerto is for the most part
contemplative and elegiac. The first performance was a debacle because Elgar
and the performers had been deprived of adequate rehearsal time. The work did
not achieve wide popularity until the 1960s, when a recording by Jacqueline du
Pré caught the public imagination and became a classical best-seller.
A Worn Path. A short story by Eudora Welty
A Worn
Path
A short
story
EUDORA
WELTY
It was December—a bright frozen
day in the early morning. Far out in the country there was an old Negro woman
with her head tied in a red rag, coming along a path through the pinewoods. Her
name was Phoenix Jackson. She was very old and small and she walked slowly in
the dark pine shadows, moving a little from side to side in her steps, with the
balanced heaviness and lightness of a pendulum in a grandfather clock. She
carried a thin, small cane made from an umbrella, and with this she kept
tapping the frozen earth in front of her. This made a grave and persistent
noise in the still air that seemed meditative, like the chirping of a solitary
little bird.
She wore a dark striped dress
reaching down to her shoe tops, and an equally long apron of bleached sugar
sacks, with a full pocket: all neat and tidy, but every time she took a step
she might have fallen over her shoelaces, which dragged from her unlaced shoes.
She looked straight ahead. Her eyes were blue with age. Her skin had a pattern
all its own of numberless branching wrinkles and as though a whole little tree
stood in the middle of her forehead, but a golden color ran underneath, and the
two knobs of her cheeks were illumined by a yellow burning under the dark.
Under the red rag her hair came down on her neck in the frailest of ringlets,
still black, and with an odor like copper.
Now and then there was a
quivering in the thicket. Old Phoenix said, 'Out of my way, all you foxes,
owls, beetles, jack rabbits, coons and wild animals! ... Keep out from under
these feet, little bob-whites ... Keep the big wild hogs out of my path. Don't
let none of those come running my direction. I got a long way.' Under her small
black-freckled hand her cane, limber as a buggy whip, would switch at the brush
as if to rouse up any hiding things.
On she went. The woods were deep
and still. The sun made the pine needles almost too bright to look at, up where
the wind rocked. The cones dropped as light as feathers. Down in the hollow was
the mourning dove—it was not too late for him.
The path ran up a hill. 'Seem
like there is chains about my feet, time I get this far,' she said, in the
voice of argument old people keep to use with themselves. 'Something always
take a hold of me on this hill—pleads I should stay.'
After she got to the top, she
turned and gave a full, severe look behind her where she had come. 'Up through
pines,' she said at length. 'Now down through oaks.'
Her eyes opened their widest, and
she started down gently. But before she got to the bottom of the hill a bush
caught her dress.
Her fingers were busy and intent,
but her skirts were full and long, so that before she could pull them free in
one place they were caught in another. It was not possible to allow the dress
to tear. 'I in the thorny bush,' she said. 'Thorns, you doing your appointed
work. Never want to let folks pass—no, sir. Old eyes thought you was a pretty
little green bush.'
Finally, trembling all over, she
stood free, and after a moment dared to stoop for her cane.
'Sun so high!' she cried, leaning
back and looking, while the thick tears went over her eyes. 'The time getting
all gone here.'
At the foot of this hill was a
place where a log was laid across the creek.
'Now comes the trial,' said
Phoenix. Putting her right foot out, she mounted the log and shut her eyes.
Lifting her skirt, leveling her cane fiercely before her like a festival figure
in some parade, she began to march across. Then she opened her eyes and she was
safe on the other side.
'I wasn't as old as I thought,'
she said.
But she sat down to rest. She
spread her skirts on the bank around her and folded her hands over her knees.
Up above her was a tree in a pearly cloud of mistletoe. She did not dare to
close her eyes, and when a little boy brought her a plate with a slice of
marble-cake on it she spoke to him. 'That would be acceptable,' she said. But
when she went to take it there was just her own hand in the air.
So she left that tree, and had to
go through a barbed-wire fence. There she had to creep and crawl, spreading her
knees and stretching her fingers like a baby trying to climb the steps. But she
talked loudly to herself: she could not let her dress be torn now, so late in
the day, and she could not pay for having her arm or her leg sawed off if she
got caught fast where she was.
