All posts by Sandra Dolby

Coronavirus masks

Sparks from Science and Society, The Handel Seminar Continues,

Handel blog 3*

From Katherine:  Well, we talked about the Plague song “O du lieber Augustin” last time.  I’ve seen quite a few songs popping up on social media—either parodies that reference the coronavirus or sometimes simply old songs meant to distract us from our worries.  But today I wanted to bring together comments some of you have made about masks—the surgical masks now in such demand in so many public contexts.  I’ve seen several articles commenting on the beak-like “doctors’ masks” that were seen as a symbol of the Plague in the early 1700s.  The “doctor’s mask” was even used as a clue in the 2017 Disney movie Beauty and the Beast—a sign that Belle’s mother had died of the plague.  I expect the Handel-era doctor’s mask served a different purpose than the surgical masks we have today.  What do you think?

Circa 1656, A plague doctor in protective clothing. The beak mask held spices thought to purify air, the wand was used to avoid touching patients. Original Artwork: Engraving by Paul Furst after J Colombina (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

From Rebecca:  Masks have been connected with healing in cultures throughout the world—think of the stereotypical witch doctor wearing a colorful mask.  But there are much more serious meanings associated with the use of masks.  I find it interesting to hear some of the beliefs about the wearing of protective masks today.  And there is even a kind of folk craft springing up—people making their own masks or producing some to help out with the shocking shortage of face masks here in the US.  You can read about some of the information on making masks here.

From Peter:  I did a little research on the doctor’s mask we associate with the Great Plague.  By the time Handel was living in London, from the early to mid-1700s, the beak-like doctor’s mask had fallen out of use, but interestingly some of the reasons for its emergence in the first place remained a part of the culture.  It seems the beak protuberance part of the mask was actually filled with various herbs or spices that supposedly protected the wearer from illness—well, THE illness, the plague.  I assume the spices did at least smell better then whatever the doctor was encountering where ever he went.  Anyway, along with that tie to the mask itself, there was also a general belief among physicians and their patients that certain smells carried medical benefits.  What we think of as perfumes today were regarded as a kind of medicine back then.  One article I read said this about such cures in the 1700s: “Recipes in pharmacopoeias confirm that physicians believed in the medicinal properties of perfumes.”  You can read about it here.

From Katherine:  That is fascinating, Peter.  It brings to mind the more modern practice of aromatherapy with its use of essential oils.  You can read about aromatherapy here.  But it also made me think of Handel and one of the last people who saw him before he died—his friend and neighbor James Smyth (see p. 57 in The Handel Letters). James Paul Smyth was a perfumer.  My guess is that he was there as both a comfort and a kind of Hospice health care worker, bringing the oils and perfumes that represented this medicinal part of his trade.  Handel was clearly grateful for Smyth’s services.  He left James Smyth a substantial bequest in his will. 

I think that is it for today.  Stay well.

*All posts listed as “Handel blog” are texts that use the fictional characters in my book The Handel Letters: A Biographical Conversation.  As in that book, the posts will often reference things from Handel’s life or time period as starting points.  And the post will cite a page or paragraph in the book when it seems relevant.   Find The Handel Letters.

Du lieber Augustin

Songs and Scenes, The Handel Seminar Continues,

Handel blog 2*

From Katherine:  Most of you have signed on for this little Handel Seminar extension.  Forella, I think you had a great idea!  Thanks.  I’ll post the comments that came in and set them up with a little editing.  I know we could do this without this extra step, but that would take us into uncharted waters, and Forella wanted to keep it along the lines already familiar to us.  Since it seems we will have unlimited time for this, I’ll just try to share bits every day and keep it short.

From Brad:  So, I listened to the YouTube with the accordion and the guys singing about lieber Augustin—which sounded like bad German beer hall music to me.  But I remember the tune as a song from grade school—“Did You Ever See a Lassie?”  I don’t think the Lassie song had anything to do with the plague.  And was this Augustin guy supposed to have died but still played music from his grave?  I suppose I could look up this information myself, but I’d rather complain that we need a better explanation.

