Chapter 35
Quedlinburg
December 1636
The previous year’s program had been such a success that with sponsorship from the abbess and Mary Simpson’s National Endowment for the Arts, or whatever it was called exactly, it had been repeated a couple of times, once in the spring, shortly after Easter, in Magdeburg at the DESSSFG, in the presence of Princess Kristina. And hadn’t that been a project, transporting the whole school? They’d stayed for three weeks, of course. It wouldn’t have been worth the trouble otherwise. They’d taken the students to visit every important site in the USE’s capital city, new and old, seen a couple of plays, a musical, and an opera, and eaten from food carts. Overall, the food carts proved to be most popular with the children.
Food carts aside, it was the popularity of the program with many interested adults that meant that there would be a new one this year, again designed by Iona with Annalise’s assistance.
The audience for the first performance this year would not be just parents and local citizens. The abbess had been in Magdeburg, a guest of her friend the landgravine-regent of Hesse-Kassel, to see what she could see as to what was happening at the conference of governors and administrators of the provinces and states of the USE. She was gathering up as many of them, and their spouses (if any), their guests (definitely some), and their staff (quite a lot), as she could and transporting them to Quedlinburg for the show. And hosting them, of course, until such time as each of them took a notion to leave.
That was quite a production in itself, but thankfully not Iona’s worry.
The attending governors and administrators included the delegation from Westphalia.
That particular governor had already, more than once, heard Princess Kristina squeal, “I love it when the girls from Quedlinburg sing” followed by “I love the abbess” and “I love Annalise.” He had only escaped being coerced into bringing his future sister-in-law along as one of his guests by saying that he was sure that the program would come to “the DesFig” again next spring. Saying “adults only” hadn’t been feasible, since the performers were also, he presumed, children. It was, after all, a school, so they were probably children.
He’d attended school for a long, long, time. His father had demanded that he be carefully educated. He hadn’t particularly liked children even when he was one.
* * *
It was Iona’s problem that, by popular demand, this year’s program was going to be nearly twice as long as the previous one. She decided that she would let the youngest girls go off to the green room and play between their first segment and bringing them back for one piece after the first intermission and then for the encore. That meant that she had to find mentors for the green room when almost everybody in Quedlinburg was going to be busy with some other duty associated with what was generally termed the deluge of dignitaries.
God be praised that Veronica Dreeson had come to the rescue. In response to Annalise’s “pretty please,” she arrived four days in advance with half the operating staff of the Magdeburg branch of St. Veronica’s academy, having successfully evaded several efforts by Princess Kristina to get herself added to the group. Iona would have air-kissed her on both cheeks if she hadn’t known that any such gesture would not be welcomed.
They were in the St. Servatius church nave this year rather than in one of the smaller chapels. It had taken quite a lot of time to get the acoustics right. It had also involved sending some men from the abbey stables all around the town with wagons to beg and borrow every chair that a housewife was willing to lend (every one of which then had to be labeled, of course, so they could be returned to the right house). Standing for a church service wasn’t something Iona had quite gotten used to and she was certain that standing for a children’s chorus performance was a horrible idea likely to lead to unfavorable evaluations of its quality. More than one pastor did or did not have a large attendance at his sermons based on the popular perception of their average length.
* * *
Basically, she kept the same format. For the opening “action piece” she picked
“Daisy Bell.”20 Yes, it was an old chestnut—for up-timers. For down-timers, she hoped, it would be cute. Most of the “bicycles” were sawhorses with cardboard bicycle cutouts painted in bright colors in front of them, but she had borrowed three up-time bicycles, small ones, from friends in Grantville, and the seamstress had copied 1890s bicycling costumes for the three little girls carefully riding them around the dais.
Then the audience arose to sing “O Lord, How Shall I Meet You,”21 which she had introduced the year before. Presumably, by 1653, Gerhardt and Crueger would write something else.
She came out and introduced the abbess. The abbess welcomed all the guests.
She came out and introduced the head pastor of St. Servatius, who also welcomed all the guests.
She came out again and introduced the theme of the evening as “folk songs and popular songs.”
It was pretty hard to go wrong with that theme.
