The Arts: Music from the Oud

By Lisa J. Yarde

Arabic oud

The oud or ud. One of the most popular stringed instruments meant to reverberate as if struck when played. It became synonymous with the music of the medieval Arabic world from the ninth century onward, but its origins aren't from the Arabs. From ancient Egypt and Greece, similar forms of the same type of instrument can be found. The Persian (modern day Iranian) barbat or barbud is one of the oldest version of what would come to be known as the lute in Christian lands and a precursor of the oud in the Middle East and the guitar in the West. The barbat has existed in Central Asia since at least the first century BC, where the first image of it occurred in northern Bactria, once comprised of regions in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. 

Persian barbat

The Persians adapted the barbat, carved from one piece of wood, covered in part with leather or some kind of animal skin. During the Islamic expansion of the seventh century, Arab musicians became aware of the instrument, which they called al oud meaning wood and specifically flexible or thin wood. Several kinds of wood have been used over the centuries; some chosen for their aromatic quality, like sandalwood but the beech, walnut, maple, pistachio, cypress, oak, cedar and pine trees have also been used in the creation of the oud.

The shape has typically remained that of a bowl or sound box connected to a short neck, with strings stretched from the lower half of the sound box across the body, which changed as the oud developed. The barbat's form revealed more of the neck than the oud. The slimmer, smaller body of the barbat's sound box became pear-shaped with a rounded, swelling back and a flat front surface in the medieval Islamic period. The body was pierced by two or three oval holes, rather than the one found in the barbat, often in an ornamental design. The oud began as a two-stringed instrument, but this evolved over time as well. Music from the oud also found further refinement in Spain through the musician Ziryab, discussed here in my 2011 article; he added additional strings. These are plucked with a plectrum held between the thumb and index finger, which sets off a deep but mellow, vibrating resonance when the instrument is played. There are pegs attached to neck as well. A maker of the oud, along with those who construct lutes, violins and guitars, is called a luthier.

Beyond the influence of Moorish Spain, other refinements to the oud occurred in Turkey during the Ottoman period and Egypt. Those instruments played in Turkey tend to be smaller than the Arabic version, with a lighter weight construction. There has not always been a great appreciation for the music of the oud. Over the centuries, some have condemned its soothing sound, as well as all other forms of music as sinful and a sign of indolence within society. As early as the Safavid period in 16th-century Persia and as late as 2003, religious fanatics have tried to forbid oud playing. Fortunately, today its music can still be heard all over the Middle East and in North Africa. 

A modern version of music from the oud from one of my favorite players.

Sources

All images are public domain, royalty-free. Oud (Bigstock from Shutterstock), Barbat (Wiki Commons) .

Video: Ahmed Alshaiba's cover of Adele's Hello, from YouTube

Lisa J. Yarde writes fiction inspired by the Middle Ages in Europe. She is the author of two historical novels set in medieval England and Normandy, The Burning Candle, based on the life of one of the first countesses of Leicester and Surrey, Isabel de Vermandois, and On Falcon's Wings, chronicling the star-crossed romance between Norman and Saxon lovers before the Battle of Hastings. Lisa is completing a six-part series set in Moorish Spain, Sultana, Sultana’s Legacy, Sultana: Two Sisters, Sultana: The Bride Price, Sultana: The Pomegranate Tree, and Sultana: The White Mountains, where rivalries and ambitions threaten the fragile bonds between members of a powerful family. Her short story, The Legend Rises, which chronicles the Welsh princess Gwenllian of Gwynedd’s valiant fight against English invaders, is also available.

Wonders and Marvels: The Cantigas de Santa Maria

By Jessica Knauss

King Alfonso directs his subjects to worship Jesus through the Virgin Mary
and the angel Gabriel in the F manuscript of the Cantigas de Santa Maria. 

A poor woman takes her baby with her to the wheat fields — she has no alternative. While his mother works, the boy swallows a head of wheat and his belly swells to alarming proportions. His mother, believing he’s been poisoned or bitten by a spider, frets over him for several days. When she despairs for his life, there’s only one person — or supernatural being — she can turn to. She lays him before the altar of Our Lady of Atocha. The boy’s clothes are removed, and no one can find a spider bite, but they do find an intact head of wheat coming out the boy’s side. The boy recovers immediately. Everyone gives praise to the Virgin Mary for such a beautiful miracle.

The Cantigas de Santa Maria tell of the wonders of the Virgin Mary in a way that still makes people marvel.

Alfonso X of Castile and León is called el Sabio because he loved learning. He made it possible for a team of scholars to record the latest scientific advances for future generations. He carried this compulsion for compilation through to the Cantigas, which are a collection of nearly 400 songs with words, music, and illustrations.

Many of the miracles involve a dramatic recovery, as in Cantiga 315 above, or theatrical leaps of faith, as in the story about the good wife whose husband was so jealous of her that he mistreated her terribly. She asks him if he would believe she’s faithful to him if she underwent a trial by fire. He responds that he doesn’t think that’s necessary, but she can jump off a cliff! If she comes out alive, that will be proof of her fidelity. The woman comes to the edge of the highest, scariest cliff for miles around.

She commends herself to the Virgin Mary and throws herself over. With the entire town as witness, she lands feet first on ground that seems soft and smooth to her, although for non-believers, it would have been rocky — and deadly.

In the style of a rosary, the Cantigas punctuate the miracle stories with songs in praise of the Virgin Mary’s own wondrous nature at every tenth cantiga.

