The Lost Pianos of Siberia by Sophy Roberts

I knew the entire endeavour had been inflected with a measure of madness.~from The Lost Pianos of Siberia by Sophy Roberts

I was intrigued. Pianos and Siberia--what a strange combination.

I love piano music. I have played (poorly) since I was eight years old. I love the piano music of Rubinstein and Rachmaninoff. I love Russian composers, from Tchaikovsky to Rimsky-Korsakov to Stravinsky to Prokofiev to Shostakovich.

But--Pianos in Siberia? The far land of exile and punishment for millions known as The Prison Without a Roof?

Just the kind of book for me.

Sophy Roberts spent several years traveling across the breadth of Siberia tracing an unlikely, but rich, musical heritage. Her book The Lost Pianos of Siberia is part travelogue and part Russian history, filtered through the impact of music.

Franz Liszt's Russian tour "turned the Russian love of the instrument into a fever in the 1840s," Roberts writes.

The diversity of Siberia's people, from the indigenous people who underwent repression, to prisoners including serfs and the Romanov family, fill the pages as Roberts sought the rumored, legendary pianos, including the piano Empress Alexandra played while held prisoner.

The book is also a compressed Russian history, especially of the 20th c. revolutions, and a history of the piano, including the rise of Russian factories.

It felt about as far from home as I could get while remaining on this planet. ~from The Lost Pianos of Siberia by Sophy Roberts

In the far-flung communities of Siberia, Roberts discovers the universal love of music. It is incredible to read about herders gathering to hear a brilliant pianist play a baby grand in a Mongolian gert.

The Lost Pianos of Siberia is a unique and mesmerizing read.

The publisher gave me a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

from the publisher

From acclaimed journalist Sophy Roberts, a journey through one of the harshest landscapes on earth—where music reveals the deep humanity and the rich history of Siberia

Siberia’s story is traditionally one of exiles, penal colonies and unmarked graves. Yet there is another tale to tell.

Dotted throughout this remote land are pianos—grand instruments created during the boom years of the nineteenth century, as well as humble, Soviet-made uprights that found their way into equally modest homes. They tell the story of how, ever since entering Russian culture under the westernizing influence of Catherine the Great, piano music has run through the country like blood.

How these pianos traveled into this snow-bound wilderness in the first place is testament to noble acts of fortitude by governors, adventurers and exiles. Siberian pianos have accomplished extraordinary feats, from the instrument that Maria Volkonsky, wife of an exiled Decembrist revolutionary, used to spread music east of the Urals, to those that brought reprieve to the Soviet Gulag. That these instruments might still exist in such a hostile landscape is remarkable. That they are still capable of making music in far-flung villages is nothing less than a miracle.

The Lost Pianos of Siberia is largely a story of music in this fascinating place, following Roberts on a three-year adventure as she tracks a number of different instruments to find one whose history is definitively Siberian. Her journey reveals a desolate land inhabited by wild tigers and deeply shaped by its dark history, yet one that is also profoundly beautiful—and peppered with pianos.

About the author

Sophy Roberts is a British writer whose work focuses on remote travel. She began her career assisting the writer Jessica Mitford, was an English scholar at Oxford University, and trained in journalism at Columbia University. She regularly contributes to the Financial Times and Condé Nast Traveler. The Lost Pianos of Siberia is her first book.

The Lost Pianos of Siberia
by Sophy Roberts
Grove Atlantic
Pub Date August 4, 2020
ISBN: 9780802149282
PRICE $40.50 (CAD)

The Vexations by Caitlin Horrocks

On February 18, 2018, we attended the Detroit Symphony Orchestra's French Festival to hear Claude Debussy's orchestration of Erik Satie's Gymnopédies Nos.1 & 3 along with music by Dukas, Saint-Saens, and Offenbach.

