An event in a cemetery makes you feel more alive.
An event in a cemetery makes you feel more alive
Editor’s Note: The below is an expanded version of a piece published in the current issue of National Review.
Brooklyn, N.Y.
‘G reen-Wood is an active cemetery,” reads a sign outside the entrance, and I can’t help smiling. I know what they mean — people are working, being buried, etc. — but still . . .
You enter through fantastic arches, designed by Richard Upjohn during the Civil War. This could be the façade of the Munsters’ house, I think. At any rate, the arches make a perfect entrance for a grand cemetery, especially as night falls, as it is doing now.
I’ve come for a concert, and a highly unusual one.
Green-Wood Cemetery, here in Brooklyn, was founded in 1838. In the Revolutionary War, this land was a scene of the Battle of Long Island. (Somewhat confusingly, the Borough of Brooklyn is on Long Island. So is Queens.) In 2006, Green-Wood Cemetery was declared a National Historic Landmark.
The great and the good are buried here, including Samuel F. B. Morse, of code fame. And Henry George, the political economist and journalist who founded “Georgism.” Its main thrust was that land, and land alone, should be taxed.
Once, William F. Buckley Jr. said to me, “I am a closet Georgist.” (This was after I told him about my difficulty in finding an apartment.)
In addition to the great and the good, there are the bad, or at least Boss Tweed. Regulations said you could not be buried in Green-Wood if you died in jail. The Boss’s family — in true Tweed fashion — got around this.
If you were reading the New York Times in 1866, you may have read this: “It is the ambition of the New Yorker to live upon the Fifth Avenue, to take his airings in the Park, and to sleep with his fathers in Green‐Wood.” (By “the Park,” the author, whoever he was, meant Central.)
Not a few musicians “sleep” in Green-Wood. One of them is Louis Moreau Gottschalk, the first classical-music star in America. He was a New Orleanian, not a New Yorker, born in 1829. His father was a Jewish businessman from London and his mother a French Creole. He had five half-siblings who were the children of his father’s (mixed-race) mistress.
Hard to get more American than Louis Moreau Gottschalk — and he incorporated the songs and sounds of young America into his music.
A much later musician, and star, is buried at Green-Wood: Leonard Bernstein. He is buried with the score of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony lying across his chest. Needless to say, Mahler meant a lot to Bernstein (as a fellow composer-conductor).
Another American composer, Elliott Carter, lies here. He died in 2012, at 103. I interviewed him on the eve of his hundredth birthday — one of the most intelligent people I have ever been around.
In all, some 560,000 people are buried at Green-Wood. On this night, one of them is especially important: James Weldon Johnson, that Renaissance man who lived from 1871 to 1938. He wrote the words to “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” which is sometimes known as the “black national anthem.” His brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, wrote the music. It is a great song, outstanding in the American treasury.
Lift ev’ry voice and sing,
’Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list’ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
This song became a matter of controversy in the 2008 presidential campaign, believe it or not. The Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama, felt forced to say, “We have only one national anthem.” The circumstances of this controversy are convoluted, and if you are interested, I wrote about the matter in a piece called “Right Song, Wrong Place.”
Tonight’s concert in the cemetery was inspired by James Weldon Johnson. (Incidentally, the composer of the song, J. Rosamond, is buried up north in Westchester County, N.Y. — Hastings-on-Hudson, specifically.) The concert is called “To America,” which is also the title of a Johnson poem. The program has been put together by Andrew Ousley, a music impresario, and Harry Weil, an official at Green-Wood.
Ousley (rhymes with “Browse-ly”) is the founder of Death of Classical, an organization whose name plays on an old theme, or worry: the death of classical music. I often quote Charles Rosen, the late pianist-scholar, who said, “The death of classical music is perhaps the oldest tradition of classical music.” Ousley puts on concerts in crypts and catacombs.
The spirit of his organization, or project, can be seen in his fundraising. Here are his donor levels, from entry to top: Pallbearers, Eulogizers, Undertakers, Crypt Keepers, and, finally — I love this — Angels of Death of Classical.
Tonight, Ousley is wearing a “Death of Classical” face mask and a striking lapel pin: a large rhinestone skull. For attendees, there are snacks on a table, namely chips, cookies, and Life Savers. Exactly what I have at home, I think. My pandemic diet.
I keep saying “concert,” in reference to this event, and so it is: but the event also includes poetry and dance. In different shifts, small groups — masked and socially distanced — walk from site to site in the cemetery, hearing and seeing various performances.
Ousley says, simply, that this has been a brutal year in America — pandemic, social unrest, the presidential campaign — and he wanted to do something to reaffirm the goodness of our country. Or if not its goodness, its higher ideals and better self. I think of a Lincoln phrase: “the better angels of our nature.” Also, Ousley wanted to offer something rare: a live performance.
Today is October 23. I last reviewed a concert, live and in the flesh, on March 6. (It was a chamber concert at Carnegie Hall.) In between, there have been online concerts — livestreams — only.
Our group walks to a chapel, whose interior is lit, slightly, by little candles. There are shadows on the walls. Members of a string quartet wear black masks. There is dead silence, for now. It is all very . . . cemetery-at-night–like.
After a minute or two, a man recites a poem: “Inhale, Exhale,” by Terrance Hayes, who was born in South Carolina in 1971. The theme of his poem is captured in this line: “America — do you care for me, as I care for you?” I think of a Langston Hughes poem, “I, Too,” which has a similar message:
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes . . .
Here in the chapel, the string quartet plays “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” — an arrangement of it, that is. No words, no singing. The quartet then plays Elegy: A Cry from the Grave, by Carlos Simon (not to be confused with Carly Simon). He was born in Washington, D.C., in 1986. His elegy is lush, beautiful — what some critics would call, not very nicely, “neo-Romantic.” Are you allowed to write that way in this day and age? I’m glad Simon has.
To conclude the chapel portion of the evening, a baritone sings “Sence You Went Away,” a wonderful love song by H. Leslie Adams. It sets a poem by James Weldon Johnson. Adams is one of our senior composers, born in 1932 (Cleveland). He wrote Nightsongs — a cycle that includes “Sence You Went Away” — in the early 1960s.
By the way, we have been instructed not to applaud, for any of the performances tonight. Which adds to the solemnity, and the weirdness, of the evening overall.
On we go to the next site, a monument to DeWitt Clinton, that key New York politician in the first quarter of the 19th century. A bass emerges from behind the monument to sing a spiritual: “Deep river, my home is over Jordan.” Maybe I can indulge in a linguistic note? You can sing either “Jordan,” rhyming with “Gordon,” or “Jerdan.” Southerners tend to sing “Jerdan,” and so did Marian Anderson, “The Lady from Philadelphia.” Hamilton Jordan, President Carter’s chief of staff — a Georgian, like the president — said “Jerdan.” Our singer tonight, however, chooses “Jordan.”
Further on, we hear a cellist play a piece by Caroline Shaw, born in North Carolina in 1982. It is a nifty piece, In manus tuas, based on a motet by Thomas Tallis, that English genius from way back (the 16th century). As the cellist plays, a dancer dances, with the aid of a spotlight. Her shadows dance, too. It is a spooky, engaging experience, out here in the cemetery.
As we walk to the next site, a man tells his companion, “This feels like the coolest thing in the world going on right now.”
Under a tree, two different singers sing two different songs — very different songs –involving trees: “Ombra mai fu,” from Handel’s opera Serse — an aria known, in its instrumental versions, as “Handel’s Largo” — and “Strange Fruit,” the song by Abel Meeropol, published in 1937, made famous by Billie Holiday two years later. “Ombra mai fu” is an ode to a plane tree; “Strange Fruit” is about lynching. I’m not sure there has ever been a more unusual pairing, but what the heck? Each number is a classic.
In due course, we arrive at the Civil War Soldiers’ Lot, where a brass ensemble is assembled. They play “Lift Ev’ry Voice.” They also accompany a singer in “Somewhere,” the song from Bernstein’s West Side Story. It is one of the best art songs in the whole American repertoire. Schubert would be pleased to claim it.
The last offering at the Civil War Soldiers’ Lot is a rollicking, jazzy version of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which almost has me dancing.
Our final stop will be the Catacombs. En route, though, we go through the Weeping Beech Tunnel, where a violinist is improvising . . . on “Lift Ev’ry Voice.”
At the Catacombs, a Johnson poem is read: the titular poem of the evening, “To America.” Then we hear the slow movement from George Walker’s String Quartet No. 1, and the slow movement from Samuel Barber’s String Quartet (his only). Both of these men studied with Rosario Scalero at the Curtis Institute (Philadelphia).
In 1936, Barber arranged the slow movement from his string quartet for chamber orchestra, calling the arrangement “Adagio for Strings.” Ten years later, Walker arranged his slow movement for chamber orchestra, calling the arrangement “Lyric for Strings.” Walker hated it when people compared the two. “They’re nothing alike!” he would say. Walker protested too much. Each is a marvelous piece, regardless.
George Walker died two years ago, at 96. I got to know him toward the end of his life. He dedicated “the Lyric,” as he called it, to his grandmother, Malvina King, an ex-slave. She lived with George’s family, in Washington, D.C., as he was growing up. She had had two husbands. She lost the first when he was sold at auction. She never talked about slavery, ever. But when her grandson George pestered her about it, she spoke one sentence, only: “They did everything except eat us.”
Walker referred to Lyric for Strings as “the Lyric,” yes. He also referred to it, tenderly, as “my grandmother’s piece.” (In 2017, I wrote about Walker in two parts: here and here.)
In the Catacombs, another poem is recited, this one by Langston Hughes: “Let America Be America Again.” The last part goes as follows:
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain —
All, all the stretch of these great green states —
And make America again!
I can see a hash tag: “#MAA”?
Let me register a little complaint: The Hughes poem and the Barber piece are made into a duet. The poem is read as the Barber is being played. Whether the music is accompanying the poem, or the poem is accompanying the music, I don’t know. I would prefer the two separate: I cannot quite concentrate on either one. At any rate . . .
The evening closes with — for the fourth time — “Lift Ev’ry Voice,” sung by a tenor. He does not sing all the verses, unless I’m asleep at the switch, asleep in the Catacombs. In any case, I think of Bill Clinton — who once boasted that someone had described him as “the only white man in America who knows all the verses to ‘Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.’”
Who knows? It may have been true.
Leaving Green-Wood Cemetery, I acknowledge, just internally, that I have missed live music these past seven months. Online concerts are wonderful, certainly as substitutes — but there is nothing like live and in the flesh. “The coolest thing in the world going on right now”? I don’t know about that, but this concert, or whatever we should call it, was a great idea. The evening has been fortifying, reaffirming, somehow. Kind of funny: Come to a cemetery, feel more alive.