Tomorrow, August 6, is a horrible occasion: the 72nd anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. It seems appropriate to spend some time meditating on our relationship with Japan and its people over the last century. Earlier this year Fresno, California, joined the rest of the nation in observing the 75th anniversary of the executive order of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt that forced 120,000 Japanese immigrants and Japanese-American citizens into internment camps during World War II. Fresno played a particularly terrible role in this internment, imprisoning 20,000 Japanese in two camps. I routinely pass by the Fresno Fairgrounds, a mile from my house, where I see tiny, ugly huts that held these people still standing. Fresno farmer and author David Mas Masumoto has taught Fresno gently and well about the checkered history of the Japanese in our region and led us effectively in observing this sober anniversary. So I was startled to see Jan Mittelstaedt, an excellent composer from Portland, Oregon, compose a work that tells this story so compellingly.<\/p>\n
Songs of Silent Sorrow<\/em> is not easy listening. Indeed, Mittelstaedt is not at all afraid to be prophetic and confront us with our sins against our neighbors. No wonder. She had the opportunity to interview the grandmother of one of her piano students and hear her story as a teenager from this era. The cruelty of this time is reflected in the very opening chord of \u201cShock,\u201d the first of three movements: an incredibly ugly diminished triad in root position with a half-step dissonance added to increase its assault on the ears. The onslaught continues with the soprano soloist practically yelling \u201cThe children were told,\u201d the opening lyrics by Roberta Badger Cain, as the cellist slaps her instrument sharply. The ghastliness of our treatment of the Japanese is made yet more horrible by this immediate plunging of their offspring into this maelstrom of cacophonous dissonance \u2013 all absolutely necessary to the telling of this story. Violent tone clusters in the piano presage the radio announcement of the Pearl Harbor hostilities. The ensuing canon proclaiming Japanese people and children as the enemy mimics well the real-life canon of gossip that spread our fear of the Japanese across California\u2019s Central Valley and the nation. The very harmonic fabric of \u201cShock\u201d is as torn up as the lives of Japanese families surely were 75 years ago: a quasi-tonal recitative breaks out into discordant shouts seconds later.<\/p>\n A close relative of the opening discord jars our ears as a dissonant quote of \u201cAmerica the Beautiful\u201d gives way to pounding hearts in the flute and cello. The struggle between blatant \u201cpatriotism\u201d and the rough displacement of fellow citizens is well depicted in one more back-and-forth between a patriotic tune and a chromatic quagmire that follows, as the ugly chord from the beginning brings \u201cShock\u201d to a close.<\/p>\n The second movement, \u201cShame,\u201d is an eloquent elegy exploring chiefly the F Dorian mode (minor scale with a raised 6th<\/sup> degree) and the F Phrygian mode (minor scale with a lowered 2nd<\/sup> step). This movement mourns the \u201cshame trains\u201d that conveyed the Japanese to ten internment camps all around the USA, as the tonality shifts across the universe to the very opposite: B minor. The descriptions of desert and relentless sun certainly bring the Central Valley of California to mind. The \u201cloyalty oath\u201d gives birth to a wildly disjunct motive that aptly describes the terror of the camps along with the drafting of Japanese men into a segregated military unit. This interacts with repeated moanings of the Japanese from their tight quarters, harsh labor, and family separations. I believe that \u201cShame,\u201d with its increased tonality and gentler, more traditionally melodic and harmonic gestures, is a welcome tonic from the sheer aggressiveness of \u201cShock,\u201d which certainly lives up to its name! It also prepares us for the somewhat festive finale, \u201cStanding Tall.\u201d<\/p>\n I always celebrate when a work of art has a moment of redemption that is balanced with reality, and \u201cStanding Tall\u201d provides that necessary redemption as it tells the story, in Mittelstaedt\u2019s own words, of \u201creconciliation and the change of Americans\u2019 attitudes toward Japanese Americans.\u201d[1]<\/a> In the opening, one hears the chaotic joy of children playing \u201cRing Around the Rosy\u201d in many different keys and at least two different tempi. The flute merrily skips around this paean of joy with a bustling melody that is surprisingly chromatic and would be completely atonal in another context. It is a moment of festivity that combines Alban Berg\u2019s Wozzeck\u2019s<\/em> final scene with the sheer hilarity of Charles Ives\u2019 \u201cChildren\u2019s Day\u201d from his Third Symphony, The Camp Meeting.