I had not realized previously how much I loved French music! I wanted to attend every one of the concerts. The two Gymnopedies were the only music by Satie performed during the festival--only because Debussy had orchestrated them. The music Satie wrote before he was twenty-two-years-old is his best known.  Reading Caitlin Horrocks' debut novel The Vexations I realized how little I knew about French composers and La Belle Époque Paris.

The Vexations centers on the life of the composer Erik Satie (1866-1925), bringing to life Paris's Bohemian society of eccentric and cutting-edge artists.

The novel also tells the story of Erik's siblings, separated as orphans after their mother's death. Conrad Satie leads a respectable life as a chemist in a perfume factory. Louise is a talented musician whose short-lived marriage leaves her and her son dependent on her in-law's wealth.

The Bohemian, a portrait of Erik Satie by Ramon Casas, circa 1891

Erik is a frustrating personality, an eccentric genius who would not be shoved into expected boxes artistically or socially. People didn't understand his music. His love affair with Susan Valadon lasted six months. He did not really seem to connect to people or need intimacy. During his life he was notorious. By the time of his death, his family and even most of his friends were no longer speaking with him.

Satie played piano at The Chat Noir

In later life, Satie was associated with Surrealism, including writing music for the Ballets Russe, Parade directed by Cocteau with Picasso costumes.

Erik Satie by Santiago Rusinol 

I became very taken by Louise Satie's story, the limitations society placed on a female. Pressured to marry well, she waited for passion. And when she found herself a young widow, one night of passion labeled her a whore. She clung to her son, but the legal system gave his custody to male relatives. She moved to South American and outlived the rest of her family, long enough to discover her brother Erik had become famous, long enough to understand life.

Satie's most well-known music remains the Gymnopieds.

The novel has left me with an earworm, sadness, and a better feel for the society and time that produced some of my favorite music.

After I finished the novel I discovered Horrocks is a writing instructor at Grand Valley State University. And that our son, who graduated from GVSU with a writing major, counted her as one of his best and most favorite professors!

I was given access to a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Vexations
by Caitlin Horrocks
Little, Brown and Company
Pub Date 30 Jul 2019
ISBN 9780316316910
PRICE $28.00 (USD)

Earworms

The last few weeks have been rife with earworms. You know--music playing continually in one's head. 

There was Eric Satie's music which I listened to again after reading The Vexations by Caitlin Horrocks. In particular, The Gnossienne No.1 stayed in my head.

Satie's music was followed by Suite Judy Blue Eyes after reading The Fourteenth of September by Rita Dragonette. Her main character's nickname came from the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young album that was such a hit in 1969-70.

Last week I finally saw Jersey Boys about the Four Seasons. Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You was one of the first 45 records I ever bought in 1966. I can sing all of the words, and it's in my range.

Last month I came across Songs My Mother Sang Me and I played it over and over on Youtube, then found I had piano music for it and have been trying to learn to play it. So heartbreaking.

During the July Fourth fireworks display, which takes place in the city park a block away, I took our grandpuppy into the finished basement to be away from the noise. I turned on my iPad music to Gordon Bok, songs which always felt calming. One of the songs I played was Seal Djiril's Hymn.

It broke my heart. The music has this sad wistfulness, this longing and regret.

The summer after I graduated from Temple University my husband and I went to the Philadelphia Folk Festival, camping in an open field. The music was a wonder. One of the singers we were introduced to was Camden Maine's Gordon Bok.

We were smitten by Bok's rich baritone voice and amazing instrumental skills. He sang the most beautiful songs about the sea and fishermen and a vanishing life, and rich legends and stories shared in song.

Seal Djiril's Hymn is sung by Bok and Anne Mayo Muir. You can hear it on Youtube here.

Long are the days gone, andiranda
Long down the sad and windy years
Long from the land of our desire

Rain comes and wind and snow, andiranda
Stormcloud and squall do shroud the sea
And peace shall follow us no more

Now through the hollowing green wave we wander
Long down the stormy seas and sad
Long from the land of our desire

Years when the sun was our provider
Milk of the meadows gathering
Winds brought the riches to our door

Now are the days come, andiranda
When to the seas again we go
Now do we cry for those green years

Why, when the winnowing sun was keeping
All of our harvest and our toil
Made we no peace among our kind?

