Thursday, March 30, 2023

TV and kerosene

 


Got a stinker, so I'm making things easy on myself with a few samples of what I'm currently reading.

*

I realized I had forgotten to say goodbye to my mother but, by the time I turned round, she had gone. I waved at the empty space she had left behind and followed the daunting Mrs Berwick into a room where twelve other girls were sitting on squishy sofas and beanbags. I sat cross-legged on the floor, as we used to do in assembly at Kingsclere Primary School.

"What's that pong?" I heard one girl with long hair scooped up in a scrunchie say to another, also with long, tumbling hair.

"I think it's coming from over thar." The other girl pointed towards me.

I sniffed at my clothes and realized that I did smell of Flossy. I tried to tuck myself into as tight a ball as I could, hoping I would disappear. Mrs Berwick looked down her beaky nose and told us all what we could and, mainly, what we couldn't do.

I was sharing a room with two other girls who were much older than me. Everyone was older than me by nearly a year and they all seemed to have been to boarding school before.

"What does your father do?" a girl asked me, as she wound her long blond hair round her index finger.

"My dad's a racehorse trainer," I answered.

There was a snort from one corner, giggles from another. I heard the word "Dad" being uttered with incredulity.

"You mean your father's a stable boy?" the blond girl said.

"No, he's a trainer. He trained Mill Reef." Usually, that was my get-out-of-jail card.

"Huh," said a girl whose father was a colonel in the army. "Mill Reef? Never heard of him. But if you were born in a barnful of horses, that explains why you stink of manure!"

The other girls started laughing hysterically, rolling around on the floor together. I got up and silently left the room.

"I can ride, I can ride," I said to myself.

It was the one thing I knew I could do better than anyone else at this school.

We were straight into lessons the next day, which meant wearing the uniform of green and white striped shirts, green skirt, red or green jumper and green blazer with red stripes. I chose to wear the red jumper as it was new, whereas my green one was second-hand. Everyone else had chosen green. My skirt needed to be rolled over a few times, as it was on the big side.

"You'll grow into it," my mother had promised me.

Mum had refused to buy me the burgundy penny loafers that were on the school uniform list because they were "ridiculously expensive". Instead, I had orthopaedic shoes that would support my arches. I hated them.

Clare Balding's first day at boarding school, from her irresistible memoir My Animals And Other Family (2012). (For non-UK readers, Clare Balding is a TV sports presenter. Initially her specialism was horse racing but she's doing Wimbledon this year.)

*

I stood on Brocken's sovran height, and saw
Woods crowding upon woods, hills over hills
A surging scene, and only limited
By the blue distance. Heavily my way
Downward I dragged through fir groves evermore,
Where bright green moss heaves in sepulchral forms
Speckled with sunshine; and, but seldom heard,
The sweet bird's song became a hollow sound;
And the breeze, murmuring indivisibly,
Preserved its solemn murmur most distinct
From many a note of many a waterfall,
And the brook's chatter; 'mid whose islet stones
The dingy kidling with its tinkling bell
Leaped frolicsome, or old romantic goat
Sat, his white beard slow waving. I moved on
In low and languid mood: for I had found
That outward forms, the loftiest, still receive
Their finer influence from the Life within;
Fair cyphers else: fair, but of import vague
Or unconcerning, where the heart not finds
History or prophecy of friend, or child,
Or gentle maid, our first and early love,
Or father, or the venerable name
Of our adored country! O thou Queen,
Thou delegated Deity of Earth,
O dear, dear England! how my longing eye
Turned westward, shaping in the steady clouds
Thy sands and high white cliffs!

My native Land! 
Filled with the thought of thee this heart was proud,
Yea, mine eye swam with tears: that all the view
From sovran Brocken, woods and woody hills,
Floated away, like a departing dream,
Feeble and dim! Stranger, these impulses
Blame thou not lightly; nor will I profane,
With hasty judgment or injurious doubt,
That man's sublimer spirit, who can feel
That God is everywhere! the God who framed
Mankind to be one mighty family,
Himself our Father, and the World our Home.

 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Lines Written in the Album at Elbingerode, in the Hartz Forest"; the poet feeling the alienating force of a nature that had no personal association for him, but intrigued too.The original draft of the poem (apart, presumably, from the one in the album at the inn) was sent in a letter of 17 May 1799 to Sara Coleridge, who was keeping the home fires burning at Nether Stowey.  "Not that they possess a grain of merit as poetry," he wrote (as was his wont). But this poem's thinking about nationalism and internationalism, about our relations with nature in a local context and outside that context, holds my attention.

Like many readers of our time, I'm discovering Coleridge's poetry (other than the half-dozen standards) through Richard Holmes' inspiringly-curated Coleridge: Selected Poems (1996).

I must say that my own experience of coming back on the Calais-Dover ferry is that the fabled white cliffs are at least as dingy as a kidling!

