By Grace Cavalieri – IAWM Journal (2004)
In 1974 I was teaching at Antioch College (Yellow Springs, Ohio) as poet/playwright in residence. I submitted my play, Best of Friends, to Notre Dame College (Baltimore, Maryland), and it was accepted for production. It was a complex and difficult theater piece, which depended upon a kind of “emotional weather” as its hydraulic system. It needed sound: the sound of loneliness, fear and motion through a turbulent event. To accommodate that need, Alice Houstle, head of Notre Dame’s theater department, said there was a musician I should meet: “Here’s the phone number of someone I admire very much, Vivian [Vickie] Adelberg Rudow.” From this distance, 30 years later, I see Alice Houstle as some sort of spiritual guide who knew that these two artists were meant to work together.
Vickie Rudow and I had much in common. We were both young mothers who practiced our arts while managing households of children (I had four daughters, Vickie three sons). This was an immediate relief, as I was accustomed to working with artists whose inspirational schedule occurred between 2 and 4 a.m. Here was someone like me—in collaboration with the divine—and still trying to get the cat to the vet on time. Here was someone who was breaking new molds and creating new forms, but still had to rush to meet the 3 p.m. school bus. Here was a friend. The soundtrack Vickie produced for Best of Friends was an astonishing process to watch as it evolved. In this case, the text had already been completed, but the conversation about music and words was just beginning, and would continue for 20 years.
“What does loneliness sound like? A train whistle in the distance?” So went our inquiry into the theater piece. Vickie’s youngest son still remembers waking to the strange sounds coming from the tape machine downstairs, and he claims it did not help his nighttime psyche. Vickie’s music was electronic, and my psyche was equally unprepared. My introduction to her methodology included listening to certain taped sounds slowed down and played backwards to get the desired effect—sounds she invented that do not exist on this earth. We achieved the effect we wanted, and the drama of Best of Friends was haunting and lyrical.
After working with Vickie, I felt privileged as I sat in Baltimore’s Meyerhoff Hall in 1982 listening to her piece, Force III, presented by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, with Sergiu Comissiona conducting. This was the first piece by a Maryland composer to be presented at Meyerhoff Hall. At the time, Vickie claimed she felt so “awed” working with the noted conductor that she could barely speak during rehearsals. To this day, when Vickie speaks of that momentous occasion in her life, she refers to “the honor” of having Sergiu Comissiona conduct her work. And that feeling has not lessened through the years. But she still wishes she’d had the three rehearsals promised her rather than the two she received!
It was here I learned my first lesson about one of the difficulties of a composer’s life. I had never imagined the impact that loss of rehearsal time could have on a piece and possibly on a person’s musical reputation. Often composers are criticized unfairly if their music does not sound right, when the real reason for the problem may be the lack of adequate rehearsal time. On this occasion, Pinkus Zuckerman, who was playing a concerto by Elgar, was given the third rehearsal that had been promised to Vickie.
Vickie’s concern was a legitimate one—the performers had not played Force III straight through since the first reading several days before. Therefore, the premiere was actually a “rehearsal,” which, according to Vickie, was about “two-thirds there.” The second night’s performance served as the real premiere of a fully rehearsed performance. This was the event I attended, and the work sounded perfect to me. Unfortunately, the piece was recorded the first night.
Despite the uneven opening night performance, Force III received some glowing reviews. The late R. P. Harris, writing for News American, a major newspaper at that time, remarked: “Her 10-minute expanded sonata-cum-rondo is full of interesting thematic material— constantly developed for grand orchestra with a wonderful variety of sound effects in augmented percussion battery. The force of nature is evocatively and descriptively expressed. But the wispy melodies, supported by blocks of texture rather than harmony, are tantalizingly evanescent.” He also remarked that “the audience reacted with considerably more enthusiasm than new works often receive.” From City Paper, Wayne F. Henkel referred to the composer as “an extraordinary compositional talent.”