From Alison:  Well, Katherine probably knows the folklore on this, but I’ll share what I know about the song.  You are right, Brad, that it is the same tune as “Did You Ever See a Lassie.”  I remember doing a kind of play or dance to that in grade school, too—something like, “Did you ever see a lassie go this way and that way and this way and that way.” But later, as an adult, I did hear the German version about “lieber Augustin,” and I was surprised to learn that it wasn’t really a folksong but was instead, as Katherine suggested, a song composed about the Plague years during Handel’s time.  Supposedly the man who wrote the song was in fact named Augustin and he was someone who entertained people with his songs and his bagpipe playing.  One time he was drunk and passed out.  The local gravediggers found him lying along the road and assumed he was one of the many corpses they had the sad task of collecting and moving to a mass grave during this nightmarish time. They threw him in a grave along with many actually dead people. Augustin revived, found himself unable to get out of the deep grave, and started playing his bagpipe (which they had thrown in with him).  Passersby heard him and pulled him out of the grave.  He survived and wrote the song.  That’s the story, as I remember it.

From Rayette:  That’s an amazing story, isn’t it?  I hadn’t known anything about it before, but I checked into it a little.  You can read about it here.  But I just wanted to say how interesting I thought it was that something so disturbing as people dying in such numbers and being buried in mass graves—the whole history of the Plague—that it would be commemorated in a song, and a children’s song at that.  It reminds me of the John and Ol’ Massa stories that joked about slavery.  Humor sometimes helps us handle some horrible reality.

From Katherine:  Yes.  I wonder if Handel knew the song.  I wonder if it was something people sang back then—in the years just after the last great sweep of the Plague through Europe.  It really did act like a folksong, even if we do know who composed it. Any time a song or legend or joke circulates widely enough for it to enter tradition, you can bet that the topic it brings up is one people find disturbing. The Plague, like the coronavirus pandemic of today, was frightening, a time of fear and loss. Very unsettling. On that somber note, thanks, Brad, Alison, Rayette.  That’s it for today.

*All posts listed as “Handel blog” are texts that use the fictional characters in my book The Handel Letters: A Biographical Conversation.  As in that book, the posts will often reference things from Handel’s life or time period as starting points.  And the post will cite a page or paragraph in the book when it seems relevant.   Find The Handel Letters.

The Plague and COVID-19

Boxes in the Basement,

Handel Blog 1*

From Katherine: As we have all been ordered to “shelter in place,” Forella has asked me to resurrect the Handel Seminar—only this time as a blog. I no longer have Benfey here to help with the technology, so you will have to be patient with my poor skills in getting this blog going. Angela had suggested we simply meet electronically through an app called Zoom, but Forella said, with her vision nearly gone, she would rather have the option of pondering written texts that Angela could read to her. We all have time on our hands, so the reading and writing shouldn’t be a burden. I assume our posts will be short in any case.

So, let me start with what I consider one of the most relevant or timely lines in The Handel Letters—a reference to the Plague in one of Ross’s introductory comments. Ross warned us that he was “likely to ruminate on Handel’s views on death and suffering.” This gloomy theme, Ross claimed, was important in our consideration of Handel because Handel’s German hometown, Halle, “had lost half of its population to the plague just a few years before Handel was born. His father was a surgeon. Handel must have encountered death and misery even before losing his father at age twelve.” (p. 122). So Handel was like what some are now calling Generation C in our own time—children born just as the coronavirus sweeps across the globe. Handel’s childhood was no doubt effected by the devastation caused by those last years of the Great Plague in Europe.

From Ross: Well, yes, I remember that I was curious about why much of Handel’s music was so deep and heartfelt. I think he must have internalized some of the heartache people felt as they lost friends and family members—probably some of the heartache he himself came to feel as he heard stories of the many losses in his hometown and throughout the rest of Europe. They always say misery makes a good artist. Personally, I’m hoping we don’t have to face anything as horrible as the plague. Science must be giving us better answers now. I’m sorry they had to suffer from the plague in Handel’s time, and I’m sorry we have to suffer from this virus today. I don’t really think we need dark times to produce great artists.

From Katherine: We can only hope.  Time will tell, I suppose. Actually some of the music we associate with times of pestilence is not heavy but instead light or humorous, even children’s songs. Do you all remember “Ach, du lieber Augustine?” It was a song about a musician who supposedly died during the Great Plague but played music from his grave and was saved.  The song was created in Austria, based on the legend, right about the time Handel was born. Here is a modern performance of it. Enjoy here  Or, for a children’s version, Augustine for children

We’ll take up some more thoughts on this and other themes next time.

*All posts listed as “Handel blog” are texts that use the fictional characters in my book The Handel Letters: A Biographical Conversation. As in that book, the posts will often reference things from Handel’s life or time period as starting points. And the post will cite a page or paragraph in the book when it seems relevant. Find The Handel Letters.