*

She passes right by many dense patches, leaving them to sway in the breeze. "It's our way," she says, "to take only what we need. I've always been told that you never take more than half." Sometimes she doesn't take any at all, but just comes here to check the meadow, to see how the plants are doing. "Our teachings," she says, "are very strong. They wouldn't get handed on if they weren't useful. The most important thing to remember is what my grandmother always said: 'If we use a plant respectfully it will stay with us and flourish. If we ignore it, it will go away. If you don't give it respect it will leave us.'" The plants themselves have shown us this -- Mishkos kenomagwen. As we leave the meadow for the path back through the woods, she twists a handful of timothy into a loose knot upon itself, beside the trail. "This tells other pickers that I've been here," she says, "so that they know not to take any more. This place always gives good sweetgrass since we tend to it right. But other places it's getting hard to find. I'm thinking that they might not be picking right. Some people, they're in a hurry and they pull up the whole plant. Even the roots come up. That's not the way I was taught."

From Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants (2013) by Robin Wall Kimmerer. 

*

Grisha, completely forgetting who was boss, hugged the berry commissioner and, squinting at him slyly, mischievously drawled out:

An old tramp helped me escape . . .

And the berry commissioner sang, sighing as though the words had been written for him personally:

I came to life, sensing freedom . . .

Ksiuta came out from behind the wall, rubbing her sleepy eyes, and gently put her finger to her lips. Out of respect for the infant, they stopped singing. 

And then Ivan Kuzmich Belomestnykh said, "People should live together the way they know how to sing together. Everything would be all right then. And, people should start talking and not be afraid of their thoughts. For if you're afraid of your thoughts, you won't have any at all.

"Thank you, dear guests, for coming with this precious present -- my grandson. I'm often not kind enough, and there's no point in even talking about education. Forgive me for that. And you forgive me, Ksiuta. People fight against each other, mostly over trifles. If we stop fighting over trifles, then, God willing, there won't be another big war either."

"To peace!" the berry commissioner cried out ecstatically, hugging Belomestnykh. "Hey, Ivan Kuzmich, you and I . . . You and I . . . And all of us . . . I'm staying with you, my native land. Yes, staying! Where else can I go?"

And he offered a large tear in place of the innumerable emotions he couldn't express with words. And then fell asleep in the chair where he sat, his head in the sauerkraut. Grisha and the geologist lay down in the haystack. The night wind, penetrating the cracks, rustled the hay, and it moved, breathing as if alive, trying to share its thoughts with people, but unable. The pole over the well creaked in the wind, its long neck swaying under the tired stars, which continued to shine for all their weariness. And they would have to shine for a long time more, so that people, weighed down by the earth's gravity, could sometimes raise their heads, look at the stars, and think that besides funny things and sad things, besides meanness and kindness, besides life and death on earth there was a universal eternity.

The mushroomer was put in the side room on a creaking iron bed with nickel-plated knobs, and when Ivan Kuzmich lit the way for him with a kerosene lantern, Nikanor Sergeyevich saw, hanging over his bed, an oilcloth with swans. They even flew this far, Nikanor Sergeyevich thought, and laughed sadly. But he slept soundly, dreaming that he and Kuroda were in some extraordinary forest, where giant mushrooms grew taller than a man. They were using a saw to cut the stem of an agaric so gigantic that your arm wouldn't fit around it. They would take it in Grisha's truck to Hiroshima and show all mankind, to make them ashamed of that other, terrifying mushroom, invented by men. 

And the infant, probably, didn't dream anything, because he still had no past and, therefore, no memories to give birth to dreams. 

From Wild Berries (1981) by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, translated by Antonina W. Bouis. 

*


despite the hopelessness of their position they didn't despair they were

not as hopeless as their           position         human beings do this fine

though you might say it's something they only do when the mood

takes them AS THEY SAY                  hey big spender despair is       quite

gratuitous and             never accurately quoted                    humanity is anti

-universe                     never curated Quixotically               do you know i

still don't really know what i'm made of not really i read the books         etc.

and watch Horizon but one day it will repeat itself too often to memorize



empty                                                                                            reminder

say 2 different words and the 2nd. will always be a repetition of the 1st.

sunlight                                                                                         labyrinth

see what i mean                       if only liars could be seen silhouetted against

the sun             white ash        black ash                        white lash blacklist the

star emerging from the wormhole                 rolling on quantum shingle an

empty reminder like a moth in the fist                      deluded into folly       by

the truth          the prisoners turn to dust                    visitors' book bleached


Extracts from two poems near the start of Tim Allen's Very Rare Poems Upon The Earth (128 Improvisations) (Aquifer, 2023). I only recently embarked on this, but I'm already hauling up treasures. (NB The extracts are the second half of "Intrusion", and the first half of "Modification".)

*

From tall rooms, largesse of peonies, 
the porches summercool, the bed upstairs
immaculate in its white counterpane,

to kerosene-lit evenings, the wind
an orphan roaming the silver maples,
sudden widowhood: to meaner comforts,

a trumpetvine above the kitchen door,
then one night her new husband didn't
come in from the milking: to the lot

she bought with what that place went
for, dwindlings in a doll's house: to
the high-rise efficiency condominium,

television on all day, to the cubicle
in the denominational home, to total
unprivacy of bed and bedpan, nurse shoes,

TV with no picture or else coming in waves,
a vertigo: to, one nightfall ...