At last she was safe through the
fence and risen up out in the clearing. Big dead trees, like black men with one
arm, were standing in the purple stalks of the withered cotton field. There sat
a buzzard.
'Who you watching?'
In the furrow she made her way
along.
'Glad this not the season for
bulls,' she said, looking sideways, 'and the good Lord made his snakes to curl
up and sleep in the winter. A pleasure I don't see no two-headed snake coming
around that tree, where it come once. It took a while to get by him, back in
the summer.'
She passed through the old cotton
and went into a field of dead corn. It whispered and shook, and was taller than
her head. 'Through the maze now,' she said, for there was no path.
Then there was something tall,
black, and skinny there, moving before her.
At first she took it for a man.
It could have been a man dancing in the field. But she stood still and
listened, and it did not make a sound. It was as silent as a ghost.
'Ghost,' she said sharply, 'who
be you the ghost of? For I have heard of nary death close by.'
But there was no answer, only the
ragged dancing in the wind.
She shut her eyes, reached out
her hand, and touched a sleeve. She found a coat and inside that an emptiness,
cold as ice.
'You scarecrow,' she said. Her
face lighted. 'I ought to be shut up for good,' she said with laughter. 'My
senses is gone. I too old. I the oldest people I ever know. Dance, old
scarecrow,' she said, 'while I dancing with you.'
She kicked her foot over the
furrow, and with mouth drawn down shook her head once or twice in a little
strutting way. Some husks blew down and whirled in streamers about her skirts.
Then she went on, parting her way
from side to side with the cane, through the whispering field. At last she came
to the end, to a wagon track where the silver grass blew between the red ruts.
The quail were walking around like pullets, seeming all dainty and unseen.
'Walk pretty,' she said. 'This
the easy place. This the easy going.' She followed the track, swaying through
the quiet bare fields, through the little strings of trees silver in their dead
leaves, past cabins silver from weather, with the doors and windows boarded
shut, all like old women under a spell sitting there. 'I walking in their
sleep,' she said, nodding her head vigorously.
In a ravine she went where a
spring was silently flowing through a hollow log. Old Phoenix bent and drank.
'Sweet gum makes the water sweet,' she said, and drank more. 'Nobody know who
made this well, for it was here when I was born.'
The track crossed a swampy part
where the moss hung as white as lace from every limb. 'Sleep on, alligators,
and blow your bubbles.' Then the cypress trees went into the road. Deep, deep
it went down between the high green-colored banks. Overhead the live oaks met,
and it was as dark as a cave.
A big black dog with a lolling
tongue came up out of the weeds by the ditch. She was meditating, and not
ready, and when he came at her she only hit him a little with her cane. Over she
went in the ditch, like a little puff of milkweed.
Down there, her senses drifted
away. A dream visited her, and she reached her hand up, but nothing reached
down and gave her a pull. So she lay there and presently went to talking. 'Old
woman,' she said to herself, 'that black dog come up out of the weeds to stall
you off, and now there he sitting on his fine tail, smiling at you.'
A white man finally came along
and found her—a hunter, a young man, with his dog on a chain.
'Well, Granny!' he laughed. 'What
are you doing there?'
'Lying on my back like a June bug
waiting to be turned over, mister,' she said, reaching up her hand.
He lifted her up, gave her a
swing in the air, and set her down. 'Anything broken, Granny?'
'No sir, them old dead weeds is
springy enough,' said Phoenix, when she had got her breath. 'I thank you for
your trouble.'
'Where do you live, Granny?' he
asked, while the two dogs were growling at each other.
'Away back yonder, sir, behind
the ridge. You can't even see it from here.'
'On your way home?'
'No sir, I going to town.'
'Why, that's too far! That's as
far as I walk when I come out myself, and I get something for my trouble.' He
patted the stuffed bag he carried, and there hung down a little closed claw. It
was one of the bobwhites, with its beak hooked bitterly to show it was dead.
'Now you go on home, Granny!'
'I bound to go to town, mister,'
said Phoenix. 'The time come around.'
He gave another laugh, filling
the whole landscape. 'I know you old colored people! Wouldn't miss going to
town to see Santa Claus!'
But something held Old Phoenix
very still. The deep lines in her face went into a fierce and different
radiation. Without warning, she had seen with her own eyes a flashing nickel
fall out of the man's pocket onto the ground.
