Sigma Alpha Iota

Winter 2019 22 PAN PIPES THOREAU'S SYMPHONIES • A blue jay screams • Surprised to hear a very faint bobolink in the air; the link, link, once or twice later • Swallows twittering • Hear a peawai whose note is more like singing-as if it were still incubating • Some of the warble of the golden robin • A peetweet…uttered its peculiar note • e chipping of a song sparrow occasionally heard amid the bushes • e birds were heard or seen in the course of three or four hours on the river but there were not sounds enough to disturb the general stillness oreau was able to capture in his journal entries a vivid soundscapes not unlike the vivid soundscapes created with musical sounds by Gustav Mahler, particularly in his Symphony 3, third movement (1895). is movement of Mahler's Symphony 3 was given a title by some as "What the Animals in the Forest tell Me" and this musical work seems to embody the sounds of oreau's literary symphonies. One can hear in Mahler's music oreau's journal writings on music and sound. Possibly the best way to "hear" oreau literary symphonies would be to listen to Mahler's Symphony 3, movement 3, while reading oreau's journal entries for 1852 and 1853. For both oreau (in 1852 and 1853) and Mahler (1895) man and nature were one, man's sound making and nature's sound making were one. Man existed in some Garden of Eden at least for the moment, aware, awake and alive, refreshed, renewed and redeemed. For both oreau and Mahler this paradise would not last long. For oreau, with the passing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in May 1854, a few months before the publishing of his masterpiece, Walden, the curse of slavery was finally unleashed throughout that land, bringing bloody Kansas, then the martyrdom of John Brown, and finally the Civil War; his journal entries turned darker. Aer Symphony 3 Mahler's symphonies gradually become more disturbing and dissonant, describing in music the loss of that oneness with nature, a loss of innocence, nostalgia for an era gone by, and a feeling of impending doom. For the moment I wish to be present in oreau's transcendental symphonies. Sources Charles Ives, Essays Before a Sonata, e Majority and Other Writings, edited by Howard Boatwright, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1961 Henry David oreau, e Journal of Henry D. oreau, edited by Bradford Torrey and Francis H. Allen, In Fourteen Volumes Bound as Two, New York: Dover Publications, 1962 Henry David oreau, Walden, edited by Jeffrey S. Cramer, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004 Hollis oms, composer, educator, and researcher, has had a number of articles published in Pan Pipes over the years. He has written almost 150 musical works and has had over 40 articles published in journals. From left, Past National President Ginny Johnson spoke with Honorary Member Renee Fleming, along with SAI Friend of the Arts Bill Johnson and friend Linda Birkhold at the Fort Wayne Philharmonic 2018 season's opening concert in October.

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