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Chapter 38


Magdeburg

May 1637


“I can make this program considerably saucier, I think,” Iona Nelson mused. “Quite a bit saucier than a school program, since it will feature singers from the upper secondary level up to, including, and actually more of, a batch of early-twenty-somethings. Maybe, for the private performances, I can even make it a little naughty. I’d like a mix of up-timers and down-timers.”

“How many of the up-timers do you want to try to involve?” Mary Simpson asked. “There are a lot in Magdeburg, but most of them are desperately busy. Amber Dunn is out of the question. So is Bitsy. There’s no one you can call on for help with staging or the choral numbers.”

“We don’t need a big chorus.” Iona put her coffee down. “That’s not the effect I’m going for. I’d like to have a few of the up-time guys, but the ones in the military get jerked around so much that I couldn’t count on them to start rehearsing on June 15 and still be available on July 15.”

“I suppose Sherry Russo from the DesFig can help from backstage and keep a lid on some of the practices. She’s expecting, but not until October I think,” Mallory Pierpoint said. “I can help with that too, if I can bring the kids along and don’t have to pay a sitter. Or Alanna and I can trade off.”

The planning session involved coffee, cookies, and rather a lot of women.

Alanna Reilly nodded. “We can do that. Now, who’s available? I declare Heather Rush old enough to be part of this, if someone keeps an eye on her when there are boys around. What is she now? Sixteen, I guess.”

Catrina Murphy nodded. “Lisa Roberts is the same age. Not that either one of them will remember much about up-time music. They would have been ten when the Ring of Fire happened. We can probably get all four of the Bartholow kids. Matt and Dave are about the same age as Heather and Lisa, but Tessa and Liz are even younger. I don’t think Brenda Straley would let her kids be in this kind of program.”

“If you ask any of the teenaged kids from the women at the hospital, you’ll have to ask them all,” Mallory warned. “They’re a tight-knit bunch over there. Craig Hunsaker would be okay, but Lissie is disruptive in a group.”

Catrina shook her head. “Betty Jo’s sending Craig and Lissie back to Grantville for summer school; she says they’re starting to lose their English up here, even though they speak it to them at home. Same for Kaycie and Kara Washaw and Kevin Hunsaker. Tyler Briggs, too, and Allie Hobbs. And Lisa Dailey’s kids. They’re all going down on the train as soon as school here lets out. Marge Washaw is going to take them; after summer school, Cecelia Calafano will bring them back after the librarian’s conference in August.”

Iona made some more notes. “Okay, scratch those possibilities. Anyone else?”

“Well, Henry Swisher plays the mandolin.” Alanna grinned. “He’s at Imperial Tech now.”

“No,” Iona said. “Just no.” She had memories of Henry Swisher from her Grantville years. And the mandolin.

“Melody Reardon will be helping Vanessa Clements all summer; also getting ready to head for the normal school in Amberg now that she has finished at Quedlinburg. What about Lisa Hilton?”

“She’s starting summer semester at Imperial Tech.”

“So it will be the four guys who are at the Department of Transportation, if they’re willing and can get the time off. David, Ben, and Joe from the Imperial Tech students. All the others will be too busy, for sure, to come and rehearse as much as this will involve. So, boys and girls together, we can scratch up maybe a dozen up-timers and all the rest will be down-timers who may or may not know anything about up-time music and may or may not like up-time music.”

“Like it or not like it, the DesFig girls have been taught to sing at least some of it,” Livvie Nielsen said. “But more Marla-style.”

“I’ll take a dozen of them, then. Ones who aren’t totally involved with their delightful patroness’ wedding to Duke Ernst, because those won’t have time to rehearse with us and will have to be out of town for that for part of June. Let the teachers pick. And there’ll be Annalise, of course.” Iona closed her notebook.

* * *

“I’m not going to do hymns for this,” Iona said. “The 1941 Lutheran Hymnal has completely escaped into the wild, along with the concordance. They’ve been reprinted in abundance. Thousands upon thousands of church musicians are studying them and this program isn’t at the Stift.”

“I thought you were Lutheran yourself.”

“I am, and I have my favorite hymns. But I’m not going to ask any audience to sing that arrangement of ‘Behold a Host Arrayed in White’ from a cold start, even if it is a seventeenth-century Norwegian folk melody.”

