Between Alice Parker and Eudora Welty: My Experience in the Opera The Ponder Heart

A recent photo of Alice Parker. Inset: Eudora Welty, when I was her neighbor, ca. 1980

 

I'm pleased to learn from a web search that composer Alice Parker received an award for "Sacred in Opera" from the National Opera Association just last year. We go way back. I thought of her last week when I saw her name on music that our choir director pulled out of our library, the pages yellowed with age.

In 1982, with the Choral Society of Jackson, Mississippi, I sang in a workshop production of Alice Parker's fourth opera The Ponder Heart, her text drawn entirely from the novel by Pulitzer-winning writer Eudora Welty, lifelong resident of Jackson. We were to sing the score for potential investors who might be persuaded to fund a full-scale production.

Alice Parker was well-known to all American choral singers for her arrangements of Negro Spirituals and other sacred folk material. The music was published as "the Robert Shaw" series, after the famed choral conductor. Her name was always in smaller print than his, but the arrangements were all hers.

At our first rehearsal, she was courtly, commanding, unflappable and always ready to laugh. In my mind, I see high heels, flowing skirt, tightly cinched waist, straight back, a scarf, and firm hair -- but my memories of her blend with images of elegant movie stars of her vintage -- Lauren Bacall, for instance.

The small town setting of Miss Welty's novel gave Parker opportunities to write in different styles of what we today might call Americana: shape-note singing, blues, and gospel. But I was a music nerd less excited by simple folk tunes than by techniques she used to layer authentic material into the texture of her dramatic story.

My favorite instance of a technical twist was in Parker's arrangement of a sentimental gospel song that began with the words, "Somewhere the sun is shining." In the story, the central character "Uncle Daniel" Ponder falls in love with a certain soprano in the church choir. Given the perception that sopranos are enamored of their upper registers, Alice Parker arranged the soloist's music in a different meter from the choir's, allowing her a couple extra beats to massage her high notes while the choir waltzed on in strict time. (I think we sang in 6/8 while the soprano had some measures in odd meters).

At one rehearsal, the director handed me freshly-composed music for the big trial scene in act II. I was to play it on the piano for the chorus while Miss Parker, in another room, rehearsed the leads. We were all sight-reading, and I recall that it was difficult material with dissonances and varying meter -- my favorite things! After a couple of hours, when Alice Parker heard her music for the first time, I was playing it. The next day, she brought in new music for the same scene, throwing out everything we'd worked on.

I was enraptured, not disappointed. That year I'd been singing with a cassette tape of Marry Me a Little, a musical revue made up entirely of songs cut from Stephen Sondheim's musicals. Having put so much effort into a number that was cut from the opera, I felt that I had paid my dues to join the exalted company of musical theatre professionals.

When we performed the score at New Stage Theatre, located in the neighborhood where both Eudora Welty and I lived, it was a social occasion. Drinks and finger food were laid out on long tables; the musicians took seats on one side of the room, while the wealthy guests sat on the other. Just before we started, Ms. Welty approached and asked me, "Young man, may I have this seat?" She sat at my side throughout the performance.

The guests backed a full-scale production by New Stage. Immersed in my second year of teaching, I did not participate in that one, though I did go to see it, of course. I remember thinking that it was a sweet story, but not one to excite you. The critic from The New York Times said pretty much the same thing. Edward Rothstein concluded, "But what made the music work was some of what Miss Welty called the Ponder heart – a love of simplicity, good humor and plain speaking."

The opera was cited for recognition of Sacred in Opera along with her operas on more overt religious themes. In their citation, the National Opera Association wrote that all of Parker's operas demonstrate “what it means to live a productive life as a member of a community, whether that community is a town, an extended family, or a musical or faith tradition.”

I'll admit that I thought Alice Parker was ancient in 1982. Actually, she was then seven years younger than I am now, and she's still active. If you're Googling yourself, Ms. Parker, and you see these lines, come on to St. James Episcopal in Marietta, GA for our All Saints service, and hear us do your music.

[Update: Alice Parker died on Christmas Day, 2023.]

Dread and Hope for Sondheim's Last Show

On the Vulture page of New York Magazine online, Frank Rich's interview with playwright David Ives and theatre director Joe Mantello has me intrigued about something I've been dreading: Stephen Sondheim's last show Here We Are.

I've seen the films on which the two acts of the show are based (Luis Bunuel's films Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and Exterminating Angel). Act one is based on the former, in which well-heeled friends can't get food or even a drink from any vendor they visit, for a variety of unlikely reasons. Act two is based on the latter, in which well-heeled guests have eaten a banquet, but, for no apparent reason, cannot exit the dining room. The Met presented a tedious opera that Thomas Ades made of the latter story. These are, for me, arch social allegories. You hear the premise, you get the point; you don't need it drawn out to three hours.

Still, David Ives is dynamite. A student production of his short play All in the Timing gave me ten of the most delightful minutes of theatre I've ever experienced. Montello's production of Assassins set a new standard for that show (see my recent reflection Assassins On-Target 01/2023). And Sondheim made marvelous shows from dry material, such as the history of the industrialization of Japan in Pacific Overtures, and from off-putting characters, such as a cannibal barber in Sweeney Todd.

But when I heard that Sondheim had not completed any songs for act two when he died on the night of Thanksgiving, 2021, I felt relief that we'd be spared a miserable coda to Sondheim's brilliant career.

