A Grand Tour: American Bach Soloists

British gentlemen in Rome by Katherine Read, c. 1750. Image source: Yale Center for British Art

The Grand Tour was a rite of passage for young aristocratic British men in the 18th century: a months- or years-long trip to the Continent to increase their knowledge of the classical past; educate them in current European mores, fashions, politics, art, and music; and enable them to sample some of Europe's decadent pleasures before returning home, more worldly-wise, to settle down and produce an heir.

A typical route would begin in London, where before setting out the Grand Tourists (in the 18th century they were mostly men) would be outfitted for the rigors of 18th-century travel. Embarking from Dover they would cross the Channel (a sometimes rough voyage), and then travel by stagecoach to Paris. After acquiring a personal carriage in Paris, the travelers would often continue on southeast to Geneva, and then make the hazardous crossing of the Alps to their ultimate destination: Italy. As the Earl of Darmouth wrote to his son Lord Lewisham on a Grand Tour: "Having passed the Alps like Hannibal. . .you have nothing to do, but, like him, to enjoy the Luxurious sweets of Italy." [1]

Perhaps stopping first in Turin or Milan, they would travel east through Verona (location of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet) to the fabled city of Venice. After a sojourn in Venice that might include the festive Carnival season (which ran from the day after Christmas until the dawn of Ash Wednesday), they would head south through Bologna and Florence to Rome. After some time in Rome examining ancient ruins and artifacts, they would travel further south to Naples to view the ruins of Herculaneum and, after its mid-century discovery, Pompeii, and climb Mount Vesuvius. Returning, they might head north into Austria (Vienna), Bohemia (Prague), and Germany before heading west to the Low Countries (Amsterdam). Then the Grand Tourist would sail back to Britain, laden with art, books, manuscripts, antiquities, and other luxuries or curiosities acquired on the journey.

Piazza San Marco, Venice, by Giovanni Antonio Canal (Canaletto), c. 1730–1734. Image source: Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum

For the inaugural concert of American Bach's 37th season, "A Grand Tour" (seen October 26 at St. Mark's Lutheran Church, San Francisco), artistic director Jeffrey Thomas used the Grand Tour as the selection principal for four Baroque masterworks: Handel's Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne, "Eternal Source of Light Divine" (1713), representing London; Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 1 in C major (c. 1725), representing Leipzig; Vivaldi's Gloria in D major (c. 1715), representing Venice; and Handel's Dixit Dominus (1707), representing Rome.

While there is no question about the quality of these four works, they don't all fit comfortably into a Grand Tour framework. And it's curious that there was no work included by a French composer to represent Paris. But any doubts about how closely the works reflected the concert's title were swept away by the superb performances of the vocalists and the American Bach Soloists orchestra and Cantorei chorus. To take the works in the order of performance (and geographically from north to south):

Handel's Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne: The concert's gorgeous opening work was probably never performed publicly in Handel's lifetime, and so would not have been heard by Grand Tourists on the eve of their journey. Queen Anne was severely ill on her birthday on 6 February 1713 and 1714, and so it's unlikely that a concert including this work was ever held. However, the first stanza of this Ode has become one of Handel's most-performed works.

Queen Anne by Michael Dahl, c. 1702. Image source: National Portrait Gallery NPG 6187

I only had a single hesitation about the ABS performance. The music for the opening stanza was originally intended to be performed by Queen Anne's favorite singer from her Chapel Royal, the high tenor Richard Elford. Thomas followed a common practice in having the opening stanza sung by a countertenor, the pleasant-timbred Kyle Sanchez Tingzon. Although he acquitted himself honorably, unlike Queen Anne I prefer to hear a female soprano or alto sing this exquisite, ethereal music.

As in this performance by Kathrin Hottiger, soprano; Dominic Wunderli, baroque trumpet; Jonathan Pesek, violoncello; and Frédéric Champion, organ:

https://youtu.be/RNj0lI7j6pE

Eternal source of light divine With double warmth thy beams display, And with distinguished glory shine, To add a lustre to this day.

After Tingzon, the other excellent soloists for the ABS concert were the bright-toned soprano Julie Bosworth; Morgan Balfour, whose warm soprano revealed both a lovely high extension and a mezzo-like lower register; the rich-voiced contralto Agnes Vojtkó; and the solid baritone Jesse Blumberg. Bosworth, Votjkó and Blumberg were soloists in last season's performance of Bach's St. John Passion by ABS, one of my favorite live performances of 2024; Blumberg has regularly performed and recorded with early music groups in the Bay Area and Boston. Balfour, an alumna of San Francisco Conservatory of Music, also appeared in ABS's 2023 concert performance of Rameau's Pygmalion, a favorite from our year of French Baroque opera.

The libretto by Ambrose Philips in praise of Queen Anne's virtues is exceedingly fulsome, but Handel's music is ravishing, and was ravishingly performed. This is the first time I'd heard the full Ode, with different soloists or combinations of soloists singing each stanza, all of which were concluded by the choral refrain "The day that gave great Anna birth/Who fix'd a lasting peace on earth." The peace, alas, was fleeting—Britain would go to war again in Europe just four years after the Treaty of Utrecht ended the War of the Spanish Succession—but Handel's music has proved to be far more lasting.

Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 1 in C major: Joseph Sargent writes in his informative program notes that "we imagine that Leipzig—home of the great Johann Sebastian Bach—and Venice—a focal point of Italian music—were high on the list of hotspots" for the Grand Tour. He is certainly right about the latter, with its opera, gambling, art, churches, canals, Carnival, and courtesans—but probably not the former.

Thomaskirche, Leipzig, 18th century. Image source: JS Bach Biografie Online

J.S. Bach was not well-known outside of Germany; significantly more famous were George Philip Telemann and Christoph Graupner, both of whom were offered the position of Thomaskantor in Leipzig before Bach, and both of whom turned it down. On hiring Bach the Leipzig town council grumbled, "Since the best could not be obtained, a mediocre candidate would have to be accepted." [2]

Fewer than two dozen of Bach's hundreds of compositions were published during his lifetime, primarily keyboard works, and he was mainly known as an organ virtuoso. In addition, the severe Lutheran town of Leipzig did not possess many attractions for a Grand Tourist. Dresden, capital of Saxony and a center of porcelain manufacture; Berlin, capital of Prussia; and Hamburg, with its Gänsemarkt (Goose-market) opera house, were more likely Grand Tour destinations. [3]

Despite the improbability of a Grand Tourist actually hearing a Bach orchestral suite, the concert performance highlighted the virtuosity of the ABS instrumentalists, particularly oboists Stephen Bard and Curtis Foster and bassoonist Georgeanne Banker. Their fingers were kept flying through Bach's series of dance movements, fluently conducted by Thomas.

