How Beethoven brought Mirabehn to Gandhi

 

Mahatma Gandhi of course was a central figure in our school history books in the chapters devoted to the Indian freedom struggle. But I don’t remember Mirabehn getting any mention; if she did, it must have just been in passing.

She “came to life”, as it were, for my generation, in Richard Attenborough’s 1982 hagiographic film ‘Gandhi’. At almost the exact midpoint of the film, she arrives at Gandhi’s Sabarmati ashram, Ms. Slade, the “daughter of an English admiral”, but who prefers the name Gandhi has given her: Mirabehn.

Mirabehn played by actress Geraldine James in Richard Attenborough’s film ‘Gandhi’ (1982)

But who was she, and what could have caused her to leave the comfort of her home in Britain to work with Gandhi? It was her love of classical music, and specifically her adoration of the music of Beethoven, that propelled her on her journey.

Mirabehn (1892-1982) was born Madeleine Slade, to an aristocratic British family, daughter of Rear-Admiral in the Royal Navy, Sir Edmund Slade. As her father was posted overseas for long stints, she grew up at her grandparents’ country estate, inculcating a love for nature and animals.

The music of Ludwig van Beethoven was another abiding passion that began early in her childhood. She had started on the piano, and her father had bought her a “player-piano”  or pianola, a self-playing piano containing a mechanism that operates the piano action by “reading” or “decoding” a complex patterns of holes or perforations on a roll of strong sheet of paper, called a piano roll. The pianola was extremely popular until superseded by the phonograph and radio in the early 20^th century.

In her autobiography ‘The Spirit’s Pilgrimage’, Mirabehn writes:  “I played and listened, but nothing interested me particularly except one piece which held me from the moment it began. It was Beethoven’s Sonata Opus 31 No. 2 [popularly called ‘The Tempest’]. I played it over and over…. I …procured one Beethoven sonata after another…. I was finding something far beyond the music…. I threw myself down on my knees in the seclusion of my room and prayed.”

She visited India when her father was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the East Indies Station; but the experience “meant nothing to me but a life of social functions and formalities in a very restricted society which did not appeal to me.” So at some point during her family’s return to England, she preferred to stay on there, where she “played and listened to Beethoven day after day… I imbibed, more surely than if there had been words, a sense of fearlessness, strength and purity passing, especially in the slow movements, to those regions of the spirit which lift one into that which can only be felt but never spoken.”

She became a concert impresario, and in 1921 organized a series of concerts featuring Beethoven and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, ending the British boycott of German composers during the Great War.

Her Beethoven obsession prompted a pilgrimage to his birthplace in Bonn and to Vienna, where his career was established. She then heard of the “epic novel” by French novelist and mystic Romain Rolland (1866-1944) on Beethoven. She took a year out in France in order to improve her proficiency in French, just so that she could read the book.

She met Rolland at his home in Villeneuve, Switzerland. It was then that he mentioned a book he had just completed (1924), on the Mahatma. (Incidentally, Rolland had written the book without even meeting Gandhi). Mirabehn describes her reaction in her autobiography: “I looked blank. “‘You have not heard about him?’ he asked. “‘No’, I replied. So he told me, and added: ‘He is another Christ.’”

She read Rolland’s biography of Gandhi, and it changed her life. She corresponded with Gandhi, expressing her wish to become his disciple at Sabarmati ashram.

The book ‘Romain Rolland and Gandhi correspondence’ makes very interesting reading, as it chronicles, through extracts from letters, diary entries and press interviews the awakening of Rolland’s interest in Gandhi and the freedom struggle. His diary entry in September 1925 states:  “I write to Gandhi to recommend my “daughter” Madeleine Slade who is leaving for Bombay on 24 October… She says her example has carried along her parents; her mother is spinning, and her father, the admiral, is weaving (cursing Gandhi all the while).”

There are several references to Beethoven in the book. On more than one occasion, Rolland calls Beethoven “the European Mahatma”. In a postcard to Gandhi’s secretary Mahadev Desai (February 1924), he signs off: “As our European Mahatma – Beethoven – sings in his Ode to Joy: Let us – millions of human beings –embrace each other.”

In a letter to Mirabehn (25 April 1927), he writes: “If Gandhi knew him [Beethoven], he would recognize in him our European Mahatma, our strongest mediator between the life of the senses and eternal Life. And he would bless this music which perhaps, for us, is the highest form of prayer, a permanent communion with the Divinity.”

Rolland chronicles Gandhi’s visit to him in 1932 in a letter to a friend: “On the last night, he [Gandhi] asked me to play him something by Beethoven; for he knows that Beethoven was the link between his great European disciple Mira (Miss Slade) and myself, who then did the same between her and Gandhi. So all three of us brought our gratitude back to Beethoven.” He even mentions what he played: a piano reduction of the Andante (second movement) from his Fifth Symphony. Piano reductions of orchestral works were a common way of acquainting oneself with such compositions, again before the era of the phonograph and radio.

He then went on to play ‘The Elysian Fields’ (Dance of the Blessed Spirits) from Christoph Willibald Gluck’s opera ‘Orfeo ed Eurydice’, and Rolland elaborates: “(the first orchestral melody and the flute melody, for I know from Tagore’s example that there’s no page of European music better attuned to an Indian’s sensibilities)”.

In another letter to a friend in 1932, Rolland reassures him not to worry about Gandhi’s impending prison sentence, as “Prison is his time of rest and reading, and there is nothing better for his health.” He further writes that Gandhi’s secretaries informed him that in preparing for a stint in prison, Gandhi was “setting aside your [Rolland’s] books on Beethoven for that time in the cells.”

And what did Gandhi think of the “European Mahatma”? If he expressed an opinion, I’ve not come across it yet in my reading.

