Tom Stoppard and Me

The one thing left on my bucket list is to write a Stoppardian play. That would mean a comedy with characters whose dialogue would mix their personal stories with some intellectual controversy in a collage of images and allusions to literary or scientific sources. An unkind critic said a Stoppardian play uses complexity of form to disguise a simplicity of thought.

I tried, but never got beyond the brainstorming stage. It's probably a mistake to start with the form and not with a subject of interest. Anyway, he died today, so he'll never see my homage, should I ever write it.

Regardless, I loved what I read and I liked what I saw.

Bruce Davison, actor on stage and screen, starred in the Duke Players' production of Stoppard's Travesties for which I was props manager. Davison was Duke's artist-in-residence that year, around 1980. I was honored when the actor inserted "Scott Smoot" into a list of names during a performance.

The earth moved for me the first time I saw a play of his that I could understand. It was a one-act take-off on Agatha Christie's plays that he called The Real Inspector Hound. Mid-way, the phone rings and just keeps ringing. A theatre critic who has commented on the first half of the play gets annoyed and climbs up onto the stage to silence the phone. From that point on, every line and stage movement is practically a repeat of the first half of the play, only it all means something new with this different character.

Stoppard performed a similar feat in his screenplay for Russia House, which opens with a story told by Sean Connery, heard three times, verbatim. Each time we hear the words, we're seeing a different angle on the story that changes its meaning completely.

I was delighted, and in awe. I felt the ground drop away, and I was in free-fall. I'm always grateful for that experience.

I got that same feeling from Arcadia, a much more substantial and emotional (and joyful!) play. I admit that other live performances were rarely as strong as the ones I imagined while I read and marked cross-references, puns, and epigrams. A Broadway production of Jumpers, a play I'd read with delight, was especially disappointing. I missed so much that I had caught on the page.

That's more or less my experience with other Stoppard plays. Below are links to my blogposts about Stoppard's works:

• Stoppard's The Hard Problem: Dramatizing Thought
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: Still Kicking How do we gain when Stoppard crosses Hamlet with Waiting for Godot? Let me count the ways!
• The Invention of Stoppard Stoppard's favorite of his own works was The Invention of Love. I saw it on Broadway and I read it closely. Stoppard eluded me, but I do think my essay about the show hits on something great: the playwright known for verbal virtuosity achieves his greatest emotional effect in the silence between just two words.
• I read today (Stoppard's death) that he thought Arcadia was his best play. Me, too. I wrote about it in Math and Tenderness.
• I tried to appreciate Stoppard's suite of plays called The Coast of Utopia about the intellectual developments of the 19th century that led Russia to totalitarianism. I didn't succeed. Or maybe, Stoppard didn't. You Had to be There.

I may some day post notes I wrote longhand on Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, The Real Thing, Travesties, and Night and Day.

When I studied at Oxford in the summer of 1980, the lords of British theatre were Stoppard, his buddy Pinter, and their less-revered-but-more-popular colleague Peter Shaffer. I wrote about the other two when they died:

Playwright Sees God: Remembering Peter Shaffer https://smootpage.blogspot.com/2016/06/remembering-playwright-peter-shaffer.html

A Moment of Silence for Harold Pinterhttps://smootpage.blogspot.com/2008/12/moment-of-silence-for-harold-pinter.html

Premieres by young composer Nathaniel Davila

Young composer Nathaniel Davila presented a recital of original works Sunday night November 9. Although he is a baritone, he has sung Tenor with St. James parish choir for two years. I and many other members of the choir were there.

In Scott Hall of KSU's Bailey Arts Center, we heard live performances of several chamber works by Nathaniel. The theme of the recital was a question, "How do you express character in music?" In a three-movement work for piano, cello, and bassoon, Nathaniel played with the notion that time changes character while character also changes our perception of time.

We also viewed a short film Distance for which Nathaniel composed the score. The story is about a relationship when the partners are separated for a summer. The director used split screens to show the action, so Nathaniel created parallel themes. Like parallel lanes of a north-south highway, the characters' themes moved in opposite directions: not a good sign for their relationship!

Another piece featured a choir singing vocalese in close harmony over, and sometimes against, a tonal background created by instruments.

At the conclusion, Nathaniel thanked Dr. Black. "I have learned so much from St. James," he said. In the photo, he's pictured at the piano, surrounded by members of the choir.