The beginning of "A Winter Burial", from Amy Clampitt's Westward (1990). I had relished her three earlier collections when I first set about discovering modern poetry in English, but it wasn't long before I was focussing on kinds of poetry that were not so readily purchasable in Waterstones. Thirty-five years later, and closer to the poet's own age (she was a famously late starter), I now seem to hear different strands in the incredible weave of her verse. 

She died in 1994, just eleven years after the publication of her first book. I was actually surprised at how relatively little there is about her on the internet... She had been celebrated, so far as poets are ever celebrated, during that decade. But even celebrated modern poets drop out of public memory with staggering speed. (A thought that might also apply to Yevtushenko.)

Anyway, there's a couple of evenings of Amy Clampitt's poems here: https://www.amyclampitt.com/poems-main .




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Saturday, March 25, 2023

liberty dont je suis issue

Priscilla Lane and Robert Cummings in Saboteur (1942)

"Stay with me. Wake up, Frank, Johnny, Jack, or whatever. Oh, Archibald, don't bow out on me now!" Comme dans les films, all those ladies qui frappent avec leurs jolies mains, peintes d'un rouge noir, sur film noir et blanc, forties ladies with their forties grammar, with their offres de jambon sandwiches and big glasses of milk, avec the uniform en blanc avec la ceinture noire saying things like "That's mighty kind of you, ma'am." and not holding his head up, but bent, en courbe, and not squarely as they should, comme appris, changing the tides of seas entire experience Held in what should be ces femmes et leurs mains qui frappent qui tapotent and hold you in their entire sea, ces femmes des années quarante, et les années de cet arbre généalogique de ces femmes des forties when on chantait "hey batter, batter, batter, swing" and "Joltin Joe DiMaggio we want you on our side," "how I love ya how I love ya, my dear old Sewanee," and of course: "somewhere over" americaines, dont je suis issue, these américaines, these ricaines, thowing back their heads, montrant leurs dents bien blanches, these carniverous ladies, candied, laquered red on the bout de leurs doigts, et leur performed liberty dont je suis issue, et que je perform oh I do and you encore ce rouge que l'on suppose, que l'on ne voit pas, et qui est noir sur l'écran, challenged like la peste au bout des doigts showing you your propre mort au bout de tes doigts bien visible, encroaching vanity, Paris vaut bien une analyse, the five shiny dying pieces of flesh au bout des doigts dont je suis issue, le visage de celui qui dort, le verre d'eau, les sels d'ammoniaque, des séries de doigts qui frappent comme pour donner le droit, enfin, le droit enfin de frapper ce con qui n'est plus. "Stella!" Ce con qui dort. Réveille-toi, idiot, avec tes six yeux si clairs, que je suppose si clairs, mais qui sont en noir et blanc. ...


An extract from "En Brume" by Jody Pou, a poem in the 1917 women: poetry: migration anthology edited by Jane Joritz-Nakagawa. 

The poem begins and ends with Wittgenstein looking doubtfully at his hand, with a Dick and Jane early reader, and with Octavius Caesar accidentally breaking off Alexander the Great's nose. But this extract comes from the central span about the "femmes des forties", their sassiness, glamour, compromise and humiliation in a world where power resides elsewhere; performed liberty but also a "Hébé" à genoux. Somehow all the parts of the poem cohere, perhaps because of the reader's irresistible journey through this multilingual medium. The topic in question (we're mistaken into concluding) might be anything at all and we'd still be absorbed.

In "En brume" (in mist) the outlines are not quite as defined as this list of topics suggests. For example, though "Joltin' Joe DiMaggio" is definitely from the 1940s, the sideline taunt "Batter, batter, swing" can only be traced back to 1983. After all, a poem cannot be only historical, it's still a statement about now.

There are sideshows here too, multilingual crosscurrents (like seas/six yeux/seizures), creative misspellings, misgrammar, mispunctuation. Perhaps it's relevant to quote what Wittgenstein is made to say here: "Après tout, pourquoi le jeu de langage devrait-il reposer sur un savoir?" And yet the comparative definiteness of topic (compared, I mean, to a lot of other experimental writing) seems an important aspect of how "En brume" poses its questions. 

"Joltin' Joe Dimaggio" by Les Brown and his Orchestra (1941), Vocal Chorus by the sixteen-year-old Betty Bonney (she subsequently took the professional name Judy Johnson).

*

The Augustus passages play off the Emperor's own Res Gestae, that seminal plea for the merits of centralised power, especially in shirtsleeves.

... just a dude among the many, absolute monarch, mais "primus inter pares," I gave HS 240 to the plebs, to the plebs, I paid out public gift, cadeau, j'ai fait construire la curie, j'ai fait reconstruire des canaux des aqueducts, I rebuilt this road puis celle-là, trois fois j'ai donné, I gave, j'ai gave des spectacles de gladiator où 10,000 hommes se sont battus, I gave the people hunts of African beasts in the circus, à peu près 3500 were killed, morts, got rid of some statues of me, I am modest, ...

HS or more pedantically IIS  :  currency symbol for sestertii.

It's useful to know that four sestertii = one denarius, and that this was approximately the day wage of a common soldier in the time of Augustus.

*

Jody Pou (b. USA, lives in France) writes and performs multilingual texts, is also a singer and visual artist. 