'How old are you, Granny?' he was
saying.
'There is no telling, mister,'
she said, 'no telling.'
Then she gave a little cry and
clapped her hands and said, 'Git on away from here, dog! Look! Look at that
dog!' She laughed as if in admiration. 'He ain't scared of nobody. He a big
black dog.' She whispered, 'Sic him!'
'Watch me get rid of that cur,'
said the man. 'Sic him, Pete! Sic him!'
Phoenix heard the dogs fighting,
and heard the man running and throwing sticks. She even heard a gunshot. But
she was slowly bending forward by that time, further and further forward, the
lids stretched down over her eyes, as if she were doing this in her sleep. Her
chin was lowered almost to her knees. The yellow palm of her hand came out from
the fold of her apron. Her fingers slid down and along the ground under the
piece of money with the grace and care they would have in lifting an egg from
under a setting hen. Then she slowly straightened up; she stood erect, and the
nickel was in her apron pocket. A bird flew by. Her lips moved. 'God watching
me the whole time. I come to stealing.'
The man came back, and his own
dog panted about them. 'Well, I scared him off that time,' he said, and then he
laughed and lifted his gun and pointed it at Phoenix.
She stood straight and faced him.
'Doesn't the gun scare you?' he
said, still pointing it.
'No, sir, I seen plenty go off
closer by, in my day, and for less than what I done,' she said, holding utterly
still.
He smiled, and shouldered the
gun. 'Well, Granny,' he said, 'you must be a hundred years old, and scared of
nothing. I'd give you a dime if I had any money with me. But you take my advice
and stay home, and nothing will happen to you.'
'I bound to go on my way,
mister,' said Phoenix. She inclined her head in the red rag. Then they went in
different directions, but she could hear the gun shooting again and again over
the hill.
She walked on. The shadows hung
from the oak trees to the road like curtains. Then she smelled wood smoke, and
smelled the river, and she saw a steeple and the cabins on their steep steps.
Dozens of little black children whirled around her. There ahead was Natchez
shining. Bells were ringing. She walked on.
In the paved city it was
Christmas time. There were red and green electric lights strung and
crisscrossed everywhere, and all turned on in the daytime. Old Phoenix would
have been lost if she had not distrusted her eyesight and depended on her feet
to know where to take her.
She paused quietly on the
sidewalk, where people were passing by. A lady came along in the crowd,
carrying an armful of red, green, and silver-wrapped presents; she gave off
perfume like the red roses in hot summer, and Phoenix stopped her.
'Please, missy, will you lace up
my shoe?' She held up her foot.
'What do you want, Grandma?'
'See my shoe,' said Phoenix. 'Do
all right for out in the country, but wouldn't look right to go in a big
building.'
'Stand still then, Grandma,' said
the lady. She put her packages down on the sidewalk beside her and laced and
tied both shoes tightly.
'Can't lace 'em with a cane,'
said Phoenix. 'Thank you, missy. I doesn't mind asking a nice lady to tie up my
shoe, when I gets out on the street.'
Moving slowly and from side to
side, she went into the big building, and into a tower of steps, where she
walked up and around and around until her feet knew to stop.
She entered a door, and there she
saw nailed up on the wall the document that had been stamped with the gold seal
and framed in the gold frame, which matched the dream that was hung up in her
head.
'Here I be,' she said. There was
a fixed and ceremonial stiffness over her body.
'A charity case, I suppose,' said
an attendant who sat at the desk before her.
But Phoenix only looked above her
head. There was sweat on her face, the wrinkles in her skin shone like a bright
net.
'Speak up, Grandma,' the woman
said. 'What's your name? We must have your history, you know. Have you been
here before? What seems to be the trouble with you?'
Old Phoenix only gave a twitch to
her face as if a fly were bothering her.
'Are you deaf?' cried the
attendant.
But then the nurse came in.
'Oh, that's just old Aunt
Phoenix,' she said. 'She doesn't come for herself—she has a little grandson.
She makes these trips just as regular as clockwork. She lives away back off the
Old Natchez Trace.' She bent down. 'Well, Aunt Phoenix, why don't you just take
a seat? We won't keep you standing after your long trip.' She pointed.
