Wound-Dresser. Set to Music.
I attended my first BSO concert of the season last night. A great concert where the orchestra performed what I think is my favorite Beethoven symphony: his 7th in A major.
John Adams was the conductor. No, not the president, the composer. Nixon in China is his work most likely to be known by the hoi polloi. He conducted two of his own compositions: My Father Knew Charles Ives and The Wound-Dresser. I thought it was pretty cool watching a composer conduct his own works.
My Father Knew Charles Ives was outstanding. Three movements, with the third, "The Mountain," completely conveying this sense that you are underneath a gigantic mass of granite. I almost felt like it was hard to breathe.
The Wound-Dresser was something else again. Adams set to music Walt Whitman's poem of the same name. Adams uses a baritone voice to sing the words. I'm glad I heard it, but once is enough. "Amputated hand", "bloody stump", and "gnawing and putrid gangrene" just aren't the snappy phrases I need set to music. The work is certainly appropriate for the times, but a real downer to hear. Anyway, read Whitman's poem and imagine listening to it set to music. Very strange.
I just hope Adams hasn't read The Road.
K-
John Adams was the conductor. No, not the president, the composer. Nixon in China is his work most likely to be known by the hoi polloi. He conducted two of his own compositions: My Father Knew Charles Ives and The Wound-Dresser. I thought it was pretty cool watching a composer conduct his own works.
My Father Knew Charles Ives was outstanding. Three movements, with the third, "The Mountain," completely conveying this sense that you are underneath a gigantic mass of granite. I almost felt like it was hard to breathe.
The Wound-Dresser was something else again. Adams set to music Walt Whitman's poem of the same name. Adams uses a baritone voice to sing the words. I'm glad I heard it, but once is enough. "Amputated hand", "bloody stump", and "gnawing and putrid gangrene" just aren't the snappy phrases I need set to music. The work is certainly appropriate for the times, but a real downer to hear. Anyway, read Whitman's poem and imagine listening to it set to music. Very strange.
I just hope Adams hasn't read The Road.
K-
I used to go to the symphony when I lived in Muskegon. The hardest part was deciding what to wear. I would have preferred to wear jeans, but it was very much a dress up affair.
One year I even got season tickets which I won. You should probably know I was just barely a step up from being a welfare mom at the time. As such, I was drug to a friends of the symphony fund raiser despite the fact that I did not belong there. So anyway, the contest consisted of the conductor sitting at a grand piano in a roomful of some of the elite from the community (and me). It was a very cozy setting with wine and cheese. The conductor said he would strike one note (or maybe it was a half note) from a song. The attendees had to guess the song. If no one got it on the first note, he would play it again with the second, and so on until someone guessed right. He played the key and I waited what seemed like a really long time, but no one said anything. Finally, I sort of quietly said the name of the song. Well, some people were quite upset. Someone even blurted in a very disdainful way that I was a ringer. Uh! Not even. But, I said nothing. I wanted to say, "didn't you idiots watch TV in the 70's?" because the song was the Theme from MASH and the note was the very first one from the song.
I'm getting the distinct feeling I've told you this story before. Sorry for junking up your story with mine.
I'm glad you go to the symphony.
Not to name drop -- oh, hell, I'm name dropping -- John is a friend and former neighbor of ours here in Berkeley. He is a heck of a nice guy and very down to earth -- perhaps unexpectedly so for someone in his line of work. One insight into "The Wound Dresser," which like many of Whitman's Civil War poems is almost unbearably wrenching: John wrote that after his father died as a sort of meditation on that experience. What makes Whitman's poem so hard to read for me is not the unsparing detail, but his absolute openness to and sympathy for the suffering of others.
Marie, I hadn't heard your story. I thought it was pretty cool; certainly a lot more interesting than mine. Casual dress predominates at the BSO. Students usually wear blue jeans and t-shirts. I usually wear khakis and polo shirt. Some folks dress up.
Dan, even though the program said he lived in Berkeley, I never would have thought to connect you two. Glad you name-dropped. John Adams, like BSO music director Marin Alsop, addressed the audience before each work. (I really enjoy this because it gives me background and insight into what the conductor is thinking. Like most old-school conductors, Alsop's predecessor, Temirkanov, never said anything.) He didn't mention his father's death in his introduction to "The Wound-Dresser". Mr. Adams did explain that Whitman was a nurse during the Civil War, which I didn't know. Next time you see Mr. Adams, please tell him for me that I enjoyed his concert very much and I'm sorry there weren't more people in the concert hall. (BTW, do you know my cousin, Jan, or her partner, Cathy? They live in Berkeley, too.)
K-
I'll pass your comments on to Mr. Adams, who will be nonplussed to be addressed thus.
Jan and Cathy? I'll say hi to them.