(An edited version of this article was published on 15 October 2017 in my weekend column ‘On the Upbeat’ in the Panorama section of the Navhind Times Goa India)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Carissimi and the Jesuits

 

Recently a German research scholar liaised with me on her visit to Goa. She was researching “the music of the Jesuits in South India from the time of the formation of the order to their suppression in 1759.” It was a pleasure chaperoning her and poring along with her over documents in the Archives, Bishop’s Palace Altinho and the Xavier Centre for Historical Research Porvorim.

While discussing secondary sources, the name of Italian composer Giacomo Carissimi (1605-1674) cropped up more than a few times. Several sources quote the passage by visitor to Goa in the 1660s (he was in India between1656-1665), Monsignor Sebastiani Fr. Giuseppe di Santa Maria (1623-1689), of the Order of the Scalzi Carmelites, First Bishop of Hierapoli (Greece) and First Baron of the Hagia Sophia.  In his communication from his Seconda Speditione all’Indie Orientali (Second Voyage to the East Indies), he marvels at the musicianship of the ‘Canarins’: “Non può credersi quanto rieschino nella Musicaquei Canarini, come ci si esercitino, e con quanta facilità.”

The term ‘Canarin’ is an interesting one. Is it a generic term for all non-white inhabitants of Goa at the time, or did it indicate a social group distinct from the Brahmins and Chardós, terms that the Portuguese and visitors were already using in their descriptive writing even in the 1500s? This came up for discussion during the lecture series “Goa in the making of the Portuguese empire (16^th-18^th centuries)” of Dr. Ângela Barreto Xavier as well. Perhaps it meant different things to each observer, so it’s difficult to generalise.

Anyway, Giuseppe di Santa Maria mentions in particular a work by Carissimi performed at “the Professed House of the Fathers of the Compagnia [Society of Jesus], where the body of St. Francis Xavier is located.” If I’ve translated the entry (with some reading between the lines as well), the performance might have been on 31 July 1663, the feast day of St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of order of the Society of Jesus.

I first learnt of Carissimi through this entry of di Santa Maria, and this time I decided to look him up further. More specifically, was there a reason and some significance in the performance of a work by Carissimi in particular? Did he have a special relationship with the Jesuit order?

It turns out that he did, very much so.  Very little is known about Carissimi’s early life; we know he was born in Marino, near Rome,  that his father Amico was a cooper  (a maker and repairer of casks and barrels),his mother’s name was Livia  and that he was the youngest of six children (he had five sisters and a brother).

We have no details of his musical training, but he first surfaces at the Tivoli cathedral (under maestri di cappella Aurelio Briganti Colonna, Alessandro Capece and Francesco Manelli); he began as chorister there in October 1623, and a year later was organist until 1627.

1628 is an important year in Carissimi’s life. He first took up a position as maestro di cappella at the Cathedral of San Rufino, Assisi. But the same year, he then took up the maestro di cappella post at the church of Sant’Appolinare belonging to the Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum in Rome. He stayed at this post for the rest of his life.

Again, ‘reading between the lines’, Carissimi seems to have held the post and the institution in high regard. Why else would he give up a maestro di cappella post in Assisi, which had just obtained, and relocated almost 200 km north of Rome, only to return perhaps a few months later for this post? He must have displeased his employers in Assisi; or perhaps he quit because of interpersonal differences. We do not know.

The Collegium Germanicum is a German-speaking seminary for Roman Catholic priests in Rome, founded in 1552. Saint Ignatius of Loyola was actively involved in its establishment and inaugurated it himself. The administration of the college came under Jesuit jurisdiction. It rapidly acquired a reputation for the “splendour and majesty” of its functions, with particular emphasis on music. It attracted great composers under its ambit: the Spaniard Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611); and a host of Italian composers Annibale Stabile (1535-1595), Annibale Orgas (1585-1629), Lorenzo Ratti (1589-1630), Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni ((1657-1743). It is therefore not surprising that Carissimi felt drawn here as well.

He received several attractive offers while at his post here, including the very prestigious position of maestro di cappella at the basilica of San Marco in Venice to replace the great Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi after his demise in 1643. In 1647, Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, son of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II tried to entice him as well. But Carissimi turned them all down. We can only speculate on his reasons, but perhaps the Jesuit order had become ‘home’ to him. We know he was ordained a priest in 1637. A Jesuit priest? Quite likely, but I couldn’t confirm this.

Although he perhaps never left Italy, Carissimi’s legacy is vast and far-reaching, despite the unfortunate fact that “much of his music was destroyed when the collections of the Sant’Appolinare and the Gesù were sold as rubbish (!) at the time of the suppression of the Jesuits.” (entry in the 10^th edition of the International Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians, 1975). (Incidentally, the confiscation and destroying of documents at the time of the suppression might also explain why the German researcher was not able to find Jesuit music scores here in Goa).

As might be expected, his oeuvre includes largely sacred music: oratorios (based on Old Testament stories), cantatas, motets and masses.  Indeed, he was an important figure in the early history of the oratorio and the cantata, and contributed substantially to the development of recitative (the style of delivery in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms of ordinary speech), also utilizing the church cantata with such skill and expressiveness that it soon replaced the motet. His compositions stand out for their imagination and dramatic variety.  His pupils included Alessandro Scarlatti (father of the better-known Domenico Scarlatti) and Marc-Antoine Charpentier.

Trying to deduce which Carissimi composition Giuseppe di Santa Maria heard in 1663 requires some sleuthing. He describes it as a work for “sette Chori” (seven choirs), but it more probably was a composition for seven “voices” or parts, as we know of no Carissimi composition for “seven choirs”. Most of Carissimi’s known works for six voices or more seem to have been written after 1663; or perhaps the work heard in 1663 in Goa was “destroyed as rubbish” post-1759.Works that could fit the bill are Carissimi’s oratorios ‘Daniela propheta’ (1638) or ‘Jephte’(1648), both for 6 voices and continuo (the seventh ‘voice’?).