The overture to Orchestral Suite No. 1, performed by the English Concert conducted by Trevor Pinnock:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BURErcLxHi4

Vivaldi's Gloria in D major: In the early decades of the 1700s Vivaldi was employed by Venice's renowned Ospedale della Pietà, an orphanage just to the east of the Piazza San Marco where young women were trained as musicians and singers. Travelers from Britain and across Europe attended performances by the all-female orchestra and choir of the Pietà, where the women performed behind latticed screens erected to shield them from the lustful gaze of men. So there's no question that a Grand Tourist might have heard this work, or one of the many others Vivaldi wrote to be performed by these highly skilled musicians and singers. [4]

The church of Santa Maria della Pietà (tallest building on the left) and the Ospedale della Pietà (immediately to the right of the church and to the left of the bridge), Venice, c. 1760. Image source: Venecísima

The ABS Cantorei is a mixed-gender choir, and they truly sounded glorious in this work, justly one of Vivaldi's most well-known. "Et in terra pax homínibus bonæ voluntatis" (And on earth, peace to men of good will), performed by the English Concert conducted by Trevor Pinnock; listen for the amazingly modern-sounding dissonance on the word "voluntatis" between about 3:20 and 3:48:

https://youtu.be/IS0Qz3SlN98

Handel's Dixit Dominus: It may seem odd that a work by Handel (rather than, say, a work by Corelli or Scarlatti) was chosen in this program to represent Rome; after all, he was born in Germany and spent most of his working life in Britain. But the 21-year-old Handel traveled to Italy in 1706 and composed there in Florence, Venice, Naples and Rome until 1710. In his program notes Thomas calls Handel's Italian years "the most important journey of his life." It was there that he absorbed Italian musical style and gained experience composing vocal works on both intimate and large scales, including Italian opera.

The psalm setting Dixit Dominus may have been commissioned by the wealthy Cardinal Carlo Colonna for the second Vespers service of the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel celebrated on 16 July 1707 in the Church of Santa Maria di Monte Santo in Rome.

Piazza del Popolo, Rome, by Gaspar (or Caspar) van Wittel, 1718. The church of Santa Maria di Monte Santo is the domed building to the left; the one to the right is its sister church, Santa Maria dei Miracoli. Image source: ArtsLife

The words of Dixit Dominus are taken from the Latin Vulgate Bible, and depict a wrathful Old Testament God. One verse reads, "Judicabit in nationibus implebit ruinas: conquissabit capita in terra multorum" (in the words of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, "He shall judge among the heathen; he shall fill the places with the dead bodies: and smite in sunder the heads over divers countries"). On the word "conquissabit" the choir percussively illustrates the blows smiting heads asunder (at around 5:35 in the following clip, which begins at 5:02):

https://youtu.be/H2i8dk8kMXY?t=302

The performers are Les Musiciens & Choeur du Louvre conducted by Marc Minkowski.

Dixit Dominus is a startlingly dramatic composition with a lot of antiphonal interplay. It is a supreme test of a chorus, and Cantorei (as in the other choral works, supplemented by the soloists) met every challenge of this demanding work. It was both a thrilling conclusion to the concert, and a sobering one: in recent years we have seen far too many places filled with dead bodies.

After the violence of "Judicabit," the final section before the "Gloria Patri" and Amen is a depiction of serenity and peace: "De torrente in via bibet" (He shall drink of of the brook in the way: therefore shall he lift up his head), beautifully sung in concert by Julie Bosworth and Morgan Balfour, here sung by Annick Massis and Magdalena Kožená:

https://youtu.be/XJ42ApWadwA

"A Grand Tour" will undoubtedly be among my favorite live performances of 2025. Information about the remaining concerts in American Bach's 37th season can be found on the American Bach website.

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1. Quoted in Mark Bridge, "Eighteenth century Grand Tours fueled by art—and adrenaline," The Times, 22 December 2020, a review of Sarah Goldsmith, Masculinity and Danger on the Eighteenth-Century Grand Tour, University of London Press, 2020. Instead of hazarding the dangerous Alps, some Grand Tourists would instead hazard the dangerous seas by boarding a ship and sailing through the Straits of Gibraltar to Genoa, south of Milan, or Livorno (Leghorn), west of Florence, on Italy's northwest coast.
2. Jörg Jacobi, "Rediscovery of a youthful masterpiece," booklet essay, Antiochus and Stratonica, Boston Early Music Festival recording, CPO 555369-2, 2020.
3. Although the extant manuscript of the Orchestral Suite No. 1 in a copyist's hand dates from Bach's early Leipzig years, there has been speculation that it and at least one of the other Orchestral Suites was actually written while he was Kapellmeister at the court of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen from 1717–1723. Köthen lies 60 km northwest of Leipzig.
4. You can watch a full performance of Gloria by all-female forces in the highly recommended BBC Four film Antonio Vivaldi: Gloria.

Kind of Blue: The Making of a Jazz Masterpiece

Cover of Kind of Blue (Columbia CS 8163). Photo credit: Jay Maisel. Image source: HMV.com

The Miles Davis sextet's Kind of Blue regularly tops listener's and critic's polls of the greatest jazz albums of all time. It was certainly an ear-opening experience for me when I encountered it for the first time in the record collection of my then-girlfriend and current life partner four decades ago. It became a gateway to further exploration of jazz, especially from the mid-1940s through the mid-1960s. The players on the album were a remarkable and never-to-be-repeated group. Each was a bandleader in his own right: apart from Davis himself on trumpet, they included John Coltrane on tenor sax, Julian "Cannonball" Adderley on alto sax, Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Jimmy Cobb on drums. [1]

Ashley Kahn's Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece (second edition with a new afterword by the author, Da Capo, 2007; originally published in 2000) is a deep dive into the recording sessions, held on March 2 and April 22, 1959. The book is essentially 200 pages of detailed liner notes; if you love this album it's a fascinating read, even if Kahn occasionally lapses into empty critics' shorthand (calling Kind of Blue "the height of hip" (p. 16) in his introduction, for example).

Cover of Ashley Kahn's Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece (Da Capo, 2007). Cover photo: Chuck Stewart. Image source: Bookshop.org

The year 1959 was a remarkable moment in the evolution of jazz. Among the albums released that year were the Dave Brubeck Quartet's Time Out, Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come, João Gilberto's Chega de Saudade, Abbey Lincoln's Abbey Is Blue, Charles Mingus's Mingus Ah Um, Thelonious Monk's 5 by Monk by 5, Oliver Nelson's debut Meet Oliver Nelson, and Nina Simone's debut Little Girl Blue. It was also the year John Coltrane recorded Giant Steps, which was released in early 1960; six of its seven tracks were recorded on May 4 & 5, 1959, just two weeks after the second and final Kind of Blue session.

Kind of Blue crystallizes both the artistic ferment of the era and the mastery of the players in the Davis sextet. Its special atmosphere is apparent from the first moments of the opening track, "So What":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylXk1LBvIqU

Bill Evans played piano on "So What," "Blue in Green," "All Blues," and "Flamenco Sketches." Wynton Kelly replaced Evans on piano for the second track on Side 1, "Freddie Freeloader." The track titles were all added by Davis after the sessions; when they were recorded they were simply assigned project and song numbers by the engineers.

