At an intermediary stage toward the second plane, I did recognize the song as a perfectly composed glee in the old style, including its a cappella setting of the two stanzas for Ralph Rackstraw, the Boatswain, and the Boatswain’s Mate. But I only got the joke a few years ago. Sir Joseph Porter gives three copies of the song to Ralph, claiming that he wrote the ditty himself “to encourage independence of thought and action in the lower branches of the service.” The three men start to perform the unfamiliar piece by singing at sight from Sir Joseph’s score. They begin, and manage to continue for an entire verse of four lines, in perfect homophony—Sir Joseph’s obvious intention for the entire piece. But, as simple sailors after all, these men can boast little experience in sight-singing, and the poor Boatswain’s Mate soon falls behind the others. The second verse of four lines therefore “devolves” into an elegant, if mock, polyphonic texture—that is, a part song, a perfect and literal glee (made all the more absurd in fulfilling, by this “imperfection,” Sir Joseph’s stated intention to encourage independence among his men).
Gilbert’s drawing (signed with his pseudonym “Bab”) of a British tar as “a soaring soul. . . whose energetic fist is ready to resist a dictatorial word.”
(I am confident that I have caught Sullivan’s intent aright, but I remain surprised that modern performers generally don’t seem to get the point, or don’t choose to honor the potential understanding of at least some folks in their audience. Only twice, in about ten performances, have I seen the song performed by sailors holding the scores, with the Boatswain’s Mate becoming frustrated as he falls behind. Why not honor Sullivan’s theatrical instincts, and his lovely, if relatively sophisticated, musical joke? The piece, and the humor in the polyphonic discombobulation, works perfectly well even for listeners who only experience the vernacular plane, whereas the dual operation, with full respect accorded to both planes, expresses the sine qua non of excellence.)
The madrigal (so identified) from The Mikado (“Brightly dawns our wedding day”) exploits a similar device. Yum-Yum prepares for her wedding with Nanki-Poo, but under the slight “drawback” that her husband must be beheaded in a month. The four singers, including the bride and bridegroom, try to cheer themselves up through the two verses of this perfect madrigal, or four-part song in alternating homophonic and polyphonic sections. They start optimistically (“joyous hour we give thee greeting”) but cannot sustain the mood (“all must sip the cup of sorrow”), despite the words that close both verses (“sing a merry madrigal, fal-la”).
To “get” the full joke, one must recognize the rigidly formal and unvarying texture of the musical part—thus setting a contrast with the singers’ progressive decline into textual gloom and actual tears. Gilbert made his quartet stand rigidly still throughout the piece, as if declaiming their ancient madrigal in a formal concert hall—thus emphasizing the almost antic contrast of constant and stylish form with growing despair of feeling. In this case, I do sense that most modern directors grasp the intended point, but suspect that so few listeners now know the musical language and definition of a madrigal that the contrast between form and feeling must be reinforced by some other device. I do not object to such modernization, which clearly respects authorial intent, but I feel that directors have acquitted their proper intuition with highly varying degrees of success.
My vote for last place goes to Jonathan Miller’s otherwise wonderful resetting at an English seaside resort. (As Gilbert’s central joke, after all, The Mikado’s Japanese setting is a sham, for each character plays an English stock figure thinly disguised in oriental garb—the ineffably polite upper-class Mikado, who boils his victims in oil but invites them to tea before their execution; his wastrel son; the phony noble pretender who will do any job for a price, and who gave his name, Pooh-Bah, to men of such multiple employments and salaries.) Miller’s quartet sings the madrigal stock-still, in true Gilbertian fashion, while workmen ply their tools and move their ladders about the set to emphasize the key contrast. A decent concept, perhaps, but Sullivan never wrote a more beautiful song, and you can’t hear a note amid the distractions and actual clatter of the workmen’s movements. Pure kudos, on the other end, to Canada’s Stratford Company. They recognized that most of the audience would not draw, from the song itself, the essential contrast between structured form and dissolving emotion—so they set the singers in the midst of a formal Japanese tea ceremony to transfer the musical point to visual imagery that no one could miss, and without disrupting the music either visually or aurally.
I have thus grown to appreciate Sullivan more and more over the years, but I still lean to the view, probably held by a majority of Savoyards, that Gilbert’s text must be counted as more essential to their joint survival. (Gilbert might have found another collaborator of passable talent, though no one could match Sullivan, but Sir Arthur would surely have gone the way of Victor Herbert, despite his maximal musical quality, without Gilbert’s texts.) My Swiss moments with Gilbert therefore bring me even greater pleasure, make me wonder how much we have all missed, and lead me to honor, even more, the talent of a man who could so love his vernacular art, while not debasing or demeaning these accomplishments one whit by festooning the texts with so many gestures and complexities that few may grasp, but that never interfere with the vernacular flow. Gilbert thus surpasses Jack Point, his own jester in Yeomen of the Guard, by simultaneous expression of his two levels:
Jack Point, Gilbert’s jester, showing “a grain or two of truth among the chaff” of his humor.
I’ve jibe and joke
And quip and crank
For lowly folk
And men of rank. . .
