Perquimans County Restoration

Several weekends ago, I presented a lecture-recital for the Perquimans County Restoration Association. The event took place in a lovely setting - Hertford United Methodist Church, and was arranged by a friend I met through our chapter of the American Guild of Organists, Lynwood Winslow. Jonathan Johnston joined me once again for several of the works.

The program as well as a few reflections follow.

Life Let Us Cherish - Mozart


Kinlock of Kinlock - Arranged with Variations

This is a lovely set of variations that always seems a variation or two short.


Tyrolean Waltz from La Cenerentola - Rossini/Herz

Two German Waltzes - Henri Herz

This was the first concert on which I have played these two Herz Waltzes. I thought they worked rather well on the bright piano and the lively acoustic of the church.


Buonaparte’s Coronation March

Bonaparte’s Retreat from Moscow

Battle of Warterloo - G. Anderson

Duke of Wellington’s March and Quickstep - M. Holst

This suite surveys high and low points of Napoleon's career. The pomp and pride of the Coronation March make a silly contrast with the immediate reversal of musical fortunes in the childish-sounding retreat that follows. The audience, which was particularly attuned to the humorous aspects of the concert, had a good laugh at the juxtaposition.

A few days after playing this collection of Napoleon pieces, I had the idea of arranging them for Chowan's string group (The Meherrin Chamber Orchestra) and maybe adding a fiddle tune and composing one more piece for Napoleon's time in exile. If I get around to doing it, the title of the orchestral suite will probably be "Napoleon Complex."

The Cottage Rondo - M. Holst


Intermission


Waltz - Mozart


Overture to Caliphe de Bagdad - Boieldieu

One audience member told me he thought the piano was too loud for the violin in this piece. While that may be the case, it might also be that this type of piece calls for a type of balance that we are not so accustomed to today. The violin part here is not so much a solo to be accompanied as one voice adding color to a more orchestral piano texture. This is typical of violin parts for a number of parlor pieces that mostly double what is already happening in the piano. In fact, the pieces usually stand alone just fine without the part, although the added color definitely gives them a very nice new dimension.


Storming of Monterey - Francis Buck

This is not in the bound anthology but was owned by the same ancestors and was passed down alongside it.

Auld Langsyne with Variations - D. Ross


Virginia Reels - Arranged by G. P. Knaupf

Natchez on the Hill

Republican Spirit

Love in the Village

After the concert, we were treated to a reception with tasty food and interesting stories. The audience had been rather large for a Sunday afternoon concert of parlor music, and among its number were several people with Skinner connections. The original owner of most of the music was actually a resident of the Perquimans region, so it was exciting and fun to present the music back in her area.

One colorful story that was shared involved some Skinners who have a property between Hertford and Edenton, I think. They named their place "Skinner Cat." The reason for the name, of course, was so that when they give directions to their home, they can say "There's more than one way to Skinner Cat!"

Battles of Prague

I included "The Battle of Prague" on two concerts in the last several weeks. The first was at Galilee Lutheran Church in Pasadena, MD. The theme of that concert was the outdoor life and the concert also included Satie's Sports et Divertissements. Both works require narration, and Joel Borrelli-Boudreau (a friend from Peabody who is now in the Naval Academy Band and serves as the music minister at Galilee) did the narration in a spirited fashion.

Another friend, Myja Thibault, rode up to Pasadena with me. He reminded me that I had prepared myself for work in the parlor music world through a series of three Mozart concerts Kathy and I presented in our small house in Richmond during 2006. We invited folks from the neighborhood and church and had refreshments and fellowship after each concert. Those were very fun times.

I showed Myja the place in the score where one hand is labelled "The Prussians" and the other "The Imperialists." I had mostly dismissed this as being a little silly since there is no real conflict between the hands. However, the piece took on a distinguishing layer of interest for Myja once he knew about this labelling. It seems that the two registers in which the hands spend most of their time provide a musical depiction of opposing lines of soldiers facing each other in formal 18th century battlefield style. Then, when one hand crosses into the other's register, we understand it to represent material - cannon or flying bullets - making its way from one line over into the other.

The second concert was at Woodland Heights Baptist Church in Richmond, VA where Kathy and I used to work and where we met Myja. This concert was a part of the church's centennial celebration. My theme there was to think about that church, its community, and my relationship with them. I started my research into the Skinner Anthology while living there. I also played the Satie as the church is full of sportsmen and women.

