Frontier Figures

by Beth E. Levy

  Given the near invisibility of homosexual allusion in Cadman's voluminous output, it is striking that one of the few songs that does seem ripe for homo-erotic reading sets a poem by Charles Farwell Edson called “The West,” the first of Cadman's Three Songs of the West. Beginning and ending on B, the opening phrase (“Oh boundless, beautiful, lonely west”) arcs downward to the E of “boundless” and back up to “west,” gathering up its lonely, minor-mode coloring on the G of “beautiful,” poignantly supported by the only complicated harmony in the otherwise diatonic phrase. The twinning of boundless freedom and beautiful loneliness is echoed by the poem's closing quatrain, which offers up an ecstatic paean to love that transcends societal niceties: “Living, loving without pretense; King of the world you be!” Emerging out of tonal uncertainty, Cadman directs his energies toward a cadence in G, which is deflected deceptively to B (as dominant of E), and then reinforced by a twofold repetition of “King of the World!”

  In between these framing stanzas, we find a species of age play well suited to the West, with its robust heroic types and its emphasis on youth and renewal (example 14): “Infinite mighty young-old free…Full of silence of mystery…. Cradled in finite joy…Man-like and strong, you boy!” Cadman mirrors the falling octave (from C to C) of the word “mystery” with a rising C-C at the phrase “you boy,” set in the shadowy key of F. The West that Cadman here embraces is definitively masculine, but alluringly uncertain; the connotations of purity or simplicity that so often attach to C are here undone by enigmatic chromaticism, while the more unusual C functions as a the dominant of F (straightforward to the ear, but masked by Cadman's peculiar notation).

  The poet Charles Farwell Edson was a music patron and composer (apparently no relation to Arthur Farwell). He embraced a mystical type of Christianity, and his son was a scholar of classical antiquity. His West thus had multiple meanings. Given that the last the final song in Three Songs of the West features a “wild coyote's long-drawn wailing note,” the trans-Mississippi West seems the strongest connotation. Yet the “West” of ancient Greece lingers in the background, calling to mind other evocations of California as an “American Athens,” where public democracy and personal (perhaps also sexual) freedom went hand in hand. By and large, however, if sexuality played a role in Cadman's life as a composer, it affected his choice of professional associates more than his subject matter. He was equally at home with men's clubs like the Bohemians or the Up-lifters and with the women of the MacDowell Club. He served as musical mentor, and probably more, to the young pianist Edward Earle; and his Violin Sonata was written for Sol Cohen, with whom he retained close personal ties.38 While it cannot be said for certain, it seems likely that Cadman's sexuality also affected where he chose to settle. Southern California on the cusp of World War I probably offered a greater variety of socially acceptable lifestyles than Cadman had found farther East. Whatever the reason, he left Colorado for more hospitable climes in 1916.

  EXAMPLE 14. “The West,” mm. 13–18, 28–33 (Boston: White-Smith, 1916)

  FROM TSIANINA TO SHANEWIS

  Although Cadman's time in Denver was brief, it transformed his career by bringing him into contact with Tsianina Redfeather. Born in 1892 on a ranch assigned to the Creek tribe in what is now Oklahoma, Tsianina and her siblings attended the Indian Government School in Eufala. An adept piano pupil, she caught the attention of the first Congresswoman to serve the new state, Alice Robertson, at whose expense she was sent to Denver. According to her autobiography, Where Trails Have Led Me, her piano teacher there discovered her voice by chance and recommended her to John C. (“Jack”) Wilcox.39 As it happened, Wilcox was a friend of Cadman's, and less than a month after Tsianina entered his studio, he alerted the composer that he had taken a promising Indian girl under his wing.

  Accustomed to hearing his songs among the encore selections of such seasoned singers as Nordica and McCormack, Cadman was skeptical about Tsianina's undeveloped voice. Nonetheless, he agreed to let Wilcox arrange two trial engagements of the Indian Music Talk for Denver-area music clubs featuring the young Indian girl. To Cadman's delight, the program went over beautifully: “The singer was for once the star of my Indian talk,” he wrote to Eberhart in May. “I was tickled to death for it means a lot to see that she can do the stunt. You don't know the ATMOSPHERE it adds to the vehicle. People went crazy over her. I realise that it is on account of her lovely personality and winning way and her ‘100% Indian' nature that helped the thing out, yet I must say that vocally she was more than adequate.”40 A reporter in Rocky Ford, Colorado, observed: “Tsianina has the fine, strong beauty of the aristocrats of her race—a voice that is haunting, appealing—and more than anything else, Indian. Always in her tones there is a plaintive note, the echoing faraway bird-like call of the voices of the primeval forest. The Indian songs she sings proudly, tenderly, sometimes sorrowfully, with a wistful note of pitying love for a vanishing race.”41

  During the 1913–14 season alone, the pair presented Cadman's Indian Music Talk more than twenty-four times, traveling through all parts of the Midwest, as far east as New York and Boston, and westward to Arizona, California, and Oregon. By 1924 (despite a significant interruption during World War I), the cross-cultural duo claimed to have performed in more than five hundred cities.42According to Tsianina, she received half of the total fee for each appearance, and she chose her own songs, favoring Frederick Burton's Ojibway arrangements. With less space devoted to the piano, Farwell's works slipped off the program, but songs by Wa-Wan composers Troyer and Loomis remained. Far more significant than these changes, however, were the new meanings that accrued to the talk, meanings that framed Cadman as both friend and benefactor of the Indian.

