Favorite Lieder (3): Robert Schumann "Schoene Fremde"

Dreamer (Ruins of the Oybin) by Caspar David Friedrich, ca. 1835 (The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia)

My favorite song cycle is Robert Schumann's Liederkreis, op. 39 (1840). Liederkreis means "garland of songs," or a song collection. In this case, all the songs are settings of poems by the great Romantic poet Joseph von Eichendorff, and they form a kind of loose narrative of a wanderer's love and longing for his beloved and his homeland. The connections are of theme and mood, not strict storytelling. This collection of songs was written in 1840, during Schumann's "year of song," when he finally married his beloved Clara.

The op.39 Liederkreis is full of allusions to ancient times and ancient ruins, so it goes well with the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840). Friedrich painted many scenes in which classical, Germanic, or Christian ruins are the subject or the evocative background. The Dreamer (left) is a good example. "Schoene Fremde" is half dream, half vision, and the word trunken (literally "drunkenly") expresses the poet's rapture, which is wonderfully reflected in Schumann's music.

See and hear a very young Bryn Terfel sing "Schoene Fremde" with Malcolm Martineau at the piano.

Schöne Fremde* (Robert Schumann, 1810-1856)

Es rauschen die Wipfel und schauern,
Als machten zu dieser Stund
Um die halbversunkenen Mauern
Die alten Götter die Rund.

Hier hinter den Myrtenbäumen
In heimlich dämmernder Pracht,
Was sprichst du wirr wie in Träumen
Zu mir, phantastische Nacht?

Es funkeln auf mich alle Sterne
Mit glühendem Liebesblick,
Es redet trunken die Ferne
Wie vom künftigem, großem Glück.

[Joseph von Eichendorff (1788-1857)]

*German text with thanks to Emily Ezust from http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=5276.


In a Lovely Distant Land

The treetops sigh and tremble,
As if at this hour
The ancient gods circled
Around the half-buried walls.

Here amid the myrtle trees
In mysterious twilight splendor,
Why do you speak cryptically
as in a dream, wondrous night?

All the stars blaze at me
With the burning gaze of love,
Distant places speak ecstatically
Of great happiness to come.

Translation (c) 2008 by Celia Sgroi

Good Car = Ugly Car?

The Nissan Cube. The Ugly Duckling that could?


In May of 2008, Nissan announced that it will market an all-electric car in the USA in 2010. It will be an emissions-free, environmentally-friendly car. It will also be small, which isn't surprising, because one assumes that the technology is not yet advanced enough to power a bigger car effectively. I understand that perfectly.

The car will also be ugly. Apparently, the design of choice is likely to be the Nissan Cube. This I will never understand. Why does a good car have to be ugly? Can't we have at least a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down?

I am told that younger, hipper car buyers like these square cars. I don't know about that, but I do see one or two models of the Honda Element in the parking lot at SUNY Oswego, where I work. They are bigger versions of the Nissan Cube pictured above, and they are butt-ugly, in my humble opinion. When you go to the Honda website, there is "young people's" music and they have colorful graphics that feature a skateboard, so obviously the car isn't aimed at old fogies like me. Thank God for that.

But I have two questions. First, in this lousy economy, with credit shrunken down to nothing, are there enough youngsters out there to buy these funky-looking cars? And second, why can't an old bag like me help the environment by buying an all-electric, environmentally-friendly Nissan that looks like my idea of a car? What I mean is, why can't there be one that looks like the Nissan Sentra, even if it is smaller? Yes, those kids are young and hip and all that, but I have money. Why not target me for a change?

Of course, there is another problem. In my part of the world, Oswego, NY, where it is winter for at least five months of the year, and where winter means lots of snow and ice, and where shrinking municipal budgets mean less plowing and sanding, a really small car doesn't look so good. I mean, you can save a lot of money on fuel and help reduce emissions if you leave your car in the garage all winter, but how feasible is that? Besides, I don't need a new car to help the environment in that way; I can just take the bus to work. Not a bad idea, but it won't help the auto industry.

Comeuppances, and Not

Some notable things happened in the world of the rich and famous this week. Or at least, to be accurate, one involved the formerly rich and merely notorious.

