May in the Phantom Concert Hall!

It's a lovely evening in early May; it's not hot or humid, the air is clear after a few days of rain, and we're in a mood to get out and have fun. Tonight we're hitting that old revived concert hall across town!

The star of the program is this piano concerto by Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838), a Romantic composer who was a student of Beethoven, and someone I only recently became aware of. And we're all about the Romantics here, aren't we? After all, Gothic is an offshoot of Romantic...

Anyway, here's his lovely Piano Concerto No. 8!



Quite a work, eh? You'll be sure to hunt down his other works. It's fun discovering a composer you never knew...

Anyway, the concert's over, let's go and have a drink, shall we?

A September Night at the Phantom Concert Hall

We're kicking off the fall season, and thumbing our nose at the dreary, rainy weather, by heading out to the concert hall again. Tonight's performance...Rheinberger's roiling, romantic piano concerto!



Isn't it great? One of those lovely pieces that flies under the radar. I love finding these obscure little gems.

Sorry to be late with this and not posting for a while. My elderly mother took a fall and broke both her shoulder and hip, and my sister and her husband have moved cross-country to Seattle. I had to be on hand when Mom underwent surgery and helping arrange for assistance while she's in a rehab facility. And then Mom decided she couldn't take care of her cat any longer so she had him surrendered to a local shelter, which upset me quite a bit as he's 10 years old and shelters have problems adopting out older cats. And I haven't talked about this on the blog, but over the summer I was hit by an unexpected depression and I went into therapy. I'm slowly coming out of it but it's taking a while, as it usually does.

So, the past couple months have been difficult, to say the least, and while I slowly get my groove back, bit by bit,I hope to get back to regular posting.

Tales of Hoffmann: Signor Formica

Over the holiday weekend, I had time to finish a Hoffmann tale! "Signor Formica" is pretty interesting, but not from the usual perspectives.

And no, it's not about countertops.

"Signor Formica" tells a purportedly true adventure of Baroque-era painter Salvator Rosa, who was also a printmaker and poet, and had a remarkable life full of adventure. (That's a self-portrait above.) The story begins approximately in 1649, when Rosa returns to Rome after various adventures in Naples, including rumors of being involved with a group of banditti.

Rosa encounters some strange folk, including the unscrupulous Dr. Splendiano Accoramboni (called the "Pyramid Doctor" for his peculiar headwear), who treats ill artists in hopes of reaping paintings as payment...and only to let them die. Rosa manages to survive and send the doctor on his way, then befriends Antonio, a young barber/surgeon who's also an aspiring painter. Rosa praises a painting of Antonio's that depicts the Magdalen in a new and interesting way, and divines that it's a girl that Antonio is in love with. And of course, she's the ward of a forbidding old man, Pasquale Capuzzi di Senigaglia, a pretentious dandy who fancies himself a great composer and singer, but who is truly execrable. And Signore Pasquale has two great friends, a dwarf named Pitichinacchio and the aforementioned Pyramid Doctor.

The rest of the story goes into how Rosa cons and tricks Capuzzi and his friends, gets the lovers together, and how justice serves all.

It's not supernatural at all, but it's a good read. There's some meditating on art that doesn't overwhelm the story, and lots of funny action with plot and counterplot with Rosa and Antonio on one size and Capuzzi and his friends on the other. And while reading this, I kept thinking what a great comic opera or operetta it would make. And there's scenes set in the opera house that just call out for a talented composer to have fun composing bad music. (The "Signor Formica" of the title is an opera singer who seems to set out especially to communicate with, or embarrass, Capuzzi, and is one of the big players of the story.)

To wrap up, this is hardly the core of D&C material, but it's still a fun read that begs for a spirited adaptation somewhere along the line. It's also an intriguing early entry into the "fictional adventures of a real-life person" genre that we see so often today. So, not for everyone, but for those in need of a chuckle or two, check it out.

Tales of Hoffmann: A Twofer

I'm overdue, I know. I've had a few crazy weeks and haven't been able to concentrate. But now I'm housebound by the expected blizzard, so I'm sitting down to get updated and all...

For this episode of "Tales of Hoffmann," I read two stories....