  Cadman was a generous contributor to the cause of Indian welfare when his budget allowed. In 1910, for example, he gave a benefit performance of the Indian Music Talk that raised more than a hundred dollars for the Omaha Indian Reservation Hospital, directed by La Flesche's sister. Moreover, he conceived of his musical idealizations as a type of missionary work to foster appreciation of Indian culture and as “part of a larger ‘movement’ to better the lot of ‘our poor red brethren.’” 43 For all this work, La Flesche was a key source of authority. But in the person of Tsianina, Cadman found a visible symbol of interracial symbiosis and of the potential, even the necessity, for “idealization” or “improvement” through the institutions of white civilization. Tsianina's youth and Cadman's prominence conspired to create strong overtones of white beneficence that were rarely questioned in the press. Cadman's financial situation in the mid-1910s was haphazard, and Tsianina's revitalization of the Indian Music Talk was the composer's saving grace; yet in the eyes of the public, Cadman was in charge, “allowing” the Indian Princess to choose her own repertory and costume—white buckskin with colorful beadwork and moccasins.

  Tsianina's presence also deepened the significance of the talk in complex ways. Reviewers who had commented on the earlier lecture tours tended to focus on its entertainment value, Harper's “delightful” voice, and the “weird” melodies that the composer had uncovered. When Tsianina took the stage, however, the political import of the event was clearer from the start. Reviewers were intrigued by her posture and costume, her skin color and facial features. But many also attempted to identify Tsianina with the warriors and maidens of Eberhart's now-famous texts. When the duo performed in Chicago, one critic commented on the discrepancy between the artistic evocation of a “dying race” and the fact that Tsianina herself was very much alive: “She is aborigine and so charmingly so, that when the composer announced that the theme of The Moon Drops Low was no longer true because the latest government reports showed that the Indians were increasing, the spontaneous burst of applause was a direct compliment to the singer and her race.”44

  Had Tsianina merely renewed Progressive Era interest in the Indian Music Talk, her importance in Cadman's biography would be secure. But as luck would have it, she was also the inspiration for what b
ecame, after the Four American Indian Songs, the composer's most famous work: Shanewis (The Robin Woman). After the failure of Daoma, Cadman was reluctant to try another opera on an Indian theme. Yet Wilcox and other Denver musicians prevailed upon him and Eberhart to create a dramatic vehicle for both Tsianina's voice and her life story. The result was a one-act opera requiring only five solo singers and chorus, completed in roughly four months. Though conceived to be suitable for community groups—and perhaps, if successful, as a stepping-stone toward a performance of Daoma—this modest opera became the composer's next big success.45 While the wartime cancellation of German productions must be credited for the prestigious premiere of Shanewis at the Metropolitan Opera on 23 March 1918, it was performed again on 28 March, 5, 10, and 15 April, and three more times in 1919, thus becoming the first American opera produced by the Met to remain in the repertory beyond a single season.

  La Flesche had provided a mythic scenario for Daoma, but Tsianina's own past would shape the new opera: the young Indian soprano, her generous white patroness, and reservation life in Oklahoma. Even the title character's name is, according to most sources, a rough transliteration of Tsianina (chee-NEE-nah).46Given the story's biographical origins, Cadman felt that he had to remind Eberhart of the difference between the real Tsianina and the fictional Shanewis: “I had hoped that you would carry out the tragic ending, with the Indian girl either killing herself or being killed or else stabbing the false lover in a passion or frenzy at the revelation of his perfidy. That would give an opportunity for BIG MUSIC and dramatic music. I fear you are thinking too much of Tsianina's own characteristics and her life and story of her career rather than the manufacturer of a plot that will be grand operish!” And in the same letter:

  Tsianina said you felt the tragic ending or the killing or being killed business was not “Indian” or “civilised Indian” for this age and day and therefore you felt we could be TRUER in our conception by not doing it. That may be ethnologically true and may be consonant with Tsianina's own character but I have never at any time associated this plot of hers with her life story save ONLY the opening which is that drawing room scene and the fact of her having a “benefactress.” Outside these two TRUE events I had pictured the whole plot in the nature of a tragedy or melodrama such as one thinks of and associates with the grand opera stage.47

  Instead of becoming a celebrated recitalist, or a spokesperson for Indian contributions to the arts, the character Shanewis becomes one member of a predictably ill-fated love triangle.

