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24 Winter 2024 • sai-national.org Cposers DISCOVERIES continued from page 19 Hollis Thoms' Hollis Thoms' Transfiguration Transfiguration at Grinder's Stand (2023) at Grinder's Stand (2023) My one-act opera, Transfiguration at Grinder's Stand, was written in response to reading the Lewis and Clark Journals, from their famous expedition of May 1804- September 1806, and in reading about the mysterious death of Meriwether Lewis only a few years later on October 10, 1811. I made a trip to Bismarck, ND, visiting Fort Mandan, a Lewis and Clark stopping point, and travelled to Grinder's Stand, about 70 miles southwest of Nashville, TN, where Lewis unexpectedly died at the age of 35. ese trips helped me to imagine what happened over 200 years ago. Captain Meriwether Lewis (1774- 1811), famed leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, died mysteriously by two gunshot wounds on October 10, 1811 at a cabin near Grinder's Stand off Natchez Trace. His controversial death has sparked many articles and books over the years on whether he died by suicide or murder. My opera musically dramatizes this controversy in an hour-long work for three singers and small chamber ensemble of flute/alto flute, violin, oboe, bass clarinet, bassoon, and double bass. e three characters in the opera are Meriwether Lewis, baritone; John Pernier, tenor (Lewis' African-American servant); and, Priscilla Grinder, soprano (wife of the landlord of Grinder's Stand). e setting is at the cabin at Grinder's Stand, where Lewis spent the evening of October 10 on his trip from St. Louis, where he was Governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory, to Washington, DC. He was going to meet with members of the new James Madison administration to clear up some financial problems and clear his name from perceived scandals. Lewis carried his famous journals with him on this journey back to Washington. Aer Jefferson negotiated the Louisiana Purchase, he assigned Captain Lewis to be in charge of leading the famous military expedition to explore the possibility of a water route up the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean, opening up the vast frontier to American citizens and ideally providing an interchange of commerce between the Native Americans and the American settlers moving west. e Journals of Lewis and Clark are a literary achievement about a historic expedition (History of the Expedition under the command of Captains Lewis and Clark, a reprint of the Biddle Editions of 1814, in ree Volumes, New York: Allerton Book Company, 1922). President Jefferson had an expansionist vision for America, and under the influence of the Enlightenment, he sought an exhaustively comprehensive account by Lewis and his group of everything they saw and encountered, including the myriad of Native American tribes. Jefferson instructed that Lewis' valuable journals should be published and made available to the world. As a reward, aer the expedition, Jefferson appointed Lewis to be the 2 nd Governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory, although that kept Lewis from editing and publishing his journals, which frustrated Lewis. Lewis was intellectually brilliant but psychologically sensitive. e expedition offered Lewis an opportunity to display his precise military leadership skills. However, as governor of a new and wild territory, he seemed unable to cope with the unsettling political intrigues and social upheavals in the new wild landscape. He appeared to have a breakdown as he made his trip from St. Louis to Washington, DC in 1811, and he tried to commit suicide a number of times before getting to Grinder's Stand, the setting for my opera. During the famous expedition there were many encounters with Native Americans and those interactions were at times very dangerous. However, there were times when one of his members of the expedition would play his fiddle and dance and the Native Americans would share their music and dance, and they would both dance to each others' music, an act of some mutual empathy and understanding. In my opera I have the alto flute play some Native American tunes in combination with and in counterpoint against the violin and distinctly European 18 th century musical tunes. In the sung dialogues, I try to articulate the various theories given by scholars of Lewis' disintegration and depression: suffering from malaria, syphilis, alcoholism, drug addiction, and bipolar depression. I presented some of the theories about his possible murder and suicide: simple murder by thieves on the dangerous Natchez Trace route; death by conspirators to avoid Lewis exposing the corruption going on in the Louisiana Territory; murder by Priscilla Captain Meriwether Lewis portrait, 1807 Captain Meriwether Lewis portrait, 1807

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