We can only guess. But wouldn’t it be wonderful to have the Bom Jesus Basilica resound to Carissimi’s ‘Jephte’ sometime soon, perhaps on St. Ignatius feast day?

(An edited version of this article was published on 08 October 2017 in my weekend column ‘On the Upbeat’ in the Panorama section of the Navhind Times Goa India)

 

Jo jeeta wohi Sikandar

 

I registered for the course “Goa in the making of the Portuguese empire (16^th-18^th centuries)” conducted by Dr. Ângela Barreto Xavier a few weeks ago because of the intriguing title, and because I had encountered Dr. Xavier’s name in much scholarly Goa-related research. I am glad I did, as each day on the course offered fresh perspectives and observations about ‘old’ hitherto unchallenged assertions and assumptions about Goan history. The idea that “Goa was a laboratory of political experimentation”, and that “if successful, the Goan experience would become a model ready to be applied in other territories of the Portuguese empire” was very new to me.

The fifth session (and the related reading material) of her course in particular caught my attention: I learnt that operas had been staged in the Cidade de Goa (today’s Old Goa) way back in 1751. And not just one, but two of them, in quick succession!

But the context in which they were staged is rather complex. The overarching title of Dr. Xavier’s paper “L’Inde mise en scène” (literally “India staged”, or “India as a theatre prop”) hints at this, and is elaborated upon in the subheading “The Tragedy of Porus: Empire and Politics in 18^th century Goa”.

Dr. Xavier makes the case that both the operas staged in Goa “evoked history and memory— and this was certainly their principal goal.” Both celebrate “The Romance of Alexander the Great”, any of several collections of legends concerning the sometimes historically factual, and sometimes mythical, exploits of Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), creator of one of the largest empires of the ancient world in his short lifespan, stretching from Greece to northwestern India.

British historian Andrew Roberts (b. 1963-) in his lecture ‘Alexander and Imperialism’ suggests that the conqueror has an “afterlife” as well, in the numerous times his legacy is conveniently resurrected to justify and prop up an imperialist agenda. Various western imperial powers resorted to this, from the British to Napoleon, and so did the Portuguese.

The story of the encounter between Alexander and King Porus at the Battle of the Hydaspes (326 BC), believed to have been fought on the banks of the Jhelum river in the Punjab Province of modern-day Pakistan, in particular, “helped to fashion Portuguese self-representation as magnanimous and clement conquerors.”

According to the mists of legend surrounding that battle, the “bravery, war skills and princely attitude” of Porus greatly impressed Alexander. When asked how he wished to be treated, Porus is believed to have replied “”Treat me as a king would treat another king”. The story goes that Alexander did so, allowing Porus to retain his kingship, but as satrap within Alexander’s vast empire.

This tale well suited an imperialistic agenda, portraying bravery on the part of both the Greeks (representing the West) and the Indians (the Orient), but with an inevitable triumph for the West, who then display magnanimity in victory while the East has no option but to be gracious in defeat. Porus in effect becomes a mirror reflection of Alexander, but still a reflection, an ‘illusion’ at best.

The title of the first opera, ‘The Tragedy of Porus’, which Dr. Xavier also uses as the title of her paper, was in fact staged and better known in Europe as ‘Alessandro nell’Indie’ (Alexander in India), using the libretto by the famous Italian poet and librettist, Pietro Metastasio (1698-1782). However Dr. Xavier’s paper doesn’t mention whose musical adaptation of the libretto was used in the Goa production of the opera. This allows room for some sleuthing, which I love doing.

Many composers worked on Metastasio’s libretti, and ‘Alessandro nell’Indie’ provided the creative springboard for Leonardo Vinci (1730; and no relation to his more illustrious namesake) and Giovanni Pacini (1824). Vinci’s opera could theoretically fit the bill, as it predates the Goa staging (1751).  But it is in three acts, requiring chorus and orchestra. Details of the scale of the Goa production are not mentioned, but I’m guessing that had it been an extravaganza, it would have been noted.

Dr. Xavier does mention that “the opera consisted of six singers, five French and one Portuguese. Four of them belonged to the ‘house of the Marquis’ [Dom Francisco Assis de Távora], and had followed the [newly-arrived, 1750] Viceroy to India for his entertainment.” The six singers would have played the parts of Alessandro Magno, Poro, Cleofide (fictional queen of “another part of India”, and Poro’s lover), Erisenna (Poro’s sister), Gandarte (general of Poro’s army, and lover of Erisenna) and Timagene (confidant of Alexander, but his secret enemy). We do not know the gender of the singers, but interestingly, in the 1730 première of Vinci’s opera in Rome, all roles but Gandarte (tenor) were sung by women, who took on trouser-roles for Alessandro, Poro (sopranos) and Timagene (contralto).

But Xavier then mentions that the Távoras (the large influence was actually the spouse D. Leonor) chose a work with French libretto, which was translated to Portuguese, so this rules out the Vinci opera, whose libretto is in Italian. She then speculates that “the Goan ‘Tragedy of Porus’ was probably a version of [the great French playwright Jean] Racine’s ‘Alexandre le Grand’ (1665), to which music and chorus had been added.” The composer however is sadly not known.

Apparently the very next day, another opera (interestingly, “produced by two Goan nobles”, sons of the powerful viscount of Asseca, Diogo Correia de Sá) was staged: Adolonimo of Sidon, and this time the composer is known: António Alexandre de Lima. However an internet search about him didn’t reveal much, and although I was able to find some information about the librettist Apostolo Zeno whose text was adapted for this opera, this opera doesn’t feature among his oeuvre, at least via the means at my disposal (the internet, of course, and any books on music I could lay my hands on). But the synopsis is not dissimilar to Mozart’s 1775 opera ‘Il re pastore’ (libretto again by Metastasio) or Gluck’s opera of the same name in 1756 based on the same libretto. While Alexander (Alessandro) is the pivotal role in Il re pastore, this distinction is given to Adolonimo (‘rightful heir of Sidon’) in the opera staged in Goa, in a similar name-change to the opera staged the day before.