Kind of Blue achieved greatness despite a host of errors, small and large, that marred the original issue of the album. Most consequentially, the first side was mastered at the wrong speed, and so the music sounded a little faster than it was played in the studio and about a quarter-step sharp (something a generation of musicians discovered when they tried to play along). My partner noticed this immediately when I put on the 1997 CD reissue—amazingly, the first issue of this album on which the playback speed was corrected. "It's slower than on the album," she said, perceptively. The running time of the corrected version of "So What" is 9:22, versus the original album's 8:57. [2]

There's also the moment in "Freddie Freeloader" (the second track on Side 1, but the first song to be recorded), where, on Coltrane's emphatic entrance for his solo, you can hear engineer Fred Plaut frantically turning down the volume level on his mic. As Kahn writes, "As precise a balance as Plaut may have achieved by arranging the band in the studio, he was unprepared for the startling power of Coltrane's tenor" (p. 106).

From left: John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Miles Davis, and Bill Evans during the Kind of Blue recording sessions. Photo credit: Don Hunstein. Image source: Simon Schreyer

In some versions of the album, the order of the tracks on Side 2 was switched on the back cover, with "Flamenco Sketches" erroneously listed as coming first (in some pressings this is true of the listing on the Side 2 record label as well). Additionally, Adderley's name was misspelled on the cover (the second "e" was dropped); the drummer, who was known professionally as Jimmy Cobb, was credited as James Cobb; Wynton Kelly, who went by his full name professionally, was listed as Wyn Kelly; and the producer Irving Townsend was uncredited. As with the mastering speed of Side 1, the crediting errors were corrected for the first time on the 1997 CD reissue, 38 years after the album was first released.

Back cover of a 1959 issue of Kind of Blue, with the reversed Side 2 track listing and misspelled/misnamed credits. Image source: Discogs.com [3]

There are three key legends about Kind of Blue that, although false, continue to cling to it. The truth about how the album was created is miraculous enough to need no embellishment. It has been claimed that the music on Kind of Blue is:

• Unrehearsed: Bill Evans' original liner notes say that "Miles conceived these settings only hours before the recording dates," and the implication is that none of the musicians had seen any of the music before. However, Kahn reports that drummer Jimmy Cobb remembers of "So What" that "we had played it once or twice on gigs" before the recording sessions, and Miles stated in an interview at the time with jazz critic Ralph Gleason that "All Blues," the opening track on Side 2, had been played live and developed over several months (p. 96). Evans had left the band in November 1958 and had only rejoined them for the recording sessions several months later; he may not have known about music the band had been playing since his departure.
  
  And in 1991 Miles said of "All Blues" that "it's just 'Milestones' in 3/4" (p. 143); it's a similar chord progression, although the chords in "Milestones" are played staccato, at twice the speed, and with a different time signature (4/4). The title track of Davis' 1958 album Milestones was his first modal composition, a way of basing chord changes on specific scales, or modes, rather than melodies; it's a framework that structures all the tracks on Kind of Blue. Bassist Paul Chambers and saxophonists Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane had played on Milestones.
  
  And finally, motifs on two of the tracks seem similar to music that Evans had recorded several months earlier, in one case with Chambers (see below). So both the general musical approach and perhaps elements of specific pieces were familiar to at least some of the musicians when they walked into the studio.
• First takes: A statement frequently made about the album is that it consists entirely of first takes. However, this isn't quite true even if the statement is modified as "first complete takes": the version of the closing track "Flamenco Sketches" that was selected for the album is the second complete take, and the sixth take overall. (The first take was issued for the first time as a bonus track on the 1997 CD reissue.) "So What" had multiple false starts before the first complete run-through on the fourth take; "Freddie Freeloader"'s first complete take was also Take Four; "Blue in Green"'s first complete take was Take Five; and "All Blues" is the second take after a false start. It's still remarkable that the five tracks on the album were selected from only six complete takes, but it was also how Davis often preferred to record. Keyboardist Herbie Hancock, who was in his band from 1963 to 1968 and continued to record with him for several years afterward, said "Everything was a first take unless we screwed up the melody, so what you hear on the record is the first full take. The five-and-a-half years I was with him that's the way Miles worked" (p. 105).
• Solely composed by Davis: The album cover states "All compositions by Miles Davis." However, Evans later said that he wrote the opening chords of "Blue in Green" (the closing track of Side 1) in late 1958 based on a suggestion from Davis.
  
  
  
  
  https://youtu.be/TLDflhhdPCg
  
  And indeed the chords can be heard in modified form in Evans' accompaniment to Chet Baker's instrumental version of "Alone Together" (Dietz/Schwartz), recorded in December 1958 and released on the album Chet in early 1959. [4]
  
  An even closer match with an Evans composition, to my ears, are the opening chords for "Flamenco Sketches," which sound very much as though they are derived from Evans' "Peace Piece" from the album Everybody Digs Bill Evans, also recorded in December 1958. Although Kahn reports that Evans expressed some bitterness about the lack of composing co-credit, he never challenged Davis's copyright to "Blue in Green" or "Flamenco Sketches." Davis repeatedly credited Evans for his contributions to the sound of the album, and in 1986 said in an interview with his biographer Quincy Troupe, "'Blue in Green'—we wrote that together" (quoted in Kahn, p. 98). Nonetheless, the composing credits remain Davis's alone.

Of course, jazz is by its very nature improvisational and collaborative, and Kind of Blue is the sum of all of the contributions of the brilliant musicians who played on it. This is not to take anything from Davis' role as leader: he assembled the band, chose the numbers, sketched the chord progressions, and gave each musician instructions about how and when they should play. But within his conception he left them free to choose what they played; Kahn reports Cannonball Adderley as saying "He never told anyone what to play but would say 'Man, you don't need to do that.' Miles really told everyone what NOT to do" (p. 106). The album these men produced together remains one of the greatest achievements in jazz.

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1. Kelly, Chambers and Cobb would continue to play live and in the studio as a part of Davis's group until 1963. Coltrane would leave in early 1960 after the release of Giant Steps, and Adderley departed in the fall of 1959 to form his own quintet. The group as it appears on Kind of Blue never recorded together again.
2. You can hear the difference by listening to the original album version of "So What" and comparing it to the version above.
3. The variant versions of the early pressings and their matrix numbers are listed on Discogs.com.
4. Apart from Evans and Baker, the musicians on "Alone Together" are Herbie Mann (alto flute), Pepper Adams (baritone saxophone), Paul Chambers (bass), and Connie Kay (drums).

Anne Sofie von Otter: Swan Song

Anne Sofie von Otter, mezzo-soprano. Photo credit: Ewa Marie Rundquist. Image source: Cal Performances

The Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter turned 70 this year. She has had a long and illustrious career in concert, in opera, and on recordings. If her concert in Berkeley's Hertz Hall two Sundays ago was her last public appearance in the Bay Area, it was a fitting farewell: a performance of Franz Schubert's Schwanengesang (Swan Song, 1829).