Why, when the summering wave was swinging
And all our hills and trees were green
Did we not sow our fields with love?

Hearing the song again left me heartbroken. Because it was so long ago that we first heard Bok. Because of the place his music had in our shared life, including the mixed tape my husband made for when I was in labor with our son. Because it has been so many years since we last saw Bok in performance, when he and Anne Mayo Muir and Ed Trickett came to Lansing, MI, Bok ill and unable to sing. And because the song itself is so very, very poignant.

This month I turn 67. I think about how many years my parents and grandparents were allotted. The number of years still ahead in which I might be productive and leave something behind are limited.

I worry about the world and the future our son will have, wondering if freedom will continue or be lost, how quickly climate change will alter the world causing food shortages and mass migration and warfare over resources.

Yes, why have we made no peace among our kind and sown our fields with love?

I am troubled by so many things today. Climate change and water pollution and invasive species and wildfires. How government does not reflect the will of the people by moving forward with sensible gun control, enforcing voting rights, and protecting personal freedoms. How our country has chosen to embrace punitive measures to solve problems, creating mass incarceration and the immigration crisis.

Why, when the winnowing sun was keeping/All of our harvest and our toil/Made we no peace among our kind? /Why, when the summering wave was swinging/And all our hills and trees were green/Did we not sow our fields with love?

So, as I listened to these words from Gordon Bok during the July Fourth fireworks, I was nearly in tears. What have I done to make peace and sow love? What can I do in my remaining years?

It is not a new concern. As a girl I felt the push to DO something, suddenly shaken to wake up from the dream-state of mere living to claim a greater life.

At times, an airplane--no jet, not then-- droning
overhead would shake my world of make-believe to its roots
with reality's heavy awareness.
My heart would beat a faster tattoo, and restless,
disquieted, but directionless, I rushed outdoors 
to breath freer air, escape the restraint of walls,
to seek the questions I already felt swelling 
in my girl's breast, the mystery I could not name.
I only knew that I must shake off
girlhood's cushioned hermitage, to live and work, 
now, suddenly aware of mortality's unaccustomed weight, 
because I heard, and looked up from play,
to catch sight of a mystery outside my window, 
common, yet profoundly unsettling. 

excerpt from The View From Windows by Nancy A. Bekofske 

I thought that life as a clergy wife would allow me to do good in this world. Perhaps I did something--who knows. And these last years I thought that book reviewing would do some good, promoting books that enhance our understanding of others, the important issues of our time, helping to 'only connect'. And yes, to support writers, many of whom will be writing and influencing after I am gone.

Seal Djiril leaves the land and life as a man to return to the sea.

Now are the days come...When to the seas again we go...Now do we cry for those green years...

Did I waste my green years? What recompense can I make in these my last years? What is enough?

Earworms. Some come with memories. Some come with discomfort.

So now my personal playlist in my brains is looping a whole series of music, ranging over my entire life.

Songs of America by Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw

Oh, I so enjoyed reading this book! From the beginning with the beautiful and inspirational Overture on The History of Music by Jon Meacham, I did not want to stop reading this history of America through music.

Music brings a deep association with the events and places I have experienced. When I hear a song I can place myself in a specific place and point in time. The Green Berets by Barry Sadler came out when I was fourteen. It had pride of country and was an appealing march. I bought a ceramic green beret pin at a drug store counter.

But the patriotic support of the war was short-lived and the backdrop of my teenage years was filled with anti-war music including Turn, Turn Turn, Where Have All the Flowers Gone? and Give Peace a Chance. 

The music of my life tracked the social changes going on. The songs about women waiting for men became feminist anthems. Love of country was replaced by calls for justice and equity. Love songs were still popular, but cooler were the protest songs for social change with messages of universal love, peace, inclusion, anti-authority, and dropping out of the system.

