Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Will the Real Maria Anna Mozart Please Stand Up?




It's my pleasure today to share a guest blog post by friend and fellow critique-group member, Elizabeth Rusch.

Elizabeth writes:

Will the Real Maria Anna Mozart Please Stand Up?
A critique of the French film Mozart’s Sister

Soon after my newest nonfiction title for young readers, For the Love of Music: The Remarkable Story of Maria Anna Mozart (Tricycle Press/Random House, 2011) was released, I began getting emails from friends telling me about a French film on the same subject called Mozart’s Sister. The film finally came to Portland, and I was invited to do a Q&A after the show on opening weekend. Thank goodness, because whether I was invited to or not, I would have wanted to stand up in front of the audience and set the record straight.

What Is Accurate: The Mozart family did indeed tour Europe for three years, traveling by carriage for more than 3,000 miles, giving concerts in 88 cities. Maria Anna, older sister of Wolfgang by five years, was a child prodigy, a gifted virtuosic pianist. She composed music, and indeed, her music has been lost.

What I Loved: The depiction of the Mozart family relationships, their affection, dedication to music, and the silliness that bordered on bawdiness (especially when Leopold and the two children stand at the bathroom door while the mother tries out the bidet) captured visually what I read in the Mozart family letters. There were other gorgeous moments in the movie that probably came from primary source material. Maria Anna writes in her journal from the European trip about watching the waves come in and out at Calais. And there it was, the beautiful Marie Féret, hair fluttering in the wind, staring dreamily at the ocean. Wolfgang loved canaries, and there he was poking one with a violin bow.

What Is Inaccurate, Misleading, and Troubling: Soon after establishing the Mozart family on their journey, a carriage wheel breaks outside Paris. Broken carriage parts are mentioned frequently in the family letters, but here the movie jumps off a solid foundation based in fact to a completely fictional account that is not only inaccurate, but also blatantly contradicts what we know about the Mozart family and their daughter.

In the movie, Maria Anna develops close friendships with a daughter of Louis XV and the crown prince. The second relationship is struck while Maria Anna cross-dresses to deliver a letter, and plays violin and sings for the prince. Maria Anna begs to stay in Paris while her family continues on the musical tour. When they leave, she continues her relationship with the prince, studies composition at a Paris academy dressed as a boy, and writes a violin concerto.

The critique: Oh, where to start! Maria Anna was closely chaperoned by her parents at all times, did not stay in Paris alone as a young, single 15 year old, developed no relationship or romance with French royalty, didn’t cross dress, or even play violin! While there are references in letters to Maria Anna singing, they usually entail Wolfgang teasing her about her singing voice. Maria Anna’s singing was not her genius, her harpsichord playing was.

The movie depicts Maria Anna burning her violin concerto and claims that she never composed again, had only one child, and that she died blind and poor. Yet later letters from Wolfgang praise Maria Anna for her compositions, she eventually married a baron enabling her a comfortable living, and she had three children, only one of whom died in childhood.

The Story the Movie Missed: In the end, Mozart’s Sister seems more obsessed by the weird court of Louis XV than in its title subject matter. So much rich, dramatic material about Maria Anna Mozart’s life was distorted, misrepresented or ignored.

Here’s what I find amazing about Maria Anna’s story: She was a child prodigy, thought to be a better pianist than Wolfgang – and all the other pianists in Europe. She was Wolfgang Mozart’s closest musical collaborator, and, as I explore in a recent Smithsonian magazine article, was probably an important musical influence. There’s an incredible scene from Maria’s life that the movie skips completely. While in London, Leopold falls ill and the children have to be very quiet – they can’t even play their instruments. So together, Wolfgang and Maria Anna write what is known as Wolfgang’s first symphony. But it is in Maria Anna’s handwriting.

After the three-year musical tour, the family returns to Salzburg. But when Wolfgang sets off to tour Europe with his father and later with his mother, Maria is left home. While he learns composition and is exposed to the stimulating musical life of Italy, Maria oversees the cook, gathers herbs, and mends clothes. But she also continues to practice for hours each day, teaching herself harmony, modulation, interpretation -- and composition.

She falls in love, and she and Wolfgang share a dream of the family reuniting in Vienna, where she would be married to her love, teaching music and giving concerts. Sixteen months later, Maria Anna is married off to a baron who is twice widowed and already has five children. But she continues to play three to four hours every day – even when her instrument goes horribly out of tune and can’t be fixed for more than two years. When her husband dies, Maria Anna returns to Salzburg where she teaches music and gives private concerts.