Myja did a great job with the narration characterised by a spirit of almost mischevious enjoyment. He also added a layer of increasing intensity of delivery as the stages of the battle escalated - an excellent insight into the structure of the piece and how to perform it more compellingly.

The young son of another friend at the concert enjoyed "The Battle of Prague" the most as he said he could hear the cannons.

I reflected a bit on this occasion that the work was written for instruments that sounded really differently than the modern pianos on which I get to play it most of the time. On the modern piano it's a little hard to reconcile the combination of the very polite and elegant-sounding passages and the more expanded descriptive and explosive passages. Thinking of the chaos that could ensue when battle really broke out between two very formal lines helps. But I also imagine the two qualities I've described would come across very differently on the original instruments.

At the end of June, I am playing it once more, this time with string bass and my neighbor Ken Wolfskill doing the narration at the Lasker Summer Music Festival. Dr. Wolfskill teaches literature and writing at Chowan and will be a superb narrator. We are also performing the Satie on that occasion. Another great friend, Ariel Dechosa, will be playing Prokofief's Sixth Sonata - one of Prokofief's "war sonatas." We have entitled the program "War and Peace."

Prague and the Satie could make a nice short program with narrator with the same title.

College Music Society

In March, I had the privilege of presenting music from the Skinner Anthology during the annual conference of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the College Music Society, which took place at George Mason University. I enjoy my involvement with CMS as the organization includes people from all branches of the college music scene - theory, musicology, performance, ethnomusicology, music industry, etc.


My presentation quickly painted the parlor music landscape by highlighting three of its personalities -

Henri Herz: the successful Parisian musical elite

George Knauff: the struggling musical pioneer in Farmville, VA

Franticek Koczwara: the roaming rogue whose Battle of Prague stayed near the top of the parlor hit parade


I also shared a list of uses I've found for my research, which I will copy below.

1. The technical demands of most parlor music are such that intermediate piano students can enjoy playing it. Knowledge of intermediate repertoire is an acknowledged weak point for many piano teachers, thus an introduction to the range of parlor music could be very helpful for piano pedagogy students.

2. As much parlor music is literal in form and formulaic in development, it is an excellent source of straightforward scores for theory students to analyze.

3. As much parlor music was designed for collaboration, it provides lots of options for creative work with students and colleagues in music, drama, dance, literature, history, etc.

4. Parlor music can provide contrast in our own recitals full of Brahms, Busoni, and Boulez. Listeners enjoy a respite from aesthetic challenge, and hearing about music-making in the parlor setting seems to spark their imaginations.

5. In the context of college-level piano study or music history classes, parlor music can provide perspective on the quality of the works that have survived in the canon. It can also introduce discussion of the 19th century struggle between commercial music for home use and the rise of the symphony as the hallmark of high art in the concert hall.

6. Working in an area with few traditional concert venues, I need to find other settings in which to connect with the public and to recruit students. Historical associations, museums, and history teachers are often interested in presentations that involve live music. Such opportunities allow me to meet a broader range of people than I would if I were limiting myself to the recital hall.

7. Facing the limited nature of the materials of the music, and contemplating the parlor setting, I have been refreshed in my appreciation of the sometimes simple joys of making music. This attitude is exemplified by a song text attributed to Johann Usteri and found in the anthology. In it we are exhorted to enjoy the simple gifts of life while there is still time to do so.


Several colleagues shared interesting remarks after my presentation. One probably shares ancestors with me. Another commented on the need for a lighter charming sort of repertoire today. A third provided some wise counsel regarding what sort of place ought to eventually be entrusted with the anthology.

Lafayette's Journey

On Thursday, I presented a short recital of Skinner Anthology materials at the Hertford Academy at the request of the Murfreesboro Historical Association. The Society is one of the things that makes Murfreesboro a great place to live. It preserves our heritage and plans events that give our town lots of charm, including the Christmas Tour, the Watermelon Festival, and Porkfest. I've been wanting to get involved with the Historical Association, so I was excited about the opportunity.

The occasion was the visit of a tour group from Suffolk. The group is retracing Lafayette's journey through our region in 1824, and they came to Murfreesboro on the precise date that Lafayette did, February 26. They were treated to several museums in historic buildings in town that would have been here when Lafayette visited, and they were served a fine lunch at the Hertford Academy.

The Hertford Academy is the building in which several schools have held classes over the years, including some of the earliest classes of Chowan University. The Academy was decorated with several images and artifacts relating to Lafayette, including the pretty portrait from the Roberts-Vaughan House that always makes me think of Beethoven.

