His mother, Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, of Dutch descent and Quaker faith, was fond of singing folk songs and telling stories to her large family. Thus little Walt, who was her favorite, the second of nine children, was bonded to music early in life.
An American Opera in Prose By Harold Hayes
By the time he had written the first edition of Leaves of Grass in , he was acquainted not only with the sentimental ballads, folk songs, and hymns popular in his time, but with the music of Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, Auber, Meyerbeer, Weber, Mendelssohn, and Gounod as well. Musical terms are used in abundance throughout his poetry. The larger forms of opera, oratorio, symphony, chamber and instrumental music, as well as solo arias, influence the structure, style, and design of the longer as well as some of the shorter poems.
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His orchestral "Proud Music of the Storm" celebrates all the passionate chants of life. His reviews of the music that he heard in the concert halls and theaters in New York and Brooklyn provide much information about the history of American music during the middle of the nineteenth century. As a journalist during the early s he listened to Mendelssohn's oratorio St. Paul , and experienced the virtuoso playing of the French violinist Henry Vieuxtemps and the Norwegian violinist Ole Bull.
But he was mainly attracted to the simple "heart-music," sung by the family trios and quartets of groups like the Hutchinson family of New Hampshire, the Cheney children from Vermont, the Alleghenians, the Harmoneons, and Father Kemp's Old Folks. He preferred sentimental ballads like "My Mother's Bible," "The Soldier's Farewell," and the "Lament of the Irish Emigrant," with their easy unison melodies and simple harmonies.
When he first attended the operas of Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi, he complained about "the trills, the agonized squalls, the lackadaisical drawlings, the sharp ear-piercing shrieks, the gurgling death-rattles" qtd.
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He was slow to appreciate grand opera, but when he did, he became passionately fond of it. He was to maintain, later in life, that the dramatic overtures, the passionate cantabile arias, the eloquent sobbing recitatives, were among the shaping forces of his free-verse style of poetry. His love for "heart-singing" gave way to his love for "art-singing": As a journalist and "music critic" of twenty-eight, he wrote about opera singers with considerable sensitivity.
He describes the singing of the English soprano Anna Bishop, in Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix , in a most enthusiastic manner.
He assures his readers of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle that her performance on 5 August was exceptional:. Her voice is the purest soprano—and of as silvery clearness as ever came from the human throat—rich but not massive—and of such flexibility that one is almost appalled at the way the most difficult passages are not only gone over with ease, but actually dallied with, and their difficulty redoubled.
They put one in mind of the gyrations of a bird in the air. He was even more effusive where the Italian contralto Marietta Alboni was concerned. During the — season the Italian prima donna gave a dozen concerts, including a performance of Rossini's Stabat Mater. Her singing gave Whitman "indescribable delight," for he considered her to be "the greatest of them all. Her singing, her method, gave the foundation, the start.
Were it not for opera, he maintained, "I could never have written Leaves of Grass " qtd. A list of the vocal compositions heard by the poet-journalist between and is impressive. It includes twenty-five operas and three oratorios, plus Rossini's Stabat Mater. He singles out scenes from numerous operas for inclusion in his poems. Title remainder Abridged and in prose form.
Illustrations illustrations Index no index present Literary form non fiction. An American opera in three acts - and five scenes with comments by the author, Plot, words, and music by Buren Schyrock Instantiates Libretto of Malena and Nordico. Member of Malena and Nordico. Library Locations Map Details.
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An American Opera in Prose
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