Even these most spiritual of the Cantigas display a down-to-earth quality. One of Alfonso’s main objectives with these songs was to show how wonder could reach absolutely everyone in his realm through Mary, from the poor lady in the wheat field, through nobles, sheriffs, monks, nuns, and warriors, to the king himself. Because they so accurately portray real life, the Cantigas don’t limit Alfonso’s realm to people, but also include the animals that cohabited with his subjects, such as horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, ermines, and silk worms!

A woman who makes her living with silk has trouble: her silk worms are dying. She goes to the Virgin Mary’s altar and promises that if Mary revives her silk worms, she will make an altar cloth to honor the Queen of Heaven. Soon enough, the silk worms are hard at work again, but the woman forgets her promise — until, one day, she comes home to find that the worms have taken her promise upon themselves. They make not one, but two altar cloths, and in the illustrations we see the added miracle that they already have a beautiful lacy design. The fame of the miracle spreads, and since there are two of them, King Alfonso takes one for his own altar to the Virgin Mary.

Most of the lower-numbered cantigas take stories from all over Europe’s Marian repertoire, but as the king’s demand for more and more miracles increased (the goal may have been 500), the poets searched closer to home and in more recent history. As Cantiga 18 shows, some feature Alfonso himself, and 22 take place during the reconstruction of El Puerto de Santa María in the south, one of the king’s pet projects.

Cantiga 371 tells how a large ship headed for El Puerto was laden with flour and people. Some of them were coming for the land grants, some to work as masons, some to form part of the new religious community. El Puerto’s fame was already widespread, as the refrain reports: “Holy Mary performs so many miracles in her Port that we poets can’t describe the least part of them.”

Unfortunately, the ship in this cantiga hits a rock and sinks, killing everyone on board except one woman. She cries out to the Virgin, “I’m coming to you, so save my life with your great power.” In that instant, one of the sacks of flour emerges from the ship, and even though it’s heavy, it floats as if it were very light. The woman floats along atop it, calling, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, Emmanuel,” until she arrives at El Puerto to be welcomed by the residents.

Not all the miracles are so outwardly spectacular. In one of my favorites, the miracle consists of a violent, lustful knight deciding to change his ways.

As you can see in the illustrations, he’s already got an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. The Virgin Mary appears to him with a beautiful silver platter filled with rotten food — a metaphor for the knight’s outward loveliness and evil interior. He gets the message loud and clear. Even though the knight’s life is never threatened in this cantiga, his soul is in danger of eternal damnation, which, to medieval thinking, is the most dramatic story of all.

It’s said that the Cantigas were the king’s favorite project, as they incurred the most labor, expense, and time. The compilation may have begun before Alfonso ascended to the throne in 1252 and ended only upon his death in 1284. In his will, Alfonso instructed that the Cantigas manuscripts should be kept in the chapel where he was buried (in the cathedral in Sevilla) and sung on high feast days. None of the four extant manuscripts reside there now: an early draft without illustrations known as To is in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid; King Felipe II had three deluxe manuscripts (including E and T) removed to the Escorial in the sixteenth century; and somehow one of those deluxe manuscripts (F) came to be at the Italian National Library in Florence today.

The Cantigas de Santa Maria deal with people’s interior lives as well as the most unexpected details of their exterior lives, and include everyone from every social class, from Spain to Europe to Northern Africa and the Middle East. Some of these songs are masterpieces of lyricism, others are solid narratives from a time before short stories existed, and still others take humor to new heights. Each of the thousands of illustrations offers delights to appreciate from any point of view. They constitute the largest collection of medieval music ever amassed and contain every imaginable Western musical style.

In their time, the Cantigas celebrated marvels and wonders, and today they have become a marvel in themselves because of the sense of wonder they convey in greater measure as time goes on. 

You can now experience ten of the Cantigas de Santa Maria in a fun new way in J. K. Knauss's Our Lady's Troubadour. 

Jessica Knauss earned her PhD in Medieval Spanish with a dissertation on the portrayal of Alfonso X’s laws in the Cantigas de Santa Maria, which has been published as the five-star-rated Law and Order in Medieval Spain. A driven fiction writer, Jessica Knauss has edited many fine historical novels and is currently a bilingual copyeditor at an educational publisher. Find out more about her historical novel, Seven Noble Knights, and her other writing and bookish activities here. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter, too!

Tragic Tales: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

By Zoe Archer

Born in London in 1875, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was the son of an African man from Sierra Leone and an Englishwoman. His father, Daniel Taylor, was a London-trained doctor who lived five years in England. Britain, unlike the United States at this time, had no formalized segregation, and Dr. Taylor studied medicine at King's College in London, later qualifying as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, England. By contrast, Coleridge-Taylor's mother was the illegitimate daughter of a domestic servant. There is no evidence that Dr. Taylor and Alice Holmans ever married, but they did have a romantic relationship. She gave birth to Samuel on August 15, 1875.

It's worth noting that, during the Victorian period, interracial relationships were far more common in Britain than in the United States and the Caribbean--and, due to migration patterns and other factors, the majority of these interracial couples were comprised of black men and white women. The greater concern arose from Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's possible illegitimacy rather than his biracial heritage, a fact which later biographers attempted to obscure.

Seven months before Samuel's birth, his father left England. It's entirely possible he never knew Alice was pregnant, and he never had any communication with his son. Samuel was raised by his mother and maternal grandfather in Croydon, a suburb of London. A family member was a professional musician, and music lessons were provided for the boy. Coleridge-Taylor showed an unusual aptitude for music, and was sponsored to the Royal College of Music at the age of fifteen. Despite this sponsorship, a large social gap existed between him and the other students, living, as he did, next to the railroad tracks and downwind from the slaughterhouse, and had never played a single note on a piano until he entered the college. Most of the other students had homes with their own pianos. Even after he began attendance, Coleridge-Taylor's instruments, such as his violin, were loaned to him.