During the 1980s Vickie won several international honors with her electronic music, creating sound portraits that combined recorded spoken words with music. She won First Prize in the 1986 14th International Electroacoustic Music Competition, Bourges, Program Division, for With Love, a fantasy for live cello and decorated cello cases (prepared tape), written in memory of Myrtle Hollins Adelberg. The work received the top score of ten from each of the judges. Vickie was also the first American woman to win a first prize in the Bourges Competition, and was the first woman to win the Program Division as well.
Also in 1986, using the interview technique to get expressive verbal material to be combined with music, Vickie composed Portrait of a Friend for an artist friend who was suffering from a difficult divorce. She edited his conversations and added electronic music that exemplified his emotions. She decided to add songs to the work, and at this point I became part of the compositional process. I wrote the words to the songs, the most memorable of which is The Garden Song.
The first performance featured a soprano, but the work was recorded with tenor Howard Carr, and his performance was much more effective. Vickie subsequently revised The Garden Song to better fit his voice. The song has an interesting history. Beginning in October 1992 and continuing for years to follow, Carr’s recording of The Garden Song was aired on the late Kjell Forsting’s TV program “From My Window,” a production of Dundalk Community College’s TV station (Baltimore). In my field, I can only compare the hundreds of performances to that of a single poem, extracted from an entire book of poetry, being anthologized over and over.
Many of the pieces we worked on together were actualized because Vickie was a producer/ presenter as well as creator of music. Between 1980 and 1991, Vickie served as founder, producer and artistic director of Res Musica Baltimore, later Res MusicAmerica. This organization of high quality performers presented 283 musical works, mainly by American living composers, for full-house audiences; in addition, Res Musica offered 26 symposia and 22 youth concerts. Most of the performances were at the Baltimore Museum of Art, with some at the Walters Art Gallery. It was a marvelous time in the furtherance of music, and I learned much of what I know about contemporary music by attending those programs.
Vickie felt the general public had little exposure to “new” music. She believed the atonal and dissonant deserved a place at the table along with all other music. She designed a way she could acquaint the audience with such music by inviting and not alienating them. Vickie created “sandwiches” consisting of recently-composed works. The program would present one accessible piece, then an atonal work, followed by another easy-to-understand composition.
My memories of these performances are that they represented all kinds of classical music, and included women conductors and African American composers and performers. Both were very rare in the 1980s. Vickie remembers attending Wendell Wright’s concert series in downtown Baltimore City to search for outstanding talent. The late Wendell Wright was a retired Africa-American tenor who founded and produced the Lois Wright Memorial Concerts, in memory of his first wife. The concerts were designed to help young artists, mostly but not exclusively African Americans. Vickie found the performers to be exceptionally talented, and she invited many of them to perform in her concert series; in fact, one Res Musica concert featured more black performers than white. This was highly venturesome at that time. She did not produce special African-American concerts or gender concerts; her concerts were inclusive, not exclusive.
An extraordinary Res Musica event was an “84 in 84 Concert” featuring Otto Luening at age 84 in 1984. He spoke at length and then conducted one of his compositions, Potawatomi Legends, a work inspired by Native American life. On the same program, Vickie conducted her composition, Journey of Waters. She scored the work for the same 14 instruments that Luening used in his Legends, plus a soprano solo singing words that I had written. Vickie originally planned the work to be purely instrumental, featuring either a solo viola or trumpet. Later, in 1994, she returned to her original concept, and The Baltimore Chamber Orchestra performed the music, now titled Dark Waters, with additional string sections and with the trumpet playing the main melody. Another particularly memorable Res Musica event was the international festival that Vickie produced in 1988 in Baltimore, with 14 composers from around the world, plus other USA composers in attendance. It was a great honor to have such an array of composers in Baltimore. Res Musica hosted them, patterning the festival after the 1987 Cuban International Electroacoustic Music Festival.