O.J. Simpson, the former football great, who was acquitted in 1995 of the murders of his ex-wife and her boyfriend, was sentenced this week in Nevada to a minimum of 9 years and a maximum of 33 years in prison for armed robbery and kidnapping. Sunny von Buelow, whose husband Claus was tried for her attempted murder by insulin overdose in 1980 and after a conviction was eventually retried and acquitted, died at the age of 76, still in a coma after 28 years. And CBS Sunday Morning broadcast a story about the late Brooke Astor as promotion of a new book entitled Mrs. Astor Regrets, which tells the story of how, at more than 100 years of age, the wealthy socialite and philanthropist was allegedly swindled out of more than $60 million by her son and guardian, Tony Marshall.

In the case of O.J. Simpson, most people see his downward spiral in the years after his acquittal and his ultimate conviction and prison sentence for a Las Vegas hotel robbery as a final accounting for the murders that he committed and never paid for. The Simpson case was tawdry from start to finish, perhaps befitting a former ghetto kid who achieved fame and fortune for his football talent but never gave up his penchant for dubious friends and fast living. It is a sorry tale, but in the end the bad guy seems to have gotten his comeuppance.

As far as Claus von Buelow is concerned, the second husband of millionaire Martha (Sunny) Crawford, whose first marriage was to a prince, was convicted of attempted murder by giving his wife an overdose of insulin. Mrs. von Buelow was found comatose in the bathroom of their mansion in Newport, R.I. She never recovered. Von Buelow appealed and won a retrial, at which he was acquitted in 1985. One of his lawyers on the appeal, Alan Dershowitz, wrote a book about the case called Reversal of Fortune, which was later made into a film of the same name (1990) with Jeremy Irons playing Claus von Buelow. After much bitter family wrangling, von Buelow renounced any claim to his wife's $75-million estate in exchange for his daughter Cosima's, reinstatement in her grandmother's will. Today, Claus von Buelow is a society figure in London.

Tony Marshall is Brooke Astor's son by her first marriage, although he later took the surname of her second husband, Charles "Buddy" Marshall. He is the eldest of Brooke Astor's three children. Brooke Astor became immensely wealthy when she married her third husband, Vincent Astor, but did not blossom into the socialite and philanthropist she was known as until she was widowed. She administered the Astor Foundation and gave enormous amounts of money to many important New York City Institutions, such as the New York Public Library, the Bronx Zoo, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Mrs. Astor had the good fortune, and later the curse, of living an unusually long life. In her later years and suffering from Alzheimer's disease, her son Tony was appointed to be her guardian. Some of her prominent friends, including Annette de la Renta and David Rockefeller, were concerned that she was not being properly cared for, and they persuaded her grandson, Philip Marshall, to bring a lawsuit against his father, Tony Marshall. What emerged was a sorry tale of negelect, exploitation, and probable larceny and fraud. Marshall still faces trial on a number of criminal charges, the most serious of which, grand larceny, carries a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison. Marshall is accused of inducing his ailing and demented mother to sign an alteration of her will that bequeathed $60 million, originally earmarked for her favorite charities, to him.

The court named Mrs. de la Renta to be Mrs. Astor's new guardian, and Brooke Astor lived out the rest of her days in the mansion on her estate in Briarcliff Manor, NY. She was 105 years old when she died in 2007. At the present time, Tony Marshall is free and living in New York City with his wife. However, he is in severe financial difficulties because of the legal fees arising from the charges against him and is embroiled in litigation with the charitable institutions that stand to benefit if the allegedly forged will of Brooke Astor is set aside.

The 84-year-old Tony Marshall had heart bypass surgery in 2008. Whether he will be around to be convicted of grand larceny and eleven other felony counts is anyone's guess. Considering that his mother lived to be 105, maybe he will. And maybe the man who bilked his demented mother's estate to finance theatre productions will get his comeuppance one day, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it.

The Enemy is Us

Most people of a certain age remember the Pogo cartoon that commented, "We have met the enemy, and he is us." Well, we're staring the enemy in the face again, and he is still us.

I have been thinking that for weeks, in a dim sort of way, and then today I read an article in the New York Times that claimed that GM had already failed a makeover with its Saturn brand. Again, those of us of a certain age remember the birth of Saturn, which was supposed to be a "different" kind of car brand. In the beginning it was, perhaps, but then GM turned away from the concept to build gas-guzzling SUVs, and Americans bought them like candy.