This is great! Jody Pou and Emily Manzo, performing all of Anton Webern's compositions for voice and piano:

https://shskh.bandcamp.com/album/volume-4-a-webern-j-pou-e-manzo

Jody Pou's website:

https://jodypou.com/

Sign up for new writing on her newsletter:

https://jodypou.substack.com/


Gloria Grahame in Not as a Stranger (1955)


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Monday, March 20, 2023

Things I wrote in Intercapillary Space, part 2





OK, here's a second tranche of things that I published on Intercapillary Space, or sometimes Stride. Covering approximately April 2007 to August 2009. Part 2 of 4. 


[My Intercapillary Space links: 



Richard Makin:

John Wilkinson:

Donald Ward:

Peter Riley:

Elizabeth Willis:

rob mclennan:

Van Der Graaf Generator:

Colin Falck:

Gunnar Björling:

Denise Riley:

"Athwart":

Pentti Saarikoski:

Anne Campbell:

Lisa Samuels:

Lisa Samuels / Rosanna Warren:

The Many Press:




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Thursday, March 16, 2023

Early contributions to Intercapillary Space

 


This is a really boring post, but I figured it's time to link to some of the writing (mostly about poetry) that I produced for Intercapillary Space. Otherwise you might never know (and in quite a few cases I myself had forgotten) that I'd written about these guys. 

 IS was at its most vibrant in its first year, when we had relatively lots of contributors and Edmund just said to publish something every day if we could. (I just couldn't, none of us could, but we all tried.) You can get a better idea of the mix of improvisations that this advice produced by having a glance through some of the early months of Intercapillary Space in full. Just put https://intercapillaryspace.blogspot.com/2006/02/ into your browser, then change the 02 to an 03, and so on. 

This post covers things I wrote for IS between its inception (Feb 2006) and round about April 2007. What constrains it is the maximum total length of labels on a single post. So there'll have to be a follow-up or two. 

 
I've omitted whatever I believe has already appeared on this blog (though I may have made some mistakes). 


Bob Cobbing:

Peter Redgrove:

Moniza Alvi:

Kathleen Raine:

Geraldine Monk:

Tua Forsström:

Thomas Kinsella:

Catherine Daly:

Jessica Smith:

Cathal Ó Searcaigh:

Arielle Greenberg:

Alexander Pope:

Robert Browning:










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Tuesday, March 07, 2023

Selected Prose of Sir Walter Scott


 




Selected Prose of Sir Walter Scott, Edited with an Introduction by J.C. Trewin (Falcon Prose Classics, 1952). (John Courtenay Trewin, 1908 - 1990, jounalist and drama critic.)

"I read Walter Scott first with the eagerness of a boy of ten, niched among the worn, sea-pink-tufted crags on Old Lizard Head upon several of the long primrose-and-blue July evenings of a lost summer."

That's the first sentence of the Introduction, and the best. Trewin remained a fan of the Waverley novels, and here he selects ten extracts. 

They are: 1. the battle of Prestonpans, from Waverley. 2. The funeral of Mrs Margaret Bertram, from Guy Mannering. 3. The post office scene, from The Antiquary. 4. First encounter with Andrew Fairservice, from Rob Roy. 5. The riot and death of Porteous, from The Heart of Midlothian. 6. Arriving at Wolf's Crag, from The Bride of Lammermoor. 7. Dalgetty meeting Ranald in the dungeon, from A Legend of Montrose. 8. Ivanhoe's joust with Brian de Bois-Guilbert at Ashby, from Ivanhoe. 9. Meg Dods talking about the new resort, from St Ronan's Well. 10. The end of the Chevalier's venture, from Redgauntlet.

If J.C. Trewin's book had any influence, it can only have been to hasten the precipitous decline of Scott's reputation. 

These are mostly great pages from mostly great books, and yet they are somehow a terrible advert for an audience unconvinced of Scott's merits. Taken out of context, the extracts lose most of their meaning: for instance, in the first extract, almost everything depends on having followed Edward Waverley's story to this point, his relations with Colonel Gardiner, with Fergus MacIvor, etc. And on the other hand, reading an extract focusses pitiless attention on the feeble and clumsy writing that is always to be found in Scott, even in selection, and it makes an uncommitted reader think (mistakenly but reasonably), well if this is the best I needn't bother with the rest.... (The extract that works best in isolation is the post office scene from The Antiquary, perhaps because it's peopled by characters outside the main narrative.) The truth is, that to have a chance of experiencing Scott's greatness you have to read one of his novels in full, and then you might feel it or you might not, but if you do feel it the feeblenesses and clumsinesses don't matter, any more than dead branches in a forest. 