The 1980s were a vibrant time for our work together. Vickie took an existing poem of mine, The Healing Place, and set it to music for flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello, tape, live synthesizers and narrator—a universe of sound multiplying the many dimensions of the story. The work was performed a number of times, the most notable of which were at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1987 and the Walters Gallery of Art in 1988. The conductor for both of these events was the composer, Vivian Rudow. Conducting The Healing Place for the first time was a Herculean challenge. During rehearsals, Vickie could not hear the taped portions while the acoustic instruments and live synthesizer performers were playing. She claims she almost gave up during the final rehearsal, but a technician saved the day with earphones; Vickie juggled the phone in one ear to hear the tape, and with the other ear she heard the live performers. It came together (she says “miraculously”) and was hugely successful. A few years later, with computer technology, she was able to combine live synthesizer parts with the taped parts, adding a click track for conductors, so the piece could be more easily performed.
This experience awakened in me the full understanding of where language could go. We can think of words as boxes, stacked or set on edge, or thrown in the air. But to have them lifted off the ground was what it felt like to hear language spoken to music. It was a revelation to the existing narrative. The staging of the piece depended on finding the right speaker. Vickie chose a deep resonant voice, bass baritone Joseph Eubanks, because the opening lines gave her permission: “The deep and dark, green blue woods....” I had thought the protagonist would be a female, as the poem was written from that point of view, but I was pleased with the outcome and honored because Vickie had composed the music as a birthday gift to me. Joseph Eubanks recorded the piece. However, in 1987 music was not as computerized as it is today. Imagine Vickie composing her work on reel to reel tape. The music was composed for live acoustic, live keyboards, and prepared tape. The narrator was flesh and blood, and here we had a world of many floating realities to put together. These taped/instrumental/live narration (or spoken voice) combinations were even toured. Would I call Vivian Adelberg Rudow a pioneer in her field? Or should I call her an inventor of the field? She says, “Neither. I took what there was and ran with it.”
Now, I want to hark back five years before this “setting words to Vickie’s music.” I mean that literally: setting words to music. In most cases when a writer works with a musician, the language is in place first. I’d had many poems choreographed for dancers prior to working with Vickie, and the first piece in the collaboration was always the written word. Yet in my working relationship with this musician, it somehow naturally evolved that Vickie would present me with a musical score, and I would tailor each syllable to the demanding note. I am “just literate” in reading music, but somehow I managed to bypass the brain’s files that said “you cannot do this.” Somehow, I killed the censor judging me (the one inside each of us), and I went right to the feelings, where the music spoke most directly. Vivian Adelberg Rudow is an emotional composer. Any composer can manipulate sound, but to rinse it through the heart was for me the test of this artist and my role with her. The feeling state is what spoke to me and enabled me to find my space to write within the relationship.
In 1984 a poet, also my friend, passed away. The poet had been the original impetus for my writing The Healing Place, but she was not to be healed. I had told Vickie about the wine and pill bottles found by her bed, and how I took her sheets home to wash them. The mark of genius is knowing what to hear; what Vickie heard was my sadness, and from this she composed Devy’s Song, a melody for treble instrument with no words.
We composed many songs together between 1984 and 1992. Once again the writing process was one where Vickie presented me with finished musical compositions, and I cut each word to fit. It was difficult to write, since I’d had free rein before. Later, we decided to tie the songs together to create a song cycle or mono opera. I added brief links of dialogue, thus the title of the mono drama for female voice and piano, String of Pearls. The work contained fragments of poetic speech, telling of a young woman’s loneliness. It also examined the many aspects for an unfulfilled love: soaring hope, unrealistic love, avoidance and rejection of love, defenses, and an inability to absorb the good in the world. It is set in the voice of one whose pain cannot influence God. The creation shows our heroine through her hysteria, running without rest, until the only comfort is to recede into the shadows. The work is powerful and the music magnificent. The variety of songs gives the singer the opportunity to create numerous different personalities. When the mono opera premiered with Beth Rothenberg as mezzo-soprano, accompanied by Jeffrey Chappell on piano, I believed in magic.