I asked Dr. Xavier where these operas were likely to have been staged, and she felt it could have been the Casa de Pólvora, possibly before an invited audience of a hundred-odd dignitaries and personalities. What did they make of the operas’ themes? Was it just grandiose entertainment, or did the symbolism matter?

I was also interested to learn that the Távoras, obviously lovers of culture, “immediately upon their arrival in Goa” in 1750, commissioned the French engineer Pierre Vicente Vidal, to build a theatre in their palace in Goa. Perhaps it wasn’t ready a year later in time for these operas the next year; but did it ever get completed? Or did their departure in 1754 (and their execution in Lisbon in 1759 by the Marquês de Pombal on trumped-up charges) mean the work was stalled or even reversed? I’d love to learn more.

(An edited version of this article was published on 01 October 2017 in my weekend column ‘On the Upbeat’ in the Panorama section of the Navhind Times Goa India)

 

 

 

 

Passages

 

On our Independence Day 15 August 2017, an extra-ordinary late-night BBC Prom concert featured at London’s Royal Albert Hall: the complete, almost hour-long performance of “Passages”, the 1964 collaborative concept album of American minimalist composer Philip Glass (b. 1937-) and the great sitar virtuoso-composer Pandit Ravi Shankar (1920-2012). It was billed as the “first complete live performance” of the work, so not surprisingly the venue was packed for this historic concert.

The other draw would certainly have been the fact that Shankar’s own daughter and pupil Anoushka Shankar would be at the sitar. The other musicians were Gaurav Mazumdar (sitar and vocalist), Ravichandra Kulur (bansuri and vocals), Ameen Ali Khan (sarod), Sanju Sahai (tabla), Prashanna Thevaraja (ghatam, kanjira, morsing and vocals), M. Balachander (mridangam), Nick Abel (tanpura), Alexa Mason (soprano), Cathy Bell (alto), Peter Harris (tenor), Oliver Hunt (bass) and the Britten Sinfonia was conducted by Karen Kamensek.

“Passages” is a work I remember well from the heady days when I had joined the salaried workforce and made my monthly raids on VP Sinari near the Secretariat every pay-day directly after having cash in hand. I began to listen much more to Pt. Shankar after that introduction.

About fifteen years later, I got an opportunity to meet the maestro at this same venue, the Royal Albert Hall, through sheer chance. I had won an opportunity to participate in a BBC Proms music quiz, to be recorded there for later TV broadcast. I had heard through the music grapevine that Pandit Ravi Shankar would be coming to a concert that day, and persuaded the staff to let me meet with him. I was taken by an usher through a backstage service elevator to meet with him very briefly.  He was extremely polite, and when he heard I was from Goa, he told me how much he loved visiting our land, and to my surprise, even exchanged a few pleasantries in halting Konkani with me.

“Passages has always been one of my favourite examples of collaboration, said Anoushka Shankar in a BBC interview. “This concert for me is a real treat. It’s a premiere of an album that people have loved, for nearly thirty years.” She remembers Passages being recorded when she was about 9 years old, and being fascinated by the way her father and Philip Glass each came up with themes and allowed the other to write music around them. Looking back, she feels it was ahead of its time, and probably a major influence of the way she is able to work between musical cultures, authentically, and with respect, which, to her, “Passages” is all about.

She revisited the album when she herself began composing music, and that was when the genius of the album was brought home to her. “It celebrates and sort of explores the separateness and togetherness of western and Indian classical instruments, in a way that only my dad and Philip Glass could have done.”

In 1964, Glass, having studied at Juilliard, received a Fulbright scholarship to study in Paris with the eminent composition teacher Nadia Boulanger. It was life-changing, not just on account of her influence, but also the exciting, stimulating milieu that Paris offered, from music to film and theatre.

In 1965, he was hired to transcribe the music of Ravi Shankar into western musical notation for a film. This experience changed his approach to composing in general, encouraging him to “drop the bar lines”, as he put it, “making all of the notes equal”.

In contrast to the Western approach to composing music, “which slices time in the same way one slices bread”, Indian music is created by a stringing together a succession of small units or beats.

Glass began studying with Shankar, and at some point in their friendship, they decided to work on a piece together, and ‘Passages’ was the result. According to Anoushka Shankar, each composer gave the other three pieces of music, and the collaboration began on the six pieces in the album: 1. “Offering” (Shankar); 2. “Sadhanipa” (Glass); 3. “Channels and Winds” (Glass);  4. “Ragas in Minor Scale” (Glass);  5. “Meetings Along The Edge” (Shankar); and 6. “Prashanti” (Shankar). The “seed of my dad’s brain” is found in the Glass pieces, and the other way around as well

Conductor Karen Kamensek has a lifelong attachment with ‘Passages’, saying it ‘blew her mind’ when it was first released. She began working with Glass at around the same time, in the 1990s, and secretly hoped that someday, she could perform the work.  “This album has been in my life for so long that I’ve forgotten where the actual click came. It changed my world immediately. I think I was at university, and I said ‘I want to conduct this piece with Ravi Shankar.’ That was always a goal. And of course he passed away five years ago, and the honour is just as great to do it with Anoushka.”

With the help of Philip Glass and the Indian musicians, Kamensek prepared a performing score for ‘Passages’. She describes it as a “labour of love.” Ironically, to make the work playable for the musicians of the Britten Sinfonia, the bar lines had to be re-introduced.