Remembering Mom

Frances M. Smoot
Educator, Dancer, Runner
November 5, 1934 – November 6, 2025

Frances Smoot died in her sleep one day after her 91st birthday. She was born Frances Lee Maier in 1934. Throughout her childhood in Cincinnati, she danced ballet and tap, continuing to dance in the annual revues at Walnut Hills High School. There she met Tom Smoot, a “bad boy” who reformed under her influence. She finished her undergraduate degree in Education at the University of Cincinnati, and married Tom in 1955. Over the next seven years, their family grew by three children, daughter Kim and sons Scott and Todd. They lived in Champaign-Urbana, Pittsburgh, and Chicago before settling in the Atlanta area in 1969.

Once the youngest child Todd reached middle grades, Frances started her career as a teacher at Holy Innocents Episcopal School in Sandy Springs in 1972. Soon, she was leader of the third-grade team. After she earned a graduate degree in Educational Administration, she instituted the school’s summer program, directing it for twelve years. At the celebration of her retirement from Holy Innocents in 2005, she surprised the faculty by handspringing up onto the stage to accept her plaque.

Frances also became an entrepreneur. With friends, she purchased properties to rent or resell. She managed a pool of writing tutors that she called “The Write Connection.”

Tom and Frances traveled the world. From Alaska to Peru, Iceland to Italy, Egypt to South Africa, Australia to New Zealand, and India to China, Tom and Frances covered every continent but Antarctica. Her brother Jack Maier and sister-in-law Blanche often accompanied them on their travels. Closer to home, Tom and Frances flew in a hot air balloon and parachuted from a plane. Tom made photo collages of their many adventures, keepsakes that Frances treasured.

Frances and Tom went to great lengths to support their children. When son Todd joined his high school’s track team, Tom and Frances both began to train as well. During the 1980s and 90s, Frances competed in Atlanta Track Club events, often winning her age division, being the only contestant.

While Frances was a consummate cook and entertainer for social occasions, the grandest party of all was a surprise to her. Years in advance, Tom invited guests to her 60th birthday, and they came from as far away as Italy. He rented the top floor of an Atlanta skyscraper, and led her to believe they were going to a friend’s retirement party.

Shortly after Frances retired, she and Tom followed Todd to Valdosta to be close to their grandchildren Raymond Craig and Mary Alice. They continued to race, supporting Todd’s business promoting track events, and they were active in Valdosta’s First Presbyterian Church. They also rescued Sassy, a miniature Doberman Pinscher who had been slated for euthanasia. When Tom died in 2010, Frances wrapped up affairs in Valdosta and returned to the Atlanta area in 2012. At Winnwood Retirement Community, she made friends and kept active walking with Sassy to the end of the dog’s life. During this time, Laura Robinson of Visiting Angels became her daily companion and friend.

In 2018, she moved to memory care at Arbor Terrace, where she was a bright and lively presence. A director there observed that her schoolteacher instincts kicked in, as she encouraged others in warm but firm tones to participate in conversation. With Laura at her side, she never felt alone during months of COVID-19 lockdown.

As dementia progressed, Frances forgot how to walk and talk, but she maintained a regal bearing and sense of humor. Some of the staff at Arbor Terrace referred to her as “The Queen.” During a visit when she hadn’t opened her eyes or said a word, Scott chatted with the nurse who was feeding her. When he rose to go, he said, “Ok, Mom, nice talking with you.” She stopped chewing and said, distinctly, “Yeah. Right.”

More about Mom

• All the articles I wrote to work through my range of feelings since Mom's diagnosis are linked on one-page overview at Dementia Diary. It may be of help to others shepherding a loved one through the same valleys.
• Articles about Mom in the context of generations of my family are linked to a page I call Family Corner.

Dementia Diary: Sarcasm

Mom is now in a full-fledged nursing home because they accept Medicaid. When I have visited, she has smiled, she has nodded, and she has opened her mouth when I've held a fork full of Sloppy Joe or beans or rice to her lips. But she hasn't spoken. She has kept her eyes closed.

I spent some time with her Friday, chatting with the young woman who often feeds her mid-day. After awhile, I said, "Okay, Mom, I'm going home, now. Nice talking to you."

She said, distinctly, "Yeah. Right."

[I've posted stories and pictures since Mom's diagnosis in 2012. I've curated links to those stories at my page Dementia Diary. If you're dealing with a loved one's dementia, you may find useful tips and comfort there. ]

[A favorite photo from late 2019, just before the pandemic -- when Mom was still walking and conversing. A sharp drop-off followed in the months after, when only her Visiting Angel Laura Robinson could cross the quarantine boundaries around her.]