The mono opera did not remain static, and we prepared different versions: we changed the soloist from female to male and retitled it Love Chain; I wrote new lyrics designed for a male voice. For the premiere, Jeffrey Chappell, a virtuoso pianist, asked Vickie to write a more difficult part because he wanted something interesting to play. Vickie later wrote an optional easier piano part for the song Liquid Gold because that was the most difficult to perform; however, given the choice, most pianists select the original version. We arranged String of Pearls as a song cycle and titled it Purple Ice, and we also adopted the later title for the mono opera.
The work has had many performances as a mono opera, but it was performed more often as a song cycle, with the singer selecting the songs. A number of the songs have had a life of their own, performed individually in various venues—single songs continue to be performed throughout the country. The cycle has grown from eight songs to ten (for the song titles, see the Work List). These songs could be considered popular American classics. How dare I say this? When I see that people in the audience can grasp immediately— and remember for a very long time—what was heard, I believe a cultural roadblock has been removed. Some of the “songs” have been played without lyrics. Devy’s Song has received a large number of performances as a viola or violin solo. Currently, Vickie is working on an electroacoustic version.
In 1988 I published a book of poems entitled Migrations about the loss of children— not through tragedy but because “away is the only road there is.” This was bold; motherhood is not a favorite topic for female poets because it is so easily trivialized. But since the experience was universal, I folded the subject of loss into a surreal world. Vickie and I began adapting the book’s poems to a field of music. At this point my husband was hospitalized. I remember times in the hospital, when my husband was safely sleeping, I would find myself standing at the pay phone in the hallway talking to Vickie about the right word for the right line. She thought the words alone were too much about loss; the music would provide greater light. It was as if the language captured the angst, but the sound would uplift the “weather” of the poems. I attribute the success of Migrations to Vickie’s music because she would not allow the dark to prevail, and she elevated every poem with her positive energy.
Through a miraculous fusing of minds that cannot be described, a book of complex and difficult poems learned to fly to the music of love. Words are, by nature, of the intellect. They carry the brain’s baggage. It was Vicki’s job to add the spiritual body for each poem. What is important about this remembrance is that we were able to work while in the midst of crisis. Our life in the physical world was never serene; we had initially begun our work while carpooling children, preparing dinner, performing ordinary tasks, but somehow we found the space to give and get the power to create something that did not exist before.
In 1992 Migrations premiered at the Franz Bader Gallery in Washington, D.C., as an electronic poetry-opera with three female actors narrating the text and Washington’s Seda Galenian dancers interpreting the words. Vickie had created an electronic sound composition for each poem. The American artist Mary Ellen Long had illustrated the book with photos of antique dolls; these visuals were available on a monitor. It was a multi-media event, most certainly, but the words and sound would go on to have a life of their own. Migrations, in its entirety, was broadcast on Washington’s WPFW-FM following its stage premiere. My favorite remembrance is the look on the engineer’s face when Vickie walked into the booth and took over the sound controls, running the board so we had the right levels and consistency for Migrations.
Rudow’s work was ideally suited for radio. By this time her electronic music had won international recognition, and she was known globally. It was a good time to capitalize on this with radio. In 1992 Migrations was sent via National Public Radio satellite to 300 public radio stations. Each year for several years it was played regionally on-air to 200,000 listeners in the Washington/Baltimore vicinity on WPFW. This is a time-honored piece, an evergreen, which will be long remembered. Every possible musical mood is created to clothe the poetry. There is elegiac music as well as a hip-hop piece, a full spectrum of human emotions. I believe that the full appreciation of this set of compositions is yet to be realized. The difficulty in touring Migrations is that the music is on tape, and it involves live actors reading a difficult poetic text. The synchronization of the tape with voice once again reveals how much the composer acts as technical engineer. I fear to do it without Vickie backstage, but modern technology may open more doors in the near future to enable the work to be mounted.