Schwanengesang is a collection of fourteen of the last lieder Schubert wrote before his death at age 31 in November 1828. The songs are settings of texts by two poets, Ludwig Rellstab and Heinrich Heine, plus a final song that sets a poem by Johann Gabriel Seidl. The songs were not intended as a cycle by the composer, but probably instead conceived as two separate collections, each devoted to a single poet. As a result, the collection lacks coherence of subject and tone. Their grouping as a set was the decision of Schubert's publisher Tobias Haslinger, who also provided the title. (Schubert wrote two earlier songs with the title "Schwanengesang"; neither is included in Schwanengesang.) Von Otter performed the songs in their published order without an intermission, accompanied on a period-appropriate fortepiano by Kristian Bezuidenhout. 

With their short metrical lines and regular rhyme schemes, Rellstab's poems work better as song lyrics than they read on the page. Perhaps the best-known of the seven Rellstab songs in Schwanengesang is "Ständchen" (Serenade), here performed by contralto Nathalie Stutzmann accompanied by Inger Södergren:

https://youtu.be/3smT4FX-9fs

Leise flehen meine Lieder Durch die Nacht zu Dir; In den stillen Hain hernieder, Liebchen, komm' zu mir! Flüsternd schlanke Wipfel rauschen In des Mondes Licht; Des Verräthers feindlich Lauschen Fürchte, Holde, nicht. Hörst die Nachtigallen schlagen? Ach! sie flehen Dich, Mit der Töne süßen Klagen Flehen sie für mich. Sie verstehn des Busens Sehnen, Kennen Liebesschmerz, Rühren mit den Silbertönen Jedes weiche Herz. Laß auch Dir die Brust bewegen, Liebchen, höre mich! Bebend harr' ich Dir entgegen; Komm', beglücke mich!

My melodies plead softly through the night to you; down within the silent grove, beloved, come to me! Whispering slender treetops rustle in the moon's pale light; That a betrayer will eavesdrop There's no need to fear. Do you not hear the nightingales calling? Ah, you they implore; with their voices sweetly singing they send my entreaties to you. They understand the heart’s keen yearning, they know the pain of love; with their notes so silvery they touch every tender heart. Let your heart, too, be moved, beloved, hearken to me! Trembling, I await your coming! Come, bring me happiness!

To provide von Otter with some respite, Bezuidenhout performed two solos. The first, Schubert's Impromptu in C minor, D 899 No. 1 (1827), came after the first group of six of the seven Rellstab songs, ending with "In der Ferne" (Far Away).

Kristian Bezuidenhout. Image credit: Marco Borggreve. Image source: Festival Ghent

After the second group of four songs, which began with Rellstab's "Abschied: Ade, du muntre, du fröhliche Stadt, Ade!" (Farewell, you lively, you cheerful town!) and ended with Heine's "Das Fischermädchen" (The Fisher-Maiden), Bezuidenhout performed the Andante from Schubert's Sonata No. 13 in A major (1819). The Andante flowed almost imperceptibly into the first song of the final group of four, "Die Stadt" (The City), without a pause for applause.

Schubert's Heine songs have a darker sound than his Rellstab settings, and are filled with imagery of death and loss. From the final group of Heine songs, "Am Meer" (By the Sea), again performed by Stutzmann and Södergren:

https://youtu.be/Jp4k6hW7W-s

Das Meer erglänzte weit hinaus Im letzten Abendscheine; Wir sassen am einsamen Fischerhaus, Wir sassen stumm und alleine. Der Nebel stieg, das Wasser schwoll, Die Möwe flog hin und wieder; Aus deinen Augen liebevoll Fielen die Tränen nieder. Ich sah sie fallen auf deine Hand, Und bin aufs Knie gesunken; Ich hab’ von deiner weissen Hand Die Tränen fortgetrunken. Seit jener Stunde verzehrt sich mein Leib, Die Seele stirbt vor Sehnen; – Mich hat das unglücksel’ge Weib Vergiftet mit ihren Tränen.

The sea glittered wide before us in the last rays of the sun; we sat by the fisherman’s lonely house, we sat silent and alone. The mist thickened, the waters surged, a seagull soared back and forth. From your eyes, so filled with love, the tears flowed down. I watched them fall on your hand. I sank upon my knee; I, from your hand so white, Drank away the tears. Since that hour my body is yearning, My soul dies of longing; I have been poisoned forever by her disconsolate tears.

With the passage of time von Otter's voice has lost a touch of the purity of tone, perfection of intonation, and sustained breath support so evident in her earlier recordings. However, her communicative power as an artist remains undiminished. As the last chords of the last song in Schwanengesang—the incongruously sprightly "Die Taubenpost" (The Pigeon Post)—faded away, the audience responded with an extended standing ovation.

The artists generously offered an encore: Schubert's "Abschied von der Erde" (Farewell to the world), a poem spoken by the character Mechthild in her death scene from Adolf von Pratobevera's play Der Falke (The Falcon), for which Schubert wrote a keyboard accompaniment. The reading was a powerful reminder of the acting skill that von Otter brought to all of her operatic roles. Many thanks to Cal Performances for bringing her to Berkeley; if Schwanengesang was the last time we'll have the opportunity to see her in concert, she left us wanting more.

Anne Sofie von Otter: Three favorite performances

We first became aware of von Otter as a soloist on the recording of Handel's Messiah performed by the English Concert conducted by Trevor Pinnock. Her performance of "He was despisèd" remains our favorite, which is saying a great deal, since we also own recordings of this aria by Lorraine Hunt and Andreas Scholl.

After hearing her in Handel we sought out her other recordings. The very next one we found became a favorite that we still return to frequently, 30 years on: Opera Arias: Mozart, Haydn, Gluck (Arkiv Produktion, recorded 1995) in which she was again accompanied by The English Concert and Pinnock (themselves a recommendation; Pinnock always seems to choose the right tempo, and The English Concert was and remains among the premier period instrument orchestras).

Image source: Presto Music

The selections on the album are not the usual collection of standards. Of course she includes Cherubino's "Voi che sapete" (You who know what love is) from Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, as an example of her excellence in trouser roles. She also performs arias of Donna Elvira and Zerlina from Don Giovanni. But there's nothing from Dorabella's role in the third Mozart-Da Ponte opera, Cosi fan tutte; instead, Otter and Pinnock include arias from the less-well-known Mozart operas Lucio Silla, La finta Giardiniera, and La clemenza di Tito, as well as from three Gluck and three Haydn operas. By itself this disc is an education in late 18th-century operatic styles, and was our introduction to the operas of Haydn as well as at least two of the three Gluck operas.