At the age of seventy-eight, Maria died. Two weeks before she died, though she was blind and has lost the use of one hand, she asked to be carried to the piano that she and Wolfgang play on together as children. Found on the piano were scores from her brother’s operas Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute, probably the last music she ever played. On their childhood tour, Wolfgang often played blind to astonish audiences. At the end of her life, his sister Maria Anna also played blind, and with only one hand, for the sheer love of the music.

What bothers me most about Mozart’s Sister is that the film used Maria Anna to get to the Louis XV court and then ignored her and who she really was.

Maria Anna Mozart’s story is one of not only musical genius, but also of undying musical passion and commitment. There is a beautiful film to made, but Mozart’s Sister is not it. Maybe I should write it ☺

Elizabeth Rusch

Friday, October 22, 2010

Serendipity


Almost ten years ago I met the writer/illustrator Debra Frasier at a Children’s Literature Festival in Idaho. She told me that one of her greatest moments in her life was narrating her picture book “On the Day You Were Born” accompanied by a full symphony
orchestra. Standing at the podium, hearing the music surrounding her, she said, was an extraordinary experience. I must admit I was a little jealous. I mean I could do that. Stand up there and read one of my books. I could listen to the sound of violins and cellos and flutes washing over me. How wonderful would that be? Alas I hadn’t written a book that would qualify for such a thing. But from time to time I thought about Debra and her story. Remembering it gave me a vicarious thrill.

So you can imagine my excitement when, by chance, I found myself on a plane seated next to David Robinson, the musical director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. Sandra Jordan and I were just finishing the third or fourth draft of Ballet for Martha: Making Appalachian Spring. David and I chatted about the book and the music. He could actually hum the whole score, which Aaron Copland had composed for Martha Graham’s dance first performed in 1944, when America had entered WWII. Isamu Noguchi had designed the sets. It was a great collaboration between choreographer, composer, and artist. I told David we were having trouble describing the last, lingering notes of the music. “They seem to ask ‘What will happen tomorrow?’ ” David said. Yes! I mentioned that I had a vision of the text narrated with illustrations, accompanied by the music. I wanted the book to make a contribution to family concerts, a modern alternative to Peter and the Wolff. I wanted to stand up like Debra and hear the full orchestra playing behind me. (I didn’t tell David that part of it.)

He was enthusiastic about the idea, as one of his interests is showing audiences the way the arts interconnect. Two years from that serendipitous meeting, Ballet for Martha was presented with the St. Louis Symphony performing Appalachian Spring. Brian Floca’s illustrations appeared on an overhead screen. We were all there, Sandra, Brian, and our editor Neal Porter. It was exhilarating! In November there will be four performances for younger audiences of Appalachian Spring, along with the narration and images from Ballet for Martha. I guess you’re wondering if I will be up there narrating. Well, no. David, himself, will read excerpts from the text with the images overhead. The orchestra will play fragments of the music as they relate to the story, followed by the complete symphony. As for me, I’ll be sitting happily in the first row with my grandchildren and humming along. But I’m working on the next performance, which will be in Aspen, Colorado next summer. Maybe that will be my big chance!!!