First, "Tobias Martin, Master Cooper" is entertaining enough, but also kind of annoying. It's a story of a cooper (barrel-maker) who has a gorgeous daughter whom he refuses to marry off until she finds a cooper of sufficient skill to impress him. Several young men apprentice themselves to Dad, work hard, and eventually one of them is chosen by the daughter and they marry.

That's it.

Seriously, that's it. No magic, no mystery, nothing macabre or outre at all. Hoffmann may have been a Romantic writer, and there is something here about how great and clean it is to work with one's hands, and a bit of German nationalism, but that's it. This is the most mundane Hoffmann story I've read so far. It was part of his 1818 collection "The Serapion Brethren" and one almost suspects it is filler.

The other story...

In "The Mines of Falun," we have young sailor, Elis, who is depressed as he went to sea to support his family, but returned home to find them all dead. He meets an old miner who talks of the glories of the underground world, and even talks of a Queen of the underground, whom he has sworn devotion to. Elis, enchanted, follows a miner to the mines of Falun (a real-life copper mining district of Sweden, and the photo above is from the mines). He is initially horrified by the reality of the mines, but is convinced by the miners' good spirits and sense of community to start working. He meets the head honcho Pehrson and his lovely daughter Ulla, and soon falls for the latter.

But one day Elis is in the mine and meets the old miner again, who mocks him for his love for Ulla and tells him he must give his devotion to the Queen of the Underworld. He finds out later that this old miner is a ghost, Torbern, who was devoted to the mines and the underground world, and who vanished in a cave-in a century before.

Elis is tormented by his love both for Ulla and for the underground world. He is ready to marry Ulla but on an impulse, just before his wedding, he goes down into the mines to fetch a rare mineral for her wedding present...and he vanishes in a cave-in.

Fifty years later, Elis' body is found in the mines, in a perfect state of preservation. He is brought to the surface, where an old lady approaches. It is Ulla, who has lived alone and is now half-mad. She embraces the preserved body as it crumbles to dust, and then she collapses, dead.

Now THIS is macabre!

It's got some themes you'll start to recognize in Hoffmann, of being torn between the mundane everyday world and a world of dreams and magic. (We saw this in "The Golden Flower Pot.") There's dark, morbid stuff, and not just with the ghost....we're left to wonder if Elis wasn't some sort of arranged sacrifice to the Queen of the Underworld? And there's a bit of Romanticism in its praise of being a regular working guy and thinking what you do is beautiful. It's hard to decide of Elis had stumbled into this or if he had been lead into a trap by Torbern's ghost. This isn't Hoffmann at his best, but he is close to the peak of his power, and this is from the same collection that the previous story was in.

Another macabre twist is that it's based (somewhat) on a real incident. In 1719, miners at the Falun mines came across a corpse in a disused passage, in perfect preservation. Brought to the surface, he was identified as Mats Israelsson (or Fet-Mats, as he was commonly known) by his former fiancee; he had vanished 42 years earlier, in 1677. When he was brought into the air, his body dried and became stonelike. Touted as a "petrified man," he was put on display, where the naturalist Linnaeus saw him and said he wasn't petrified, but covered in vitriol, and would decompose when it evaporated. That proved to be true, and he was buried under a church floor in 1749, then dug up during renovations in 1860 and put on display again, until finally reinterred in 1930. Fet-Mats' story was famous and he was written about by many of the Romantics, but Hoffmann's story is the one that has endured. There was almost an opera based on the story, to have been bombastically composed by Wagner, but it never came to be.

So. One story not all that great, but the other packs a real whallop, especially when you learn of the back story. "The Mines of Falun" is very much worth checking out, and feel free to skip "Tobias Martin, Master Cooper."

Tales of Hoffmann: The Nutcracker and the King of Mice

We finally arrive at Hoffmann's best-known tale; in fact, you may be wondering why I'm bothering to review it, as nearly everyone knows it. But really....it's worth a closer look.

"The Nutcracker and the King of Mice" opens on Christmas Eve, with the Stahlbaum family eagerly awaiting the arrival of Godpapa Drosselmeier, who always brings the best presents. Drosselmeier, a master of clockworks who wears a glass wig (!), always brings complicated clockwork toys, and this year is no exception. Young Fritz is enchanted with a clockwork castle at first, but then grows bored with it, while his sister Marie is taken with the famous Nutcracker, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Drosselmeier.