The old woman sat down, bolt
upright in the chair.
'Now, how is the boy?' asked the
nurse.
Old Phoenix did not speak.
'I said, how is the boy?'
But Phoenix only waited and
stared straight ahead, her face very solemn and withdrawn into rigidity.
'Is his throat any better?' asked
the nurse. 'Aunt Phoenix, don't you hear me? Is your grandson's throat any
better since the last time you came for the medicine?'
With her hands on her knees, the
old woman waited, silent, erect and motionless, just as if she were in armor.
'You mustn't take up our time
this way, Aunt Phoenix,' the nurse said. 'Tell us quickly about your grandson,
and get it over. He isn't dead, is he?'
At last there came a flicker and
then a flame of comprehension across her face, and she spoke.
'My grandson. It was my memory
had left me. There I sat and forgot why I made my long trip.'
'Forgot?' The nurse frowned.
'After you came so far?'
Then Phoenix was like an old
woman begging a dignified forgiveness for waking up frightened in the night. 'I
never did go to school—I was too old at the Surrender,' she said in a soft
voice. 'I'm an old woman without an education. It was my memory fail me. My
little grandson, he is just the same, and I forgot it in the coming.'
'Throat never heals, does it?'
said the nurse, speaking in a loud, sure voice to Old Phoenix. By now she had a
card with something written on it, a little list. 'Yes. Swallowed lye. When was
it?—January—two—three years ago—'
Phoenix spoke unasked now. 'No,
missy, he not dead, he just the same. Every little while his throat begin to
close up again, and he not able to swallow. He not get his breath. He not able
to help himself. So the time come around, and I go on another trip for the
soothing-medicine.'
'All right. The doctor said as
long as you came to get it, you could have it,' said the nurse. 'But it's an
obstinate case.'
'My little grandson, he sit up
there in the house all wrapped up, waiting by himself,' Phoenix went on. 'We is
the only two left in the world. He suffer and it don't seem to put him back at
all. He got a sweet look. He going to last. He wear a little patch-quilt and
peep out, holding his mouth open like a little bird. I remembers so plain now.
I not going to forget him again, no, the whole enduring time. I could tell him
from all the others in creation.'
'All right.' The nurse was trying
to hush her now. She brought her a bottle of medicine. 'Charity,' she said,
making a check mark in a book.
Old Phoenix held the bottle close
to her eyes, and then carefully put it into her pocket.
'I thank you,' she said.
'It's Christmas time, Grandma,'
said the attendant. 'Could I give you a few pennies out of my purse?'
'Five pennies is a nickel,' said
Phoenix stiffly.
'Here's a nickel,' said the
attendant.
Phoenix rose carefully and held
out her hand. She received the nickel and then fished the other nickel out of her
pocket and laid it beside the new one. She stared at her palm closely, with her
head on one side.
Then she gave a tap with her cane
on the floor. 'This is what come to me to do,' she said. 'I going to the store
and buy my child a little windmill they sells, made out of paper. He going to
find it hard to believe there such a thing in the world. I'll march myself back
where he waiting, holding it straight up in this hand.'
She lifted her free hand, gave a
little nod, turned around, and walked out of the doctor's office. Then her slow
step began on the stairs, going down.
There's a lot going on here, in the scene with the colors, but it capturing isn't it?
Boulevard de la Madeleine, Edouard Cortes
Edouard Léon Cortès (1882–1969)
was a French post-impressionist artist. He is known as "Le Poète Parisien
de la Peinture" or "the Parisian Poet of Painting" because of
his diverse Paris cityscapes in a variety of weather and night settings.
Although Cortès was a pacifist,
when war came close to his native village he was compelled to enlist in a
French Infantry Regiment at the age of 32. Sent to the front lines, Cortès was
wounded by a bayonet, evacuated to a military hospital, and awarded the Croix
de Guerre. After recovery he was reassigned to use his artistic talent to
sketch enemy positions. Later in life his convictions led him to refuse the
Légion d'Honneur from the French Government.
His wife died in 1918, and the
following year he married his sister-in-law, Lucienne Joyeuse. Cortès lived a
simple life amid a close circle of friends. He died on November 26, 1969.
Eros Sleeping (Greek 3rd-2nd Century B.C.).