During the welcomes, the little girls had disentangled themselves from the bicycles and fake bicycles, which the stablemen hauled off the dais and stashed away. The little girls came out for a set of three:
“Aura Lee,”22 which she simply had to pair, of course, with a large reproduction of a photo of Elvis Presley singing “Love Me Tender.”23 The boys’ Latin school had been kind enough to loan her one of their older students, an aspiring vocalist and instrumentalist, for that one. It had been impossible not to do Elvis: just impossible. Then: “Simple Gifts,”24 followed by not-exactly-a-folk-song, but irresistible: Ben Mallett’s “Garden Song.”25 She hummed a bit with the girls as they mimed planting as they sang.
In spite of the stress caused by “El Paso” on first hearing, the western segment had proved to be popular last year, so she had decided to do another one. The girls aged ten to twelve came to the front and attacked (that was the best way to put it, she thought) “San Antonio Rose,”26 which, she thought grumpily, was better sung by men, but you can’t have everything. At least a few of the fathers from the town had volunteered to sing along with their daughters, which definitely helped. So did the roll-down illustration provided by Grantville, which this time was the Alamo.
The girls and fathers faded off to the side and the high school and college girls came forward for “Ghost Riders in the Sky,”27 which she had, right up to the previous day, considered dropping because the girls had so much trouble getting the rhythm, but it was already listed in the printed program.
Then another one that would stretch the audience quite a bit and gave her ever more reason to be thankful for the existence of Osanna Merkur, since she carried the whole thing: “They Call the Wind Mariah.”28
Then Annalise came forward to introduce something new this year: up-time German music that they sang in American schools.
Standing backstage, Iona thanked her lucky stars that she was born an Ingli from Pennsylvania rather than, for example, a Baxter from some benighted spot like Mississippi, and a Lutheran rather than a Baptist, because as a Mississippian Baptist, she would have been far less likely to take German as her foreign language in high school and college, much less have landed 350 years in the past in possession of a booklet of popular sing-a-longs ideal for a high school German club—in the view of the teacher, not the students expected to sing them, of course, back in the days when the experience had been inflicted upon her.
The littlest girls came back and sang “O, Tannenbaum.”29
The college group performed respectably, if not outstandingly, on “Die Lorelei.”30
Annalise was going to solo this year. Not because her voice was anything more than clear and pleasant, but because she was Annalise Richter, the sister of the hero Hans, the sister of the ferocious Gretchen, and because she was graduating this spring; going back to Ronnie at Jeff and Gretchen’s house in Magdeburg. Quedlinburg would be making a statement when Annalise sang a solo.
Iona had wavered back and forth. Goethe’s “Heideröslein” was pretty, he was certainly an important German author, and the melody was Schubert, but it was meant to be sung as a duet by a man to a maiden. Also, the other song went nicely with the mention of evergreens in the first song of the set, so—maybe some other time. For now, it was “Grün ist die Heide,”31 turn of the twentieth century, pre-WWI utter Schmalz, fair maiden, handsome huntsman in his green uniform, soft moss, red roses, irritated mother, and all, by Hermann Löns with a not-too-demanding melody by Karl Blume. And short. In Iona’s view, for a soloist with a voice of modest quality, a tentative tenor, for example, or a shaky soprano, short was very, very, good, giving fewer opportunities to crack a note. That boy from the Latin school was back with his lute.
* * *
Almost every head in the audience came up, anxious to get a good look at this young woman and even more to get a sense of the vast changes in their world that her brother and sister had initiated. If possible. Annalise cleared her throat a little nervously and began.
Als ich gestern einsam ging auf der grünen, grünen Heid’,
Kam ein junger Jägersmann, trug ein grünes, grünes Kleid.
Ja grün ist die Heide, die Heide ist grün,
Aber rot sind die Rosen, wenn sie da blühn.
In the audience, the governor of Westphalia Province found his hands shaking in his lap.
Wo die grünen Tannen steh’n, ist so weich das grüne Moos,
Und da hat er mich geküßt, und ich saß auf seinem Schoß.
Ja grün ist die Heide, die Heide ist grün,
Aber rot sind die Rosen, wenn sie da blühn.
He pushed his palms together to steady them.
Als ich dann nach Hause kam, hat die Mutter mich gefragt,
wo ich war die ganze Zeit, und ich hab es nicht gesagt.
Ja grün ist die Heide, die Heide ist grün,
aber rot sind die Rosen, wenn sie da blühn.
His teeth started to chatter.
Was die grüne Heide weiß, geht die Mutter gar nichts an,
niemand weiß es außer mir und dem grünen Jägersmann.
Ja grün ist die Heide, die Heide ist grün,
aber rot sind die Rosen, wenn sie da blühn.