Still and all, this is often great writing, though sadly chopped up; and Scott was a great prose writer, as well as (what is very different) a great novelist and (what is very relevant) a great poet. Here's the climax of that hard-bitten scene from Guy Mannering:


At length they arrived at the churchyard gates, and from thence, amid the gaping of two or three dozen of idle women with infants in their arms, and accompanied by some twenty children, who ran gambolling and screaming alongside of the sable procession, they finally arrived at the burial-place of the Singleside family. This was a square enclosure in the Greyfriars churchyard, guarded on one side by a veteran angel without a nose, and having only one wing, who had the merit of having maintained his post for a century, while his comrade cherub, who had stood sentinel on the corresponding pedestal, lay a broken trunk among the hemlock, burdock, and nettles which grew in gigantic luxuriance around the walls of the mausoleum. A moss-grown and broken inscription informed the reader that in the year 1650 Captain Andrew Bertram, first of Singleside, descended of the very ancient and honourable house of Ellangowan, had caused this monument to be erected for himself and his descendants. A reasonable number of scythes and hour-glasses, and death’s heads and cross-bones, garnished the following sprig of sepulchral poetry to the memory of the founder of the mausoleum:--

                               Nathaniel’s heart, Bezaleel’s hand, 
                                     If ever any had, 
                               These boldly do I say had he, 
                                     Who lieth in this bed.

Here, then, amid the deep black fat loam into which her ancestors were now resolved, they deposited the body of Mrs. Margaret Bertram; and, like soldiers returning from a military funeral, the nearest relations who might be interested in the settlements of the lady urged the dog-cattle of the hackney coaches to all the speed of which they were capable, in order to put an end to farther suspense on that interesting topic.


Greyfriars churchyard: The Greyfriars Kirkyard, on the southern edge of Edinburgh's Old Town. 

Nathaniel's heart, etc.: Scott stole this from an inscription in the Howff, Dundee, commemorating Andrew Schippert, haxter burgess of Dundee, who died in 1641. (See Traits and Stories of the Scottish People, by the Rev. Charles Rogers (1867).) Bezaleel was the chief artisan of the tabernacle (see Exodus 31:1-6). Nathaniel presumably refers to the prince who provided offerings to the tabernacle at the time of its consecration (see Numbers 7:18-23), though he is just one of several tribal leaders listed as doing so. 

dog-cattle: the skinny horses mentioned earlier in the chapter. See Dictionaries of the Scots Language, "dog" : "dog-cattle, a contemptuous term applied to ill-nourished animals".



Scott's novels, a brief guide.









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Sunday, March 05, 2023

The Aulins

From the 2017 Daphne CD Revived Piano Treatures: Valborg Aulin, Laura Netzel (Lucia Negro: piano). Artwork showing the title page of Valborg Aulin's Grande sonate sérieuse



A sketchy chronology of the sibling composers Valborg Aulin and Tor Aulin, dedicated musicians, and contributors to Swedish musical and cultural life. (Nearly all of it is uncritically drawn from the links that follow the composers' birth dates.)

Composition formed only a part of their lives. But the catalyst for this post is my obsession with Valborg Aulin's Grande sonate sérieuse (the original title on the first page of the score, dedicated to Hilda Thegerström: the words "Grande" and "sérieuse" were subsequently deleted). Perhaps, above all, its peculiar and wonderful Trio. I couldn't help but feel curious to know more about  the composer of such striking music. But I still don't know much more. I felt there had to be a story,  for instance to explain how the bold and ambitious music of the 1880s (basically, her years of study) dwindled into the slighter music of the 1890s and then to nothing at all. What did it feel like, to lose the critical respect that seemed to be her destiny when Ludvig Norman was her mentor and her string quartets were so admired? And this at a time when her younger brother stood at the very pinnacle of Scandinavian culture, its star violinist, the friend of Grieg, Stenhammar and Strindberg, the founder or leader or conductor of half a dozen orchestras? But this is romancing. She may not have seen it that way at all. Everyone has a story, but Valborg Aulin was one of the many people who choose not to tell their story, not to futurity anyway. All we have are stray facts.

*

Lars Axel Alfred Aulin, born 10 June 1826, died 16 September 1869. He was a teacher of classical Greek and published several educational books. He was also an enthusiastic amateur violinist involved in Stockholm musical life.
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Axel_Alfred_Aulin (in Swedish)

In 1858 he was appointed a teacher in Gävle. Here he met Edla Walborg Holmberg, daughter of the city broker (stadsmäklare) Konrad Holmberg and his arty wife Vilhelmina. Konrad was a Finn who had moved to Gävle in 1809. 

Lars Axel and Edla married the following year.

Edla Walborg Aulin née Holmberg, born 12 August 1832, died 14 February 1914. Another enthusiastic musician, she had once had hopes of a singing career, but these were prevented by ill health, and instead she became an excellent pianist, like her mother Vilhelmina. Edla's maternal uncle Rudolf was a violinist in the Hovkapellet (orchestra of the Royal Swedish Opera). Edla's sister Klara was also a pianist and her brother Konrad a gifted amateur violinist. 

Olallo Morales (1874 - 1957) in the below-linked Riksarkivet article about Tor Aulin (Sweden's dictionary of national biography -- this article is probably from the 1920s) says of Edla: "Her upbringing went exclusively in an aesthetic direction to the neglect of practical activity; she loved studies and music but lacked a sense of reality." (I'm quoting Olallo, here and elsewhere, via Google Translate.)

The articles report that Edla was a very strict parent, but I don't know the primary source for this. One of the speculations about Valborg's unexpected removal to Örebro in 1903 was that she wanted to get away from her mother. 