Marie puts the Nutcracker with her dolls, noticing that it appears to make horrible faces when she mentions Drosselmeier. Then things get weird, in a wonderfully surreal scene. A carved owl on top of the grandfather clock turns into Drosselmeier, a horde of mice arrive, and then the Nutcracker, the dolls, and Fritz's toy soldiers come to life. As in the ballet, Marie throws her slipper at the seven-headed King of the Mice, but in this story, she lacerates her arm on a glass cabinet door and passes out before she discovers the result of her actions.

Marie is laid up for a few days due to blood loss, and it's unclear if any of this really happened or if it was merely a vivid dream by an imaginative girl. Drosselmeier visits, and after singing her a weird, unsettling song, he tells her the tale of Princess Pirlipat, who was turned into a nutcracker from a curse by the witch-queen of the mice, and how the court Arcanist and Clockmaker, Drosselmeier himself, found a cure for the curse, which could only be effected by Drosselmeier's nephew. He manages to life the curse, but due to the intervention of the mouse queen, is turned into a Nutcracker himself (although it costs the queen her life), and he is then spurned by the princess and the court.

Marie recovers, and Drosselmeier tells Marie a few things that clue you in that he's fully aware of what's going on, and even may be the driving force behind this. The Mouse King harasses Marie at night, until finally she goes to the Nutcracker, who vows love and slays the king himself.

Then is one of my favorite bits in the story: The Nutcracker opens the doors of a wardrobe, climbs up and pulls the tassel on a fox-fur coat, which causes a ladder to fall from the sleeve. He and Marie climb the ladder, and find themselves on a meadow. From here the Nutcracker takes her on a tour of his realm, the Kingdom of Toys, with rivers of lemonade and people made of sugar. It's a pleasantly surreal journey, with some dabs of what seems to have been political commentary. Then suddenly Marie wakes; again, was it all a dream?

Drosselmeier arrives...and brings his nephew, newly arrived from Nuremberg. Marie and the nephew fall in love, are married a year later....and he takes her off to live in a marzipan castle.

The story is actually darker than the ballet, and while there's a lot of kid-friendly stuff in it, it's also creepy and unsettling at times. Drosselmeier is an ambiguous character at first, sometimes seeming more like a villain. He turns out to be good; was this a sign of the story needing some touching up?

There's no dancing Sugar Plum Fairy, and there's some fairly gruesome bits, like when the mouse queen dies when she's stepped on, and sometimes people are cruel and heartless. Fritz can be an awful bastard, and Marie can seem like a naive drip, but also sentimental and steadfast in her loyalty. And the descriptions of clockwork toys, and Marie's dolls, and of the candies and other facets of an 18th century German Christmas celebration, make this a nicely sentimental and cozy read for the holiday season.

And what about that bit where they enter another world through a wardrobe? Did C. S. Lewis read this?

Tales of Hoffmann: "A New Year's Eve Adventure"

Peter Schlemihl, sans shadow.

This is a rather strange tale in structure, perhaps another experiment by Hoffmann?

It's narrated by a "Traveling Enthusiast" who goes to a New Year's Eve party in Berlin, and as a sort of surprise by his host, is reunited by his long-lost love Julia, who treats the narrator coldly and cruelly...and never tells him she is married to someone else. Distraught, he leaves the party and finds a beer cellar.

There he encounters Peter Schlemihl and his frenemy Erasmus Spikher. Schlemihl lacks a shadow, and as such is shunned by human society. Spikher lacks a reflection, and tells the narrator how he lost it. Interestingly, his tale is of an obsession with a beautiful courtesan, Giulietta, who bounces between warmth and cruelty, and Spikher abandons his family for her, eventually losing everything.

It's a somewhat intriguing tale, but it can seem a bit opaque at times, largely because Peter Schlemihl is forgotten today. He was a character created by Adelbert von Chamisso for a pious children's book (published in 1814) about a man who sells his shadow to the devil for an ever-full purse, but eventually discards it and finds redemption as a humble observer of the world. "A New Year's Eve Adventure" was published in 1815 and one supposes that technically this could be considered copyright infringement, if such a thing were being enforced in 1815. But in the past, there were many such crossovers, with authors lifting another author's character and having them face a new situation or team them up with a new character.