“My score doesn’t look like their (the Indian musicians’) score, but you have to kind of have enough that means we can communicate with each other.”

The concert is now up on YouTube for those interested. The differences between the Indian and western musicians come through quit visibly: the orchestral musicians are slaves to their written score and to the conductor’s beat, while the Indian musicians are much more at ease, and have no need for playing from a score. But all of them seem to feel and revel in the music.

The Vedic prayer in the last segment “Prashanti” (Shankar) has a timeless message that seems ever more relevant in our own time: “Oh, Lord. Be benevolent to us. Drive the darkness away. Shed upon us the light of wisdom. Take the jealousy, envy, greed and anger from us, and fill our hearts with love and peace.”

(An edited version of this article was published on 24 September 2017 in my weekend column ‘On the Upbeat’ in the Panorama section of the Navhind Times Goa India)

Handel with Care: The Harmonious Blacksmith and Great Expectations

 

“Would you mind Handel for a familiar name? There’s a charming piece by Handel, called the Harmonious Blacksmith.”

“I should like it very much.”

In this fashion is the protagonist and narrator (Pip or Philip Pirrip) christened Handel by Herbert Pocket, the son of his tutor, in chapter 22 of ‘Great Expectations’, the thirteenth and penultimate completed novel of Charles Dickens.

In my early years, I saw a few film adaptations and read the abridged version of Great Expectations, and they actually put me off the book for a long time, with their dreary depictions of the woeful tale of orphan Pip, ill-treated by his abusive sister and by society in general, and the nightmarish vision of Miss Havisham clad in her wedding gown, with her wedding cake still in the hall decades after her fiancé jilted her at the altar.

It is only more recently, thanks to so many classics being freely available on Kindle, that I ventured to begin reading the original unabridged novel. And it is turning out to be a very good read indeed. Despite the gloom of much of the storyline, Dickens injects much wry humour into the first-person narrative of Pip.

Pip apprentices with his brother-in-law Joe Gargery as a blacksmith when he gets older. This accounts for the nickname (“We are so harmonious – and you have been a blacksmith”, says Herbert to Pip), as Georg Friedrich Händel (later anglicised to George Frederick Handel) wrote a “charming piece” by this name.

Or did he?

“The Harmonious Blacksmith” is the popular name that has stuck to the final movement (‘Air and Variations’) of Handel’s Suite number 5 in E major, HWV 430, for harpsichord. It belongs to the set of his first eight harpsichord suites published in 1720 shortly after leaving his native Germany the same year to accept his new position at the Royal Academy of Music, London. But Handel himself did not give this particular movement its nickname. It gained currency only in the nineteenth century. Several theories therefore abound.

One version claims that Handel had once taken shelter from the rain in a smithy, and the sound of the hammer striking the anvil and got the inspiration for the tune. The ‘proof’ of this is the regular repeated ‘pedal’ note in the first variation, which is said to give the impression of a blacksmith hammering away. A slight ‘variation’ on this story is that Handel heard the blacksmith in the smithy humming the tune of the Air and incorporated it into his composition. Handel was known to ‘recycle’ melodies he came across in real life, so this sounds plausible as well.

But it is now believed that neither of these stories is true.  In his 1836 book ‘Reminescences of Handel’, a good three-quarters of a century after Handel’s death in 1759, Richard Clark fabricated this neat story, even going to the extent of finding an old anvil in a smithy near Whitchurch, Edgware, and identifying one William Powell as the fictitious blacksmith (never mind the fact that he had in fact been a parish clerk). The makeover persists to this day: there still is a tombstone over Powell’s grave which reads “In memory of William Powell, the Harmonious Blacksmith, who was buried 27 of February 1780, aged 78 years. He was Parish Clerk during the time the immortal Handel was organist of this church. Erected by subscription, May 1868.”

Handel apparently did visit Whitchurch, smithy or no smithy, but he had already written the work much before this, so this cannot explain the nickname.

The actual reason for the title as for so many other musical works with interesting nicknames, might have more to do with advertising and money than anything else. The following is an extract by William Chappell (1809-1888) in the first edition of Grove’s Dictionary of Music: “A few months after Clark’s publication the writer saw the late J.W. Windsor, Esq., of Bath, a great admirer of Handel and one who knew all his published works. He told the writer that a story of the Blacksmith at Edgware was pure imagination, that the original publisher of Handel’s lesson under that name (The Harmonious Blacksmith) was a music seller at Bath, named Lintern, whom he knew personally from buying music at the shop, that he had asked Lintern the reason for this new name, and he had told him that it was a nickname given to himself because, he had been brought up as a blacksmith, although he had afterwards turned to music, and that was the piece he was constantly asked to play. He printed the movement in a detached form, because he could sell a sufficient number of copies to make a profit.”  Nothing sells like a good story, and veracity should not come in the way. Our media today have taken this philosophy to greater heights (or lower depths), with their own ‘alternative facts’ and ‘fake news’.

William Chappell was a music historian (and partner in the London-based piano-manufacturing firm Chappell & Co.), so it is likely that his account is true. But to date, no copy of Lintern’s edition of the piece has been found. The earliest copy of music with the title ‘The Harmonious Blacksmith’, an arrangement for pianoforte duet, has the watermark ‘1819’.

So if not from a Harmonious Blacksmith pounding away at his anvil in his smithy, where did Handel get this tune from, then?  As he so often did, Handel probably drew inspiration from himself. A passage in his opera ‘Almira’, written in 1708, is very similar. And others, from Beethoven, to Louis Spohr, Italian guitar-composer Mauro Giuliani, Francis Poulenc to Percy Grainger have mined the melody for their own use.