The Elephants of Thula Thula
Lawrence Anthony was an acclaimed
conservationist, best-selling author and environmentalist. He was the founder
and owned and ran the Thula Thula Exclusive Private Game Reserve in Zululand,
Kwazulu Natal.
In 1999, he was asked to accept a
herd of wild elephants and he did. The herd elephants would have been killed if
he didn’t accept them because they were difficult and had escaped from other enclosures
“leaving a trail of havoc across KwaZulu Natal. “
Anthony said that “by treating
the elephants like children, trying to persuade them with words and gestures,
showing them that they shouldn’t misbehave and that they could trust me.”
He focused his attention on the
leader of the herd, Nana. “I’d go down to the fence and I’d plead with Nana not
to break it down,’ he said. ‘I knew she didn’t understand English, but I hoped
she’d understand by the tone of my voice and my body language what I was
saying. And one morning, instead of trying to break the fence down, she just
stood there. Then she put her trunk through the fence towards me. I knew she
wanted to touch me. That was a turning point.”
There are two elephant herds at
Thula Thula Game Reserve and according to Anthony’s son Dylan, both herds
arrived at the house after Anthony’s death. ‘They had not visited the house for
a year-and-a-half. It had taken them about 12 hours to make the journey. “They
all hung around for about two days before making their way back into the bush”
said Dylan.
In their mourning, the elephants
remained outside Anthony's home for two days and two nights without any food. The
next morning, they left as mysteriously as they came and began their journey
back home. According to his wife, Françoise Malby-Anthony and several
journalists. the elephants, his devoted friends, have since returned every year
since his death. On the same day, March 7.
Secrets, Rumors, and Lies: Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, Pathétique
(From the Houston Symphony
presents Tchaikovsky)
Tchaikovsky’s final symphony: few
other pieces of music have provoked as much speculation with regard to secret meanings,
autobiographical resonances, and authorial intent. In part, this is a result of
Tchaikovsky’s own elusive statements, though the circumstances of his life and
his historical context have also played significant roles. Above all, however,
this powerful and tragic work—perhaps without parallel in the symphonic
tradition—seems to demand explanation. How could a person come to write such
music?
SECRET PROGRAMS
A grandson of Tsar Nicholas I,
Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov (1858–1915) was an interesting character.
Though married with nine children, he seems to have been more-or-less secretly
bisexual. Gifted with an artistic disposition, he moonlighted as a poet,
publishing under his initials “K.R.” to considerable acclaim. He first
befriended Tchaikovsky in 1880, and even invited him to take a trip around the
world together (an offer Tchaikovsky politely declined).
From the late 1880s they
maintained a correspondence that is remarkable for the insights it gives into
Tchaikovsky’s artistic opinions and creative process. Tchaikovsky set a few of
the Grand Duke’s poems to music, notably his Opus 63 romances.
In 1889—only a year after
completing his Fifth Symphony—Tchaikovsky wrote to his friend, the Grand Duke
Konstantin Romanov, that “I want terribly to write a somewhat grandiose
symphony, which would crown my artistic career… For some time I have carried in
my head an outline plan for such a symphony… I hope that I shall not die
without carrying out this intention.” Tchaikovsky seems to have begun sketching
this ambitious project in 1891, and by April 1892, he wrote to the pianist
Alexander Ziloti that “I am already thinking of a new large composition, that
is, of a symphony with a secret program.”
Such “secret programs” were
nothing new for Tchaikovsky. To put this statement in context, his previous two
symphonies both seem to have had similar—even related—“outline plans.”
In a letter, Tchaikovsky revealed
that his Fourth Symphony was inspired by an individual’s struggle with fate—a
struggle that is left unresolved by the symphony’s conclusion. Sketches for the
Fifth Symphony suggest that it was similarly concerned with “Total submission
before fate, or, what is the same thing, the inscrutable designs of
Providence.” In each symphony, there is a motif that seems to be associated
with this inscrutable “fate” that recurs in multiple movements. While the
Fourth Symphony’s “fate” motif remains malevolent throughout the work, the
Fifth Symphony’s comparable musical idea transforms from an ominous force to a positive
one over the course of the piece and brings the work to a triumphant ending.