He continued to show an exceptional musical ability, and in 1891, his composition In Thee, O Lord was published by the music publisher Novello. The company went on to publish a series of Coleridge-Taylor's pieces. He began to conduct the Croydon Conservatory Orchestra in 1895, and, following his graduation a year later, taught privately in Croydon, at Trinity College and at the Rochester Choral Society. The next few years saw Coleridge-Taylor producing a number of celebrated musical works, including Ballade in A Minor for the Gloucester Three Choirs Festival, which also received tremendous acclaim for its London premier at the Crystal Palace.

Only weeks later, Coleridge-Taylor's piece Hiawatha's Wedding Feast premiered at the Royal College of Music. An ill Sir Arthur Sullivan, of Gilbert & Sullivan, pushed himself to attend. The performance of Hiawatha's Wedding Feast made Coleridge-Taylor an international celebrity virtually overnight. Unfortunately, he never earned any royalty payments. Little knowing the success the piece would have, he had already sold the rights to Novello for the paltry sum of fifteen guineas.

Coleridge-Taylor composed two companion pieces to form the Hiawatha Trilogy, known as The Song of Hiawatha. His popularity continued to rise, and his original works were performed both in Britain and abroad. He took on numerous teaching, writing, composing, festival judging and performance engagements, as well as becoming a Professor of Composition at Trinity College of Music in London and conductor to the Handel Society. In the midst of this whirlwind of activity, he married Jessie Fleetwood-Walmisely (though her family objected to his mixed-race heritage), and the couple had two children, including a son aptly named Hiawatha.

He toured extensively in the United States, meeting privately with President Roosevelt, and was hailed by the black American community as a symbol of hope over oppression. He worked continuously in his many roles as teacher, composer, conductor and adjudicator.

In 1912, Coleridge-Taylor collapsed on the West Croydon train platform. He managed to make it home, but four days later, he succumbed to pneumonia brought about by exhaustion. At the time of his death, he was only 37. Hundreds turned out for his funeral, but because royalty payments to composers were both slight and rare, a memorial concert was held to raise money for his widow and children.

Jessie Coleridge-Taylor insisted that Novello refused to reliably grant her royalties on The Song of Hiawatha, her late husband's most commercially successful work. Two years later, the Performing Rights Society was formed in Great Britain. Its goal was to ensure musicians were paid fairly for their work. King George V granted Jessie Coleridge-Taylor an annual Civil List Pension of £100.

From 1928 until 1939, The Song of Hiawatha was lavishly performed every summer at the Royal Albert Hall. Coleridge-Taylor's reputation faded over the years, his work dismissed as "too commercial," but recently new attention and appreciation has arisen for the man hailed as "the Black Mahler."

Tragic Tales: Ludwig Loses His Hearing

By Carrie Lofty

Composer and musician Ludwig van Beethoven was only 26 years old when he began to lose his hearing. By this time he had already established himself as a fine pianist and teacher, but he had only published a few piano sonatas. His first symphony would not be published and performed until 1801. Thus his early-onset deafness affected almost the entire span of his musical career.

His symptoms began as a minor annoyance but developed into full-blown tinnitus, a ringing noise medically defined as "the perception of sound within the human ear in the absence of corresponding external sound" (Wikipedia). Historians and doctors have since debated the cause of his tinnitus, which could have originated with syphilis, typhus, lupus, or even lead poisoning.

(I adore this picture of Gary Oldman as Beethoven from Immortal Beloved. It helped inspire my June 2010 Carina Press release, SONG OF SEDUCTION. There is nothing sexier than a man consumed by his passions!)

Beethoven admitted to his growing deafness as early as 1801, when he described the difficulties he had in appreciating music and following conversations. After retreating to Austria in an to attempt to come to terms with his condition, he wrote to his brothers--the famous Heiligenstadt Testament, in which he vowed to live life through his art. This initiated his prolific and profound "Middle Period" of composition, but marked a significant decline in his ability to perform in public.

Because public performances and piano competition had been a lucrative part of his income--a financial mainstay of his contemporaries--he suffered lapses into poverty when between patrons. Frustration and embarrassment may have contributed to his reputation for being grumpy, loud, unmanned, and generally unpleasant. His close friends knew the cause, but few others did.

After a disastrous interpretation of his 5th Symphony in 1811, Beethoven never played in public again. He was completely deaf by 1814. Quite famously, he could not hear the overwhelming applause when his masterful 9th Symphony was debuted in 1824. Here the scene is portrayed in Immortal Beloved:


Although Beethoven left us with a staggering catalog of some of the best music ever composed, he was unable to appreciate his creations as we do. He heard his music only in his mind. To communicate with people, he used notebooks that continue to offer musical scholars priceless insight into his opinions and thought processes. But Anton Schindler, an associate and early biographer of Beethoven, burned 264 of the 400 notebooks in an attempt to clean up the composer's image and maintain a sense of aura around his process--so not even that aspect of Beethoven's tale escaped a tragic ending.

Excerpt Thursday: Carrie Lofty

This week on Excerpt Thursday we're welcoming Unusual Historicals' founder and moderator, Carrie Lofty (that's me!), as she celebrates the release of SONG OF SEDUCTION. This is the first of two romances set in Napoleonic Austria that Carrie has contracted with Carina Press, Harlequin's new digital-first venture, which launched this month. Carina Press titles are available in all electronic formats wherever e-books are sold. Join us Sunday when Carrie will be answering questions and giving away a copy!