The Harmonious Blacksmith consists of the opening theme (Air) and five Variations upon it. At Child’s Play India Foundation’s annual monsoon concert (“Let the Children Play”, 23 September 2017, 6 pm at Menezes Braganza hall), two of our children, Irfan Shimpigar and Natsalene Estrocio, will play the opening theme of the Harmonious Blacksmith, arranged for two violins. So do come along; we promise to meet your Great Expectations Harmoniously!

(An edited version of this article was published on 17 September 2017 in my weekend column ‘On the Upbeat’ in the Panorama section of the Navhind Times Goa India)

Music and Politics, and History and Education

 

The BBC Proms festival, a summer season of daily orchestral music at London’s Royal Albert Hall, is currently underway, beginning, as it does annually, in mid-July, extending until mid-September.

Since returning from the UK in 2008, I’ve been listening on internet radio. This year, the Proms began with a political tinge: on the very First Night, Russian-German pianist Igor Levit strode onstage wearing an EU flag on his lapel, and his encore offering was Franz Liszt’s transcription of the Ode to Joy – the famous chorus which forms the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and is the European Union anthem.

Just a few days later, Argentinian-Israeli pianist-conductor Daniel Barenboim (who also holds Palestinian and Spanish citizenship and is founder of the West-Eastern Divan orchestra, a youth orchestra comprising musicians from Israel, Palestine, several Arab countries, and Iran) made a ‘spontaneous’ speech at the end of the second of two concerts at the helm of the Staatskapelle Berlin which featured the symphonies of British composer Edward Elgar.

Barenboim stressed that his thoughts were “not political, but rather of a human concern. When I look at the world with so many isolation tendencies, I get very worried. And I know I am not alone.”

After giving an account of his years living in England, which he felt gave him “the impetus” to speak, he said, “I think that the main problem today is not the policies of this or that country. The main problem is that there is not enough education.” The audience responded with hearty applause.

“No German musician will tell you – ‘I am German and I will only play Brahms, Schumann and Beethoven’. We had very good proof of it tonight [referring to a German orchestra playing Elgar]…. If a French citizen wants to learn Goethe he must have a translation. But he doesn’t need a translation for the Beethoven symphonies….This is why music is so important. And this isolationist tendencies and nationalism in its very narrow sense, is very dangerous and can only be fought with a real great accent on the education of the new generation…..The new generation need to understand that Greece, Germany, France and Denmark all have something in common, called European culture. Not only Europe. Culture. This is the most important thing. And of course in this cultural community called Europe there is a place for different cultures. For different ways of looking at things. But this can only be done with education. And the fanaticism that exists in the world with religious backgrounds can only be fought with education.”

Predictably, a media storm erupted following Barenboim’s speech, with both critics and supporters, often betraying their own Brexit or Remain bias. But could we extrapolate some messages from the speech far beyond British shores as well? The recurrent theme in the speech was ‘Education.’ Wouldn’t an objective, unbiased education, particularly of history and at school, go a long way in creating a more balanced, humane world view?

The onus of education extends further than just the classroom, a point made by Sunny Singh in her critique of Christopher Nolan’s allegedly ‘historical’ blockbuster film ‘Dunkirk’ in the Guardian (‘Why the lack of Indian and African faces in ‘Dunkirk’ matters’) calling out the literal ‘white’wash of an historical event: “More than history books and school lessons, popular culture shapes and informs our imagination not only of the past, but of our present and future.”

“Does this removal of those deemed “foreign” and “other” from narratives of the past express a discomfort with the same people in the present? More chillingly, does it also contain a wish to excise the same people from a utopian, national future?” she asks.

Shashi Tharoor in the preface to his book “An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India” laments this lack of education: “The British public is woefully ignorant of the realities of the British empire, and what it meant to its subject peoples. These days, there appears to be a return in England to yearning for the Raj”. This was certainly my experience in my England years, with many British colleagues seeming to think it was a benign regime, with lasting benevolent legacies like railways, postal services and democracy.

But what about our own history education? Is there good reason why Dr. Ambedkar isn’t included in the pantheon of India’s national heroes in my eight-year-old son’s General Knowledge textbook? Why is caste, if its odious history is ever taught at school, airbrushed to look like it is a vestige of the past, and doesn’t exist even today? Can any evil be tackled if it isn’t called out in the first place?

In Amitav Ghosh’s book ‘The Iman and the Indian’, in the chapter ‘Empire and Soul: A review of the Baburnama’, he examines the autobiography of India’s first Mughal emperor Zahiruddin Mohammad Babur (1483-1530). It makes fascinating reading, and again is something you’ll not encounter in a school history textbook.

Ghosh writes: “The women in his book are strong-willed and independent; they declare their own agency without hesitation, in matters political and personal…The contemporary Muslim fundamentalists who would carry Afghanistan back to an idealized past in which women never stepped out of the house would do well to have a look at this classic of Islamic life in their part of the world. They would find that the Middle Ages were not quite what they imagine them to be.”

Ghosh writes further on: “Mughal rule also coincided with a great renaissance in Krishnaite theology…Far from suppressing the burgeoning activity in that area, Akbar and his nobles actively supported it…As a living practice, contemporary Hinduism would not be what it is if not for the practices initiated under Mughal rule. The sad irony is that the Hindu fanatics who destroyed the Babri mosque were attacking a symbol of the very accommodations that made their own faith possible.” The further sad irony is that many such aspects of history will be even more inaccessible to the schoolchild and the general public in the current political environment. Yes, Maestro Barenboim, the main problem here too is that “there is not enough education”, certainly not the unbiased kind. Indoctrination, on the other hand, is rife.

Coming back to music: it was Ghosh (in his Ibis trilogy) who made me aware of just how much the opium trade affected peoples on both sides of the colonial divide. Since then, each time I listen to Hector Berlioz’ opium-fuelled Symphonie Fantastique, I can’t help but think also of the exploited impoverished farmers in central India who probably starved (as they were forced to cultivate opium instead of food crops) so the drug could be indulged by Europe’s elite and intelligentsia.