THE MUSIC
The symphony begins with a slow,
tenebrous introduction: a bassoon solo emerges above a descending chromatic
bassline—a musical pattern that has served as a traditional symbol of mourning
since the baroque:
This soon gives way to faster
music as the bassoon solo is transformed into a nervous theme in the violins.
Interwoven with descending scales, the theme develops until it is punctuated by
violent fanfares in the trumpets. The music then fades to silence, and muted
violins and cellos begin a second theme marked “tenderly, very singing,
expansively.
” This melody bears a striking
resemblance to Don José’s “Flower Song” from Bizet’s Carmen (one of
Tchaikovsky’s favorite operas). Both melodies begin with a falling, triadic
line, and when the melody leaps up to a descending scale, it recalls the phrase
when Don José sings “Car tu n’avais eu qu’à paraître,/Qu’à jeter un regard sur
moi,/Pour t’emparer de tout mon être” (“For you had only to appear,/Only to
cast a glance at me,/To take hold of all my being”). Tchaikovsky marks this
part “incalzando”—which can mean “urging” or “pressing.” A delicate interlude
for woodwinds leads to a passionate reprise of the singing melody, which fades
to an impossibly quiet pppppp.
Suddenly, the orchestra erupts.
The nervous first theme returns, fragmented and developed in a fugue marked
“feroce” (“ferocious”), until the trumpets intervene with powerful descending
scales. The music becomes quieter, and above the anxious perpetual motion of
the strings, the brass intone a quotation of the Russian Orthodox chant “With
thy saints, O Christ, give peace to the soul of thy servant,” a traditional
prayer for the dead. As if pleading, the strings respond, swelling and fading
away again until only a Morse code-like pulse remains in the horns. Fragments
of the nervous first theme appear above it, building to a powerful reprise.
Despite its vehemence, the return
of this theme fails to sound like an arrival point—the momentum of the
preceding development continues until the music collapses. A searing climax
based on simple, descending scales follows. After this crisis subsides, the
singing second theme returns, marked “con dolcezza” (“with sweetness”). The
movement fades away with a coda: a tranquil variant of the once anxious motif
that opened the symphony appears above the pizzicato strings’ descending
scales.
The cellos open the second
movement with one of Tchaikovsky’s loveliest melodies. Reminiscent of the
composer’s ballet music, this theme would seem to be a waltz, except that it is
in 5/4 rather than the usual three-quarter time. Some commentators have
poetically suggested that this is a waltz “missing a beat,” but while its meter
is unusual, the melody sounds utterly complete as it is. Forgetting the
vicissitudes of the first movement, the music seems to simply delight in the
beauty of sound itself—until a contrasting central episode appears. Marked “con
dolcezza e flebile” (“faintly and with sweetness”), a sighing melody based on a
descending scale appears in the violins and cellos above an ominously pulsing
bass pedal. After a reprise of the main theme, descending scales in the
woodwinds initiate a coda in which echoes of the sighing middle section return.
The third movement begins with a
light, scherzando character: a fragmentary march emerges from the continuous
background of the strings as if from a distance. Other melodic ideas follow,
until forceful downward scales in the strings lead to more hints of the march
in the brass, as if it is coming closer. At last, the march arrives in full in
the clarinets and horns. Taken together, the impression is of some public
ceremony or military parade. After the march appears, the music cycles back
through the movement’s other ideas. When the march returns, it is now a
bombastic fortississimo. The symphony’s recurring downward scales return in an
overpowering coda.
The movement’s grandiose finale
frequently provokes applause from audiences, and many hear this music as an
uncomplicated expression of joy; however, like the outwardly jovial third
movement of Brahms’ Fourth Symphony, its position within an overall tragic
narrative suggests an underlying irony—the necessary false triumph before the
final peripeteia. For some listeners, passing shadows hint at an underlying
anxiety beneath the music’s decorative, balletic surface; at times, the music
can also seem artificial, mechanical, and repetitive, as if going in circles.