I can teach you with a quip, if I’ve a mind
I can trick you into learning with a laugh;
Oh, winnow all my folly, and you’ll find
A grain or two of truth among the chaff!
As a small example of Gilbert’s structural care, I don’t know how many hundred times I have heard the duet between Captain Corcoran and Little Buttercup at the beginning of Pinafore’s Act II. Buttercup hints at a secret that, when revealed, will fundamentally change the Captain’s status. (We later learn, in the classic example of Gilbertian topsy-turvy, that Buttercup, as the captain’s nursemaid “a many years ago,” accidentally switched him with another baby in her charge—who just happens to be none other than Ralph Rackstraw, now revealed as nobly born, and therefore fit to marry the Captain’s [now demoted] daughter after all.) The song, as I knew even from day one at age ten, presents a list of rhyming proverbs shrouded in mystery. But I never discerned the textual structure until my Swiss moment just a few months ago. (I do not, by the way, claim that this text displays any great profundity. I merely point out that Gilbert consistently applies such keen and careful intelligence to his efforts, even when most consumers may not be listening. One must work, after all, primarily for one’s own self-respect.)
I suppose I always recognized that Buttercup’s proverbs all refer to masquerades and changes of status, as she hints to the Captain:
Black sheep dwell in every fold;
All that glitters is not gold;
Storks turn out to be but logs;
Bulls are but inflated frogs.
But I never grasped the structure of Captain Corcoran’s response. He admits right up front that Buttercup’s warnings confuse him: “I don’t see at what you’re driving, mystic lady.” He then parries her proverbizing, supposedly in kind, at least according to his understanding:
Though I’m anything but clever,
I could talk like that forever.
Gilbert’s simple device expresses the consummate craftsmanship, and the unvarying intelligence, that pervades the details of all his texts. The captain also pairs his proverbs in rhymed couplets. But each of his pairs includes two proverbs of opposite import, thus intensifying, by the song’s structure, the character of the captain’s befuddlement:
Once a cat was killed by care;
Only br
ave deserve the fair.
Wink is often good as nod;
Spoils the child who spares the rod.
(Just to be sure that I had not experienced unique opacity during all these years of incomprehension, I asked three other friends of high intelligence and good Gilbertian knowledge—and not a one had ever recognized the structure behind the Captain’s puzzlement.)
The Captain of the Pinafore hears Little Buttercup’s rhymed warnings with puzzlement.
To cite one more example of Gilbert’s structural care and complexity, the finale to Act I of Ruddigore begins with three verses, each sung by a different group of characters with varied feelings about unfolding events. (In this Gilbertian parody of theatrical melodrama, Robin Oakapple has just been exposed as the infamous Ruthven Murgatroyd, Baronet of Ruddigore, condemned by a witch’s curse to commit at least one crime each day. This exposure frees his younger brother, Despard, who had borne the title and curse while his big brother lived on the lam, but who may now reform to a desired life of calm virtue. Meanwhile, Richard Dauntless, Ruthven’s foster brother and betrayer, wins the object of his dastardly deed, the jointly beloved Rose Maybud.)
Each of the three groups proclaims happiness surpassing a set of metaphorical comparisons. But I had never dissected the structure of Gilbert’s imagery, and one verse had left me entirely confused—until another Swiss moment at a recent performance. The eager young lovers, Richard and Rose, just united by Richard’s betrayal, begin by proclaiming that their own joy surpasses several organic images of immediate fulfillment:
Oh happy the lily when kissed by the bee. . .
And happy the filly that neighs in her pride.
Despard and his lover, Margaret, now free to pursue their future virtue, then confess to happiness surpassing several natural examples of delayed gratification:
Oh, happy the flowers that blossom in June,
And happy the bowers that gain by the boon.
But the lines of the final group had simply puzzled me:
Oh, happy the blossom that blooms on the lea,
Likewise the opossum that sits on a tree.
Why cite a peculiar marsupial living far away in the Americas, except to cadge a rhyme? And what relevance to Ruddigore can a flower on a meadow represent? I resolved Gilbert’s intent only when I looked up the technical definition of a lea—what do we city boys know?—and learned its application to an arable field temporarily sown with grass for grazing. Thus the verse cites two natural images of items far and uncomfortably out of place—an irrelevant opossum in distant America, and a lone flower in a sea of grass. The three singers of this verse have all been cast adrift, or made superfluous, by actions beyond their control—for Hannah, Rose’s aunt and caretaker, must now live alone; Zorah, who also fancied Richard, has lost her love; and Adam, Robin’s good and faithful manservant, must now become the scheming accomplice of the criminalized and rechristened Ruthven.
Finally I recognized the structure of the entire finale as a progressive descent from immediate and sensual joy into misery—from Rose and Richard’s current raptures; to Despard and Margaret’s future pleasures; to the revised status of Hannah, Zorah, and Adam as mere onlookers; to the final verse, sung by Ruthven alone, and proclaiming the wretchedness of his new criminal role—not better than the stated images (as in all other verses), but worse:
Oh, wretched the debtor who’s signing a deed!
And wretched the letter that no one can read!