Laura Valborg Aulin, born 9 January 1860 in Gävle, died 13 March 1928 in Örebro.
https://www.swedishmusicalheritage.com/composers/aulin-valborg/
https://skbl.se/sv/artikel/ValborgAulin (2018 article by Eva Öhrström for the Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexikon, in Swedish)

Axel Konrad Aulin, born 23 September 1862 in Gävle, died 25 February 1934 in Orsa (near Mora in Dalarna). He became a civil engineer. His wife's name was Elvira; they had three daughters.

1862, Lars Axel and his family moved to Stockholm where he had a new teaching post at the Högre Elementarläroverket.

Tor Bernhard Wilhelm Aulin, born 10 September 1866 in Stockholm, died 1 March 1914 in Saltsjöbaden.
https://www.resmusica.com/2014/06/07/tor-aulin-acteur-majeur-de-la-vie-musicale-suedoise/ (by Jean-Luc Caron, in French: a long and informative article, containing much more detail about Tor's musical career, appointments, colleagues, tours, concerts and compositions than I have given here)

Olallo Morales, in the Riksarkivet article, says of Tor: "In addition to the early emerging musical tendencies originating from both sides, Aulin inherited from his father thoroughness, ability to work, initiative, devotion to his task, unpretentiousness, self-criticism, right-mindedness, disgust for humbug and external brilliance, skill and humour. From the mother came the Finnish stubbornness but also Finnish toughness, a warm heart, passionate love for art, a never-resting restlessness in the mind, which constantly dreamed of new proposals, art creations, work goals."

1866. From the age of six, Valborg receives piano lessons from her aunt Klara. Subsequently she is taught by the pianist and composer Jacob Adolf Hägg.

1869, death of Lars Axel. Uncle Konrad to some extent acted as father to the children after Lars Axel's death, and was influential in Tor's early instruction in the violin. 

1873, the seven-year-old Tor begins his violin studies. Jean-Luc Caron (link above) reports a story that the family forbade Tor from touching the piano, thinking they had produced enough pianists, but he became a fine pianist nevertheless. 

This is confirmed by a remarkable episode. Tor performed Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor in private in front of the Norwegian master, who highly appreciated the demonstration, swearing softly before this gifted child ("this devil"), who seemed to make light of the difficulties that he himself had struggled with for so long! The two men would correspond at length for many years. 

(Jean-Luc Caron, loosely translated)

1873-1876, Valborg instructed in harmony by Albert Rubenson at the Musikaliska akademin. 

1877-1882, Valborg is a student at the Kungliga Musikkonservatoriet. Taught piano by Hilda Thegerström, and composition by Ludvig Norman among others (the only woman enrolled in the composition class).

1877-1883 At the age of eleven Tor enters the Stockholm conservatoire and studies violin under C.J. Lindberg, and theory under Conrad Nordqvist.

1880, Valborg and Tor Aulin's first public performances, at Söderköping, followed by a Norrland tour together. 

1881-1884, Tor plays in the theatre orchestra of Bernhard Fexer. At some point in this period his playing is witnessed by Emile Sauret on a visit to Stockholm (Sauret's wife was Swedish). 

1882-1885, Valborg Aulin gives private lessons in piano and harmony in Stockholm.

1882, Valborg Aulin's [Five] Tone Poems for Piano / [Fem] Tondikter för Pianoforte (op. 7) published. (NB Only principal compositions are mentioned here)

1884, Valborg Aulin's [Seven] Pieces for Piano / [Sju] stycken för piano (op. 8) published. She composes her String Quartet in F (op. 17 no. 1). 

Here's the Romanza, the first of the Op 8 pieces. If I was told this was a Brahms intermezzo I might believe it. Performance by Steven Luksan (Music Center of the NorthWest):



1884-1886, Tor Aulin is in Berlin, where he studies with Emile Sauret. He is invited to play viola in Sauret's own Quartet, stands in for Sauret himself at a concert at the Berlin Opera, and is involved in performing music by Saint-Saëns.

1885 (probably), Valborg Aulin composes Pie Jesu Domine, Missa sollemnis for choir and orchestra (op. 13), dedicated to the memory of her mentor Ludvig Norman (1831 - 1885). 

Olallo Morales, in the Riksarkivet article linked above (written during Valborg Aulin's lifetime), wrote: "During her studies, Valborg Aulin received particular encouragement from the composer Ludvig Norman, who followed her compositional development with interest. Her Nordic romantic tone poetry also shows a certain kinship with Norman's gentle muse, without however denying its origin in an era that also produced Sjögren's more colourful creations. A thorough schooling had given her creation certainty and clarity of form, refined feminine taste in combination with French influence has given it its amiable comfort and elegiacally soft touch, in which, however, a healthy rudeness is not missing".

1885-1887, Valborg Aulin has a Jenny Lind grant to study abroad, in Copenhagen under Niels Gade, briefly in Berlin, and for perhaps a couple of years in Paris.

1885, in Copenhagen Valborg Aulin composes her piano sonata in F minor (Grande sonate sérieuse, op. 14).

It was Valborg Aulin's only multi-movement piano work, but it is a remarkable one. Here it is, in a performance by Lucia Negro:





1886, in Paris, Valborg Aulin composes Tableaux Parisiens, her only purely orchestral work (op. 15) and her lyric suite Procul este! (op. 28) for soprano, mixed choir and orchestra. Music studies with  Benjamin Godard (who had also taught Helena Munktell), woman pianist E. Bourgain (I can't find out anything else about her, as yet), and to a lesser extent Jules Massenet and Ernest Guiraud.