It is perhaps worth noting that in his later years, the famously shy Tchaikovsky
had ambivalent feelings about his own celebrity; while he was gratified by
success, he dreaded being feted at official occasions and felt that he had to
don “a mask” with strangers. He was also well aware of his exceptional talent
for writing stirring, celebratory finales. Perhaps the end of this movement is
a form of self-parody, just subtle enough that most take it for the real thing;
in an 1890 letter to the composer Alexander Glazunov, he wrote, “Something is
happening inside me, which I don’t understand: some sort of weariness from
life, a sense of disappointment. At times I’m madly homesick, but even in those
depths I can look forward to a new relish for life; instead it’s something
hopeless, final, and even, as finales often are, banal.”
The actual finale is among
Tchaikovsky’s most original conceptions; in place of the expected fireworks
(evoked in the previous movement) is a long, slow adagio in B minor. Marked
“lamentoso” (“lamenting”), the opening melody is the culmination of the many
descending scales that pervade the symphony. Tchaikovsky created a uniquely
labored sound by dividing the melody between the first and second violins—they
play each note of the descending scale in alternation.
Dying away, a bassoon solo leads
to a contrasting section; a long crescendo begins, the winds marked “con
espressione” (“with expression”) and the violins “con lenezza e devozione”
(“Lenezza,” interestingly, is not a standard Italian word. Some believe it is a
misspelling of “lentezza”—“slowness”—although others have suggested that it
might be an obscure, literary variant of “lenità”—“soothing.” “Devozione” means
“devotion” or “piety,” carrying a religious connotation). Slowly the music
rises, full of intense yearning, until reaching a thundering climax built on
descending scales. Like the climactic moment of the first movement of
Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, this climax seems a negation.
A rush of descending scales leads
to a pause, after which the main, lamentoso theme returns. This time, it builds
to an anguished passage, obsessively returning to an intensified version of the
main theme’s descending scale over a pedal in the timpani. A tamtam sounds, and
the “con devozione” music returns, slowly fading to nothing.
“LET THEM GUESS”
Soon after the premiere, Tchaikovsky
contracted cholera—St. Petersburg was in the midst of an outbreak of the
disease, although the worst of it had seemed to be past. Ignoring the threat,
Tchaikovsky drank unboiled water, both at home and when dining out. Often
plagued by stomach aches, he ignored the first symptoms with disastrous
results—by the time doctors were called, it was too late to save him. The
disease destroyed his kidneys, and he died soon after.
The public reaction was one of
shock. Tsar Alexander III himself ordered a state funeral for the composer who
had enjoyed his official patronage. Thousands thronged Nevsky Prospect to bid
farewell to the national hero as his funeral cortege passed. Twelve days after
his death, a memorial concert was given which featured his Sixth Symphony,
which now appeared with the subtitle that Tchaikovsky had intended to be
printed in the published score: Pateticheskaya, a literary Russian word meaning
“full of pathos, impassioned, passionate, emotional.” In the West, it is
usually translated as the French Pathétique.
Warning: the remainder of this
post includes discussion of self-harm and homophobia.
In contrast with the premiere,
when the symphony met with “bewilderment,” the work now made a profound
impression. As the final movement faded away, it seemed to many that
Tchaikovsky had written his own requiem. Immediately, rumors and conspiracy
theories began to spread that Tchaikovsky had committed suicide and that the
cholera diagnosis was a cover-up.
In fact, the evidence suggests
that nothing could be further from the truth, as Tchaikovsky biographer
Alexander Poznansky has convincingly demonstrated. Tchaikovsky did suffer from
depressive episodes throughout his life–the one he experienced during the
winter of 1892–93, when he began composing his Symphony Pathétique in his head
is a prime example. In this case, however, it seems that composing the symphony
helped Tchaikovsky purge these negative emotions. Surviving letters and memoirs
from friends and family who actually knew Tchaikovsky intimately suggest that
the months leading up to the premiere were happy ones during which Tchaikovsky
was busy making plans for the future.
LOVE THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS
NAME?
Nevertheless, the rumors
persisted, and especially in the wake of Oscar Wilde’s very public downfall in
England less than two years later, they began to link the composer’s alleged
suicide with his homosexuality. Specifically, people began to suspect that Tchaikovsky
had committed suicide because he was tortured by his sexuality.