For Ruthven only cites images of impotence, but he must become an active criminal:
But very much better their lot it must be
Than that of the person
I’m making this verse on
Whose head there’s a curse on—
Alluding to me!
Again, I claim no great profundity for Gilbert, but only the constant intelligence of his craftsmanship, and his consequent ability to surprise us with deft touches, previously unappreciated. In this case, moreover, we must compare Gilbert with the medieval cathedral builders who placed statues in rooftop positions visible only to God, and therefore not subject to any human discernment or approbation. For these verses rush by with such speed, within so dense an orchestral accompaniment, and surrounded by so much verbiage for the full chorus, that no one can hear all the words in any case. Hadn’t Gilbert, after all, ended the patter trio in Ruddigore’s second act by recognizing that all artists must, on occasion, puncture their own bubbles or perish in a bloat of pride?
This particularly rapid, unintelligible patter
Isn’t generally heard, and if it is it doesn’t matter.
Mr. Justice Stewart famously claimed, in true (if unintended) Gilbertian fashion, that he might not be able to define pornography, but that he surely knew the elusive product when he saw it. I don’t know that we can reach any better consensus about the orthogonal, if not opposite, phenomenon of excellence, but my vernacular plane knows, while my limited insight into Plato’s plane can only glimpse from afar (and through a dark glass), that Gilbert and Sullivan have passed through this particular gate of our mental construction, and that their current enthusiasts need never apologize for loving such apparent trifles, truly constructed as pearls beyond price.
Ko-Ko, reciting the tale of Titwillow to win Katisha and (literally) save his neck.
Ko-Ko, to win Katisha’s hand and save his own neck, weaved a tragically affecting tale about a little bird who drowned himself because blighted love has broken his heart. But Ko-Ko spun his entire story—the point of Gilbert’s humor in Sullivan’s wonderfully sentimental song—on the slightest of evidentiary webs, for the bird spoke but a single mysterious word, reiterated in each verse: “tit willow.” Even the most trifling materials in our panoply of forms can, in the right hands, be clothed in the magic of excellence.
5
Art Meets Science in The Heart of the Andes: Church Paints, Humboldt Dies, Darwin Writes, and Nature Blinks in the Fateful Year of 1859
THE INTENSE EXCITEMENT AND FASCINATION THAT Frederic Edwin Church’s Heart of the Andes solicited when first exhibited in New York in 1859 may be attributed to the odd mixture of apparent opposites so characteristic of our distinctive American style of showmanship—commercialism and excellence, hoopla and incisive analysis. The large canvas, more than ten by five feet, and set in a massive frame, stood alone in a darkened room, with carefully controlled lighting and the walls draped in black. Dried plants and other souvenirs that Church had collected in South America probably graced the room as well. Visitors marveled at the magisterial composition, with a background of the high Andes, blanketed in snow, and a foreground of detail so intricate and microscopically correct that Church might well be regarded as the Van Eyck of botany.
But public interest also veered from the sublime to the merely quantitative, as rumors circulated that an unprecedented sum of twenty thousand dollars had been paid for the painting (the actual figure of ten thousand dollars was impressive enough for the time). This tension of reasons for interest in Church’s great canvases has never ceased. A catalog written to accompany a museum show of his great Arctic landscape, The Icebergs, contains, in order, as its first three pictures, a reproduction of the painting, a portrait of Church, and a photo of the auctioneer at Sotheby’s gaveling the sale at $2.5 million as “the audience cheered at what is [or was in 1980, at the time of this sale] the highest figure ever registered at an art auction in the United States.”
A far more important, but basically ill-founded, tension—the supposed conflict between art and science—dominates our current scholarly discussion of Church and his views about nature and painting. This tension, however, can only be deemed retrospective, a product of divisions that have appeared in our society since Church painted his most famous canvases. Church did not doubt that his concern with scientific accuracy proceeded hand in hand with his drive to depict beauty and meaning in nature. His faith in this fruitful union stemmed from the views of his intellectual mentor Alexander von Humbo
ldt, a great scientist who had ranked landscape painting among the three highest expressions of our love of nature.
Church sent The Heart of the Andes to Europe after its great American success in 1859. He wanted, above all, to show the painting to Humboldt, then ninety years old, and who, sixty years before, had begun the great South American journey that would become the source of his renown. Church wrote to Bayard Taylor on May 9, 1859:
The “Andes” will probably be on its way to Europe before your return to the City. . . . [The] principal motive in taking the picture to Berlin is to have the satisfaction of placing before Humboldt a transcript of the scenery which delighted his eyes sixty years ago—and which he had pronounced to be the finest in the world.
But Humboldt died before the painting arrived, and Church’s act of homage never bore fruit. Later in 1859, as The Heart of the Andes enjoyed another triumph of display in the British Isles, Charles Darwin published his epochal book, The Origin of Species, in London. These three events, linked by their combined occurrence in 1859—the first exhibition of The Heart of the Andes, the death of Alexander von Humboldt, and the publication of The Origin of Species—set the core of this essay. They present, in my view, a basis for understanding the central role of science in Church’s career and for considering the larger issue of relationships between art and the natural world.
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