Muriel’s Songs

(2023) for Mezzo-Soprano and eleven instruments - duration: 40:00

Muriel Gellert (Chasalow) age 16

Muriel’s Songs is scored for mezzo-soprano soloist and eleven instruments and traverses the tumult of Twentieth-Century America from the very personal, intimate and, primarily domestic perspective of my grandmother. Each song inhabits its own musical world with stylistic points of departure from Baroque to Tin Pan Alley, The Beatles, Latin Jazz and Disco to Milton Babbitt. Finding the right balance of reference and new creation, as always, was both enjoyable and challenging. It felt especially risky to have used so many musical styles as points of departure. It feels even more risky to strip those sources naked here, though I am not about to tell it all.

Muriel’s Songs – text adapted from Years of Understanding, by Muriel Chasalow

 1913

When she was ten, my grandmother, Muriel lived for the summer with her mother’s mother, who spoke no English and spent the days engaged in Jewish rituals. The experience was a stark contrast to what she knew at home.  Her father had been born in Brooklyn and they lived a very secular life. The ensemble begins and ends with an energetic tutti that settles into something more folk-like as the voice enters.

My mother’s mother was orthodox

So very religious, she only spoke Yiddish

The summer that I turned ten years old 

and my Zadie died, suddenly,

I, as the eldest, was sent to stay 

For a while to keep her company.

When I washed my hands, we said a prayer

With every meal, we said a prayer

Before going to bed, we said a prayer.

I found this all very new

And so very exciting.

But for her it was

Just the way that

Every day had always been

And always would be.

But my parents were completely different.

My father was a Tammany Hall Democrat 

And above all, worshiped

The Brooklyn Dodgers.

1916

The second song centers on an anecdote of Muriel’s that I love. It really captures something about being very young and wanting something very badly only to get it and realize it is not quite what you thought it would be. The song melds two different bits of piano music from a time when upward mobility was defined by having a piano in your parlor – so of course, the accompaniment is piano-centric. In the transition from the first song (there is no pause between the two), and again at the end, there are refracted eighth notes sounding somewhat like a Hanon exercise. In between, I’ve woven a reference to the Irving Berlin hit, I Love a Piano.

Oh how I envied every other girl 

Walking down along Fulton Street

carrying a roll of piano music under her arm.

I begged my parents for lessons too.

They were very expensive

Relying as we did, on father’s salary

Selling shoes in the

Store below our apartment.

At first, I was determined

And I continued to 

practice diligently

But soon, it became 

more and more of a chore

Until one day I placed the 

novel that I was reading 

over the music.

I guess it sounded odd

Because my mother came

Quickly into the room

And that was the end of my music lessons.

1919

In a few of her stories, Muriel writes about how she felt being Jewish in a “mixed neighborhood” in Brooklyn, including the grammar school. The line about cringing when they sang “Onward Christian Soldiers” is entirely hers, as is the reference her teacher made to Helen Hayes. It all reminded me a bit of the song, General William Booth Enters Into Heaven by Charles Ives – a march that became my point of departure.

I cringed so 

when they sang 

“Onward Christian Soldiers” 

But I always joined in 

on “America the Beautiful” 

Then, they rolled the doors shut

And classes began.

Oh, that Helen Hayes!

She should be going places.

1934

Muriel Gellert marries Sam Chasalow and they move to an apartment in Newark, NJ. The couple starts to make a life together in the Weequahic neighborhood, full of Jewish life as captured a few years later by Philip Roth, an older schoolmate of their daughter Renee.  The music starts out angular and strange, metaphorically becoming more settled and conjunct toward the end.

The mother across the hall

in Newark

earned her living 

as a prostitute

But we felt it didn’t 

Really affect us 

in any way.

One day, 

in a straight line, 

coming across the hall 

into our apartment, 

a line of cockroaches. 

What should I do?

I placed a small begonia 

on our window sill

and it became 

a very large plant.

Sam said,

Let’s go down to Prince Street 

and pick up some 

pastrami sandwiches 

at Sidney’s.

1938

My father, Ivan always told this story and my grandfather, Sam would respond with a smile and no more than a word or two. I have moved the perspective to that of my grandmother, who never mentioned it. Allegedly, during the 30’s, my grandfather joined with other Jewish men to “confront” the local German American Bund – a group of Nazi sympathizers. It is also likely that Sam and his buddies were supported in their efforts by the Jewish mob, as documented in several sources on the time. In another story, they show up the next morning with some watermelons to share with the family. The accompaniment, a variation of the material in the first song, consists entirely of a transparent line of eighth-notes resonant of a Bach suite movement. The connection would be more apparent if this music appeared in the keyboard, but I have intentionally avoided that.