"O del mio dolce ardor bramato oggetto" (O beloved object of my sweet passion) from Gluck's rarely-performed opera Paride e Elena (Paris and Helen, 1770):

https://youtu.be/v3E4N2ZLAqk

The film A Late Quartet (2012, directed and co-written by Yaron Zilberman) brought von Otter to the attention of a broader audience. In the film she plays the deceased wife of the fictional Fugue Quartet's cellist Peter (Christopher Walken). To commune with her memory, he puts on her recording of "Mariettas Lied" from Erich Korngold's opera Die Tote Stadt (The Dead City, 1920). Here is a different recording of the aria, performed with a piano quintet (arrangement by pianist Bengt Forsberg) rather than full orchestra:

https://youtu.be/WN_vsAUEE8s

Glück, das mir verblieb, rück zu mir, mein treues Lieb. Abend sinkt im Haag bist mir Licht und Tag. Bange pochet Herz an Herz Hoffnung schwingt sich himmelwärts. Naht auch Sorge trüb, rück zu mir, mein treues Lieb. Neig dein blaß Gesicht Sterben trennt uns nicht. Mußt du einmal von mir gehn, glaub, es gibt ein Auferstehn.

Joy, stay with me. Come to me, my true love. Night falls now; You are my light and day. Our hearts beat as one; our hopes rise heavenward. Though sorrow darkens all, come to me, my true love. Bring your pale face close to mine. Death cannot separate us. If you must leave me one day, know that there is a life after this.

After the Berkeley concert, my partner and I wanted to hear more of von Otter. Usually we don't listen to music after a concert, wanting to give ourselves some time to absorb the experience. But in honor of what may have been our last opportunity to see her perform live, that night we watched scenes from the excellent 1994 Vienna production of Richard Strauss's opera Der Rosenkavalier (1911) directed by Otto Schenk and accompanied by the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Carlos Kleiber. In that production von Otter is a superb Octavian, fully worthy of being mentioned in the company of other great Octavians such as Brigitte Fassbaender and Elina Garanča.

Here is the exquisite final love duet from Der Rosekavalier. Von Otter's Sophie is Barbara Bonney, Sophie's father Faninal is Gottfried Hornik, and the Marschallin is Felicity Lott:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EolhXNJBbU

Von Otter's recordings and our memories of her concert performances will be among our most treasured. Below I offer a list of posts on E&I that discuss her or that include linked or embedded performances:

• The songs of Erich Korngold and Reynaldo Hahn: Erich Korngold, "Mariettas Lied" (1 January 2009)
• Opera Guide 5: L'incoronazione di Poppea" Claudio Monteverdi, "Pur ti miro" (14 August 2009)
• Ten recordings you many not know—but should: Christoph Gluck, "O del mio dolce ardor" (13 April 2015) 
• Why we live in cities: Five exceptional musical performances: Concert by von Otter and Andreas Scholl accompanied by Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra conducted by Nicholas McGegan (25 May 2016)
• Five songs: "Traumgekrönt" (Dream-crowned) from Alban Berg's Sieben frühe Lieder (Seven Early Songs, 1905-1908) with both orchestral and piano accompaniment, and "Liebesbriefchen" (Love-note) from Erich Korngold's Sechs einfache Lieder (Six simple songs, 1911-1913) (17 August 2017)
• The first Black prima donna: Vittoria Tesi: Final quartet from Gluck's Le cinesi  (9 April 2022)
• Every Valley: Handel's Messiah: Handel, "He was despisèd" (13 April 2025)
• A season of Handel operas, part 4: Ariodante: Handel, "Scherza infida" (7 June 2025)

Mozart and the London Bach: Allegro

Cover of Allegro by Ariel Dorfman, Other Press, 2025. Image source: Bookshop.org

Historical novelists set themselves a doubly difficult task: they must create not only an engaging fictional world, but one that is plausibly of a specific past time and place. This sets up two pitfalls which many historical novels fail to avoid: the first is characters whose function is all too clearly to explain things to the readers that the author assumes they do not know, and the second is jarring anachronism.

Indeed, over-explanatory characters are doubly problematic: they not only stretch our credulity, they are also almost always anachronistic. People take for granted the world in which they are living; they don't bother to explain it in detail to one another, because there's no need. When arranging a meeting with someone we might say "Text me when you arrive"; we wouldn't say "Alert me to your arrival by transmitting a short message from your personal handheld wireless communication device to my own."

Which brings us to some early passages from Ariel Dorfman's Allegro, a novel narrated from the point of view of none other than Wolfgang Mozart.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, attributed to Pietro Antonio Lorenzoni, ca. 1763. Image credit: Mozarteum, Salzburg. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Here are the remembered thoughts of the nine-year-old Mozart one February morning during his family's stay in London in 1765:

Today I would hear Maestro Bach present my symphony, the inaugural offering of so many—I could already envisage a long stretch of similar works ahead of me, I was already finishing the second and the third, I would start next week on the fourth symphony—today was the day, tonight the night. Oh, molto allegro my outlook, like the first movement of my first symphony, very joyful and buoyant. . . (p. 12)

But then he learns that his father Leopold is ill and so none of the Mozarts will be able to attend the concert. A letter dictated by his father is dispatched to

my protector, Baron Johann Christian Bach. . .Please ask Concert Master Bach to forgive our absence this evening at Carlisle House and at dinner later at Dean House, King's Square Court, where he and Herr Carl Friedrich Abel reside. . .The Allegro Molto's buoyancy had lapsed into the mournful strains of my Andante, a somber second movement that denied the playfulness of the first one. . . (pp. 13–14)

Would Mozart explain to himself the meaning of molto allegro and andante? Would Leopold inform J.C. Bach of his own address? And finally, the tempo indication of andante is "moderate" or "at a walking pace"; it doesn't necessarily imply "mournful" or "somber." I would call the second movement of Mozart's Symphony No. 1 "stately," "measured," or "reflective" rather than "mournful," but of course, musical affect is in the ear of the auditor:

https://youtu.be/gPDK9IE921Y

The performers are The English Concert conducted by Trevor Pinnock.

Wolfgang's fears of missing the première of his symphony turn out to be groundless: Johann Christian Bach comes in his carriage to take Mozart to the concert. Afterwards, Wolfgang is approached by a stranger:

. . .in a voice so squat that only he and I could harken to it, he scooted a question at me: "Can you keep a secret, Master Mozart?. . .You must swear that you will tell no one of this conversation," the man continued. "Save for one man, save for the London Bach, Johann Christian Bach, son of the incomparable Johann Sebastian, deceased these fifteen years," and his eyes scurried in the direction of the Kapellmeister, still standing close to the podium receiving congratulations for his own newest Sinfonia Concertante, written exclusively for this subscription series. (p. 9)

As you may have noticed, this passage is discordant in several ways:

• it's over-explanatory: Wolfgang knows perfectly well who "the London Bach" is and who his father was, and so doesn't need to be told by the stranger. And the information that J.C. Bach wrote music for the subscription concert series that he and Abel organized is extraneous.
• it's anachronistic: Johann Sebastian Bach would not be generally thought of as "incomparable" until the 19th century revival of his music. At this time he would more likely have been considered a somewhat old-fashioned, "learned" composer. Wolfgang's six sonatas for clavier and violin or flute had been dedicated the previous fall to Queen Charlotte with the words (probably written by Leopold), "With your help, I shall become as famous as any of my great countrymen; I shall become immortal like Handel and Hasse, and my name will be as famous as that of Bach." As Heinz Gärtner writes in his biography of Johann Christian, "less than a decade after Johann Sebastian Bach's death, when people talked about 'the famous Bach,' they did not mean the cantor of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig; he had been virtually forgotten by then." There was only one famous Bach in London in the 1760s, and it was Johann Christian, not his father. [1]
• it includes some odd word choices. "A voice so squat": one meaning of "squat," according to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, is "hidden from sight; quiet, still." It's a stretch to use a term referring to someone trying to avoid being seen to describe a soft voice, and especially so since the meaning "quiet, still" dates from a dialect first recorded in the mid-19th century, a hundred years or so after this scene is supposed to take place. "Scooted a question" is also strange: all the meanings of "scoot" in the Shorter Oxford refer to physical movement, not to rapid or sudden speech. And "his eyes scurried in the direction of the Kapellmeister" again applies a metaphor of displacement in space to something that happens while both Wolfgang and his interlocuter are rooted to the spot, not to mention the disturbing mental images that are conjured if we take the metaphor literally.