This was my Last Visit to New York

Well, I've said that before, in 2010, and again last March. I've seen all I want to see, and I like my routine at home with my lovely old dog, and I look forward to my next colonoscopy more than my next flight. Still, in case I ever go again and want to remember what I learned, or in case I never go again and just care to savor the experience I had, here's what I want to remember:

A bag of peanuts is not worth $300. Using Google.flights, I compared prices for round trips at my preferred times, and found Frontier Airlines for $300, half what was listed for competitors. Buying my ticket was like playing a video game, because offers popped up at different places on my screen, to choose a seat, to carry on a small suitcase, to have more leg room. Each offer required lightning-fast reflexes to admit, deny, affirm, reject. For all the stuff that my no-frills ticket lacked, the flight was fine. I had the window and an empty seat beside me going up, and my friend Susan was beside me going home. So my round trip ticket was only 2/3 the cost of my seat at the Metropolitan Opera, and all the underwear and black tee shirts I needed were able to fit in my laptop bag with room for regulation-sized hygiene products and a book of crosswords. I win!

Frick 'n' Friday. Susan and I took off from Atlanta around 2:30 and arrived in just enough time to check in at the Empire Hotel and hail a cab to reach the Frick Gallery in time for our reservations 6:30-8:30. We arrived at 7. I didn't expect a musical welcoming committee, but attractive young staffers greeted us in a chorus line. This was evidently a regular Friday evening occasion for art and music. We toured several rooms, serenaded by a couple of young men who played jazz bass and saxophone from music on their phone screens. They were stationed in a central courtyard while Susan (a painter) and I wandered through the surrounding rooms. They got special applause from the crowd and some words of encouragement from me when they played a gorgeous ballad by Monk, "Ask Me Now." Are you guys from Juilliard, I asked. "We wish," they laughed. To my question, the bassist said he had no regrets about not choosing the harmonica, as he struggled to lift his instrument to the exit.

You can love 18th Century Art, too. Mr. Frick had great taste, we thought, as his collection includes many pieces by Whistler and early impressionists. We like a lot of dramatic and opulent 17th century stuff, too -- Frick has lots of Rembrandts. But the 18th century has left me cold.

My takeaway from the Frick was how much I enjoyed the rooms devoted to the 18th century. A portrait of British General Burgoyne by Joshua Reynolds captured so much nuance of personality! We both disliked some "blobby" cloth in the backgrounds, but came to realize that these were like stage curtains gathered up to reveal the backdrop. So our subjects were star actors in front of blatantly artificial natural scenery. There were little domestic dramas in several Vermeers, too. I took a photo of Susan, herself a painter, between a Vermeer (drama: what's in the letter that the smirking maid reads to her startled mistress?) and a Rembrandt. Thanks to Android and AI, it was a cinch to erase another guest for an unobstructed view.

The two of us enjoyed a Goya piece that gave a lot of attention to the woman's face and hardly any detail to the torso. We had both known Hogarth from disgusting etchings of London debauchery, but we liked a Hogarth painting of a smiling woman with her frisky dog. We enjoyed noticing that the features in the face of a girl and the cat at her hand were very similar. "This is a fun room," I told my phone, and "I'm enjoying the 18th century for the first time."

Everybody ought to have a goal. Saturday morning, with nothing else on our agenda, we visited the former home of my hero Stephen Sondheim (see my page of postings devoted to him and his work). So many nights in sleep I've dreamed of finding myself in that home on "Turtle Bay" close to the river. There was no bay, and the only turtles were figures in the wrought iron gates. But I was so excited to be on the street where he lived. Fun fact: My dad's business partner Alfredo owned the property.

Take a jacket. We walked across the street from our home, the Empire Hotel, to see the opera THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY. An hour later, we dined a few blocks north of Lincoln Center at Chama Mama, a Georgian restaurant. The temperature was balmy, but the first breaths of a vicious Nor'easter made it chilly for those of us seated on their terrace. Still, we enjoyed bread with a variety of pastes made from walnuts mixed with ingredients such as yams, beets and other plants.

My Time of Day is the Dark Time. Before sunrise the next morning, I walked to Columbus Circle, observing men as they stocked their food trucks. I saw one man ordering breakfast from another, and I enjoyed how thirty or so pigeons that feasted on seeds that one chef had thrown in the pool of light that his service window cast on the pavement, where he could watch them as he prepped food for the day. Except for those men and a couple of cars, I had New York to myself. I thought of Frank Loesser's favorite song from his own musical Guys and Dolls, a recitative for the gambler "Sky Masterson" that begins, "My time of day is the dark time / a couple of deals before dawn...."