She started to mutter and make lists. “I love ‘Danny Boy,’ but Marla and Friends sing it so often that everybody knows it already, and I don’t have anyone, male or female, who can match that girl’s voice. So no, Evan Difabri, can’t sing it, even if it’s his deepest heart’s desire. At least not here and this year.”

She gave him “Lorena”44 after sending an emergency plea for succor to Quedlinburg and being rewarded by the arrival of the Latin school student with his banjo.

“Scarborough Fair”45 was obvious. But, “So many of the folk ballads complain about the same stuff,” Iona whined, pushing her fingers through her already-spiky hair. How is a person supposed to pick between “On the Banks of the Ohio”46 and “The Long Black Veil”47?

“Try one in which nobody has killed anybody else,” Ronnie Dreeson advised. “‘Scarborough Fair’ sounds pretty woebegone, but at least nobody’s dead.”

“That pretty much eliminates ‘East Virginia,’48 too. So, ‘Wagoner’s Lad,’49 with a little bit of class-consciousness and more than a hint of women’s rights. But using that cuts out ‘I Never Will Marry.’50 Maybe I’ll do better with more modern ones. Or, oh heck, I’ll have them do ‘The Sweetest Gift.’51 It’s not a love song, but it’s good. Or, maybe, ‘Homeward Bound,’52 but that would overlap with the railroad segment.”

* * *

“Weren’t there any actual love songs up-time?” Ronnie asked eventually.

“Some, but not many of them were traditional ballads. Somebody’s almost always dead in those,” Iona admitted.

“Think of some from somewhere else, then.”

“One thing you’ll need to remember,” Mary Simpson said, “is that for the private performances, there may be quite a bit of overlap in the audience from one to another. Maybe you should have the performers learn some extra songs, and if I signal you on the third night, for example, you could swap out something they sang at the second performance for another piece.”

Iona thought she was going to escalate from insomnia to nightmares any time now. But there were some cheerful songs. These, she could swap, if need be. Only two at any given show.

“The Green Leaves of Summer”53

“Lara’s Theme”54

“Raspberries, Strawberries,”55 if she could find someone to play bass.

Western segment, same thing. Only two at any given show. And if absolutely necessary, she could switch the theme from High Noon for one of the love songs. She’d never been able to decide whether she liked Tex Ritter or Frankie Laine better. Ritter, probably.

“Sweet Betsy from Pike”56

“Red River Valley”57

“Cool Water”58

“Theme from High Noon”59

* * *

“After the intermission,” Iona said, “I think we should liven things up. How about a salute to the USE Department of Transportation, which has been really cooperative about giving the guys time off?”

“Wabash Cannonball”60 went on the list because, yes, yes, yes, Joe Straley did have an electric guitar and Melanie Matowski, who was still working on the electricity for the new opera house, had a generator that would power it. Then Kevin Norris would lead off on “City of New Orleans,”61 with Jake Yost on drums, which was enough for railroad songs or otherwise they would take over the whole show. But give them something to which the technology geeks and nerds could aspire. “Leaving on a Jet Plane.”62

Then, for people who requested “a new experience in listening,” four of the girls (Heather, Lisa, and two from the DesFig, with a preliminary viewing by and permission from their parents) would render “If My Friends Could See Me Now”63 in genuine cheerleaders’ uniforms borrowed from Calvert High School in Grantville. Well, for the private performances. For the public one, it would be skirts and no high kicks. That option had been a close tie with “Hey, Look Me Over,”64 but the choreography was easier. That is, Iona had directed it before.

* * *

The kids were having fun while they waited for Iona. The boys got into a contest about whether up-time or down-time managed to have the longest songs. The down-timers flourished the many verses of several different hymns. David Leek retaliated by flourishing his acoustic guitar and off the top of his head remembered quite a bit of “American Pie,”65 which was one of his father’s favorites.

The down-timers thought of an even longer hymn. “I don’t think you can beat sixteen verses each with eight lines.”

“Like the Little Engine that Could, I think I can, I think I can; probably don’t remember all of it, though.” He played a few chords and said a few words. Then Ben Roberts took over and started talking his way through “Alice’s Restaurant,”66 ad-libbing quite a bit of it with reference to various Magdeburg city ordinances, while David strummed.