The music of patriotism is inevitably the music of protest, Meacham writes, adding that history is not just read, but is something we also hear. And he notes that history is a continual process. He holds hope that we "can overcome fear, that light can triumph over darkness, that we can open our arms rather than clench our fists." Music reminds the nation of where we have been and points to what we can become.

The authors begin with pre-Revolutionary songs such as John Dickinson's 1768 The Liberty Song which rallied the colonies to unite in a righteous cause and move through history to Bruce Springsteen's protest anthem Born in the U. S. A. Each song placed in its historical and cultural setting.  

Over There was George Cohen's "bugle call" 

evoking the American Revolution's Yanke Doodle in its patriotism.
"Johnny get your gun...show the "Hun" you're a son-of-a-gun"
"And we won't come back till it's over, over there."

The music discussed by Meacham and commented on by McGraw includes the well-known and well-beloved but also lesser-known songs that were influential in their day. They all represent America at a specific historical era: The Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, slavery and abolition, the Civil War, minstrel shows and racism, WWI and WWII, the social movements of Civil Rights and equal rights and voting rights, the reactive rise of the Klan and Jim Crow, the cultural division of the 1970s, and the political divisions of the last fifty years.

WWI saw patriotic music like America, Here's My Boy 

with a mother offering her 'boy' to the cause... 

and anti-war protest music like I Didn't Raise My Boy to be a Soldier.

McGraw's contributions are inserted in text boxes. He addresses the songs from a musician's viewpoint and from a personal, emotional response.

Sinatra was one of McGraw's idols

Songs of America is a book of history, filled with stories that trace the complicated American experiment in democracy.

In 1938 Irving Berlin's God Bless America was debuted on Kate Smith's CBS radio show. Woody Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land was originally titled God Blessed America and questioned the inequality behind the American promise.

History is an argument without end, Meacham shares. Americans have argued and fought, and dissent and protest continue, but this book offers the promise that "America is not finished, the last notes have not yet been played," and calls us to lift every voice and sing in the continuing great national conversation.

I received an ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Songs of America: Patriotism, Protest, and the Music That Made a Nation
by Jon Meacham; Tim McGraw
Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Pub Date 11 Jun 2019
ISBN 9780593132951
PRICE $30.00 (USD)

All sheet music photographed are from my personal collection.

Our Homesick Songs by Emma Hooper

I adored Emma Hooper's first novel Etta and Otto and Russell and James, which I read in 24 hours, and which had me in tears. I finished my review with the words "Read it."

So I was super excited to read Hooper's new novel Our Homesick Songs. I had high expectations and was not disappointed. I was enchanted by the writing.

The story is set in a small Newfoundland fishing village suffering from the impact of over-fishing by commercial ships that are "big as bergs; monster-big" and able to hold "a whole sea" of fish. Their livelihood over, the villagers leave, going West for jobs on mainland Canada.

The Connor family is hanging on. The parents Aiden and Martha share alternating monthly shifts working inland where they are surrounded by concrete, steel, and trucks, the light and noise never-ending. Martha asks a co-worker what it was like "here, before" and he tells her, "There were only trees."

Daughter Cora longs to leave the island for a 'normal' life packed with other children. She turns the empty houses into travel destinations.

Son Finn loves his home and feels at one with the land. He carries his accordion with him, even on the boat, playing traditional Newfoundland jigs and reels and airs to the open seas and clouded skies around him. He endeavors to bring back the fish, wondering if any are left in the oceans anywhere, and hoping the community will return.

The Connor parents work inland with other displaced workers. They are lonely and isolated, forever separated, seeing each other only in passing as they change places at the ferry every month. During their month home, the parents sing less. They return tired and depressed. The stress and distance wear on their marriage.

Like Hooper's first novel, there is a touch of magical realism and the characters go on journeys both physical and internal. The parent's charming backstory is sweet and magical, their courting taking place on boats at sea in the night, and includes a treacherous sea journey.