Tormented by guilt. Haunted by scandal. Freed by love.

Austria, 1804

Eight years ago, composer Arie De Voss claimed his late mentor's final symphony as his own and became an icon. But fame has a price: fear of discovery now poisons his attempts to compose a redemptive masterpiece. Until a new muse appears, intoxicating and inspiring him...

Mathilda Heidel renounced her own musical gift to marry, seeking a quiet life to escape the shame surrounding her birth. Sudden widowhood finds her tempted by song once more. An unexpected introduction to her idol, Arie De Voss, renews Mathilda's passion for the violin--and ignites a passion for the man himself.

But when lust and lies reach a crescendo, Arie will be forced to choose: love or truth?

***

He pushed Mathilda against the night-damp wall of their concealed passageway. Pressed by the unyielding bricks, her soft curves molded and formed to his taut body. With impatient hands he grasped the round fullness of her rear and pulled the cradle of her hips to his. She thrust to meet him, accepting his rough violence and demanding more.

Although Mathilda was trapped between Arie and the bricks at her back, her answering hunger enslaved him. Her kiss sanctioned no breath of air, no reasonable thought. Good sense diminished to a forgettable fiction while his deepest, most elemental instincts demanded that she yield to his rigid length--even there, forced against an alley wall.

A determined echo of sanity would not allow him to perpetrate another such travesty. The greatest regret he suffered from their hastily wrought intimacy in February was just that: his confounded haste. Keen on instant fulfillment, his body demanded a brutal orgasm. Arie, however, wanted to experience more than the rudimentary satisfaction of a quickly roused urge.

Mathilda seemed willing. Beste God, he hoped so. Only the few remaining steps to his studio stood between them and a long, slow night of exploration. He wanted to discover her, not shove and jostle until she felt obliged to ask him to stop.

With that most pleasurable goal at the front of his hazy consciousness, Arie began to slow the tugging rush of hands and lips and tongues. He said her name once, then again. He breathed deeply, her essence like warm mulled wine. The surprising male animal that had briefly taken control receded to a corner of his mind. The animal watched, waiting, but Arie successfully wrested control from the creature. For now.

"Mathilda."

He buried his face at her neck. The smooth, warm skin evoked a profound sense of tenderness within him. He loved her. He needed her like his next breath--so much that a surge of fear clenched his heart and caused that dependable organ to thump painfully. Even as he restrained the lust driving him near to mindlessness, he labored to hold a wave of dread at bay.

"This is where you belong," he rasped. "Never forget what I tell you."

"Where, against a wall again?"

Her placid teasing leavened his anxieties. Arie smiled and nipped her top lip. "Minx."

"Wretch."

With trembling fingers, Arie traced the line of her nose. "Why aren't you shaking?"

"Habit. I lived with wanting you, wanting and not having you. I had no choice." She slid questing hands from his shoulders to his biceps and squeezed. "Take me home."

Her request stung like the winter wind. "Really? To the Venner house?"

"No." In her reticule, she searched for a single worn slip of heavy parchment. She kissed the little card before waving it playfully before his face. "To Getreidegasse 26."

"You kept that?" He took the dog-eared card between two fingers. "Small wonder you have no need for your pendant. Look at this poor, worn thing."

"I kept it as a souvenir. The prospect of that first lesson made me unbearably nervous. I had no idea what to expect."

Arie clutched the flesh of her hips. "I had an idea then, but I was quite mistaken."

"And what idea do you have tonight?"

"A very similar one. I want you, Tilda, and I believe you want me too. Please, tell me I am not wrong."

Smiling, she reclaimed the worn address card and kissed it. "You're not wrong."

Arts and Music: The Stradivarius Violin

By Lisa Marie Wilkinson

Wurlitzer organ. Steinway piano. Les Paul, Gibson, and Fender Stratocaster guitars.

Some musical instrument maker names represent the gold standard of musical instruments, and at the top of the list is the Stradivarius.

The term "Stradivarius" refers to stringed instruments--including guitars, violas, cellos, harps and violins--created by members of the Stradivari family, beginning with craftsman Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737). Stradivari set up shop in the small Italian city of Cremona in 1680 and soon gained a reputation for the quality of his handcrafted string instruments. The "Golden Age" of the Stradivari violin, during which the highest quality violins were produced, is generally conceded to be from 1698 to 1720.

Stradivari experimented with form, construction methods, and the types of wood employed in the creation of his instruments throughout his career. Spruce was used for the top, willow for the internal workings of the instrument and maple for the neck and back. It has long been speculated that he treated the wood with various minerals, and used a custom varnish consisting of honey, Arabic gum, and egg white as the finishing touch.

Nearly 400 years later, we can still only speculate about what it is that makes the sound of a Stradivarius so unique in quality. A number of disparate theories have been explored, including the rumor that the wood used to make the Stradivari instruments had been removed from old cathedrals, or that the dense wood came from trees whose growth had been stunted during what is referred to as "The Little Ice Age" that affected Europe from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

Whether the sound quality results from the shape of the instrument, the minerals used to prepare the wood, irregularities in the wood itself, the special recipes used for the glue and varnishes, or some undefined "something" contributed by the art of the instrument maker has provided fodder for lively debate for centuries.