It seems to me that the fundamental problem with our kind of capitalism-- and perhaps every kind of capitalism-- is that it deliberately appeals to the side of us that we don't really like to look at in the mirror. We'd like to be better people than we are, but if you give us a chance, we'll take anything that isn't nailed down. At least animals are honest about it. When my dog steals a napkin (he loves to tear them up) and runs away with it, he doesn't want to be punished, but he doesn't see anything wrong about what he's doing either. The thinking part of us, on the other hand, knows we should consume less and save more, but we rationalize our bad old ways and keep on doing what we really want to do, aided and abetted by the companies that sell us things.

And those companies really do appeal to the worst that is in us. Despite the terrible terrorist attacks in Mumbai, the thing that shocked me the most recently was the shoppers in Valley Stream, Long Island who broke down the doors of a Walmart store and trampled an employee to death in their haste to get to the bargains on "Black Friday." How can you be willing to literally walk over someone's dead body to buy a flat-screen TV? Some commentators claim that Walmart and other stores are at least partially to blame for this kind of behavior. In their desire to "get into the black" for the sales year, they inundate us with ads that whip consumers into a frenzy. "We're opening at 5 am. Be there early!" "You'll never get a better deal on all the things you want!" "Act fast or all the best buys will be gone!" Clearly, some people believed the hype and acted on it.

A look at our criminal justice statistics will tell you that plenty of people will kill to get what they want, from Nike athletic shoes to cocaine. But I still don't see how you can run by-- or over-- a 270-pound man lying on a floor littered with broken glass and not stop to help. What are such people thinking? The short answer is that they're not thinking, they're just wanting. The enemy is us all right, and it's a scary thing.

ICE STORM (A Poem)

ICE STORM

Ice came silently

in the night,

covering grass,

coating branches and fences.

Morning light glittered

on frozen stems

and bushes.

Powerlines sagged

under icy weight.

Crowns swayed

ponderously,

bending earthward,

then cracked and fell.

Ice showered down

like tiny shards

of glass.

Quiet of night

fled before

creaks and groans

of dying trees,

and broken twigs

pattered onto rooftops,

each cluster of buds

a crystal globe.

© 2003 Celia A. Sgroi

Pasadena Where?

If anyone needs proof that some major newspapers don't have enough serious stuff to write about, one might consider the New York Times' apparent fascination with a guy named James Macpherson, who has outsourced the local news coverage of his Pasadena news website to India. Today it was Maureen Dowd's turn to discuss this "horrendous" (just a little news-speak, folks) betrayal of American journalism. I had to yawn through six paragraphs before I discovered the name of this online news site, which is called Pasadena Now, and couldn't help wondering why the Times didn't provide a link to it.

Not that there is anything particularly interesting there. It's rather like the local newspapers I grew up with in Oswego County, The Fulton Patriot and the Oswego Valley News, which consisted mainly of photographs, local stories, announcements of pending events, promotion of local people and businesses, and advertisements. You know the kind of newspaper I mean-- if your high school team won a game, your picture would be in the paper a week or two later, and columns of print were devoted to publishing the local schools' honor rolls. Actually, Pasadena Now is more attractive, though not necessarily more substantial, than that. In any case, it's more colorful, and there are more bells and whistles, but I bet if you look deep enough you'll find last week's league bowling scores somewhere.

This isn't the first time Mr. MacPherson and his outsourcing have made the New York Times. Last year, it got coverage in the Times blog "Freakonomics." Could it be because journalists at the nation's flagship newspaper are worried about losing their jobs to part-time workers from Mumbai and Bangalore? No, it has to be the gently bizarre image of someone in India sitting down with various internet references to cobble together news stories for an online newspaper half a world away. According to Dowd, MacPherson pays his writers $7.50 per 1000 words to write local news stories for Pasadena Now. She quotes one of these writers, who lives in Mysore, India: “I try to do my best, which need not necessarily be correct always. Regarding Rose Bowl, my first thought was it was related to some food event but then found that is related to Sports field.”

The Rose Bowl as a food event-- I have to admit that this tickled my fancy enough to make me actually go and look at Pasadena Now and try to figure which stories were being written in India. Of course, they don't just hand you this information on a plate, but the byline "From STAFF REPORTS" appears frequently on brief local news stories, such as "Police Patrols Protect Shoppers." What these articles have in common is that they're short, and most of them are just bare facts. The writing and eccentric punctuation are about standard for newspaper writing these days. If MacPherson and newspapers like the Times hadn't made such a big deal about it, people in Pasadena probably wouldn't have noticed any difference. Well, maybe the seven employees who got fired would have noticed, but I bet no one else would have.