In the mid 90s, radio was again to become part of my career with Vickie. In a series I created featuring West Virginia poets, the music bridges were designed by her. The sound looked to the 21st century yet with a feel of country air, mountains and earth. Chiefly rendered by strings, the music served well as the theme for “The Poet and the Poem from West Virginia,” a spin-off from my existing radio series. These poetry readings and interviews fastened by Vickie’s musical composition were distributed to the nation via NPR satellite in 1995.
I want to jump to the present day. I am able to see the track of musical notes left like crumbs along the trails, and I find them constantly reassembling. For instance, in the poetry-opera Migrations, featuring miniature portraits of music (Vickie’s stock and trade), one poem in particular caught her by the heart and brought forth what she calls her Love of Child theme. She has since used that theme in The Bare Smooth Stone of Your Love for cello and piano, and she used musical fragments in an electroacoustic composition, Cuban Lawyer, Juan Blanco. The original music, transformed again, can be found in her orchestral piece, Spirit of America. Refiguring one’s own material is truly part of a creative process, where we burnish it differently so it will shine again in a new setting.
In this essay, my aim was to explain how a writer and musician work together, and this brings me to the theoretical basis of the collaboration. Writers work from the Jungian principle that there are four major quadrants in the whole finished work: the thinking, the feeling, the sensual, and the intuitive. This is the Jungian circle, a pie cut into four pieces. We might say these are the elements that make up a balanced life, as well. It is what Jung believed. If we can write, touching some of these four qualities, we may achieve a balanced work of art. I write in total silence. I cannot be distracted by background noise. In working with a composer, if the music comes first, one must submit words to the sensuality of music. But they bear the burden of the thinking part of ourselves. The end result, one hopes, offers the intuitive and feeling components in good amounts. The collaboration then creates a prism where all these possibilities are multiplied.
The difficulty in writing words for existing music is that Vickie’s pieces of the Jungian circle were already in place and not of my creation. The thinking and the intuitive had to be matched. Fortunately, neither of us considered what we were doing in such theoretical terms, or we probably would not have been able to do it at all. I cannot remember any time of friction between us. I do remember thinking that Vickie often liked the second poem or revision I sent her, rather than the first, but it was a long time ago, and I cannot be completely sure of our process. Vickie recalls that sometimes we went back and forth several times and sometimes she had to change a melody. We were both opinionated, as we each were used to composing or writing how and what we wanted.
I look back and see us as two women who worked together intermittently, perhaps bohemian in spirit, flamboyant of heart, but never reckless. In fact, we were just the opposite. I am sure we got the roast defrosted in time before we indulged in our art. Our children grew up, went to college, and became parents themselves. And throughout the coherence and course of friendship we integrated a life of art to somehow make compositions that, we hope, will last longer than we do. In looking back, I remember an incident that pays homage to our union. I had sent Vickie a sheaf of poems, one line of which read, “I hear hats in the sun.” Vickie reacted with her Aries fire to my Libra air; she didn’t get it! She said, “There you go again, living in a world where daughters play dress-ups, while my boys are romping mud through the house.” The words did not speak to her. Two weeks later the phone rang at a very odd hour, a voice triumphant: “Grace! I hear it. I can hear hats in the sun!” That was the initial remark that triggered our 20-year tenure of work. As it is often said: “You just have to be home when the muse comes to call.”
Grace Cavalieri is the author of 13 books and chapbooks of poetry, the latest a children’s book, Little Line. Her play Quilting the Sun was presented at the Smithsonian Institution in 2003. Her 20th play, Jennie and the JuJu Man, premiered in New York City in June 2004. She has produced and hosted “The Poet and the Poem” on public radio for 27 years. It is recorded at the Library of Congress for distribution via NPR satellite.
Americana Visited Variations (violin or viola, piano, 1984, 10’)
Anomalies I, II, III, IV (flute, trumpet, soprano, 1977)
Ars Nova (2 bassoons, 1981, 6’)
The Bare Smooth Stone of Your Love, in memory of Daniel Malkin (cello, piano, optional narration, 1998, 7’)
Clouds of Memories (11 strings, 2002, 5:3’) With narration of memories by 4 narrators; quiet music that may be used for background while people speak their memories.