The lunch consisted of very tasty pork loin, lima beans, rolls, pickled fruit, and exquisite sweet potato soufflee, followed by a dessert of Pineapple Cake with fluffy white frosting - all prepared and served by members of the Historical Association.

After lunch, I spoke and played. The dates of the anthology fit very well with the timeframe of Lafayette and his post-American Revolution life, which included his visit to Murfreesboro.

I played two of reels that Knauff wrote down which were favorites from the Farmville area - "Love in the Village" and "Mississippi Sawyer." If he heard these, it would have been at some fete in Virginia or North Carolina.

Next I played the Herz Sontag Waltz. It is quite likely that Lafayette would have heard some Herz in some Eurpoean parlor as Herz was the best-selling composer of parlor music for piano in the era. Herz also toured the U.S. when his fortunes weren't going so well in France.

My third selection was Ogilvy/Anderson's "Battle of Warterloo." In preparation for this event, I read a bit about the relationship of Lafayette and Napoleon . Their relationship was definitely rather complicated. Being a strong supporter of representative government, Lafayette could not fully support all that Napoleon did. Napoleon must have also been concerned abot Lafayette's ideas and fame. When Napoleon held a memorial service for Washington, he didn't invite Lafayette whose own son was named for Washington! Still, after Lafayette fled to Belgium and was imprisoned, Napoleon freed him. In general, it seems that Lafayette tried to chart a course of moderation for the events of the French Revolution, and such a position must have been extremely hard to maintain and must have also been misunderstood by people on all sides of the conflict.

The last piece I played was the set of tunes from La Muette de Portici. This opera was popular towards the end of Lafayette's life, and is particularly relevant to his life journey as it deals with revolution, and revolution in Belgium in particular.

A few musical insights regarding this event:

One reel (Love in the Village) would probably have been enough!

I think all of the pieces I played on this occasion probably work best when played elegantly and with refined sound.

Hearing the "Lamentation for the Slain" in the "Battle of Warterloo" always deepens the experience in a serene way.

The picture above shows Sophie with me outside the Hertford Academy. In spite of her interest in Lafayette, I didn't take her to the performance.

Virginia Reels

These are images of rehearsals of Virginia reels for Life Let Us Cherish at Chowan.

Life Let Us Cherish

Friday night I presented a lecture-recital entitled "Life Let Us Cherish: Parlor Music in Antebellum North Carolina" as part of the 2009 Chowan University Pianofest. Click here for the full text of the lecture.

In the morning I got up and walked our beagle. Then I spent the rest of the day tending to details so that the evening would go smoothly. This was the most involved of the Skinner Anthology events yet. A singer, twelve dancers, a timpanist, a bassist, and a reader collaborated with me.

The dancers were Chowan students, coordinated and taught by Ashley Brooks. They worked hard and did an excellent job of dancing Virginia reels in period costume. Programming the reels was more problematic than I anticipated as it takes about eight minutes for six couples to dance a full round of the reel. That means eight minutes of constant sixteenth notes for the pianist. Playing that much fast music accurately during performance can tire the pianist's hand and mind, not to mention playing the music for several rehearsals in which we did the entire reel several times in a row! Nonetheless, a high point of the evening was the presence of these young dancers and their interest in the project.

Steve Harders, who also teaches at Chowan, read the Twain quotation with an excellent accent and also declaimed the various headings in the "Battle of Prague" with appropriate drama.

Lori Parker sang a few verses of "Life Let Us Cherish" at the beginning of the concert. We decided to transpose the song, and since the piano part is pretty easy, that worked out fine, although I rarely practice transposing these days.

Our version of "Battle of Prague" included another colleague, Dr. James M. Guthrie, on bass, and our student, Alex Welch, on timpani. Dr. Guthrie imrpovised/composed his part as we rehearsed, and Alex started by improvising. Dr. Guthrie and I gave a little input along the way.

Other colleagues attended and were encouraging in their feedback. One commented on the Daniel Hall piano sounding better than usual, which I believe is mostly due to the repertoire, much of which is transparent in texture and stays in the middle third of the keyboard.

Serenade

I performed two concerts recently with tenor and good friend Jeff Prillaman. Following a Bizet aria, I played Iucho's work based on themes from La Muette de Portici. At another point, I played Herz's "Mademoiselle Sontag's Waltz" Playing this waltz in the context of a vocal recital focused my attention on the fact that a lot of the writing sounds like sparkly coluratura - appopriate for a work there bears the name of one of the mnost famous sopranos of her day.

Last night we performed at historic St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Petersburg, VA. Robert E. Lee attended worhsip there and his son was married there.