Noon Departures are Easier. Delays (which we had) are less dreadful when you know that you'll still be back in time to feed dinner to your dog.

Distler's tiny masterpiece

[Editing the weekly church newsletter The Bells of St. James, I've added "Grace Notes," weekly highlights of music that the congregation can expect for the coming Sunday. Here is the first installment, after some improvements.]

A theme of the liturgy for this Sunday, the 17th after Pentecost, is how we in the Church must do our work even while others may reap rewards. "Don't lose heart," we read in Habakkuk. At a discouraging time, Paul lays hands on Timothy to rekindle his heart. Jesus asks rhetorically if servants deserve any special reward for doing just what they're supposed to do.

The hymns we'll sing amplify those themes. Hymn 3 describes serving God from sunrise to bedtime. Hymn 541 expands the meaning of its title, Ora Labora, that work is prayer, "a high calling [even] angels cannot share." In Hymn 704, Samuel Sebastian Wesley writes music for his uncle Charles Wesley's words that ask God to light a candle "with celestial fire" in our hearts.

A favorite of many priests is Hymn 312, composed for the 1940 Hymnal by David McKinley Williams. In words from ancient Syrian liturgy, the poet prays that God will "Strengthen for service...the hands that holy things have taken" in the Eucharist, and will keep the tongues that sang "holy" in church from speaking any deceit. There are verses for ears, eyes, and feet, too -- the whole body of Christ!

The anthem "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty" is a setting of the familiar tune, Hymn 390. We're told to remember, when discouraged, that God "reigneth," and "thy heart's wishes hath been granted by what He ordaineth."

In this anthem, German composer Hugo Distler (1908-1942) has written an a cappella version of the hymn that sounds light as a Renaissance motet, but it's crafted with 20th century techniques such as changing meters and tricky syncopations. Distler's intricacies are playful: on the words "music" and "joyful," voices rhapsodize with flourishes of notes squeezed in to the phrases without adding a single beat to the familiar song. On the word "resound," the low voices make an echo. They toll the last word like ponderous tower bells, while the high voices chirp like birds.

"A masterpiece doesn't have to be a big dramatic number," said music director Bryan Black. "A masterpiece can be like a precision-engineered pocket watch."

Living out the motto ora labora, Hugo Distler expressed intense religious faith in his work, for which the Nazi regime labeled his music "degenerate." Suddenly lost without a career, threatened to be drafted into Hitler's army, he ended his short life in despair. Thankfully, he left behind the gift of his joyful music.

Softening Opposition to Hard Church Music

(for our church newsletter) On his way from the parish hall to church Sunday mornings, Bob Kuzniak frequently sings his favorite hymns and songs of the Big Band era. He likes music to be "uplifting."

So he voiced some doubts about our use of unfamiliar service music by living composer Gerald Near. It wasn't uplifting, he said; it doesn't have a tune.

I pointed out that Near is emulating ancient chant. Bob appreciates the difference in chanting. Instead of fitting words to a tune, the composer of chant elevates the text, sometimes stre-e-tching syllables for emphasis. A communion hymn for a recent service was like that, "Where true cha-a-rity and lo-ove dwell" (Hymnal 606). Unlike tunes, made of repeated phrases with chords and a beat, a chant is all melody, smooth and sweet. Our word melody derives from meli, the Greek word for honey.

Bob conceded that some songs are uplifting even when they don't swing like the Spiritual that the choir sang last week. There's a piece Bob loves, with instruments playing chords under a flute melody. It all builds slowly to a high point, then falls. It's not a tune, but it's very musical and uplifting.

Gerald Near, from the web site for the PRM program Pipe Dreams

This week, by coincidence, the choir's anthem follows that same trajectory, reaching a climax at the text "They shall mount up with wings as eagles" (Isaiah 40:31): the voices rise while the chords in the organ add glorious color to the eagle's flight. Guess who wrote it? Gerald Near!

Bob also conceded, as we'll be singing this music through late November, "I'll get used to it."

Still, for Bob's sake, I've started sketching out service music that we might use in the future, based on Glenn Miller tunes. But we have to wait 16 years until Miller's songs go into public domain. Until then, you can imagine the Gloria to the tune of "In the Mood," and "Sanctus" á la "Moonlight Serenade."