Focus on the up-time German, he told himself sternly. There were interesting phonemic differences from down-time German. Focus.
* * *
It went all right, Iona told herself. Annalise stayed in key. Now, heaven be praised, after that marathon session, it was the first intermission. With snacks and beverages. May they return to us fed and happily tipsy, Iona thought.
It took them a while, but it looked like everybody returned, to be greeted by a song that had spread so fast since the Ring of Fire that she thought every conscious human being in the USE had already learned it. So Sabina Lechner invited them to sing along in unison: “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee.”32
That was followed by “Amazing Grace.”33 She had tried; she honestly had tried. These kids did not swing. They did swing a little more than they had at the beginning of the year, which was what a teacher hoped for.
Then, to show Osanna off and pay some tribute to the musical tastes of the older generation of Grantville’s population: “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem.”34
Audience participation again; the girls would teach a simple round to the audience. Iona had sternly vetoed,
King Louis was the King of France,
before the revolution.
But Louis got his head cut off,
which spoiled his constitution.
which some of the girls who had gotten hold of her well-worn copy of Rise Up Singing before class one day suggested. Several of them swore they would sing it to their parents when they went home. Iona wished them well, but the “approved by Ms. Nelson” round was rather Mozart’s “Dona Nobis Pacem,”35 which appeared to be a much welcomed peaceful interlude by the spectators.
They did Eleanor Farjeon’s “Morning Has Broken,”36 and finished with the Grateful Dead’s “Ripple,”37 which thankfully led into the second intermission. It was a short section for a concert, but the stage hands, otherwise the Quedlinburg Abbey stable hands, needed the time to set up for the next piece.
“If I survive this evening,” Iona said to Ronnie in the green room, “I’m taking a vacation. It may last the rest of my life. Why did I ever agree to a longer program?”
“Fund-raising,” Ronnie said in a no-nonsense retort. “Remember what Mary Simpson said about fund-raising?”
Iona did.
Even the best intermission came to an end.
She had offered their faithful pianist a chance to show off and he had grabbed it. From the gospel he had been playing with the year before, he had discovered ragtime, or some version thereof. The opening was a dance by the thirteen- to sixteen-year-old girls to “Bye, Bye, Blackbird.”38 Then something else lighthearted, another dance, ten- to twelve-year-olds, with singers: “Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo.”39 She had divided the high school girls on one side and college girls on the other side of the stage to get an echo effect.
Then this year’s next new feature and she was not sure about it. A Stephen Foster segment, starting with something light:
“Camptown Races;”40 then “Ring, Ring, the Banjo,” with instrumental accompaniment41 on the increasingly popular instrument by their Latin school lutist. Iona harbored a suspicion that his middle-class father was a wealthy middle-class father and an indulgent one as well, given what the man must expend on music lessons and instruments.
The audience rustled with amazement. The abbess herself stood up, along with the other great ladies of the Stift. The abbess might have been giving them rather stern looks, but they stood up. Each of them took a stack of paper and started to move up and down the aisles, handing out copies, as if—as if they were servants, and not daughters of the Hochadel who received service from such as the parents and burghers gathered at this program.
Iona hit them with “Hard Times,”42 in English with the German translation that the ladies had distributed, Osanna Merkur soloing again.
Let us pause in life’s pleasures and count its many tears,
While we all sup sorrow with the poor;
There’s a song that will linger forever in our ears;
Oh, hard times come again no more.
Tis the song, the sigh of the weary,
Hard times, hard times, come again no more;
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door;
Oh hard times come again no more.
Osanna hit it hard, all right, and then she hit it again and still again.
Tis a sigh that is wafted across the troubled wave,
Tis a wail that is heard upon the shore,
Tis a dirge that is murmured around the lowly grave;
Oh hard times come again no more.
And, if there was enough applause after that one, after the audience had heard it and read the attached plea for contributions to the anti-plague campaigns, she’d had the combined chorus practice “Country Roads”43 for an encore. Because she was homesick.
The audience was good for it. They didn’t want to go home. The girls were more than half exhausted. Iona cut it off, fund-raising or no fund-raising. There would be more snacks and beverages in the hall.
She sort of wished she’d put “This Land Is Your Land,” with the map, in the program again this year, but she hadn’t known all the important officials would be here when she was doing her planning and the wall map of the USA was long since gone back to Grantville, which was where she had borrowed it. It was probably stuck in closed stacks at the state library now—not hanging down in a classroom to teach children about the geography of their country. Because there wasn’t any such country and never would be. What could you call it? Future history?