The history behind the novel caught my interest: the loss of the cod which was the basis of an entire way of life. A quick Internet search and I learned how overfishing decimated the cod, forcing the Canadian government to enact the 1992 moratorium on cod fishing that left 35,000 Newfoundlanders out of work.  The impact on community and family life is portrayed in Our Homesick Songs.

Newfoundland is central to the novel, its rocky shores and waters and snow and ice and bergs vividly described. And so is the Celtic music of Newfoundland, brought by the Irish. Social gatherings conclude with music.

Finn travels across the water to his music lessons. His elderly teacher Mrs. Callaghan captures his imagination with strange stories about snakes becoming fish and shipwrecks harboring the fish. She tells him that the songs were how the sailors and explorers remembered their homes. They are all homesick songs, even the happy ones, she says. When Finn cannot sleep at night, he calls his teacher and she tells him stories.

One song that reoccurs is The Water is Wide, an ancient song from Great Britain, which Aidan sings early in the novel. Others include the love song She's Like the Swallow and fiddle tunes Finn plays such as The Newfoundland Black Bear and The Cotton Grass Air, The Fish of the Sea.

"No, the dead can't sing, Aidan, that's why the living have to."

Aiden has a coffee cup that reads "Squidjiggingground" which is also the name of a song by Arthur Scammell about squid fishermen. The lyrics give a sense of the life that has been lost, the camaraderie and community.

Oh this is the place where the fishermen gather
Oil-skins and boots and the Cape hands batten down;
All sizes of figures with squid lines and jiggers,
They congregate here on the Squid-Jiggin' Ground.

Some are workin' their jiggers, while others are yarnin',
There's some standin' up and there's more lyin' down;
While all kinds of fun, jokes, and drinks are begun,
As they wait for the squid on the Squid-Jiggin' Ground.

The story feels like a tale told by Finn's accordion teacher, a fairy tale with magic feathers and mermaids singing. And like most folk tales, the underlying reality is terrifyingly real.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Our Homesick Songs
by Emma Hooper
Simon & Schuster
Pub Date 14 Aug 2018
ISBN 9781501124488
PRICE $26.00

from the publisher: 

From Emma Hooper, critically acclaimed author of Etta and Otto and Russell and James, a People magazine “Pick of the Week,” comes a lyrical, charming, and mystical story of a family on the edge of extinction, and the different way each of them fights to keep hope, memory, and love alive. 

The Connor family is one of the few that is still left in their idyllic fishing village, Big Running; after the fish mysteriously disappeared, most families had no choice but to relocate and find work elsewhere. Aidan and Martha Connor now spend alternate months of the year working at an energy site up north to support their children, Cora and Finn. But soon the family fears they’ll have to leave Big Running for good. And as the months go on, plagued by romantic temptations new and old, the emotional distance between the once blissful Aidan and Martha only widens. 

Between his accordion lessons and reading up on Big Running’s local flora and fauna, eleven-year-old Finn Connor develops an obsession with solving the mystery of the missing fish. Aided by his reclusive music instructor Mrs. Callaghan, Finn thinks he may have discovered a way to find the fish, and in turn, save the only home he’s ever known. While Finn schemes, his sister Cora spends her days decorating the abandoned houses in Big Running with global flair—the baker’s home becomes Italy; the mailman’s, Britain. But it’s clear she’s desperate for a bigger life beyond the shores of her small town. As the streets of Big Running continue to empty Cora takes matters—and her family’s shared destinies—into her own hands. 

In Our Homesick Songs, Emma Hooper paints a gorgeous portrait of the Connor family, brilliantly weaving together four different stories and two generations of Connors, full of wonder and hope. Told in Hooper’s signature ethereal style, each page of this incandescent novel glows with mythical, musical wonder.

See the author discuss her first book at
 https://youtu.be/5Z3hH4n0tmQ