(An edited version of this article was published on 03 September 2017 in my weekend column ‘On the Upbeat’ in the Panorama section of the Navhind Times Goa India)

 

 

Maria’s story

 

Last month I was commissioned to cover, for the national and international press the historic run of performances of Domenico Cimarosa’s 1792 comic opera in two acts, ‘Il Matrimonio Segreto’ at the recently restored and reopened Royal Opera House Mumbai, produced by Patricia Rozario’s Giving Voice Society, with an impressive all-Indian double cast comprising twelve of her voice students, and with musicians of the Symphony Orchestra of India. It was the first time a full-length opera had graced the stage of the over-century old Baroque-style opera house.

While interviewing various people involved in the production, I stumbled upon the heartwarming story of conductor Maria Badstue. I had been told that she was of Indian origin, and was returning to India for the first time in her life. That intrigued me, and I was keen to learn more. But her story bowled me over completely.

Maria was given up for adoption thirty-five years ago to an orphanage in the temple town of Pandharpur; when just a five-month old baby, she was adopted by a Danish family and therefore had the rest of her upbringing in Denmark, in the countryside, with little opportunity to meet others like her, from India.

Her Indian origin was no secret to her when she was growing up. However, up until the time that she was invited by Rozario to conduct the opera, she thought she was from Bombay (Mumbai). “My whole life, I’ve been told I’m from Bombay. Back home we have a big and heavy briefcase with all my adoption papers, and letters to and from the adoption agency. I have always been told that I am Danish, and I had never really taken a big interest in the ‘Indian’ part of myself. In my youth in Denmark I tried to ‘fit in’ as most youngsters do, I guess. Perhaps this is why I chose to push those thoughts about India away. So I actually didn´t open that briefcase until one week before I got here.”

Maria’s story resonated strongly within me as founder and project director of Child’s Play India Foundation (www.childsplayindia.org), a music education charity working with India’s underprivileged children. Our whole ethos rests on the untapped potential of India’s disadvantaged children and the transformative power of music in their lives.

One doesn’t know whether to be amused or irritated when presumably well-meaning members of the press and media ask me whether the children we teach “have difficulty” in learning to play a musical instrument and its repertoire. Some even go further and ask whether teaching them western music is appropriate, and whether it wouldn’t be a better idea to teach them “their own” music and culture instead. They then have trouble articulating what exactly they mean by this statement; quite a few of these mediapersons themselves learnt western music as children, or today have children and relatives and peers who do. The irony, the double standard, that it is somehow okay for privileged sections of society to immerse themselves in Bach and Beethoven and Vivaldi, but the underprivileged have to turn to “their own” culture, this nebulous ill-defined entity, instead, seems to be lost on them. It calls to mind the hypocritical double standard of the whole Medium of Instruction storm in a teacup, where “the masses” have to learn the vernacular languages and be the guardians and champions of it, but the leaders of these movements, who inevitably come from privileged backgrounds, can send their own children to private, English-medium schools, just as they themselves were educated in them. “Do as I say, not as I do.”

So Maria Badstue’s story is a shot in the arm; it proves, if proof ever were necessary, that any child from any background can achieve anything, in this case musical prowess to the highest level, if given love, nurture, encouragement, opportunity, the right milieu and the proper training. This is something we at Child’s Play aspire to. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if geography became an irrelevance, and when children from all backgrounds, particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds, could get the same opportunities and conditions here that allowed Maria to blossom in Denmark?

After beginning the correspondence with Maria Badstue, I attended a conference on children affected by mining, and during the course of the day, a hard-hitting film “Falling Through The Cracks: Children in Mining” was screened. Through the whole film documenting what amounts to criminal institutionalised child neglect and abuse, I couldn’t help thinking of the potential these children represented, if only we could collectively realize this and nurture it, and how it was just being allowed to “fall through the cracks” in the system.

Maria made this same point to me when I met her in Mumbai a few days later for two back-to-back performances of the opera. Although she had not been able to fit in a visit to the orphanage in Pandharpur as she had originally planned, due to the rehearsal schedules for the opera and the inconvenient train time schedules to get her to Pandharpur, she did visit the all-boys orphanage in Mumbai run by the same organization that also runs the Pandharpur (all-girl) orphanage. She met some eighty boys crowded into a very small living space, and saw India’s future potential in them, provided they were only given the opportunity.

We have remained in touch after her return to Europe, and she hopes to return to India, and specifically to visit and work with us at Child’s Play, in the near future.

“It would be a great personal and professional honour and a pleasure to come back and contribute in developing the scene of western classical music in India in any way.”

(An edited version of this article was published on 20 August 2017 in my weekend column ‘On the Upbeat’ in the Panorama section of the Navhind Times Goa India)

How should we Listen?

An article I was reading recently mentioned in passing, by way of illustrating quite another point, the change in the way audiences listened to music over time.

It argued that up until the eighteenth century, concerts “functioned as a pleasant soundtrack for aristocratic soirees”, and at concert halls and opera houses and the ballet, “the nobility would canoodle in their boxes, only half paying attention to the performers.”

This changed with the Industrial Revolution and “a rising capitalist class”: a shift occurred from entertainment to education. Audiences now sat still and silently concentrated on nothing but the music, stifling sneezes and coughs and any extraneous noises lest it break anyone’s concentration. The Germans of the time even invented a word ‘Sitzfleisch’ (‘sitting flesh’) “to describe the muscle control required for sitting absolutely still during a concert performance.”

It brought into focus something that’s been on my mind for a long time, and that I’ve been meaning to write about: how should we, collectively as an audience, here, and today listen to a concert? By this, I refer to a western classical music concert.