That Tchaikovsky was gay was a
more or less open secret in Russian musical circles and high society during his
life. Though sex between men was officially illegal, attitudes toward
homosexuality seem to have been surprisingly tolerant in 19th century Russia,
at least among the upper classes. A number of Tchaikovsky’s gay friends even
lived openly with lovers, and after Tsar Alexander III awarded Tchaikovsky
official honors and a state-funded pension, he had virtually nothing to fear in
terms of legal prosecution or exposure in the press within Russia (although it
seems unlikely that the Tsar’s patronage could have protected him from scandal
outside of Russia–perhaps explaining his dislike of traveling abroad). Tsar
Alexander III in all likelihood was aware of and unconcerned by Tchaikovsky’s
sexuality, as he was of that of other gay men at his court.
Though Tchaikovsky struggled to
come to turns with his sexuality earlier in his life, in the aftermath of his
disastrous marriage, he seems to have found self-acceptance. At the same time,
it is difficult to imagine that he was completely happy with the society in
which he lived. He was out to his brothers (though not his parents or sisters)
and his close friends and professional colleagues, but that was as open as he
wanted to be. A passage from Tolstoy’s 1899 novel Resurrection gives some idea
of contemporary attitudes on the topic, ranging from disgust to amusement.
After becoming embroiled in a homosexual scandal, an official is punished not
with prison, but by being made governor of a distant town in Siberia:
The cover of the first US edition
of Tolstoy’s “Resurrection.” The novel included one of the earliest explicit
discussions of homosexuality in Russian fiction, albeit as a minor subplot. The
first Russian novel to focus on gay characters and themes was Mikhail Kuzmin’s
“Wings,” published in 1906. Had Tchaikovsky not contracted cholera, he might
have lived to have read it.
Meanwhile the Senators rang and
ordered tea, and began talking about the event that, together with the duel,
was occupying the Petersburgers.
It was the case of the chief of a
Government department, who was accused of the crime provided for in Statute
995.
“What nastiness,” said Bay, with
disgust.
“Why; where is the harm of it? I
can show you a Russian book containing the project of a German writer [likely
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs], who openly proposes that it should not be considered a
crime,” said Skovorodnikoff, drawing in greedily the fumes of the crumpled
cigarette, which he held between his fingers close to the palm, and he laughed
boisterously.
“Impossible!” said Bay.
I shall show it you,” said
Skovorodnikoff, giving the full title of the book, and even its date and the
name of its editor.
“I hear he has been appointed
governor to some town in Siberia.”
“That`s fine. The archdeacon will
meet him with a crucifix. They ought to appoint an archdeacon of the same
sort,” said Skovorodnikoff. “I could recommend them one,” and he threw the end
of his cigarette into his saucer, and again shoved as much of his beard and
moustaches as he could into his mouth and began chewing them.
While tolerated by some,
homosexuality was clearly not widely accepted or considered to be respectable.
Could Tchaikovsky’s feelings regarding his sexuality have played a role in the
genesis of his Sixth Symphony? It is impossible to know, and there is no direct
evidence to suggest that they did. Certainly Tchaikovsky experienced many other
hardships throughout his life that could have provided fodder for a tragic
symphony. The death of his sister in 1891, as well as the passing of other
close friends, might have been an alternative stimulus for the work’s tragic
mood.
Many have criticized the need to
search for autobiographical interpretations at all, arguing that to do so
implicitly belittles the power of Tchaikovsky’s imagination. After all, does
anyone look for autobiographical interpretations of, say, Strauss’s Salome?
Clearly Strauss did not need to perform a striptease in order to write the
Dance of the Seven Veils. Furthermore, interpretations of the symphony as a
“gay suicide note” play into many unfortunate tropes and stereotypes that have
long dogged the representation of LGBTQ people in media, namely the tendency of
writers to kill off LGBTQ characters and the implication that it is impossible
to be LGBTQ and happy at the same time.
Nevertheless, it is important to
remember that the symphony was often interpreted as a specifically homosexual
tragedy within the gay community itself. In 1913-14, 20 years after the
premiere of Tchaikovsky’s symphony, E. M. Forster penned Maurice, a novel with
explicitly gay characters and themes. Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique (and its
speculative interpretations) play a notable role in the novel, which
demonstrates just how widespread the rumors were even in the symphony’s first
decades. No one will ever know what Tchaikovsky’s “secret program” was, and the
symphony is open to as many interpretations as it has listeners.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)