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P A N P I P E S Summer 2021 19 19 A World of Music are excerpts from letters Anna wrote to Adam from Paris. In 1891, Mabel made her New York debut under the prominent conductor eodore omas. However, Mabel did not long pursue a career as a concert pianist. Instead, she became a renowned author. I purchased some of her published volumes (one autographed), borrowed others from libraries, and downloaded the remainder on my computer. I enjoyed reading them but was especially delighted to discover that her three romances were about musicians. Miserere (A Musical Story), which is only sixty-three pages, recounts the tale of a former singing nun (pun intended) who parts from her lover aer he discloses a single, uncharacteristic action from his past. Her rejection impels this wealthy man to become a voice collector — quite an unusual musical quest — searching for promising individuals with uncultivated voices and offering financial assistance for their training in Milan. About the same length is Selma the Soprano, a novella that appears in One of ose Coincidences & Other Stories compiled by Julian Hawthorne. is story is about Selma and Arthur whose original union was forbidden by her mother. Later, aer dramatic circumstances, the couple marries. Spoiler alert: the denouement is not happy. e Mad-Song, my favorite of the romance trio, tells the narrative of a widowed Russian patriarch who made very strict musical demands on his identical twin daughters, one a singer and the other a pianist. Aer their father's death, Milan becomes the setting for the intriguing plot. Many impassioned upheavals precede the bittersweet ending. Wagnalls clearly records her personal interviews with international divas and vividly captures the essence of famous operas first in Stars of the Opera: A Description of Operas & a Series of Personal Interviews with Marcela Sembrich, Emma Eames, Emma Calvé, Lillian Nordica, Lilli Lehmann, Geraldine Farr & Nellie Melba and later in Opera and Its Stars: A Description of the Music and Stories of the Enduring Operas and a Series of Interviews with the World's Famous Sopranos, the expanded edition with four more operas and four more singers: Amelita Galli-Curci, Maria Jeritza, Mary Garden, and Frieda Hempel. Both books are of particular interest to opera devotees. e rest of her corpus includes e Palace of Danger, Immortal Sinner, Letters to Lithopolis, and A Rosebush of a ousand Years, the basis of two films entitled Revelation — a silent one in 1918 and a talkie in 1924. At first, seeing Liszt's lock of hair was the impetus for my overnight trip to Lithopolis, but beforehand I incorrectly assumed Liszt had snipped off these strands and given them to Lachmund. Only aer my visit did I learn the exact circumstances. His wife, Caroline, and some other female pupils of Liszt were discussing the original color of their teacher's hair. At the time, it was almost snow white, but they were curious about its shade when he was a young man. For a while, in order to determine this, Lachmund and she picked entangled strands from Liszt's comb, separating the lighter hairs from the darker ones. is was a laborious task, but finally, they had enough samples to state Liszt's hair had been a medium brown. And in solving the mystery, they had collected enough white hair to fashion at least six locks, one of which Lachmund gave to Mabel. I arranged to meet Carol Gaal, the library's historian, in Lithopolis. Aer giving me a personal tour of Wagnalls Memorial, she escorted me to a room where under her supervision I could see the frame with Liszt's lock and examine other archival materials. Among them was the correspondence between Mabel and two Liszt admirers who asked if she would consider giving them two strands of Liszt's hair. She politely denied their request. However, Mabel then realized that some unscrupulous person might take the frame off the wall, and because it could not be guarded continuously, it was taken down and is now in the archives. Since its market value has increased significantly through the years, that is a safer location. Beginning in 1917 and for five years thereaer, Mabel gave "Imagery and Music" recitals, in which she combined her dual talents by writing imaginative stories for classical piano pieces. A narrator would read each part of the story before Mabel played the corresponding music. Aer this back-and-forth process was complete, the audience heard the composition in its entirety. e archives contain the transcripts (with editing in pencil) and musical manuscripts (oen copied by hand — maybe hers) of these unique performances. Reading the typed transcripts and musical scores enabled me to attend vicariously. e printed program lists these pairings: "e Sleeping Beauty" with Chopin's Polonaise in D minor, "e Lorelei" with Liszt's Concert Etude in D-flat Major, and "e Creation" with Beethoven's Sonata Appassionata. A reviewer of the Republican in Springfield, Massachusetts, wrote: "A triple genius is Mabel Wagnalls. She is a famous author and pianist and has originated something new under the sun — the act of music imagery." Mabel married Richard Jones when she was fiy-one, and he worked very closely with the architect of the Wagnalls Memorial. Built in Tudor- Gothic style, the building has a library, theater, and social hall. In 1946— more than two decades aer the dedication—Mabel died in New York City, but her profound legacy remains to this day. e Wagnalls Memorial Foundation still enriches the lives of local students by giving scholastic scholarships. Jayne I. Hanlin is an initiate of Alpha Omicron and current member of the St. Louis Alumnae chapter. Mrs. Hanlin, the sister of famed pianist Malcolm Frager, is the co-author of Learning Latin Through Mythology (Cambridge University Press, 1991). Learn more at: www.wagnallslibrary.org.

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