The story itself is a classic "beware the femme fatale" or a retread of Keats "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," which went on to the toxic dames of film noir and the sexy ladies of direct-to-video erotic thrillers of the 80s and 90s, which I once saw referred to as "La Belle Dame Sans Panties" (I want to use that for a title sometime, perhaps a play.) It's a classic trope, as misogynist as it may be, but we recognize its familiarity. Although it can also be seen as a commentary on the central characters' weaknesses; they simply can't let go of their obsession with Julia/Giulietta, and that obsession leads to their self-destruction. Ultimately, nobody in this is really good or admirable. Julia may be a cold, manipulative bitch, but the men she leads around are no better, fools who cheat on their spouses and can't move on from a sexual obsession.

This story formed the basis of the third act of Offenbach's opera "Tales of Hoffmann," and includes of the most famous tunes from the opera, and one of the popular tunes in the general classical repertoire, the "Barcarolle." You've probably heard it somewhere, even if you're not a classical fan. Here's an instrumental version...



All told, "A New Year's Eve Adventure" is an OK tale, with some atmosphere in the rathskeller scenes and some effectiveness in Spikher's story of his self-destruction, and some universal truths when it explores how sometimes your encounters with lost loves are just damned painful. But the business with Peter Schlemihl is a problem; you end up having to do some research just to understand part of what's going on. It hasn't aged completely well.

Tales of Hoffmann: Automata

"Automata" gives us Hoffmann in what appears to be an experimental mood, and not always succeeding. The story is in several parts, and it can seem as if the parts are greater than the whole.

It opens with the narrator going to visit his friend Vincent who's having a storytelling session. An attendee, named Cyprian (what a great name!) tells a memorably unsettling tale of a haunting which leaves people so traumatized that a teenaged girl is driven mad and now thinks she's a ghost. Some editors have cut that part from the story, and it's good enough to stand on its own, and has no bearing on the rest of the story.

Then another attendee, Theodore (maybe supposed to be Hoffmann himself?) tells a tale of the Talking Turk, a famous touring automaton which is very obviously based on the famous chess-playing Turk (pictured above) which I've written about before.

However, this Turk answers questions in a very macabre manner, and the story is of someone who asks a question, and gets a strange answer, and all sorts of twists and turns of fate that result. The automaton really doesn't play that big a role in the story, and it's more of romance and betrayal and fate...and then it just stops. Little is resolved, plot threads are left hanging, and the automaton's nature is unrevealed.

It's puzzling. The title really comes across as a misnomer. The structure is a bit odd and disjointed. The main story has no real ending and is unresolved.

But...given some thought, and a lot of this is coming to me as I write this, I wonder if this was meant to duplicate the experience of friends getting together and telling stories. Stuff just comes out, and sometimes an intriguing story just peters out because the person telling it doesn't know how it ends, or maybe, as so often in real life, things do just peter out unresolved.

So instead of an botched attempt at a weird tale, this could very well be a bold and experimental tale that prefigures postmodern literature. Damn, that Hoffmann was something else.

More Tales of Hoffmann coming soon!

Tales of Hoffmann: The Golden Flower Pot

"The Golden Flower Pot" is one of Hoffmann's longer, and more critically acclaimed, stories, and a good starting point. It came out in 1814 and is his first major published work, as well. I read it in E. F. Bleiler's anthology "The Best Tales of Hoffmann," published in 1967 and still in print, and this particular tale was translated by Richard Carlyle. (My semester of college German does not leave me up to reading Hoffmann in the original language...)

Anselmus, a student from Dresden, is rushing to a local park on Ascension Day (May 14th, long a public holiday in German-speaking countries), when he accidentally knocks over a basket of apples and cookies that were held by an old peddler lady. She curses him volubly, he gives her what money he has to calm her, and then is left penniless for the celebrations. So, making the best of it, he ends up sitting alone under a tree...and ends up hearing magical bell-like voices coming from beautiful green-and-gold snakes. Enchanted, his vision opens up and he sees more than just the mundane realities of life.

