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Angels and Muses
Scott Joplin set the action of Treemonisha in an
area near his home town of Texarkana, Texas, circa
September 1884, leading to speculation that the
opera was based on his own life. Joplin’s second
wife, née Freddie Alexander, is cited as a particular
inspiration for the title character and story. In the
opera, 18-year-old Treemonisha, a former slave, is
taught to read by a white women, and then fights
back against the conjurers who use superstition and
mysticism to take advantage of her community,
demonstrating to neighbors the importance of education. Alexander, born in September 1884, was a
well-educated woman and an advocate for the rights
of women and African Americans. She met Joplin in
Sedalia, Missouri, when she was 19, and they married in 1904. Tragically, Freddie died only ten weeks
later, of complications from pneumonia. Joplin biographer Edward A. Berlin wrote that the opera was “a
tribute to the woman he loved, a woman other biographers never even mentioned.”
— The Editors
mother a free-born black woman from Kentucky.
He grew up in a poor but music-loving family in
Texarkana, straddling the Texas-Arkansas border. After studying music with a German immigrant, he embarked on a peripatetic performing
career that took him for a while to Sedalia, Missouri, where he became an experienced practitioner of ragtime, the new syncopated style that
entranced ears in the 1890s.
In Sedalia, Joplin continued music studies
and worked as a pianist in such venues as the
Black 400 Club and the Maple Leaf Club. It was
in honor of the latter that he composed the
breakout success of the ragtime era, the Maple
Leaf Rag. While continuing to compose a
stream of masterly, subtly detailed piano rags,
Joplin also essayed works in larger forms. In
1899 he composed a ballet, The Ragtime Dance,
which was staged in Sedalia, and in 1903 he
completed an opera, A Guest of Honor, on the
subject of a dinner Theodore Roosevelt hosted
at the White House to fête Booker T. Washington. (The opera was produced and presented in
multiple tour performances but has since been
lost.) In 1907 Joplin moved to New York, where
he continued to compose rags (including Pine
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Apple Rag and Euphonic Sounds), and embarked on his ambitious three-act opera
Treemonisha. He completed it in 1910 and, unable to find a publisher, issued it himself in
1911. That same year the composer led its performance in an unstaged, piano-accompanied
reading at the Lincoln Theatre in Harlem. The
work’s finale received a staged performance in
Bayonne, New Jersey, in 1913, and in 1915 an orchestral concert included the music of the
opera’s Act Two ballet. Joplin announced plans
for staged productions on several occasions,
but in every case they went unfulfilled
The work, set in backwater Arkansas in 1884,
deals with the self-actualization of the title character Treemonisha and, by implication, the community that surrounds her. A foundling
educated by her foster parents, she stands up
to the local “conjur men” (whose superstitions
limit her community’s advancement), is kidnapped by them, and is eventually rescued by
her friend Remus. He gives the superstitious
kidnappers a stern lecture, after which
Treemonisha forgives them and is proclaimed
her people’s leader. In these performances, the
work’s elegant, ragtime-infused overture is followed by the Act One aria “The Sacred Tree,”
in which Treemonisha’s adoptive mother, Monisha, explains how she discovered the infant girl,
and then Remus’s Act Three lecture-aria “Wrong
is Never Right,” (with a chorus of onlookers),
which calls for ethical behavior from all.
The Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of
a Wayfarer) date practically to the beginning of
Gustav Mahler’s composing career. He wrote
the four songs in late 1884 and early 1885, when
he was 24 years old and working as assistant conductor in Kassel, Germany. Mahler was smitten
at the time with Johanna Richter, a singer who
was his piano pupil. His infatuation did not lead
to a happy ending. On January 1, 1884, the composer reported his breakup in a letter to a friend:
Last night I sat alone with her and we were
both almost wordless awaiting the New Year.
Her thoughts were not with her companion,
and when the clock struck, and the tears
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poured from her eyes, the terrible realization
came over me that it was not for me to dry
those tears. … My accomplishments: I have
written a song cycle, six songs for the time
being, all of which are dedicated to her. She
does not know them. What else can they tell
her beside what she already knows? … The
songs are conceived as if a wayfaring craftsman has suffered a heavy fate and now goes
out into the world and wanders aimlessly.
The cycle was reduced to four movements
(all with texts by the composer), but other responsibilities prevented Mahler from completing the orchestration until 1893 (so it seems),
and he did not lead the premiere until 1896.
Even at this early stage of his career, Mahler’s
hallmarks are in place: a fascination with death,
a general despondency tempered by manic
outbreaks of joy, perverse juxtapositions of material, a narrative progression of both text and
music, unpredictable rhythms and harmonic
modulations — and an overwhelming sense of
musical logic. The second song of the set, “Ging
heut Morgen über’s Feld” (“I Went This Morning”), provides passing relief from the dark
mood; still, the ending of this peasant-like celebration of nature reveals that the wanderer’s
happiness is merely a ruse. In the fourth and
last song, “Die zwei blauen Augen” (“The Two
Blue Eyes”), he wanders off in a state of disillusioned grief, as dazed as the love-stunned wanderer of Schubert’s Winterreise. The four
Wayfarer songs would find a firm place in the
recital literature, but the two sung here also became famous to symphony goers when Mahler
included allusions to them in his First Symphony, unveiled in 1889.
Selections from Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer)
Gustav Mahler
Born: July 7, 1860, in Kalischt, Bohemia, near the town
of Humpolec
Died: May 18, 1911, in Vienna, Austria
Work composed: December 1883–85, orchestrated
in the 1890s
World premiere: The orchestrated version was premiered March 16, 1896, at the Philharmonie in Berlin,
by the Berlin Philharmonic, with the composer conducting; “Ging heut Morgen über’s Feld” may have been premiered earlier, on April 18, 1886, at the Wintergarten of
the Grand Hotel in Prague, with soloist Betty Frank, and
Mahler playing a piano accompaniment.
New York Philharmonic premiere: February 6, 1916,
Walter Damrosch, conductor, Marcia van Dresser, soloist
Most recent New York Philharmonic
performance: April 25, 1992, Kurt Masur, conductor,
Håkan Hagegård, soloist
Estimated duration: ca. 9 minutes
Marian Anderson performed Lieder eines fahrenden
Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) with the Philharmonic
in 1946, in combination with traditional spirituals
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