A few pages later we witness Wolfgang waking up: "With one bound I was out of bed, jerked upright and in motion before my eyes draped themselves open. . ." (p. 12). To drape something, of course, is to cover it, not reveal it. Dorfman published the novel in Spanish a decade ago, and since no translator is credited, presumably he is the one who rendered it into occasionally awkward English.

Johann Christian Bach by Thomas Gainsborough, ca. 1776. Image source: National Portrait Gallery, London. Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.

Oh, and one more thing. At the very beginning of the novel Dorfman offers an Author's Note: "In Allegro all musical offerings, dates, characters, and public events, with some minor exceptions, are factually true. Their existence may be consulted in the historical record." Well, I consulted the historical record about the very first scene of the first chapter, the première of Wolfgang's Symphony No. 1 at a Bach-Abel concert on 2 February 1765. I found that "there is no evidence that Wolfgang Amadeus appeared at the Bach-Abel concerts." [2]

The first performance of his first symphony likely took place at a concert organized by Leopold on 21 February 1765 at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket. A notice in the Public Advertiser announcing a "Concert for the Benefit of Miss and Master Mozart" stated that "all the Overtures will be from the Composition of these astonishing Composers, only eight years old." [3] (Wolfgang's sister Nannerl was 13, and he was 9.) Stanley Sadie notes that "the term [overtures] is interchangeable at this date, in England, with 'symphonies.'" [4] It seems unlikely that Wolfgang's first symphony would have been given to J.C. Bach to perform three weeks earlier. And J.C. Bach would not have been present at the Mozart's 21 February concert, as he and Abel were giving another concert in their series on the same evening.

Nannerl, by the way, is virtually absent from the novel, although she performed along with Wolfgang, and was the copyist for his compositions. She even may have played a role in the structure of the first symphony. She later remembered,

In London, when our father lay ill and close to death [in the summer of 1764], we were not allowed to touch the clavier. So, to occupy himself, Mozart composed his first symphony with all the instruments, above all with trumpets and drums. I had to sit by him and copy it out. As he composed, and I copied, he said to me: 'Remind me to give the horns something worthwhile to do'. . . [5]

Maria Anna (Nannerl) Mozart, attributed to Pietro Antonio Lorenzoni, ca. 1763. Image credit: Mozarteum, Salzburg. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

In his description of Symphony No. 1 (we don't actually know in which order Mozart composed his early symphonies), Sadie observes that "there are no trumpets and drums as specified by Nannerl—unless, as is not uncommon, the parts for those instruments were separately written out [and have been lost]. . .Conceivably, the four-note horn phrase beginning on bar 14 [of the second movement] could be a consequence of the reminder from Nannerl; this pattern (in C major, C–D–F–E) is heavy with significance for the later Mozart, most famously in his last symphony but elsewhere as well." [6] (The horn phrase begins around 0:24 in the YouTube recording by The English Concert linked above, and recurs at least twice more in the first 2:45.)

Allegro is framed as a mystery. A man's reputation is at stake, and Wolfgang is asked to effect a reconciliation, or at least a meeting, between J.C. Bach and the son of the oculist John Taylor. Taylor, whom Samuel Johnson is reported to have called "an instance [of] how far impudence could carry ignorance," operated on the eyes of both J.S. Bach and Handel. [7] In both cases, Taylor's treatment resulted in his patients' partial blindness becoming total; in Bach's case, it likely contributed to his death a few months later.

Mezzotint of John Taylor by John Faber Jr, after Paul Ryche (Riche), 1756. Image source: National Portrait Gallery NPG  D40851. Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.

The choice of Bach and Handel (and hundreds of other unfortunates) to undergo an agonizingly painful procedure that they must have known would almost certainly fail is the "mystery" which Allegro attempts to solve. But is any reason other than their utter desperation needed? In proffering an unconvincing explanation for these tragic real-life events, Allegro reminded me too often of Peter Shaffer's Amadeus—a comparison which from me does not constitute praise.

Ultimately Allegro leaves us with Wolfgang's homily: "'I think the answer is always music. I think we must seek answers there when we are most lost, most bereft'" (p. 201). But for me music does not provide answers, but rather poses insoluble questions.

Perhaps the best thing about the novel is its concluding "Playlist Companion to Allegro" of the music that "inspired the author as he wrote and that accompanied the characters as they lived their real and fictional lives" (Author's Note). Any opportunity to explore (or renew acquaintance with) the music of Mozart, Handel, J.S. Bach, J.C. Bach, and Carl Friedrich Abel is recommendable; if only Dorfman's novel were more so.

From the playlist, the first movement, andante, of J.C. Bach's Sinfonia Concertante in C major, C 36a, performed by The Hanover Band conducted by Anthony Halstead. The cello solos may have been played originally by Abel:

https://youtu.be/dHYBns6DtYI [the first movement ends at 10:55].

---

1. Heinz Gärtner, John Christian Bzch: Mozart's Friend and Mentor, translated by Reinhard G. Pauly, Amadeus Press, 1994, p. ix. 
2. Christoph Wolff and Stephen Roe, "Bach, Johann [John] Christian," Grove Music Online, https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.6002278196 (subscription required).
3. Otto Erich Deutsch, Mozart, A Documentary Biography, Stanford University Press, 1965, pp. 41–42.
4. Stanley Sadie, Mozart: The Early Years, 1756–1781, W.W. Norton, 2006, p. 69.
5. Quoted in Sadie, p. 65. After Nannerl produced a clean copy of the full score, Leopold later wrote out the orchestral parts.
6. Sadie, pp. 82-83.
7. James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, Second Edition, Revised and Augmented, Vol. 3, 1793, p. 184. https://archive.org/details/lifeofsamueljoh03boswuoft/page/184/mode/1up

"I will not allow books to prove anything": What Jane Austen's characters read (and why), part 5

The Reader by Marguerite Gérard and Jean Honoré Fragonard, c. 1786. Image source: The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

In her book What Jane Austen's Characters Read (and Why) (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024), Persuasions editor Susan Allen Ford examines the reading preferences of Austen's characters as a key to understanding them more deeply. In this post series I am looking at each of Austen's canonical novels to see what this perspective can tell us in particular about her heroines. The previous installment, "Meaning to read more", looked at Emma Woodhouse's desultory reading in Emma. This final installment examines perhaps the most devoted reader in all of Austen's novels, Persuasion's Anne Elliot.