Cherry Hill Lecture Recital

Yesterday afternoon I presented a lecture recital for the Members Only Tea at Cherry Hill in Inez, NC. It is lovely venue with a fine Steinway and excellent acoustics. The audience - about fifty folks, I believe - sat in two rooms off the sides of the main hallway as well as on the steps and in the other end of the hallway.

My Roberston ancestors who owned the anthology lived just a few miles from Cherry Hill. Alstons and Kearneys married some of my Roberstons and Skinners. The Alston and Kearney names are also associated with Cherry Hill.

I think it's safe to say that the Roberstons would have at least known the residents of Cherry Hill. It seems likely that they would have visited there on occasion and vice versa. A little more speculative is the idea that the music of the Skinner Anhology was played there. It's quite possible that it was.

It was a special privilege and delight to share the music and my research at Cherry Hill. During the reception that followed, I learned a great deal and met many fascinating people.

One gentleman thought he had seem a Knauff piano before. Knauff, the arranger of the Virginia Reels in the anthology, did run a piano factory for a time in Farmville, VA.

I met several people who share Skinner or Kearney ancestors with me way back.

I also met a great-great...granddaughter of Albert Jones. Jones was the architect of Chowan's MacDowell Columns as well as a couple of other houses in town. I learned that Jones was from Warren County and more of his houses are very close to Cherry Hill.

I learned that a friend of over 10 years might share some Skinner ancestors with me. We never knew we both had Skinners our family trees.

Jonathan Johnston joined me for the concert. He played the reels and the Boieldieu and also read the descriptive titles during the Battle of Prague. Our rehearsal went smoothly, and with that piano in that acoustic, our sounds meshed better and we discovered some things about how to shape the Boieldieu. So much of that piece seems the same that it takes a while to really zero in on the contrast and the shape that it does have. Jonathan also mentioned that The Battle of Prague came more into focus and sounded much more convincing in the Cherry Hill setting. Several folks mentioned a passage that I think was probably in the Battle of Prague that reminded them of the Keystone Cops, which got me wondering if an excerpt from Battle Prague might have been used by silent film pianists.

On the way to Cherry Hill, a deer walked onto the road ahead of the car and nonchalantly stood in our lane. We stopped and waited for the deer to realize the danger it was in. Then it ran quickly back towards the woods which were far across a field.

I had been excited about the very meaningful experience of playing this music at Cherry Hill for several days leading up to the event. I didn't reaize how tightly wound I had been until I started to unwind on the drive home! We stopped for a filling supper at the Logan's in Roanoke Rapids.

Today I'm pondering further tasks I should pursue regarding the anthology, in addition to lecture recitals. I need to make usable scores of the rest of the piano works and research them as well. I currently have 20 or less of the works in a usuable version. I'd like to write an article for some scholarly organization on the contents of the anthology. I'd like to make a recording of some of the music. And I'd like to edit an edition of a selection of the works.

I enjoyed practicing some of the pieces today. Bigger portions are getting memorized even though I wasn't particularly aiming to memorize this music. The longer I'm a musician, the more I realize that a lot of the richness and enjoyment of the work comes from having pieces of music as your daily companions whether that be in practice, rehearsal, or performance.

MacGregor Plaid

I found this image here.

Last night, Kathy and I drove up to Williamsburg, had great open-faced turkey sandwiches and listened to some celtic harp playing at Shields Tavern, and bought me a MacGregor tartan bow tie to wear for my Skinner Anthology performances. The Skinner Clan is a subset of the MacGregor Clan. For a time, the use of the name "MacGregor" was outlawed, and Skinner was one of many names used by Macgregors during that time.

I wonder how connected my Skinner and Robertson ancestors felt to their Scottish heritage. It is well-represented in their collection of music which includes variations on "Kinlock of Kinlock," "The Devil among the Taylors," "Auld Lang Syne," as well as Virginia Reels. The opening of the Battle of Waterloo sounds like a fiddle tune as well.

Chowan Alumni Event

On October 18th, I played a few selections from the anthology for a group of alumni of Chowan University. The particular group consists of graduates who attended in the first few years after the school reopened following World War II.

I played "Natchez on the Hill" and "Love in the Village" from the set of Virginia reels, the first of the two waltzes from Der Freischutz, the variations on Auld Lang Syne, the Battle of Waterloo. I concluded with a piece I wrote this year called "Columns." This Chowan etude commemorates the 160th year of our school. The structure of the piece is based on aspects of our main and oldest building, the MacDowell Columns. The middle section of my piece is a slow wistful waltz loosely based on the school's alma mater. This slow section is a musical thought for our resident ghost, the Brown Lady.