He eventually finds employment and finds himself torn between the mundane, worldly Conrector Paulmann and his beautiful daughter Veronica (who love Anselmus but also wants him to become a great official and keep her in the manner to which she'd like to be accustomed) and his employer, Archivarius Linhorst, who seems to be a salamander (or fire elemental) from Atlantis, and his daughter, Serpentina, who is one of the snakes he saw on Ascension Day. Meanwhile, the old apple-lady seeks to destroy him; she is a witch and a sworn enemy of Lindhorst.

The story is really of Anselmus' choice between a mundane life as an official and government functionary, and the dreamy life of a poet. He has father-figures to guide him in either way, and all seem to appreciate his gifts in his own way. Two women desire him, but although Veronica loves him, she also has a strong desire for what he can do for her, while Serpentina sees his potential as a poet and wants him to develop that. Neither seems to want him Just As He Is but at least Serpentina's love is unselfish and she just wants to be at his side as he grows. Not to say Veronica is a bad person, but she is easily misguided and for a while falls under the influence of the old witch.

And the golden flower pot of the title? It's an Atlantean relic in the Lindorf home that's desired by the witch!

There's lots to enjoy in this story, and it's a great candy-box of Hoffmann's style. There's some light and funny parts, like the party where various people get drunk and dance about, throwing their wigs and the punchbowl hither and thither. But there's also scenes of menace and horror, like Veronica's attendance at a dark ceremony performed by the witch.

Of course, interpretations of this vary. Some say it's positive and optimistic, reflecting a embrace of art and creativity. Other say it's negative and pessimistic, the story meant as a snide satire of a pretentious artist's foibles and fantasies. Being a romantic, I like to think of it as positive, and also a reflection on Hoffmann's own rejection of an official career for one of art and writing. There's just a bit too much joyousness to the story that I saw to take it so negatively.

It's debated among critics and readers if the magical happenings in the story are really taking place in the "real" world or are part of some parallel fairyland. Personally, I think they're in the real world; it's a classic case of how being touched by the spirit of...well...Atlantis, or creativity, or whatever, can open your eyes to things you never noticed before, and how those with minds focused only on worldly, mundane things like money or just getting by don't seem to stop and smell the roses. It's just in this case the roses are enchanted and may get up and follow you around.

At any rate, this is a grand story, and worth reading. It's in a lot of Hoffmann collections and can be found free online. Good reading for those seeking inspiration.

E. T. A. Hoffmann: A Portrait

I'm going to be doing an occasional series of reviews called "Tales of Hoffmann," each a review of an individual story by E. T. A. Hoffmann, one of the founding fathers of modern weird fiction. I think he's unjustly overlooked these days, even though at least one of his works has seriously permeated popular culture.

His works are usually classed as Romanticism, but he often wrote in the fantasy and horror genres, and he started to synthesize the elements of the detective genre, but Poe came along and did it better. Hoffmann has also had a major impact on the music world, in multiple ways: in his lifetime he was a music critic and a composer, and some of his works, like the opera Undine, are still performed today. His literary output inspired musical works by others, most notably one opera, Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann, and two ballets, Coppelia by Leo Delibes, and The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky.

Yes, THAT Nutcracker. The one you went to see as a kid, or took the kids to see, or just saw this season. Think of the omnipresent music from that work, played everywhere! And even of the nutcracker ornaments on the tree, or the nutcracker-ish toy soldiers used as decorations in Christmas tableaux. All of that because of this guy. It's staggering to think of the impact he had.

He was born Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann on January 24th, 1776, in Konigsberg, a city that was first Prussian, then Russian, then Prussian again, then German, and is currently Russian again. The boy showed promise as a writer, musician, and visual artist, but Konigsberg was something of a backwater and he never was exposed to classical forms. That probably helped him develop his own individual style, even though he read voraciously, including authors like Goethe, Schiller, Swift, and Sterne.

He eventually became a minor government official, but occasionally got in trouble for drawing slightly scandalous caricatures of military and government officials...usually being sent on to another post. His professional life was never in one spot; as a jurist, he went from one area to another, mostly in Silesia and present-day Poland. In Warsaw, he read Tieck and hung out with Friedrich de la Motte Fouque and other early practitioners of the weird. He married in 1802 and had a single daughter, who died young. His official career was sidelined by the Napoleonic Wars, and he eventually found work as a theater manager and then as the musical director of an opera company (which was short lived). He was also noted as a music critic for German newspapers, and often wrote humorously of the fictitious musician Johannes Kreisler...who later inspired a piano suite by Schumann, "Kreisleriana."