<\/em> Brava for such a celebration! Yet the discords do seem a little too much out of tune, and, momentarily, we find out why. Not only is the train-motive from \u201cShame\u201d quoted, but also, in the immediately following stark moment of realism, the soprano soloist narrates: \u201cNot told: Hiroshima. Not told: Nagasaki.\u201d[2]<\/a> The wildly crunchy chords from \u201cShock\u201d rejoin us as they temporarily upend the celebration with a moment of the sad and challenging reality of Japanese-Americans in finding work and rebuilding their families and communities. Yet, there is much to celebrate as families reunite in their homes, and Mittelstaedt treats us to a Ralph Vaughan Williams moment of joy with pure triads and dance rhythms. The mood again turns serious at the climax, the time of confession: \u201cInternment was wrong. Our country feels remorse.\u201d[3]<\/a> The train-motive of \u201cShame\u201d returns yet again \u2013 perhaps reflecting our <\/em>shame as a nation, but also forcing Japanese to prove that they are loyal Americans (as the disjointed \u201cloyalty\u201d motive from \u201cShame\u201d also returns with a brief reference to \u201cAmerica the Beautiful\u201d). From here, it is an emotional tug-of-war between renewed Japanese-American pride (\u201cStanding tall\u201d) and brief, dark, teary reflections of the past that won\u2019t soon fade away.<\/p>\n Songs of Silent Sorrow<\/em> thus tells a hard story in a pithy, honest, and ultimately redemptive way. For its slender forces, a mere sextet and only 16 minutes of music, this work takes on an operatic demeanor, thanks not only to its inspired score but also the stunning performance of Vakare Petroliunaite, soprano, Janet Bebb, flute, Ann van Bever, oboe, Betsy Goy, violoncello, and Dianne Davies, piano. My only suggestion for the work would be to incorporate more quiet moments, particularly in the finale where the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are mentioned. At a time in our history when we seem destined to make the same wicked choices of xenophobia as we did 75 years ago, this piece is important and deserves widespread performances around our nation. I, myself, cannot help but wonder if a performance in Japan might not effect even greater reconciliation between us and our former enemy and now staunch ally.<\/p>\n Alas, this fine work is not available on Mittelstaedt\u2019s website http:\/\/www.sintsink.com<\/a> for listening, so here is at least a temporary place to hear this epochal piece: http:\/\/williamvollinger.com\/audio\/Mittelstaedt3.mp3<\/a>.<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Jan Mittelstaedt, Songs of Silent Sorrow <\/em>(Portland, Oregon: self-published, 2016), 3.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Ibid., 33-34.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Ibid., 38.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tomorrow, August 6, is a horrible occasion: the 72nd anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. It seems appropriate to spend some time meditating on our relationship with Japan and its people over the last century. Earlier this year Fresno, California, joined the rest of the nation in observing the 75th anniversary of the executive… Read More »Jan Mittelstaedt\u2019s “Songs of Silent Sorrow”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13,26,12,1],"tags":[49,38,37,46,51,52,53,50,47,5,48],"class_list":["post-1061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cfamc","category-civil-rights","category-music-reviews","category-uncategorized","tag-california","tag-central-valley","tag-fresno","tag-hiroshima","tag-internment-camps","tag-japan","tag-japanese","tag-mittelstaedt","tag-nagasaki","tag-new-music","tag-pearl-harbor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/waltersaul.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/waltersaul.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/waltersaul.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/waltersaul.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/waltersaul.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1061"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/waltersaul.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1062,"href":"https:\/\/waltersaul.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061\/revisions\/1062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/waltersaul.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/waltersaul.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/waltersaul.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}