The one thing the world has been able to agree upon is that an instrument bearing the Latin inscription "Antonius Stradivarius Cremonensis Faciebat Anno (date)" is special, and the belief that there are fewer than 700 surviving genuine Stradivari instruments in existence today has created a high demand for them, resulting in steep prices at auction. Depending upon the condition of the instrument and the year it was made, a Stradivarius sold at auction can fetch anywhere from several hundred thousand to several million dollars. Famous musicians who have owned and played a famed Stradivari violin include Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman, who owns a model referred to as The Soil of Strad of 1714, which is considered one of the finest of all the Stradivari violins.

In 2009, the famed Stradivarius lost in a competition against a modern engineered violin in a five-violin blind play-off held during a German forest husbandry conference. The Stradivarius, whose name has come to represent the modern standard of excellence, came in second.

Arts and Music: Medieval Dance

By Lindsay Townsend

Four husbands into her career, Chaucer's Wife of Bath was still young and a lively soul:

Yong and ful of ragerie,
Stibourn and strong, and joly as a pie [magpie].
How koulde I daunce to a harpe smale
And singe, ywis, as any nightingale,
Whan I had dronke a draughte of sweete wyn!

So how would she have danced?

Dancing in circles has gone on for who knows how long, and the medieval carol--a circular dance and the songs that went with it--was popular with everybody but the church. The songs, involving a leader who sang the verse, music from harp, pipe and tabor or the vielle (a predecessor to the violin) and the dancers providing the chorus, could get distinctly rowdy, and clerics could impose sanctions against those who moved in an unseemly fashion or sang colourful lyrics in churchyards.

The lyrics from early carols are hard to come by, but one popular carol from the thirteenth century, Angelus ad virginem, whose English version begins "Gabriel fram Heven-king/Sent to the maide swete," has a bouncy tune ideal both for accompaniment with pipe and tabor and for the circular carol-dance. The music can be heard here, and possible steps have been suggested here.

Many dances thought of as medieval--such as the basse danse, branle and pavane--really belong to the Renaissance, when the first collections of dance music were made, but we can trace some formal dances like the saltarello, with its triple time and extravagant hop, back to the thirteenth-century.

If a solo dancer or tumbler took part in social dancing, there could be some seriously gymnastic capering. The sight of women dancing on their hands may have led to an emphasis on modesty in later instruction books such as Guglielmo Ebreo's fifteenth century Art of Dance, but in earlier times things were more freewheeling. A poem from the Benediktbeuren Manuscript of c. 1230 (Obmittamus studia) has a young student longing to abandon his lessons and go down into the street to watch the maidens dancing, 'white limbs moving/Light in wantonness,' as Helen Waddell translated it.

Now that would have appealed to Chaucer.

Arts and Music: Stephen Foster

By Jacquie Rogers

I'll bet there's not a soul who reads this article who hasn't sung a Stephen Foster song. I grew up in a traditional farm community, so he figured in heavily when it came to Grange dances and activities. So who is this guy?

He wrote several hundred songs. He changed the face of music in America to give us our own style. He wrote songs that have endured for 150-plus years, and still going strong. You've heard of "Oh, Susannah"? He wrote it. How about "My Old Kentucky Home"? He wrote that. As well as "Camptown Races," "Old Folks at Home," and my favorite, "Beautiful Dreamer." He gave America a new sound and a new respect in the music world.

He was trained as an engineer at Athens Academy in Pennsylvania where he wrote his first composition that was performed in public: Tioga Waltz, which was played at the 1839 graduation ceremony. Athens Academy was near a place familiar to Stephen Foster fans--Camptown Races.

He wrote a bunch of minstrel songs to get his career started. These songs were performed by singers and dancers in black-face, as was the popular comic style in the 1850s. But after ten years of that, he grew tired of the "Ethiopian" style and began to write songs that portrayed black people in a heartfelt, honest way. This is when he wrote "Nelly Was a Lady," about a man's grief over his deceased woman. Heretofore, no white songwriter had written songs about black people (remember, slavery was still a way of life then) in a humanizing way.

While he was known for writing southern songs, Foster at no time lived in the south. He grew up in Pennsylvania, moved to Cincinnati for a while, and lived his later years in New York.

Very few musicians leave their fingerprints on a country the way Stephen Foster did, but he wasn't a performer so had to rely entirely on sheet music royalties for his income, and he died in poverty.

From Pitt.edu: "Foster's only real income was the royalty he earned on sheet-music sales. Altogether he made $15,091.08 in royalties during his lifetime and almost nothing in performing rights (yearly average was $1,371 for his 11 most productive years). His heirs, Jane and Marion equally, later earned $4,199 in royalties, so that the total known royalties on his songs amounted to $19,290. Today, it would be worth millions."

Sources:
Pitt.edu
PBS: American Experience
Wikipedia
PD Music

Down Home Ever Lovin' Mule Blues (See the Book Video featuring Justin Saragueta)
Jacquie's Website * 1st Turning Point * Myspace * Twitter * Facebook
Faery Special Romances * Book Video Royalties go to Children's Tumor Foundation, ending Neurofibromatosis through Research

Arts and Music: The Roaring 20s

By Isabel Roman

Many people say that the 1960s were the 20th century's time of peaceful revolution. Free sex, drugs, and rock and roll. But have you forgotten the 1920s? The Roaring 20s. They roared in a revolution like the world hadn't before seen. An evolution of fashion, thought, politics, and most especially music.

In the 20s, hot jazz, sultry blues, and upbeat tunes such as "Puttin' on the Ritz" and "No, We Have No Bananas Today," finally found their way into mainstream society. Women's skirts rose for the first time in over 3,000 years, and their knees knocked as they danced to the Charleston.