Friday, September 17, 2010

Introducing Ballet for Martha




I am happy to announce the publication of Ballet for Martha:Making Appalachian Spring (written with Sandra Jordan. Illustrated by Brian Floca. Roaring Brook Press)(For ages 6 through 10). The book tells the story of the collaboration between the dancer Martha Graham, the sculptor Isamu Noguchi, who designed the set, and Aaron Copland, who composed the music for Martha's most famous dance about America. Here is the blog Sandra and I wrote together for MacKids.com about the genesis of book, inspired by a trip to the awesome Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum. In this age of helmets for every sport and hovering helicopter parents, what do we make of 13 year old Isamu Noguchi, who in 1917, while the world was at war, sailed by himself on the long steamship journey from Japan--destination a boarding school in Indiana that his mother read about in a magazine? Six weeks later, when the young Japanese-American reached the school, he found it closed. The United States had entered WWI. He couldn’t go back to Japan—the seas were blocked by warring navies. So young Isamu….well, it’s a wonderfully dramatic story. We wrote briefly about it in our chapter on Noguchi in The American Eye (1995). We always had it in our minds to write something longer about him.We read about an exhibit of dance sets created by Isamu Noguchi for Martha Graham on view at the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City. We thought this angle might fuel the book we wanted to write on the artist.The next week in New York, off we went to the Noguchi Museum to check it out. We love field trips, and the Noguchi Museum is one of our favorite places, a rather anonymous looking industrial brick building on the outside, with a discreet side entrance. Inside is a whole other story. It certainly is the best place we know of to see Noguchi’s sculpture (although by itself Noguchi’s Momo Taru, a permanent installation at the Storm King Art Center--the mind-blowing 500 acre sculpture park in Mountainville, New York-- is worth a trip).Anyway, we were glad for any excuse to visit the Noguchi Museum. In addition to his artworks, the artist created a number of stage sets for dance. The majority of these were for Martha Graham, that icon of modern dance. (Noguchi’s half sister Ailes Gilmour danced with Graham early in her career.) We prowled around the sets and pieces on view, looking at stuff and wondering how we could translate it into a book. Many of Graham's works present big challenges for children’s book writers. For example, the sculptural bed from Night Journey is gorgeous, but the tale of Oedipus and Jocasta, as interpreted by Martha, would have to be written as YA. Finally, we found the study center in the museum where videos of the dances were on view. We settled down to watch. Appalachian Spring quickly became our favorite candidate. However, it was clear that we couldn’t do the project without also writing about the music, now as iconic as the dance, commissioned by Martha from composer Aaron Copland. With three protagonists we feared this could become a very unwieldy book.We asked Neal Porter, who has been our trusted editor on several books that didn’t exactly fall into the ‘no brainer’ category, to go out to the Noguchi and have a look at the exhibit with a book in mind. Then we had a serious elbows-on-the-table editorial discussion over lunch. We noodled around with several ideas, but for all of us Appalachian Spring clearly was the best candidate. If only, we could figure out how to do it. We left the lunch buoyed by Neal’s enthusiasm, scheduled some interviews, and settled down with our piles of books.Jan lives in St. Louis and Sandra lives in New York, so twenty years ago when we started writing, the Fed-X office was a weekly destination. We often scheduled three or four day long sessions when we got together to work. Since the internet entered our lives, we are able to pass paragraphs back and forth several times in an afternoon. That changed our working patterns, but it hasn’t made the actual writing any faster.Then there are the interviews. We spent an afternoon watching the Appalachian Spring videos with a dancer who called out the movements—contraction, release, right fall, sparkle, sparkle, sparkle—until the dance slowed down visually enough for us to see what was going on. There were rehearsals of the modern Graham company, performances of the dances, and talks with music conductors and musicians who had performed Copland’s music.There seemed to be so much material to cover, so many fascinating lives and stories, that for a while it looked as if we were going to have a sixty page manuscript. At least. We took a deep breath and pared the material down to our core story, pausing only briefly to weep over the great anecdotes left on our cutting room floor. We consoled ourselves with the thought that there’s always another book. For this one we wanted to narrow the focus to the actual creation of Ballet for Martha. We crossed our fingers and sent the manuscript to our agent George Nicholson, as well as to Neal Porter. Their positive responses spurred us on. We entered a whole new process that turns a manuscript into a book. We were excited when Neal suggested the terrific Brian Floca as an illustrator. An old friend and designer of several of our books, Jennifer Browne, also was on board. Our work was far from over. We had input to give and hundreds of nit picking details to fix and fuss with, but the most difficult part for us was finished.“That’s all fine,” you say, “the book moved forward. Great. But what about Isamu?” When we left him, he had arrived at a closed school with no money, and no other place to go. In one version of the story Noguchi later told, the school was now an American army camp. The troops training to go overseas adopted him for a while as a kind of a mascot. Isamu was rescued from a long chilly winter in the Indiana woods by the former headmaster Dr. Rumely, who placed him with a family in the nearby town of LaPorte. There he graduated from the local high school under the name Sam Gilmour. Dr. Rumely then helped him get an internship with Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor today best known for carving the presidential faces on Mt. Rushmore. The crusty artist told the boy he had no talent at all. Isamu moved to New York and proved Borglum wrong by becoming a world famous sculptor with his own museum. We love a happy ending.
Labels: art, biography, Brian Floca, dance, Jan Greenberg, music, non-fiction, Sandra Jordan, sculpture
Link: jangreenbergsandrajordan.com