Dashing down the corridor to the rehearsal room, Iona spotted a man leaning against the doorpost, watching the hijinks as the kids got ready. He commented a little ruefully that he was rapidly coming to feel like he belonged in the chairs with their grandparents.

“Kids will do that to you, fast,” Iona said. “Every teacher learns it. It seems like one day they’re in junior high and the next day they’ve gotten married and their oldest is beginning to talk; one more and the kid’s starting kindergarten, one more and you have the next generation sitting in front of you in the middle school band room.”

“I’ve noticed that children can scarcely wait to talk. Especially my half-sisters. Then they never stop. I’ve never been one to talk much, myself,” the man said. “Being carefully educated to become a bureaucrat will do that to a person.”

“Well, at least you got a job as a governor, so the education wasn’t wasted.” Iona had identified him as one of the group of governors who were at the program the previous December, but beyond that did not know him. The teacher in charge of a children’s music program rarely has time to focus on extraneous details and she had been busy that night in December.

* * *

She’d better calm things down after the cheerleading costumes.

Iona liked Ella Fitzgerald. She just did. So Annalise was going to solo on “Blue Moon.”67 Her voice had the range, or, more precisely, the melody had a sufficiently limited range that Annalise could sing it. For the rhythm, Iona would drill and drill and drill if that was what it took. Personally, she thought Ella’s “Mood Indigo”68 was even more spectacular, but it wasn’t a mood she wanted in this concert.

“I think Annalise has an admirer.” She described her encounter at the door at dinner that evening.

“Good Lord in Heaven, Iona!” Mary Simpson exclaimed. “You were talking to Prince Frederik of Denmark. The king’s son; Prince Ulrik’s brother.”

“Well, how was I to know? I was perfectly polite to him. He didn’t look like a perv or a stalker.”




44. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0cdmHXWYr8 John Hartford - Lorena.

45. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BakWVXHSug Simon & Garfunkel - Scarborough Fair (Full Version) Lyrics.

46. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C3r9PnoNTw Banks of the Ohio - Bill Monroe & Doc Watson.

47. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pYA46dyKh4 Johnny Cash - The Long Black Veil.

48. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxjQakmwi7o The Stanley Brothers - East Virginia Blues (Live).

49. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Vuf25juzyI JOAN BAEZ “Wagoner’s Lad.”

50. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUWcbSWIt94 Linda Ronstadt & Dolly Parton - I Never Will Marry.

51. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWEQDyrbphE Dolly Parton Linda Ronstadt Emmylou Harris - The Sweetest Gift.

52. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caUIXLxqiPU Homeward Bound | BYU Vocal Point ft. The All-American Boys Chorus.

53. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BRqA3DSmpc The Green Leaves Of Summer Brothers Four.

54. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL9IVN90uUo CONNIE FRANCIS - SOMEWHERE, MY LOVE (LARA’S THEME).

55. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD3CqdKo35s The Kingston Trio - Raspberries, Strawberries.

56. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gshb3dPl584 Provided to YouTube by The Orchard Enterprises Sweet Betsy from Pike · Burl Ives.

57. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC1Pu7bscbw The Sons Of The Pioneers: Red River Valley.

58. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amDo-KqUjpA The Sons Of The Pioneers - Cool Water.

59. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5an9OuXKxBw Tex Ritter - The Ballad of High Noon 1952.

60. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZiQ89_s67Q Johnny Cash - “Wabash Cannonball.”

61. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvMS_ykiLiQ Arlo Guthrie - City of New Orleans.

62. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVQAhhlq798 Peter, Paul and Mary - Leaving On A Jet Plane (25th Anniversary Concert).

63. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4KX0TcZ1e0 If My Friends Could See Me Now - Sweet Charity.

64. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNhvqPPDyI0 LUCILLE BALL: Hey Look Me Over from her Broadway Musical WILDCAT! assisted by Steve Lawrence.

65. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAsV5-Hv-7U Don McLean- American Pie (with Lyrics).

66. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m57gzA2JCcM Alice’s Restaurant - Original 1967 Recording.

67. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqwSde_eEv4 Ella Fitzgerald - Blue Moon.

68. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaq9Gx9GT5E Ella Fitzgerald - Mood Indigo (Verve Records 1957).


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