Learning romance: Anne Elliot, Scott, and Byron

In a famous description early in Persuasion, we are told that Anne Elliot "had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning" (Vol. I/III, Ch. IV). But we are not told, at least not immediately, how it is that she learned romance.

Bitter experience was surely one teacher: at 19, Anne had been persuaded to retract her acceptance of 23-year-old naval commander Frederick Wentworth by an older friend who occupies "the place of a parent" in her regard, Lady Russell:

Anne Elliot, with all her claims of birth, beauty, and mind, to throw herself away at nineteen; involve herself at nineteen in an engagement with a young man, who had nothing but himself to recommend him, and no hopes of attaining affluence, but in the chances of a most uncertain profession, and no connexions to secure even his farther rise in the profession, would be, indeed, a throwing away, which she grieved to think of! Anne Elliot, so young; known to so few, to be snatched off by a stranger without alliance or fortune; or rather sunk by him into a state of most wearing, anxious, youth-killing dependence! It must not be, if by any fair interference of friendship, any representations from one who had almost a mother’s love, and mother’s rights, it would be prevented. (Vol. I/III, Ch. IV)

Anne is now 27. In the eight years since she was convinced to withdraw her acceptance of Commander Wentworth she has received just one other offer of marriage, from Charles Musgrove. She refused him, and he married instead her younger sister Mary. Charles is amiable and well-off, but nothing like the naval hero who is described as being

full of life and ardour. . .such confidence, powerful in its own warmth, and bewitching in the wit which often expressed it. . .[a] sanguine temper, and fearlessness of mind. . .He was brilliant, he was headstrong. (Vol. I/III, Ch. IV)

Meanwhile, Wentworth has been promoted to captain and has become rich through the prize money he has received by capturing enemy ships in desperate battle. Lady Russell's fears have proved to be misplaced, and "Anne, at seven-and-twenty, thought very differently from what she had been made to think at nineteen . . .How eloquent could Anne Elliot have been! how eloquent, at least, were her wishes on the side of early warm attachment, and a cheerful confidence in futurity, against that over-anxious caution which seems to insult exertion and distrust Providence!" (Vol. I/III, Ch. IV)

Title page of the first edition of Northanger Abbey: and Persuasion: by the author of "Pride and Prejudice;" "Mansfield-Park," &c., 1818 (December 1817). Image source: HathiTrust.org.

"Impassioned descriptions of hopeless agony"

But in learning romance Anne has had other teachers, or at least has found reinforcement for her original feelings, in two of the greatest poets of the age: Walter Scott and George Gordon, Lord Byron.

We know that she is deeply familiar with their works because of a friendship she strikes up with a former shipmate of Captain Wentworth's, Captain Benwick. He had a long engagement with Fanny Harville, the sister of another naval colleague, which ended when she died before he could return to shore with the promotion and prize money that would have enabled him to marry her.

Captain Wentworth believed it impossible for man to be more attached to woman than poor Benwick had been to Fanny Harville, or to be more deeply afflicted under the dreadful change. He considered his disposition as of the sort which must suffer heavily, uniting very strong feelings with quiet, serious, and retiring manners, and a decided taste for reading, and sedentary pursuits. (Vol. I/III, Ch. XI)

Benwick now lives with Fanny's brother Captain Harville and his family in Lyme. When Anne meets them while visiting Lyme with a party that includes the Musgroves and Wentworth,

it fell to Anne’s lot to be placed rather apart with Captain Benwick; and a very good impulse of her nature obliged her to begin an acquaintance with him. He was shy, and disposed to abstraction; but the engaging mildness of her countenance, and gentleness of her manners, soon had their effect; and Anne was well repaid the first trouble of exertion. . .For, though shy, he did not seem reserved; it had rather the appearance of feelings glad to burst their usual restraints; and having talked of poetry, the richness of the present age, and gone through a brief comparison of opinion as to the first-rate poets, trying to ascertain whether Marmion or The Lady of the Lake were to be preferred, and how ranked the Giaour and The Bride of Abydos; and moreover, how the Giaour was to be pronounced, he showed himself so intimately acquainted with all the tenderest songs of the one poet, and all the impassioned descriptions of hopeless agony of the other. . . (Vol. I/III, Ch. XI)

Clearly, Anne is also intimately acquainted with these Romantic poems, which all share a common theme: they are about constancy in love.

Title page of Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field by Walter Scott, 1808. Image source: HathiTrust.org

In Walter Scott's Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field (1808), set in the time of the conflict between Henry VIII and James IV, Lord Marmion lusts after both the person and the lands of the beautiful Clara de Clare. Inconveniently for him, she loves and is betrothed to the knight Ralph De Wilton. Marmion forges documents implicating his rival in treason, and De Wilton is exiled. The way is now open for Marmion to marry Clara. However, rather than abandon her disgraced lover and submit to Marmion's desires, Clara flees to the protection of a convent. De Wilton returns, proves his innocence, fights heroically at the Battle of Flodden (where the guilty Marmion dies), and is finally united with Clara in marriage.

Title page of The Lady of the Lake: A Poem by Walter Scott, 1810. Image source: HathiTrust.org

Scott's The Lady of the Lake (1810) is set in the mid-1500s, during the reign of James V. Three men, the king (traveling in the Highlands in disguise as the knight Fitz-James), the rebel chieftain Roderick Dhu, and the exiled member of another clan, Malcolm Graeme, vie for the love of Ellen, the daughter of the exiled (but loyal) chieftain James Douglas. Although both Roderick and Fitz-James declare their ardent passion for her, Ellen remains steadfast in her love of Malcolm. Ultimately the rebels are defeated, Roderick dies, and Malcolm is imprisoned. Ellen goes to plead with King James for Malcolm's freedom, and discovers that the monarch she is petitioning is the man she has known as Fitz-James. He condemns Malcolm to be chained—by the bonds of matrimony with his true love.

Title page of The Giaour, A Fragment of a Turkish Tale by Lord Byron, 1813. Image source: HathiTrust.org

At the outset of his career Byron was "the poet of love and constancy" (quoted in Ford, p. 218). In The Giaour (The Infidel, 1813), Leila, a woman in the harem of Hassan, becomes enamored of the Giaour, the Christian hero. When Hassan discovers Leila's betrayal, he has her sewn into a sack and thrown into the sea. To revenge Leila's death, the Giaour kills Hassan, and then retreats to a monastery, where he "spends the rest of his life in monastic solitude, agonizing over the loss of Leila" (p. 215).