That night you were   

Running very late

The children were hungry

So I fed them

When you finally returned

with a watermelon under each arm

You did not mention

Where they came from

Or the German sympathizers

Though I read about what 

had happened to them

The next morning

In the Newark papers

Over coffee

While our children 

Enjoyed that sweet 

Pink fruit

1942

This song grounds the cycle in perhaps the defining experience of the century for my grandparents’ generation.  At the start of World War II, my grandfather, deemed too old to serve, abandoned his job selling trucks to work for the war effort. The family moved “down the shore” to Bradley Beach. Grandma took on the role of neighborhood air-raid warden. One of the details she often mentioned from that time seemed odd, but stuck with me. There were “summer carpets” and “winter carpets” and she was constantly sweeping the sand out the door, a handy metaphor. Monumental events create sense of suspended time that changes our relationships to each other and to world at large. We are at once more connected and more isolated and hyperaware of mortality. With this in mind, I have written a direct parody (in the oldest sense of that word) on Purcell’s, When I am Laid in Earth, from Dido and Aeneas.

We suffered the shortages

We learned first aid

We suffered the fear of air raids.

We lowered the shades

We sat and listened

Every moment was a new threat

We suffered the fear

We worried the night through

We suffered the loss of loved ones

We were resolved

Then, somehow, 

it was all over 

I swept the sand 

off of the summer carpet 

and out the door,

But we would never 

Ever be the same again.

1959

Following a monumental effort, due to the post-war housing boom, my grandparents moved to West Orange. Grandpa returned to truck sales, founding Greater GMC truck sales, in Newark.  The family was moving up. While the company was totally legitimate and became very successful under Sam’s leadership, it had been bankrolled by the mob and eventually in the 60’s, some gangster’s kid needed a job and Grandpa was forced out. A notorious boss of the Jewish mob, Longie Zwillman, was an associate and did live less than a mile away. The music for this song was inspired by my experience with the angular, dramatic vocal writing of one of my “associates”, Milton Babbitt.

After the war

We moved to a nice

Part of West Orange

Not the best, but very nice

One day Longie,

who lived 

Just two-minutes away,

But in a more exclusive neighborhood

Was found by his wife

In his own basement, hanged.

You had known him

In younger years -

A business acquaintance 

Back when he dated Jean Harlow

And bought her that

Diamond bracelet and 

A red Cadillac

We did not attend

The funeral

Though almost two-thousand

people did, with an

open casket

and an abundance of flowers

which really was surprising 

for a Jewish service

though we heard later

that no one, not even

the rabbi, had been at all surprised.

Many years after that,

Along with our grown children,

We were invited to his daughter’s

wedding to a millionaire

at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.

We declined.

1960

Newly affluent post war Jewish couples had an appetite for travel beyond the typical Catskills vacation. On one such trip – a Caribbean cruise, Sam and Muriel encounter some difficulties that she memorialized years later in one of her stories. The song floats a bit aimless, like the story, accompanied by a Latin Jazz groove.

The islands

The cocktail parties

The cigars

The casinos, faded and worn

The blue polyester pantsuit

That I wore for this special occasion

Made me look quite smart, I thought.

A boat ride to a private island

Was a prize that you had won

for being the most successful salesman 

But by some stroke of bad luck

Instead, we were set adrift

In our best attire

With only a thin wire to hold to.

It seemed to be attached to the sails

But in reality, it was quite useless

And so, we drifted

On and on and on and on… 

1967

I was obsessed with the music of Beatles, like so many of my generation.  When Sgt. Pepper’s was released, I wore the vinyl out, playing it over and over alone up in my room. One evening, my grandmother came in to say good night just as When I’m Sixty-four was playing. She stopped, listened and told me just what she thought. With a story like this one, there is only one possible musical source.

Goodnight Eric

Sweet dreams.

What is that they are singing about?

Who’s getting older?

I’m sixty-four, and

And I don’t feel older

And I am still definitely

Not feeling ready to sit by

The fireside anytime soon!

1970

Vietnam defined a lot of our experience living through the 60’s and 70’s. The rhythm of family life was colored by that threatening and seemingly endless war that we all viewed through the lens of graphic, nightly television reports. A stark musical contrast characterizes this song, but to be more specific here would be too much of a spoiler.

Every evening

At dinner time

We leave on our old

Black and white set

And so, the incessant, 

Ominous static

Of morbid statistics

Is always there

In the background

Droning on through the

Whole meal,

Intoning, with our soup

an endless number 

of helicopter flights

Then fire fights

With the chicken

And always finishing

with an ever more

difficult to swallow

body count

1980

The texture of the 1980’s was an uncomfortable cultural and social turning point. Even the staid, middleclass suburbs were not immune. A kind of violent disco frames a stripped down, internal blankness.

To get back to Lois,

Who is tall

And attractive

In her mid-forties,

She is the busy wife 

Of a dentist, and

Has three grown children

Of her own

But cocaine

Changes everything

Life is just like that

1985

Toward the end of her book of stories, Muriel takes stock of what matters to her and realizes that the small interactions and daily accomplishments really count.

After being busy

In the role of wife and partner

For fifty-six years,

Suddenly I am alone

I never tell anyone

How pleased I am

When they ask

me to mend a sweater

Or show me a picture

And ask, “don’t you think

This would look well on me?”

Just the other day 

I was extremely

Satisfied that

I was able to reset 

all of the clocks 

myself.

Copyright 2023 Eric Chasalow DBA Suspicious Motives Music (ASCAP)