This mini-concert took place in the Mulberry Grove room after a nice lunch. There was a huge poster of the MacDowell Columns that emphasized the recent restoration. I played on a nice older Yamaha upright that was given to the school last year. It was first time playing on that particular piano.

I thought this was the ideal audience and occasion for music from the anthology as many of these alumni were from this part of the country and have an interest in the history of the region.

AGO Northeast NC Chapter Lecture Recital

On September 20th, I presented a lecture recital for the Northeastern North Carolina Chapter of the American Guild of Organists at our home in Murfreesboro. As I prepared for the recital, I considered how and how much to use the square grand. On the one hand, having a Skinner descendent play this music on the Skinner/Roberston family piano would be about as authentic as we could get. On the other hand, the timbre and tuning (I did the tuning!) might become a little grating or disappointing after a while.

Because that's what I was thinking, I initially planned on limited use of the square grand to provide a little bit of flavor, but to play the majority of the recital on the much better sounding Steinway.

However, as I practiced on the instruments, I started to feel like many of the pieces worked better on the square grand. In the end, I played around half on each, but having performed very little on square grand in the past, it felt like I played most of the recital on the square grand.

Our friend, Johnathan Johnston, provided some violin playing for this recital in the Boieldieu and the Virginia reels.

AGO members sang along on the choral closing to The Battle of Waterloo: Britons Strike Home.

Our good friend, Agnes Lassiter, provided chocolate cake at intermission.

The complete program with original spellings from the scores is listed below.


Mademoiselle Sontag’s Waltz
Henri Herz

Life Let Us Cherish with Variations
Mozart

Life let us cherish while yet the taper glows
And the fresh flower, pluck ere it close.
Why are we fond of toil and care
Why choose the rankling thorn to wear
And heedless by the lily stray which blossoms on our way?

The Cottage Rondo
M. Holst

Battle of Warterloo
G. Anderson

Advance to the Battle – Cannon
The Battle –
The English Horse Guards Advancing to Attack the French Curassiers
The Prussians Advancing
Heavy Cannonade
The French in Full Retreat
Bugle Horn
The Rejoicings
Lamentation for the Slain
Britons Strike Home

Bonaparte’s Retreat from Moscow

Intermission and Refreshments

Virginia Reels
G. P. Knauff

Natchez on the Hill
Mississippi Sawyer
Whiskey Barrel
Love in the Village

Kinlock of Kinlock

The Huntsmen’s Chorus in Weber’s Der Freyschutz
N. Bull

Beauties of Masaniello, La Muette de Portici,
Wilhelm Iucho
Composed by Auber,
Selected and arranged as a Divertimento
For the Piano Forte
Dedicated to Miss Elizabeth Whittelseuf

Overture to Calife de Bagdad
Boieldieu

Charles J. Hulin IV, piano
Jonathan Johnston, violin

1830s Griffen and Scudder Square Grand
Rebuilt in the 1980s

The Skinner Anthology Blog

Today is the first day of rehearsing the Overture to Boieldieu's Calife de Bagdad. The arrangement in the anthology is for violin and piano. The violin part doubles the piano most of the time, and the piano part stands alone quite well without the violin. But adding the violin should spice up the performance and I think it will also add some more energy to the experience of the work.

I'm diving right into this sort of commentary because I don't want to miss out on this bit of chronicling as this is the beginning of the process of preparing the performances. Much of the research was done a couple of years ago as part of a class I taught at the University of Richmond.

I'll be posting documents with a survey of the contents of the anthology a little later on.

The first time I played some of these pieces outside of the classroom context or outside my family was a couple months ago during a choir social at our home. I played The Huntsman's Chorus in Der Freischutz. I wonder if the folks who collected the music - my ancestors - were aware of the fact that the opera is about hunters and a shooting contest. I imagine that would have really sparked their imaginations as I know they did lots of hunting. I also played Battle of Waterloo arranged by G. Anderson. I'm not sure who G. Anderson was, but I used to work for Dr. Gene Anderson! As I performed this battle piece for our guests, I read the descriptive titles to them: Advance to the battle . . . The English Horse Guards advancing to attack the French Curassiers . . The Prussians advancing . . .etc. Perhaps my delivery was responsible for this, but my guests starting laughing. This experience made me wonder if it might not be the case that these pieces were actually intended to be a little bit humorous in the first place.