Title page of The Bride of Abydos. A Turkish Tale by Lord Byron, 1813. Image source: HathiTrust.org

Bryon's The Bride of Abydos (1813) features a love story between a couple raised as half-siblings, perhaps inspired by Byron's own affair with his half-sister Augusta Byron Leigh. The hero Selim, the supposed son of Pasha Giaffir, has been mistreated by him throughout his upbringing. Selim declares his love for the Pasha's daughter Zuleika, and she reciprocates his feelings. But their marriage is forbidden by the Pasha, who, it turns out, is a usurper: he killed his own brother to seize the throne. Selim is actually the true heir and the Pasha's nephew, making Zuleika his first cousin. When Selim rebels, the Pasha attacks and kills him. And when Zuleika hears of Selim's fate, she dies of sorrow rather than live without him.

Tellingly, all of the Romantic epics Anne and Captain Benwick discuss were published after 1806, the year Anne was parted from Wentworth by the force of Lady Russell's persuasion. The poems have provided her with stirring examples of steadfast fidelity persisting beyond separation and even death.

But we also know that Anne has not lived exclusively on the rich diet of Romantic poetry's heightened emotions. In their conversation on Scott and Byron, Captain Benwick

repeated, with such tremulous feeling, the various lines which imaged a broken heart, or a mind destroyed by wretchedness, and looked so entirely as if he meant to be understood, that she ventured to hope he did not always read only poetry, and to say, that she thought it was the misfortune of poetry to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly.

His looks shewing him not pained, but pleased with this allusion to his situation, she was emboldened to go on; and feeling in herself the right of seniority of mind, she ventured to recommend a larger allowance of prose in his daily study; and on being requested to particularize, mentioned such works of our best moralists, such collections of the finest letters, such memoirs of characters of worth and suffering, as occurred to her at the moment as calculated to rouse and fortify the mind by the highest precepts, and the strongest examples of moral and religious endurances. (Vol. I/III, Ch. XI)

Anne's reading has helped her to bear suffering and adversity through eight long years, although

Anne could not but be amused at the idea of her coming to Lyme to preach patience and resignation to a young man whom she had never seen before; nor could she help fearing, on more serious reflection, that, like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination. (Vol I, Ch. XI)

"I will not allow books to prove anything"

Reading is so important to Anne's understanding of herself and her situation that at the beginning of the book it is a metaphor for her perception of others, especially Wentworth. As her feelings are thrown into turmoil at their first meeting since his return, she asks herself, "Now, how were his sentiments to be read?" (Vol. I/III, Ch. IV).

At a critical moment near the end of the novel, she will have the opportunity to literally read his sentiments. And a spoiler alert: if you have never read Persuasion, you may wish to skip to "Emulating the feelings of an Emma" below.

At the Musgrove's rooms at the White Hart in Bath, Anne encounters among the party Captain Harville and Captain Wentworth. Captain Harville has been given the unwelcome errand to have a miniature of Captain Benwick set for his new fiancée; characteristically, Captain Wentworth has offered to undertake the task himself in order to spare Captain Harville's feelings. While Wentworth is writing out a letter of instructions, Captain Harville and Anne debate constancy in men and women. In support of his arguments against women's fidelity, Captain Harville cannot resist referencing his own reading:

"Well, Miss Elliot," (lowering his voice), "as I was saying, we shall never agree, I suppose, upon this point. No man and woman would, probably. But let me observe that all histories are against you—all stories, prose and verse. If I had such a memory as Benwick, I could bring you fifty quotations in a moment on my side the argument, and I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men."

"Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything." (Vol. II/IV, Ch. XI)

When Harville speaks of his own joy at being reunited with his wife and children after a year at sea, Anne responds,

"I hope I do justice to all that is felt by you, and by those who resemble you. God forbid that I should undervalue the warm and faithful feelings of any of my fellow-creatures! I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachment and constancy were known only by woman. No, I believe you capable of everything great and good in your married lives. I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as—if I may be allowed the expression—so long as you have an object. I mean while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone."

She could not immediately have uttered another sentence; her heart was too full, her breath too much oppressed. (Vol. II/IV, Ch. XI)

Wentworth, of course, has overheard every word of their exchange. Under cover of writing the jeweler's instructions, he takes a new sheet of paper and pours out his still-ardent feelings for Anne, using the same metaphor of reading the beloved's feelings that Anne employed at the beginning of the novel when thinking of him:

"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan.—Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others.—Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in

F. W."

(Vol. II/IV, Ch. XI)

As a final indication of the importance of reading to Anne's self-understanding, it is through her reading of Wentworth's impassioned words that the misapprehensions that have kept them apart are dispelled and the two lovers are brought together again at last.

Amanda Root as Anne Elliot in Persuasion, adapted by Nick Dear, directed by Roger Michell, and produced by BBC Films, 1995. See Jane Austen proposal scenes, part 6: Persuasion.

"Emulating the feelings of an Emma"

Ford's book highlights an important dimension of Austen's characters that I had considered before only in the cases where well-known writers or books were explicitly mentioned (Cowper and Scott for Marianne Dashwood, Cowper and Inchbald for Fanny Price, Ann Radcliffe for Catherine Morland, and Scott and Byron for Anne Elliot). She illuminates many references that to me were obscure, especially the significance of conduct books in Pride and Prejudice and Madame de Genlis's Adelaide and Theodore in Emma.

To offer just one more example where Austen could assume that her contemporary readership would understand a reference that in our day requires explanation, when in Persuasion Anne volunteers to stay in Lyme to nurse Louisa Musgrove after her fall, she muses on a literary parallel: "Without emulating the feelings of an Emma towards her Henry, she would have attended on Louisa with a zeal above the common claims of regard, for his sake" (Vol. I/III, Ch. XII).

Emma and Henry are characters in Matthew Prior's poem Henry and Emma: A poem, upon the model of the nut-brown maid (1709), which was reprinted throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Title page of Henry and Emma by Matthew Prior, Manchester and London, 1793. Image source: Internet Archive

In the poem Henry woos and wins the beautiful Emma, but fears that she will be inconstant. Like Walter cruelly testing Griselda in Chaucer's "The Clerk's Tale," Henry decides to test Emma "by one great trial" (line 179). He pretends to be in love with another "younger, fairer" woman. Emma responds,

Yet let me go with thee, and going prove,
From what I will endure, how much I love.
   This potent beauty, this triumphant fair,
This happy object of our diff'rent care,
Her let me follow; her let me attend,
A servant: (she may scorn the name of friend). . . (lines 599–604)

Although Anne claims not to share Emma's feelings, at this point she is convinced that Wentworth and Louisa are sure to marry once she has recovered. Her willingness to care for Louisa "for his sake" indeed shows how much pain she is willing to endure out of love for Wentworth.

Ford's elucidation of many references such as these, which a hasty (or in my case, ignorant) reader might simply pass over without understanding, reveals an important aspect of the almost infinite richness of Austen's fictional world. What Jane Austen's Characters Read (and Why) will increase the pleasure of anyone entering, or re-entering, that world.

Other posts in this series:

• "So rapturous a delight": Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey
• "I am not a great reader": Pride and Prejudice
• "To be a renter, a chuser of books!": Mansfield Park
• "Meaning to read more": Emma