People lined up to pay $3.50 a seat to watch such Broadway hits as the Ziegfeld Follies.

But one of the most important evolutions in music happened because of a political change that threw subversive music into a little thing called the speakeasy. Liquor had been prohibited and the rise of the gangster happened because the drug of choice was booze. Everybody wanted it, nobody could get it. More than just serving a glass of moonshine, people wanted an experience.

The smart criminal established private lounges with secret passwords and pseudonyms for drinks. And offered a venue to the struggling young musician. Alternative music was heard here, jazzy, fast, up-tempo: keep the customer happy and dancing, and they'd keep drinking. Anything and everything went, and from these crime ridden, illegal dens, popular music was born.

We have to give credit to the roots of the music, most likely a hybrid of old southern slave songs, African-American music, and Latin beats.

Bessie Smith, the Andrews Sisters, and the rise of the Big Bands drew crowds like no other. Thanks to the 1920s, and the musicians who pioneered that sound, we have the music we do today. Everyone from Fergie, to Madonna, to Prince has these 1920s musicians to thank. They were the revolutionaries of rhythm.

Arts and Music: Ma Rainey

By Lorelie Brown

On April 26, 1886, Gertrude Pridgett was born to parents Ella and Thomas, who worked the minstrel circuit, a kind of sub-category to vaudeville.

It doesn't seem like a particularly auspicious beginning, does it? Who would have ever imagined that Gertrude Pridgett would eventually become Ma Rainey, the woman acknowledged to be the "Mother of the Blues"?

Ma Rainey got her start in entertaining early. By 1900, at 14, she was working steadily in vaudeville, and traveling with her parents. In 1904, she met and married William "Pa" Rainey, and at that point took on her iconic name. At some point in her travels--most people seem to believe in St. Louis--she heard authentic country blues, and began incorporating them into her routines, as well as putting her own spins on songs.

By 1912, Bessie Smith, who would later be known as the "Empress of the Blues" had joined their troupe as a dancer. At one point, it was believed that Ma Rainey had vocally trained Bessie Smith, but that's lately come into doubt. It's now said that Smith mostly got her stage presence from Rainey. (And something else, but I'll cover that in a second.)

In 1923, Ma Rainey started recording for Paramount and would eventually go on to record a hundred "sides" (mini-albums) with them. She wasn't the first, and her recordings weren't the best, primarily because of poor quality, but she became one of the most famous, bridging the gap between country blues and the woman-centric blues that would become the signature style of the Roaring Twenties. Despite a few minor scrapes with the law, she was an exemplary entertainer, and is often regarded as a consummate professional. Her career faded in the 30s, as blues went out of style because people were already miserable and couldn't stand to listen to anything sad. She retired to her hometown of Columbus, Georgia, where she managed two theaters until her death of heart disease in 1939.

I know what you're saying to yourself. Lorelie wrote about a figure with no sex or scandal? Pshaw. Yeah, right.

Well, didja wonder what happened to Pa Rainey? The simple answer is not much. He and Ma separated in 1916, twelve years after their marriage, and he disappeared into obscurity.

So what did Ma do after that on the relationship front? Apparently anything she wanted. In Chicago Ma Rainey was arrested after a noise complaint led police to a hotel room, where they discovered a number of performers from Rainey's current show in a state of undress and performing "intimate" acts. Oh, by the way? All the performers in that hotel room were women! Ma was bailed out of jail by Bessie Smith, who she supposedly also had a relationship with. The general supposition seems to be that Rainey was at the very least bisexual, and her songs seem to bear that out.

Now we're going to have the interactive portion of this program. I'm including a YouTube vid of Ma's "See See Rider Blues," one of her most famous songs. But I need you to do something for me before you hit play. Either turn off all background noise or get some headphones. Then, after you start it up, sit back and close your eyes. Listen to the emotion and particularly the pain easily heard in her voice. An amazing performer, isn't she? Now you understand why she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, fifty-one years after her death.

Arts and Music: Glenn Miller

By Carrie Lofty

Big Band music skyrocketed in popularity in the 1920s and 30s, reaching its zenith during WWII. An estimated $90 million was spent on live club music entertainment in 1938 alone. While this dollar amount went down during the war years, that didn't mean that the Big Band craze had waned. It was just that all the boys had gone off to fight!

At the close of the first war draft session in 1942, Benny Goodman had lost all but four of his orchestra. Retirees and women soon filled the ranks, and many of those bands traveled the country on USO Camp Shows to entertain the troops and stump for war bonds. On occasion band leaders themselves were drafted or volunteered. One of the most famous was Alton Glenn Miller, born in 1904 in Clarinda, Iowa.

After enduring years of obscurity, Miller and his musicians played their famous Glen Island Casino gig in New Rochelle, New York. At that spring of '39 gig, they performed for over 1800 people. His popularity became a phenomenon. Time noted in late 1939: "Of the twelve to 24 discs in each of today's 300,000 U.S. jukeboxes, from two to six are usually Glenn Miller's." Some of those famous tunes were "Tuxedo Junction," "Chattanooga Choo-Choo," and his signature composition, "Moonlight Serenade."

In 1940, he was offered a 15-minute radio program once a week, with Chesterfield Cigarettes as the sponsor. Chesterfield was so concerned about Miller's maverick sound and raging young fans that they also booked the "safe" Andrews Sisters. That engagement was quickly bumped up to three times weekly. Eventually he went on to star alongside his musicians in the films Sun Valley Serenade and Orchestra Wives, released by Twentieth Century Fox in 1941 and 1942 respectively. Other classic hits followed as well, including "Pennsylvania 6-5000" and my personal favorite, "Sun Valley Jump."