Here's one of the Tableaux Parisiens, "In the Quiet of the Night", performed by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Johannes Gustavsson. (You can listen to the other three tableaux on YouTube too.)


1886, Tor Aulin returns from his studies in Berlin and swiftly gains a reputation as a virtuoso violinist, though this is endangered for some weeks by over-exertion leading to a paralysis of the left arm and little finger.

1887, Tor Aulin forms the Aulin Quartet.(Aulinska kvartetten) with Edvin Sjöberg, Berndt Carlsson and Axel Bergström. The quartet, which lasts until 1912, is important in Swedish musical history for its promotion of chamber music. Valborg often performs with the Aulin Quartet: e.g. Saint-Saëns piano quartet, Mozart's G Minor piano quartet.

1887, Valborg Aulin returns to Stockholm in August and resumes giving private piano lessons. 

1887, Valborg gives a performance of her Grande sonate. The reviews are mixed: "Valborg Aulin 'shone as a composer', wrote respected critic Adolf Lindgren in Aftonbladet after the concert. Unfortunately however, her piano technique was not adequate to do justice to the expansive sonata, but as a composition it was well received, even though some critics complained about the free form. They got more of an impression of a number of different character pieces rather than a coherent sonata. Otherwise, the reviewers praised the modern harmonies and rhythms." (from Christina Tobeck's liner notes for Lucia Negro's 2017 CD Revived Piano Treasures: Valborg Aulin, Laura Netzel).

1888, The Aulin Quartet give the first performance of Valborg's F major String Quartet; the reviews are positive, and it is published the same year. It was a significant achievement for a woman composer; according to Eva Öhrström, string quartets had only male members at the time, and woman composers were expected to keep away from the form; Elfrida Andrée's D minor quartet (1887) was never performed.

Valborg Aulin's are considered the most significant Swedish string quartets of the 1880s, i.e. prior to Stenhammar's. The F major quartet is performed here by the Tale Quartet (Talekvartetten):



1889, Valborg Aulin composes her string quartet in E minor (op. 17 no. 2). The pianist Ida Åquist is documented as performing with the Aulin Quartet.

1889 (probably), Tor Aulin composes his Concert Piece for Violin and Orchestra (G minor, later known as violin concerto No. 1, op. 7)

1890, Tor Aulin composes his violin concerto "No. 2" in A minor (op. 11). First performance of Valborg's E minor quartet: positive reviews.

1892, Tor Aulin composes his violin sonata in D minor (op. 12). 

1892 (?), Valborg Aulin composes her Valse élégiaque

Performed here by Gamma1734 on digital piano:



1895, Tor Aulin composes his violin concerto in C minor ("No. 3", op. 14). 21 May, marries Ida Åquist, who was born Ida Hjort on 11 September 1848; he is 28 and Ida is 46. 

This remains one of the most celebrated Swedish violin concertos. Performed here by Christian Bergquist and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Okko Kamu:




1896, approximately. Wilhelm Stenhammar (1871 - 1927) begins his formative collaboration with the Aulin Quartet.

1896, Valborg gives a public performance dedicated to her own compositions. Some good reviews, some bad.

1898  Tor Aulin's first marriage (to Ida Åquist) dissolved on 30 December. He has begun a relationship with the married singer Anna Hedvig Bendixson (b. 30 June 1865); suffers social condemnation and falls into depression. Eventually marries Anna on 2 January 1900. 

(Anna later wrote, of Valborg's Paris years, "Despite her total lack of outward charm, which Frenchmen are so highly appreciative of, she became popular due to her immense talent". Of Tor she said that his compositional accomplishments were restricted by his humility and commitment to promoting music by other Swedish composers.)

1899, Tor composes his Four Aquarelles (Fyra akvareller) for violin and piano. 

Performed here, in Memphis TN, by Basil Alter (violin) and Brian Ray (piano):


1900, Tor Aulin forms the Svenska Musikerföreningens (the Swedish Musicians’ Society) orchestra, whose concert takings went to pensions and medical care for impoverished musicians.

1901, Valborg gives another concert of her own works. It is sold out but the reviews are negative.

1902-1909, Tor Aulin is a co-founder and conductor of Stockholms Konsertförening (the Stockholm Concert Society). 

1903, Valborg Aulin moves from Stockholm to Örebro as music teacher. She lives here for the rest of her life and plays a significant part in the musical life of the town, but does not compose any more music. In Örebro, unlike in Stockholm, Valborg is a big fish and her work is appreciated. She performs with the Philomeles society and at Nikolaikyrkan (St Nicholas' church).

1905, Tor conducts the premier of Franz Berwald's rediscovered Symphonie singulière. Co-founds the Göteborgs orkesterförenings orkester (Gothenburg Orchestra Society orchestra).

Tor Aulin, a photograph published in Hvar 8 dag in 1906.

[Image source: Wikimedia .]

1907 onwards, Tor Aulin conducts the orchestra of the Dramatiska Teatern and leads the Sydsvenska filharmoniska sällskapet (Southern Sweden Philharmonic Society).