One big triumph for him was his opera Undine being performed in 1814, and ran for 25 performances until a fire broke out in the theater during a performance. He started publishing collections of his stories in 1814; a four-volume set came out that year, with further collections (and novels) continuing until his death. The most widespread story was "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" which was translated into several languages and eventually inspired the iconic ballet. His last years were very productive, with many stories, works of criticism, and musical compositions coming out, but ill health (including syphilis) caused paralysis and his last works were dictated to a secretary or his wife. He also had crises of conscience with his ideological opposition to new anti-liberal reforms in the Prussian government, and his tendency to satirize public figures in his writings often caused political difficulties for him. He passed away on June 25, 1822, at the age of 46, and his grave still stands in Berlin. (Pilgrimage? Maybe.)

His writings are regarded as the perfect examples of German Romanticism, mingling realism with fantasy that pre-dates modern "magical realism" of authors like Isabel Allende and Jonathan Carroll. His influence on later authors is immense...folks like Poe, Dickens, Dostoevski, Gogol, Baudelaire, and Kafka all credited him directly. Freud famously cited his story "The Sandman" in his work on the uncanny. His works were also marked by a wry sense of humor and satire; as much as he was part of the Romantic movement, he also poked fun at it and its followers, especially in his masterpiece novel, The Life and Opinions of Tomcat Murr, which rubbed some of his contemporaries the wrong way with its satire of artistic pretension. He also shaped the music world of his time with his writings, and set new standards for the quality of music criticism. (His musical writings were finally translated into English and collected in a single volume back in 2004. I may have to track that down.)

One thing that set Hoffmann apart, and made him a trailblazer, was how he grounded his fantasies and horrors in the everyday world. Fantasy and weird writing before that time was normally set in the distant past or in some magical otherworld, but Hoffmann's characters encountered the supernatural in the midst of everyday life of Europe of the early 19th century. And as such, they also give a nice glimpse of life in that time period. He also dealt a lot with doppelgangers and dualities. But also, he never seemed to take himself or his work completely seriously, and in the midst of an otherwise chilling tale you'll find comedic passages or episodes that may seem incongruous. But that's Hoffmann, and that's life; sometimes in the midst of dire situations and dramas, you'll find something to laugh at, even if it's rueful, reluctant laughter.

And what's with the name, you ask? He was officially E. T. W. Hoffmann, and used that on official papers, but used E. T. A. Hoffmann on his musical and literary works. According to him, the A was for Amadeus, a nod to Mozart, whom he admired.

So, keep your eyes open for the "Tales of Hoffmann" series; hopefully I'll have the first one up before January 1.

I think this is a self-portrait.

August at the Phantom Opera House!

Tonight we're off to the opera! We got bargain tickets through a friend, had a festive dinner at a fun and inexpensive restaurant, and are now snugly ensconced in the opera house. The show is Weber's Der Freischütz, a German Romantic opera from 1821 based on a folktale about a marksman who uses cursed bullets.

In the second act, there's a famous scene where the hero and the villain descend to the Wolves' Den, an area in the forest noted for the ghosts and demons that inhabit it. There they meet with the Black Huntsman, Samiel, and make a bargain to forge the seven magic bullets with which the flawed hero, Max, will win a marksmanship contest and a prize that will enable him to marry his beloved Agathe. Villainous Casper (not a friendly ghost), however, has other plans, including not telling Max that the seventh bullet, once fired, will have Max carried off by Samiel, and buying Casper more time on earth. (He made a dark bargain with Samiel himself years ago...)

The music is stirring...in fact, here we go...



This scene is often described as the greatest Romantic depiction of supernatural horror, and it's a corker. I chose a video without action, leaving the listener to imagine for themselves how the action goes. After you listen, go read a synopsis or find a video of the scene, and see how close your mental image was.

The scene ends, the intermission arrives, and we rush to the bar for a glass of Rhine wine while calming our shudders. And vowing to investigate Romantic opera and music more. Bring back Romanticism!