That proved the height of his civilian career. In 1942, too old to be drafted, he appealed to join the US Army and hoped to established what he imagined as the first "modern" Army band. Transferred to the US Army Air Force with the rank of captain, he took his 50-piece band overseas and performed more than 800 shows for GIs and Allied soldiers. His popularity was thought to appeal to the German people as well. His lead vocalist, Johnny Desmond, sang many tunes in German, and Miller himself made German appeals to end the fighting. All of his wartime recordings in England were done at the famous Abbey Road Studios.

On December 15, 1944, Miller boarded a plane with the intention of meeting his band in newly-liberated Paris. They were to perform before a live audience, which would also be broadcast as a Christmas special back home in the States. His plane never arrived and he was eventually declared missing in action. His band carried on without him and performed the concert in his memory. They premiered "Little Brown Jug," which had been meant as a Christmas present for Miller's wife of sixteen years, Helen. She loved the song and had prodded him for years to do an updated arrangement.

Beyond the possibility of having crashed amidst heavy fog over the English Channel, other theories have been raised to explain his disappearance. The most widely accepted was that an air raid squadron, back from an aborted mission, dropped bomb payloads in the Channel over a designated spot. (Bombers had to discharge their cargo or risk explosion upon landing.) Another theory was that it was shot down by an anti-aircraft battery outside of Folkestone, England. The most convoluted was that, because Miller spoke German, he had been given a secret mission by Eisenhower to try and turn certain German officers toward the cause of peace, and that he was killed in a brothel in Paris. All reports of a crash, according to this scintillating theory, were part of a government cover-up.

Miller left behind Helen and their two young adopted children, Steven and Jonnie. He also left behind a legacy of music that few would ever top. His legacy was cemented with 1954's The Glenn Miller Story, starring fellow WWII Air Force volunteer, Jimmy Stewart (below). But that was the same year when Bill Haley recorded "Rock Around the Clock." Big Band would never be the same, and with only a few exceptions throughout the following years, it would never be the domain of young people again.

Famous People: Regina Strinasacchi

By Carrie Lofty

On April 29, 1784, a young woman performed with Mozart for Joseph II, the Holy Roman Emperor. But that woman, Regina Strinassachi, did not play pianoforte as most ladies were wont to do. She played violin, with Mozart on piano. Together they debuted Mozart's newest composition, Sonata in B flat for Violin and Keyboard (K. 454), which he had written for her.

By all accounts, K. 454 is a very difficult pieces, which speaks to Mozart's high opinion of Strinassachi as a performer. He often wrote "puff" pieces for influential patrons' children who had mediocre talent, but this was not one of them. In a letter to his father, Mozart wrote: "We now have here the famous Strinasacchi from Mantua, a very good violinist. She has a great deal of taste and feeling in her playing. I am this moment composing a sonata which we are going to play together on Thursday at her concert in the theater."

Because of prior arrangements, or perhaps because of laziness, Mozart did not get the sheet music to Strinassachi until the day of the performance, meaning she sight-read the entire sonata. He did not complete transcriptions for his half of the duet, playing instead with blank sheets of paper in front of him.

But perhaps Mozart had a deeper motive.

Strinassachi was reputed to be a lovely woman in face, form and temperament. The novelty of a female violinist drew music aficionados and curiosity seekers alike, because such performers were rare. In fact, in the German-speaking regions of Europe between 1760 and 1800, only three such female violinists maintained a regular touring schedule, a healthy fan base, and a respectable position within society.

So what was Mozart to do, his ego faced with the possibility of playing second to a woman who had the emperor's full attention? After the concert, someone--who is not clear--told the emperor that Mozart's pages were blank. Mozart merely shrugged, leaving the emperor to believe that he had improvised the entire duet, when musical historians now believe he had composed the piece mentally. But the wonder of Mozart's talent overshadowed Strinassachi's imperial debut.

So who was she?

The nuns at Venice's famous Ospedale della Pietà--founded by Antonio Vivaldi as a refuge for orphan girls, or perhaps for the illegitimate daughters of wealthy nobleman--constantly obscured the year of Strinasacchi's birth. As a child prodigy, if she could pass for ten years old, that would wow the audiences more than if she was actually 16. The fact she had a surname adds to the mystery of her origins, because most of the girls at the Pietà took on the names of their preferred instruments--Anna della Violin from Barbara Quick's Vivaldi's Virgins is one famous example.

Strinasacchi toured Italy, France and Germany, performing on both violin and guitar, before arriving in Vienna in 1784, where she met Mozart. In 1785, she married Johann Conrad Schlick, a famous cellist and konzertmeister of the Gotha ducal band. Some speculate that her marriage may have been one of a professional nature, because she became the first woman in Europe to perform full-time with an orchestra, rather than as an occasional soloist. She may have also composed. Their daughter Caroline, born in 1786, grew up to play piano as part of a family trio, and they split their time between Gotha and tours that reached as far as Russia.

Here I imagine Mathida, the heroine of my unpublished manuscript, Serenade, meeting Regina before a concert.

They reached Arie where he stood next to an elegant woman in her early forties. She wore an exquisite gown of watercolor blue silk and ivory lace trim. Gray-streaked black hair arranged in an elaborate coiffure of spirals and curls accentuated the graceful lines of her neck and slender face, her olive skin flawless. Magnetic black eyes shone from beneath dark, heavy lashes.

Mathilda had never seen such an arresting, self-possessed woman.

"De Voss, there you are," Haydn said.