1908, Tor Aulin composes incidental music for August Strindberg's Mäster Olof (op. 22). (Strindberg also tried to persuade him to write operatic versions of A Dream Play and The Ghost Sonata, but Tor Aulin didn't feel up to that.)

1909, Tor Aulin moves to Göteborg and becomes Stenhammar's conducting partner at the Göteborgs Symfoniker (Sweden's first full-time professional orchestra) but depression and increasing ill-health take their toll.

1912, Tor Aulin composes the Svenska danser (op. 32), initially for violin and piano, arranged for orchestra the following year.

1913, Tor Aulin has a stroke that leaves him partially paralysed. Is carried into rehearsals of his Svenska danser, but is overcome by emotion and waves farewell to the musicians (according to a memorial by his friend Emil Hansen). His decline is excruciating and his formerly amiable personality becomes irritable.

1914, death of Edla Aulin and, just two weeks later, Tor Aulin.

1914-1924, Valborg gives concerts every February (at St Nicholas' church?) to an appreciative audience.

1928, death of Valborg Aulin. She was buried in the churchyard of St Nicholas' church in Örebro, with no gravestone, but recently her gravesite was discovered and a stone placed there. 

Finding Valborg Aulin's grave: https://www.svenskakyrkan.se/orebro/sa-hittade-leif-hjalmarsson-valborg-aulins-grav (in Swedish).

Valborg Aulins vänner (Friends of Valborg Aulin):
https://sv-se.facebook.com/groups/355892397933868/


Valborg Aulin's gravestone in St Nicholas' churchyard, Örebro, provided by admirers in around 2006.

[Image source: https://www.svenskakyrkan.se/orebro/sa-hittade-leif-hjalmarsson-valborg-aulins-grav .]



My list of Nordic women composers:

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2020/11/nordic-women-composers.html








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Wednesday, March 01, 2023

-- Nay, Traveller! rest.

 

Buds of male flowers on Yew (Taxus baccata). Frome, 19 February 2023.

It's tempting to say, "a male yew". Although, as with many other dioecious plants, individual yews have occasionally been known to change sex, or to speak more accurately, change the sex of the flowers they produce. 


Buds of male flowers on Yew (Taxus baccata). Frome, 19 February 2023.

Each "bud" is actually a cluster of buds enclosed within a transparent membrane.


Open male flowers on Yew (Taxus baccata). Frome, 1 March 2023.


Ten days later, the cluster pushes out of its membrane (now revealed as multiple scales) and the buds open. Puhpowee.*

Each time I brushed the foliage I was immersed in a cloud of pollen. Sometimes a puff of breeze can make the tree look as if it's on fire.


*

* A word in the Potawatomi language. 


I come here to listen, to nestle in the curve of the roots in a soft hollow of pine needles, to lean my bones against the column of white pine... 

I could spend a whole day listening. And a whole night. And in the morning, without my hearing it, there might be a mushroom that was not there the night before, creamy white, pushed up from the pine needle duff, out of darkness to light, still glistening with the fluid of its passage. Puhpowee.

... My first taste of the missing language was the word Puhpowee on my tongue. I stumbled upon it in a book by the Anishinaabe ethnobotanist Keewaydinoquay, in a treatise on the the traditional uses of fungi by our people. Puhpowee, she explained, translates as "the force which causes mushrooms to push up from the earth overnight".

(Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (2013), p. 48, 49.)

Later, at a tribal gathering, "I learned that the mystical word Puhpowee is used not only for mushrooms, but also for certain other shafts that rise mysteriously in the night" (p.54).

That's two useful words in a single paragraph,  because I didn't know "duff" either (decaying vegetable matter on forest floor). I found myself looking with new eyes at the duff beneath these yew trees.


Open male flowers on Yew (Taxus baccata). Frome, 1 March 2023.

Open male flowers on Yew (Taxus baccata). Frome, 1 March 2023.

On the female tree, by contrast, it looks as if not much is happening.


"Female" Yew (Taxus baccata). Frome, 3 March 2023.

But in fact the flowers are here, though very unobtrusive:


Female flowers on Yew (Taxus baccata). Frome, 3 March 2023.

They look like buds, but are receptive of pollen. They are green at first and then brown. 

More noticeable are these "artichoke galls", made by the gall fly Taxomyia taxi:

Gall of Taxomyia taxi on Yew (Taxus baccata). Frome, 3 March 2023.

Debris beneath a female Yew (Taxus baccata). Frome, 6 March 2023.

The seed contents are highly poisonous to humans but palatable to some other creatures, for example squirrels, dormice, hawfinches, nuthatches, and marsh tits. (Blackbirds and thrushes swallow the whole fruit, but the seed passes through the gut unbroken.)

Male flowers on an Irish Yew (Taxus baccata 'Fastigiata'). Tytherington, 12 March 2023.

The fascinating variety known as the Irish Yew, with needles radiating all round the stem. All plants are cuttings deriving from a single specimen found in Co. Fermanagh in the eighteenth century. The plant is a dense shrub with multiple small pinnacles.

More about yew trees:


https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2017/03/unrejoicing-berries.html








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