Devy’s Song (violin or treble instrument, piano, 1985, 2:30’)
The Healing Place VI (flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello, tape with click track, & optional narrator, poem by Grace Cavalieri, 1985/1991 revised, 14’)
Kaddish, in memory of Isaac Hollins (solo bassoon, 1975, 6’) (First prize International Double Reed Society Composition Contest, solo division, 1977)
I Pledge My Love (1992, string quartet or piano, tenor, 1992, 3:11’) (alternate version for tape and tenor)
Lament, in memory of Daniel Malkin (cello, piano, optional narration, 1997, 6’)
No Rest For Devy’s Spirit (viola solo, 1984, 3’)
Not Me! (cello, violin or viola, piano, 1989, 14’)
The Sky Speaks (8-part chorus, mezzo soprano or soprano, cello, percussion, piano, optional percussion, 1996, 10’)
Changing Space (1972/73; 6’ or 10’)
Cuban Lawyer, Juan Blanco (2000; plus 9 variations, theme/piece 5:30’, variations duration vary, total 13’, Variations of Variations Kennedy Center, live interactive)
Dona Nobis Pacem (1977, 4:30’)
Lies (1973, 3:30’) (About Clive Davis when authorities told lies about him)
The Lion and the Hares (1972)
The Majesty of It All (2003, 9:02’)
Migrations (electronic score for poetry by Grace Cavalieri, 1992, 32’)
Migrations Postlude (1992, 3:46’)
The Oak and the Reeds (1972)
Portraits of Lawyers, a documentary in memory of Harry Adelberg (originally The Velvet Hammers, 1989-2004, 37:48’)
Puzzle 1 (1972, 3’)
Racing Inside the Milkyway (1994, 2:58’)
Syntheticon (1973)
Weeping Rocker, a program about Alzheimer’s disease (dance, 1992, 8:35’)
Cry A Thousand Tears (prepared tape, alto flute, muted trumpet, soprano, 1978, 7:35’)
Cry Beloved Country (tape & rapper, 1992, 3’)
Weeping Rocker III (tape & live chorus; also for chamber orchestra & chorus, 1993, 5:40’)
With Love, a fantasy for cello and decorated cello cases in memory of Myrtle Hollins Adelberg (live cello, prepared tape, 16:43’) (First Prize Winner 14th International Electroacoustic Music Competition, Bourges, 1986, program division)
Clouds of Memories (string orchestra with narration of memories by 4 narrators, 2002, 12’)
Dark Waters (small chamber orchestra with solo instrument [alternate version with voice, Journey of Waters], 1984, 7:30’)
Fanfare For My Hero (full orchestra, 1994, 2:30’)
Force III (full orchestra, 1979, 12’)
Spirit of America (full orchestra, brief optional children or adult chorus, optional audience participation, 2003, 10:30’ [Urbo Turbo, alternate title])
Rebecca’s Suite, in memory of Rebecca Blackwell: Rebecca’s Rainbow Racing Among The Stars (1991, 4’); Rebecca’s Song (1989, 5:30’)
Purple Ice (woman’s voice, piano, words by Grace Cavalieri 1984-1992; Love Chain, alternate title for male voice; String of Pearls, original title. Purple Ice Mono Opera [8 songs], 28’: “White Ribbons of Love,” “Blue Bird,” “Ya Gotta Know Me” [male version, “Get With Me Baby”], “Liquid Gold,” “I Will Not Be There,” “Walking Beside You,” “Running,” “Shadows in the Wind.” Additional songs: “I Pledge My Love,” “Journey of Waters.”)
Hollins and Park Music Company
211 Goodwood Gardens
Baltimore, MD 21210
Phone: 410-889-3939
E-mail: VivianAR@aol.com