"Gute Nacht, Kapellmeister. And Frau Heidel. Lovely to see you." Arie bowed deeply, his air bright and amused. He turned to present the elegant woman. "Allow me to present Frau Regina Schlick."

"I am honored to meet you both," the woman said. Her lilting Italian accent created melody out of plain speech. "Herr De Voss has told me you perform exquisitely."

"Thank you." Mathilda smiled broadly at the unexpected compliment. That he would speak of her in glowing terms to the exotic woman warmed her from top to toes. "The maestro flatters me."

"Nonsense. He recognizes talent almost as well as he composes." She turned and touched his arm. Mathilda fought an urge to slap her hand away. "Sir, your violin concerti remain among the most thrilling I know. I must have one of my own. You have promised for years."

"Quality requires patience, my dear."

His smooth response convinced even Mathilda. He sounded perfectly gracious and even...charming?

Watching the exchange, her jealousy--her uncertainty--increased. She never could have imitated the mysterious woman's air of unquestioned authority, holding the rapt attention of every man within earshot. Arie smiled warmly and with an expression of genuine interest.

Despondently, she wondered if he and the stylish woman had been intimate.

But no--he remained poised and cool, ignoring the fawning guests. Surely, a public reunion with a former lover would throw her reticent Dutchman into bashful fits.

Just who was she?

Their son Johann was born in 1801--when Strinassachi would have been nearly 40--and became a cellist and instrument maker. Caroline married and became an actress. Upon her husband's death in 1818, Strinassachi moved with her son to Dresden. She died in 1839, having lived through 80 tumultuous years--from the old Georgian and Classical periods, through the Napoleonic era, and into mid-19th century Victorian Europe.

But if anyone remembers Regina Strinassachi, it's because of that fateful day in 1784 when she found out what it meant to play second to Mozart.

Holidays & Celebrations:"Stille Nacht" - A Christmas Carol Travels the World

By Sandra Schwab

One of the most popular and most widely known Christmas carols is "Silent Night, Holy Night", or rather "Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht," for the text and the melody originated from Austria. Since its first performance in 1818 the carol has been translated into over 300 different languages and dialects.


The German version sung by the famous St. Thomas Boys' Choir (Leipzig)
The text of the song was written by Joseph Mohr in 1816 as a Christmas poem. Two years later, when he was temporary priest of St. Nicola's Church in Oberndorf near Salzburg (Salzburg--remember The Sound of Music? *g*). He asked Franz Xaver Gruber, the organist and headmaster of Oberndorf, to set his poem to music. Gruber finished the melody just in time for Christmas, and because Mohr liked the new song so much the two of them performed it during the Christmas Mass on 24 December, with Mohr accompanying them on the guitar. (According to another version of the story, the organ of St. Nicola's was broken therefore they needed a song for guitar accompaniment.)

In the following years, the carol became apparently well known throughout the Salzburg area, even though the names of the men who had written the text and music were forgotten. Gruber eventually felt compelled to write down the history of the carol in his Authentische Veranlassung zur Composition (Authentic Motive for the Composition, 1854).

But it was an organ builder who inadvertently caused the international popularity of "Stille Nacht": in the Authentische Veranlassung Gruber describes how Carl Mauracher brought the carol to Tyrol. And there it was picked up by two family choirs: by the Rainers and the Strassers. Both families toured Europe in the 1820s and 30s and "Stille Nacht" eventually became part of their repertoire: a Leipziger newspaper of 1832 reports that the Strassers performed "Stille Nacht" at their concert on 15 December. The Rainer Singers in turn brought the carol to the New World: from 1839 to 1843 they toured the USA, and on Christmas Day 1839 they gave "Stille Nacht" in New York.

English translations of the carol appeared in print as soon as the mid-19th century, and around 1900 Protestant and Catholic missionaries made "Stille Nacht" popular on all continents of the earth.


Enya sings "Silent Night" in Irish
"Stille Nacht" / "Silent Night" was one of the carols sung by German and British soldiers in the trenches of Belgium during the Christmas Truce of World War 1.

~~*~~~*~~~*~~
Unfortunately, the original church St. Nicola no longer exists: it was torn down about 100 ago. In its place a smaller "Stille Nacht Memorial Chapel" was erected. Each year on Christmas Eve a mass is held there in memory of Mohr and Gruber. In 2002 a webcam has been installed to allow people worldwide to catch a glimpse of the chapel and to follow the mass on 24 December.

In The Mood

How does music affect how you feel and think? For myself, I can't hear "In The Mood" without visions of WWII GIs dancing with a girl from the USO, a fiddle without thinking of a square dance held in a big Nebraska barn or "The William Tell Overture" without thinking of the Lone Ranger. :D

I'm easily distracted and can't listen to music while I write, but I frequently turn some on before I write to put me in the right mood. If I'm working on a love scene, a little slow romantic tune helps put me in the mood, and for just getting me in a 1920's frame of mind, there's nothing like some Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday or a roaring Charleston. If music helps set the mood for a party, why wouldn't it do the same for your book?

Of course, we're all used to modern music. Despite our different backgrounds, electric guitars, drums and synthesizers have infiltrated the music that's surrounded us for decades. Music from different periods can sometimes take some getting used to. Popular music from the 1920s, for example, can be incredibly irritating at first. Both men and women tend to sing in falsettos, it's frantic, crazy and hyper...much like the decade itself. But, once I got past my 21st century discriminations, I found I enjoyed listening to clarinets and ukuleles. All it takes is a willingness for the unusual and an open mind.

How about you? Do you let music from your time/location influence your writing?