America’s rush to put everyone back to work is dangerous and cruel. Much more thought needs to be given to how we can best go forward and how we can put needed funding into making everyone’s present and future safe. I took the liberty of reinterpreting what the House of the Rising Sun might be. The folksong isn’t clear on that, but there is a book that examines the topic in depth, Chasing the Rising Sun, by Ted Anthony.
Handel blog 13*
Remember me when I am gone away
~Christina Rossetti
Gone far away into the silent land
When you can no more hold me by the hand.
From Katherine: Each day of this pandemic brings more and more losses of older Americans, especially those living in nursing homes. You can read some discussion of the statistics here. Most heartbreaking, in many ways, are the deaths that occur with no friends or family there to say goodbye, no loving hand to hold, no one to respond to the eyes that say, “I love you. Remember me.” That line from Christina Rossetti’s poem has always tugged at my heart. I remember some of our discussion of the anguish Handel felt when his mother died and he was unable to be there or even to attend her funeral.
From Peter: Yes, I have seen a couple of recent articles lamenting exactly that—the sadness that comes with not being able to see a dying friend or relative. I’ll share this one and this one. I know such distressing stories will be the subject of valuable collections in many newspapers and museums across the country. Such a sad way to be remembered. We need to have more than just cold offices holding death records.
From Rebecca: Museums, archives. local history centers, maybe even personal diaries—these will all serve to preserve the stories of people taken during this pandemic. Perhaps we will learn something from their reports. Perhaps we will know how to respond more quickly and believe those who warn us of dangers that come when we send away the watchdogs. How many could we have saved if we had listened to our doctors and researchers earlier?
From Katherine: I expect we will hear many more stories of the vulnerable who succumb as well as those who have risked infection on a daily basis—the nurses, doctors, grocers, delivery people, trash haulers, and cashiers. On a more positive note, perhaps we will finally pay people a living wage and offer them universal health care. Perhaps something good will come from this time of loss. Good things did follow the Plague years in Europe. Handel gained much from being a part of the great push to rebuild and renew after Halle’s many deaths. May we garner some good, and may the sad losses end soon. Let us think of some promising signs for our next exchange. I need some emotional sunshine.
*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.
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.