One hears two extremes if one speaks to a cross-section of people. On the one hand, I have been reminded of precisely this evolution of music performance and listening, and a fervent argument is made for going back to the ‘anything goes’ attitude that seems to have prevailed centuries ago, as some sort of historical validation. Going back to an imagined past seems to be trendy on so many levels in India, and it is true here too. Why not let people just be themselves, and abandon the whole stuffed-shirt image that classical music has undoubtedly acquired? Notch up a victory for freedom of expression!

The other extreme is the ‘Sitzfleisch’ brigade to the power of infinity. Sit perfectly still and become part of the furniture. And not just that; the cardinal sin of clapping between movements (sections) of a piece of music is to be countered by rounding upon the unfortunate blunderer with a Medusa glare that will petrify him/her for eternity.

The Naxos Record label specialising in classical music has an Education section on its website, with advice on how to enjoy a live concert, and has a whole section on ‘Coping with Snobs.’

And what does it say about them? It starts by saying that “snobs are everywhere, in every field”, but that “classical music snobs can be some of the snobbiest snobs of all. They assert their superiority by showing off their knowledge and declaiming opinions. Often their snobbery masquerades as helpfulness, but snobs have a way of making ignorance appear to be shameful.”

Which brings us back to the original question: how do we listen to a classical concert today? I think the answer comes down to sheer common sense. We would do well to comport ourselves in a way that 1. allows us to be at as attentive and concentrated as we can; and 2. is not distracting to those around us. Everything else follows from these two fundamental principles.

We derive the maximum benefit and enjoyment (yes, entertainment, even) and education from a good concert performance if we give it all our attention. True, some music was written for entertainment; divertimenti, serenades, cassations are good examples. But even here, attentive listening will reap further rewards.

The operative words for us are attention and concentration. In a world of texts, tweets, and emoticons, attention spans have shrunk considerably. All too often, our phones themselves are the biggest culprits, distracting us and those around us.

Attention spans have even affected concert programming. If one looks at concert programme lengths from even about a century ago, three hours or longer were not unusual. Today a concert exceeding 90 minutes might seem interminable. There are other considerations that affect concert lengths today, like factoring in commuting time for audiences after the concert. Without becoming a Sitzfleisch advocate, it is to our advantage to make the most of the hour or so of an average concert by savouring the moment. This involves, apart from sitting attentively, either switching off or silencing our devices so they neither distract us nor others around us. Rustling plastic bags or other items are a no-no too. This is not being fussy, but acknowledging the fact that in classical music especially, the notes and the music need the contrast of the quiet and the silences to be at their most eloquent. Composers like John Cage might well celebrate and bring ambient noise to centre-stage in some compositions, but for the vast majority of music, the silence is quite necessary. To quote Debussy, “music is the silence between the notes.” Mozart had made the same point even earlier.

What if we get bored in places during a concert? It happens. It helps to focus also on the visual element of a live concert. It could be the intensity of emotion on the faces of the musicians as they play or sing, or the way a theme, motif or melody is passed from one instrument or section of instrument to another. Or it could be the cues and baton technique of the conductor.

Cameras and camera-phones to record concerts have become a modern bane. Not only does one lose the live moment, but it distracts others, often including the performers themselves. SLR cameras, video-cameras, and several phones make clicking, whirring and beeping noises, further adding to the distraction. Add to that the flash element, and it becomes an audio-visual invasive intrusion. Furthermore, the recorded material is almost invariably terribly unfaithful to what your ears would hear and eyes would see in real-time. And lastly, it raises huge copyright infringement issues and many performers get terribly upset by this, and if they remember in advance, often explicitly forbid this.

At Child’s Play concerts featuring our children (our monsoon and Christmas concerts), we do try to avoid this, barring a videographer/photographer sometimes, and as unobtrusively as possible, to get archival footage necessary for our website, social media, and publicity purposes.

As for the clapping-between-movements police: many musicians do not really mind that much; I know quite a few who feel reassured that the feedback means the audience is being appreciative (and awake?). There are other musicians who do mind, and they often make it known in advance of the performance. Having a concert programme can help an audience ‘track’ the progress of the concert, and such concerts often find their applauses at the ‘right’ moments. Programme notes, or even better, a brief introduction by the musicians themselves, explaining the background to the work, and what to listen for, can immeasurably heighten the engagement and enjoyment of a concert.

(An edited version of this article was published on 6 August 2017 in my weekend column ‘On the Upbeat’ in the Panorama section of the Navhind Times Goa India)

My review of Domenico Cimarosa’s opera buffa Il Matrimonio Segreto at Royal Opera House Mumbai

In October 2016, I covered the reopening of the Royal Opera House Mumbai ROHM (after a hiatus of 23 years) for the national and international press. Although the newly restored and refurbished gem of a venue now suddenly opened up fresh exciting possibilities in India’s financial and cultural capital, I must confess I scarcely imagined a full-length Italian opera would grace its stage in less than a year.

Read the rest of the review here

My article on Il Matrimonio Segreto at the Royal Opera House Mumbai in Scroll.in!

Less than a year after the Royal Opera House Mumbai reopened its doors to the public, the first full-length opera will grace its stage this month, with four performances (27 and 28 July at 7 pm, and 29 July matinee at 4 pm, and final performance at 7.30 pm) of Domenico Cimarosa’s 1792 comedy Il Matrimonio Segreto (The Secret Marriage). This is also the first full opera ever to be performed at the ROH Mumbai in its history.

The opera is being produced by Giving Voice Society, headed by Mumbai-origin soprano Patricia Rozario (who also sang at the gala reopening ceremony of the ROH Mumbai last October), Professor of Voice at the Royal College of Music London, and her pianist-husband Mark Troop.

 

Read the whole article here.