James Benjamin Rodgers

Walt Whitman - A man for our time… or any.

In preparation for my upcoming performances of Kurt Weill’s Four Songs of Walt Whitman with the MDR Sinfonieorchester, I have been on a fascinating journey of discovery. In delving into the life and times of one of America’s most revered poets, I have encountered a man who’s observations, analysis and commentary would not be at all out of place in the world as it exists today. In fact it is astounding to see the number of cultural parallels that can be drawn between our time and mid-nineteenth century America. Frightening? Perhaps it is. Have we progressed so little? Maybe we are simply naive in thinking that the issues of our day are unique to us?

As an example of what I am talking about, I was surprised and delighted to learn that not only did Whitman advocate rights for women, he also confronted the discriminatory pay conditions that existed for the working women of the day. Given the debate on women’s pay equity that continually, and justifiably, builds momentum throughout the western world, it is easy to see the correlation between our time and his.

In his book Walt Whitman’s America, David S. Reynolds writes:

(Whitman) was appalled by the wretched pay given for women’s work. “Poor Payment for Toiling Women” was the title of a November 1846 piece in which he complained that “the payment for Women’s labor - for female teachers, governesses, and so on, to the commonest house servant - is miserably poor.” 

Whitman wrote a series of articles about the plight of the female worker, sighting insufficient pay as a major catalyst for what he believed became for many women in 1840s New York, a choice between poverty or prostitution. Whilst not a fight for what we would classify today as “pay equity”, it was an admirable cause, and an extremely progressive one. However, what made it important to Whitman was that it was relavent to the people of the day, for it was them he hoped would glean something meaningful from his analysis.

Tragically, as the Civil War raged from 1861 to 1866, its greatest consequence, death, became central to the lives of ordinary Americans. Having gone to visit his wounded brother at the front in December of 1862, Whitman’s life changed course. He experienced first hand what the people of his beloved nation were going through. On December 26th, 1862 he wrote in his diary:

Death is nothing here. As you step out in the morning from your tent to wash your face you see before you on a stretcher a shapeless extended object, and over it is thrown a dark grey blanket - it is the corpse of some wounded or sick soldier of the reg’t who died in the hospital tent during the night - perhaps there is a row of three or four of these corpses lying covered over.

Determined to document the events of ordinary men and women, and inspired by the three years he spent serving wounded soldiers in Washington D.C. throughout the war, death’s traumatic effects became the central focus of Whitman’s writing. It is here that Kurt Weill finds the parallel with his own circumstance.

The four poems Weill choses for his work are some of Whitman’s most well known and vivid writings on the multilayered experiences of death. All of them speak not from the perspective of the dying, but from the perspective of those who remain. They are moving illustrations of why D. H. Lawrence labelled Whitman “the great poet of death”. Kurt Weill, Jew who escaped the Nazi’s but knew many who did not, was well equipped to grasp the complexity of this kind of grief. It is hardly surprising then that in 1942 he took inspiration from such poems. War had become as familiar to Americans of Weill’s day as it had been to their 1860s counterparts. 

Kurt Weill found in Whitman’s work a reflection of his own time. What is so remarkable, is that I did as well.

Working with the Composer in the Room

As pianist Jonathan Ware and I prepare for a program of Richard Hundley songs at Trinity Wall Street next Thursday see details, we met with the composer last week to gain his insights and guidance. This experience served as a great eye opener, illustrating what can sometimes be a huge disconnect between the written score and the composers intentions. This disconnect was not created through a lack of attention on the part of either composer or performers, but was a product of us all being human. It helped me to realize that composers are themselves wrestling with how to express on the page what it is they actually want. They are also aware, Richard more than many, that “what they want” evolves from day to day as their ongoing experiences contribute to their thoughts about music.  

Music notation is a remarkable device that has greatly enhanced both the chronicling of music, and our performance practices and standards. Consider how much easier it is to decipher the notes and markings in a newly updated Bärenreiter edition of a Mozart opera than some of the scruffy and error filled versions of the french operas. However, knowing what is written is very different from knowing what it means. It seems obvious but is often forgotten by musicians, myself included, that music is sound. The score is only ever a representation of that sound and can never fully convey the specifics of what the composer wanted. True, some composers were more equipped and more interested/obsessed with showing exactly what they meant. However, one can never know for certain from reading a piece of paper, what sounds the composer had in their head. 

As I eluded to above,this was highlighted in our session with Hundley as so much of what he wanted seemed to be at odds with what Jonathan and I had interpreted from the score. It served as a reminder that once the music is in our hands, the greatest service we can do the composer is to trust ourselves and our instincts. Yes, we must know the composer’s tendencies and desires. We must study the composer and their score, digging out all we can from what is written. But, ultimately, music must transcend the page and live and breath through us and as sound. There are no rules that make good music or good musicians, no written examples that move people. There is only our connection to the work, coupled with our ability to express that connection to an audience.     

Schubert’s “Ständchen”: A Puzzle

Of all the works I have performed, it may surprise people to learn that Schubert’s setting of “Ständchen” by Rellstab, is one of the most puzzling and difficult to perform from an interpretive perspective. The work has so many contrary elements that, when I hear it or sing it, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, console or beg, caress or strangle. 

The title, Serenade, implies a song of love, either of hope or expression. That is indeed my impression of the poem, for the most part. However, there are small hints of the unfulfilled or more accurately, forbidden nature of this love. The use of words like entreat, plead and trembling, to name a few. These provide the seed that creates my confusion about this work. Then, we must examine Schubert’s musical contribution here. What will be the nature of this character’s plight? Schubert’s music pleads itself, agonizing over every note and harmonic shift. It feels like it is trying to draw something towards it in the same way a fish is drawn in on a line, forced, not freely. The implication is that, whilst passion and excitement will win tonight, ultimately, this love is doomed and that our serenader’s hopes are destined to be shattered.

How else can I explain the tremendous melancholy that comes over me following this songs completion? There is such loneliness at it’s core. 

Needless to say, I am greatly looking forward to working further with pianist Michael Sheetz on this masterpiece in the upcoming weeks as we try to find our answers to all these puzzles. 

Thoughts on Dichterliebe? Perhaps a lack of thought…

What is to me an astonishing quote by Arthur Komar in his historical background of the Norton Critical Score of Schumann’s Dichterliebe:

“Dichterliebe is probably the most popular of Schumann’s song cycles - if not the most popular of all song cycles as well. This popularity rests, I believe, on the rather cheerful, pretty quality of the songs; even the settings of the sad or serious poems are not very severe.”

What an incredible simplification of the effect of this amazing cycle. I mean really Mr. Komar? Pretty? Cheerful? Those are the words you use to describe the powerful, almost otherworldly effect of one of the greatest musical works ever created? I will bare that in mind in my preparation… Perhaps not. Shame on you and on those that allowed you to publish such utter rot. 

Kurt Weill Surprises.

It is an astounding thing when you read about a composer whom you feel you know well, and you uncover a side of them that you never knew existed. I’m currently reading “Speak Low (When You Speak of Love) The letters of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya. What has surprised me is how this man, whom we associate so much with the cynical and dark works he created with Brecht (The Tree Penny Opera being the most famous), was capable of such incredible romanticism. In a letter to Lenya in April of 1925 he wrote: 

“Today I know who you are: You are Alpha and Omega, revelation from above and words of a child, sunrise and dusk of evening. For this is the equation: white is your soul, white is your body. You are everything good. All the beauty of the clouds and the earth is within you, and the abyss, when it possesses you, becomes more heavenly than all the heavens.”