[Update: The show is "Three hours of sophistication that I've not seen [on Broadway] in 25 years" (W42st.com) says Paul Ford. The teacher who got me into Sondheim in 1974, Paul went on to play piano for the original productions of many Sondheim shows and wrote a book about it, Lord Knows at Least I Was There (blogpost of 04/2022). ]

The corrected story, according to Ives and Mantello, is that Sondheim et. al. agreed that the second act shouldn't have music. "Why would these people sing?" Sondheim said. In the depths of the pandemic lockdown, Ives and Mantello realized that, logically, they wouldn't.

Of course, as my friend Susan observed, "logically," no one should be singing at all in any musical, except that it's billed as a musical. And for half a musical, she said, Mantello and Ives should charge only half price.

All that aside, I treasure the article because Rich presents us with the parts of his conversation that focused on the creative process behind the show. Rich is a longtime theatre critic for the NY Times who interviewed Sondheim on many stages around the country.

Is there any other artist whose every draft of every piece of his work has been so open to public view? I've been lapping up writing about Sondheim's collaborations and personal writing process since 1974, when, at 15, I read Craig Zadan's Sondheim and Company in one sitting. There are dozens of recordings of Sondheim's songs that never made it into shows that never made it on Broadway. He and his collaborators tell all about intentions, first drafts, and fulfillment in interviews, biography, and memoirs (link to my digests of every single book at my Sondheim page).

The story of his exhilaration in the initial stages and the long periods of enervating self-doubt are still models for creatives and, considering that he was still working at 91, touching. His eyes failing, he ordered oversized music paper so that he could see where he was putting his notes. He didn't want to be "a pointillist composer." When Ives fiddled with a lyric, Sondheim mock-objected, "Come on, I'm an icon of the American Musical Theatre!"

The search for a title is part of the story. For years, it's been referred to variously as Bunuel and as Square One. Because Sondheim procrastinated with so many excuses, including an ingrown toenail, someone suggested The Dog ate My Homework. Montello thinks Here We Are fits because it suggests "a destination, a state of being, and also an offering."

For Ives and Montello, Here We Are is a "distilled, smaller-scale version of a life's work" and "a sort of requiem" for Sondheim.

Here's hoping.

I recommend a blogpost by Showriz, clearly knowledgeable and appreciative of Sondheim.

"Our Father" and other new poems

Images posted with four new poems & birthday selfie from July.  

Since April, I've posted five pieces to my poetry blog First Verse.

• Our Father has resonated with its readers, though the details are all specific to my experience.
• A cat overtakes the real subject in Sleep was inside me.
• As friends laughed about the residences of their 20s, a Biblical theme emerged in First homes.
• I attended a funeral in Boston and bicycled through Atlanta, thanks to live-streaming. The powerful mix of experiences inspired Eulogy

Finally, there's my parody of Rodgers and Hammerstein's standard "My Favorite Things" to sing at a farewell party at St. James for Father Daron Vroon.

The images are by my friend Susan Rouse, except for my sister's cat, portrayed by  Android. 

Don't Let the Boys See You Cry: Good Night, Irene

Coffee and donuts for servicemen - AP, from NPRs website

I taught US History but never heard of the "donut dollies" who followed troops in England, France, and Germany. They dispensed coffee and wise cracks, played jazz bands, and listened to private confessions.

Novelist Luis Alberto Urrea created fiction on the framework of experiences his mother wrote about in her journals. Until she died, he knew little about her story, except that she suffered from nightmares every night of her life.

Urrea builds his story with laughs, friendship, and a rom-com perfect romance with a (fictional) cocksure pilot named Hans "Handyman." Beyond that, the arc of the story follows the trajectory of Allied advances and setbacks.

Irene's commander tells her, "Above all, don't let them see you cry." The part that moves me to tears, again and again, is the gratitude that men express, as in this letter:

I was trying to hide my terror from the other guys, but all I could think of was home. Then I saw you.... I know I was just a face among hundreds of faces, but you looked at me in the eye and gave me coffee and made me laugh

Another side to that story is how many young pilots don't come back. The women's real job was to be "the final blessing from home."

One very tough encounter for Irene, and for me, is a few minutes at the bedside of a horribly burnt soldier so that he won't have to die alone.

I couldn't tell you what happened when, or name more than a handful of characters, but I also couldn't wait each night to get back into the world of Irene and her tall driver Dorothy.

"Unconditional Love" and "the Mystery of Faith": Now I Get It

Sunday I heard two phrases new to me that clicked into place a lot of what I believe.

First, our music director Bryan Black quoted Richard Rohr about "mystery" in our faith. It's not any secret of God's that cannot be understood; rather, a mystery in our faith is something infinitely understandable. Whatever we say to pin it down -- whether it's the doctrine of the Trinity, or the incarnation -- will be insufficient. There remains room for exploration and more implications.

Bryan naturally applied this to great music and the poetry we were singing Sunday, "Blessed be the Pure of Heart." The concluding line that God makes a pure heart "his cradle and his throne" is a good example.

Then, our curate Mother Megan Swett used a phrase new to me in her first sermon for St. James, Marietta. I've long heard of God's "unconditional love" for us, but she said it another way that gives us some agency: in light of God's unconditional love, we must accept our "unconditional worth."

The world, she says, doesn't accept that. Instead, we think we have to create a Self of Worth, and the evil of the world comes from defending that Self, putting that Self ahead of others, or becoming angry and hateful towards those who do not accept the Worth that we have constructed.

In the context of a gospel lesson about taking up our cross and dying to self, she said that's not some performative suffering we do, or some suffering we take on as punishment. It's our Self of Worth that we must give up.

If we were to live as if we believed in our unconditional worth, and in the unconditional worth of others -- well, that would be the kingdom Jesus preached about.