* * *
As the singers were presented to the abbess’ honored guests afterwards, Annalise looked up, shook the hand of the man currently in front of her, and murmured politely, “It is a pleasure to meet you, Governor,” as she did to each of the other dignitaries in the line. Then she stopped abruptly, jarring the girls behind her into tripping over one another’s heels. “Governor of Westphalia Province?”
He held his hand steady and produced a courteous if thin-lipped smile. One could never be too cautious. Especially when confronting a sister of the furious Gretchen Richter.
“That means you’re the bishop of Halberstadt, too.”
“I was once elected by the chapter of secular canons at the cathedral as coadjutor to the Lutheran secular administrator of the Prince-Bishopric of Halberstadt. That meant that when the administrator died, I would have succeeded to his position. If all the chaos hadn’t happened.”
Annalise blinked. How precise of him. “Can you fix it, though?” she asked. “Or find out how to fix it? If Halberstadt is still claiming to be ecclesiastical superiors to the abbey here, can you fix the founding documents of Quedlinburg so the abbess doesn’t have to be a duchess any more but can still keep her job? So she can run for congress again and tell the government things that it needs to hear?”
He cleared his throat. That was unexpected. “I can, ah, have someone look into it.”
“Thank you very much. That’s certainly better than nothing.”
Annalise proceeded through the rest of the line and wandered back to the green room to find a mug of broth and a bratwurst. It had been a long program and she was hungry.
20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kd-xg2VZnk Sheet Music Singer “A Bicycle Built For Two.”
21. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_up_TRb7GI Geneva Presbyterian Church, Laguna Hills, CA.
22. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBDVff2gR5k Concierto de fin de curso. Coro del Conservatorio Profesional de Música Arturo Soria. Madrid, junio 2014.
23. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lD711_Xh8s Elvis Presley Love Me Tender (1956) (Official Video).
24. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLpfWnOFjcc Rutgers Children’s Choir “Simple Gifts.” 2012, December 16.
25. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6h-Yb2-_yk The National Children’s Choir Ireland 2007 Concert. 3 - Garden Song.
26. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l7rLA9Jm1I Bob Wills & Tommy Duncan, San Antonio Rose with Lyrics 1945.
27. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcnDlgeUYs4 (Ghost) Riders in the Sky - Sons of the Pioneers.
28. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxHtmmbAftU Harve Presnell, They Call The Wind Mariah, early version 1965.
29. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9U1gJy8AvE “O Tannenbaum” Vienna Boys Choir - Wiener Sängerknaben.
30. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG1hPUL6vZA Die Lorelei (arr. A. Wiedermann) : Loreley (arr. A. Wiedermann).
31. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_0fz_g-d2M Mein Chor - Männerchor Walsrode - Ja, grün ist die Heide.
32. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMY3ivdNzwE ODE TO JOY-JOYFUL, JOYFUL, WE ADORE THEE at ROYAL ALBERT HALL,LONDON.
33. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUHucpaiLJo Amazing Grace- Children Choir Raduga.
34. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqMXrecqtR4 Loved - Oh Beautiful Star Of Bethlehem.
35. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKz_aBRhCIk Chorus Niagara Children’s Choir - Dona Nobis Pacem arr. Hal Hopson.
36. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlmVuVoiOxw Morning has broken (Trad): St Mary’s Choir School Reigate 1989 (Charles Thompson).
37. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMADDgsk7WE The Grateful Dead’s “Ripple” by The Barton Hills Choir.
38. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP_vsfixmVE Bye Bye Blackbird sing along with lyrics. Standard tune of 1926 Bye Bye Blackbird - words and music: Ray Henderson and Mort Dixon.
39. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl7JYUKK6uM Anne Murray - Hi Lili Hi Lo (With Lyrics). From the CD album “There’s A Hippo In My Tub.”
40. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfNUcsTI1ic Camptown Races - Treasure Valley Children’s Chorus.
41. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC2ATqaULUM A good old Stephen Foster tune from 1851 played in clawhammer style by Rob McCarthy from Australia.
42. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zdXr3CnBGs Hard Times Come Again No More (2008 Remaster) · Emmylou Harris.
43. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBfjAMbFYOo Contra Costa Children’s Chorus perform “Take me Home Country Roads” by John Denver.