  In the opera's first part, Shanewis sings for guests of her patroness, Mrs. Everton, and unwittingly inspires Lionel (the fiancé of Mrs. Everton's daughter Amy) to fall hopelessly in love with her. Shanewis is unaware of Lionel's betrothal and eager to return his affections; yet she insists that he first accompany her to Oklahoma, to see if reservation life will cool his ardor. After Lionel and Shanewis steal away to the pow wow scene of the opera's second part, Amy and Mrs. Everton follow remarkably close behind, arriving just in time to precipitate the tragic denouement. When Shanewis learns of Lionel's engagement to Amy, she renounces him and prepares to lead a life of solitude in the forest. But as Lionel prepares to return to Amy, Philip Harjo (who has harbored a secret love for Shanewis), kills Lionel with a poison arrow, which legend has dedicated to the punishment of perfidious white lovers. Already removed from Daoma's rituals by its modern setting, Shanewis soon left behind its own realistic trappings, veering instead into melodrama. Like Cadman's “idealization” of Indian song, the dramatization of Tsianina's story is meant to ensure effective communication with a white audience. But while Cadman molded Indian tunes to emphasize their familiar features, operatic convention required that Tsianina and her people become more exotic, prone to superstition and violent ends.

  Even the title character, by far the most sympathetic and complex of Cad-man's Indian roles, is introduced in ways that frame her as exotic. The audience at the Metropolitan in 1918, assembled for the performance of Shanewis (the opera), would have found itself immediately mirrored by the audience onstage at Mrs. Everton's soiree, eagerly awaiting the debut recital of Shanewis (the character). Because the opera is entirely without subplots, conversation must focus on the imminent arrival of Mrs. Everton's curious protégée.

  The preparation for Shanewis's arrival is threefold. First the chorus of spectators wonders about her costume and appearance (“At least ‘twill have the charm of novelty”). Then Mrs. Everton sets the scene, reminding her guests to “hear her with kindness”:

  Remember she is no alien nightingale

  Fostered by tender sea-born zephyrs

  In balmy climes where the charmed air

  Exhales a golden melody.

  She is a native forest bird

  Born of our mighty wilderness,

  Warmed by our fervent sun,

  Taught by our free winds and leaping canyon waters

  A strange primeval song of ancient intervals.

  Last, the betrothed couple comment on the strangeness of the occasion, and Amy shows Lionel the fateful photograph that sparks his love for the Indian maiden (“So straight, so tall, so lithe and slender! / Years ago, in Arizona, I saw a face like hers, / With the same proud eyes, / The same white, flashing smile”). As the chorus calls for quiet, the music also signals the soprano's imminent arrival with a striking interpolation of chromatically descending, tritone-related triads. Finally, Shanewis, in beaded costume, enters onto a staged stage.

  When Shanewis begins her aria, “Spring Song of the Robin Woman,” the orchestra falls silent, and she is accompanied only by the pianist visible onstage. The opening of her melody is modified from a Cheyenne Swinging Song, collected by Natalie Curtis. Predictably enough, the tune is altered to provide periodic phrasing and predictable melodic goals. But Shanewis's difference does not melt away as Cadman “idealizes” her melody. Instead, it is accentuated by the pianist's persistent hammering on open-fifths and eventually on parallel chords over a drone pedal (example 15). The Ojibway canoe song (borrowed from Frederick Burton) that serves as encore to the “Spring Song” features a more conventional, waltzlike accompaniment instead of a double-drumbeat, but the alternation in meter (between 6/8 and 9/8 bars) creates a rhythmic profile that both Cadman and Tsianina claimed were extremely difficult for non-Indian singers. Only in Shanewis and Lionel's love duet does the soprano break completely free of Indianist references, suggesting that Cadman turned to these tropes primarily when their colors serve the dramatic function of emphasizing the exotic.

  EXAMPLE 15. Shanewis, “Spring Song of the Robin Woman,” mm. 1–16 (Boston: White-Smith, 1918)

  “AN AMERICAN OPERA!”

  Cadman may have employed as many as twenty “genuine Red Indian themes” in the opera.48 Nevertheless he was keen to label Shanewis an “American” opera rather than an “Indian” one:

  The composer does not call this an Indian opera. In the first place, the story and libretto bear upon a phase of present-day American life with the Indian in transition. As it is not a mythological tale nor yet an aboriginal story, and since more than three-fourths of the actual composition of the work lies within the boundaries of original creative effort (that is: not built upon native tunes in any way) there is no reason why this work should be labelled an Indian opera. Let it be an opera upon an American subject or if you will—an American opera!49

  In keeping with this view, Cadman and Eberhart suggested that opera companies might wish to choose costumes representing “the various phases of America in the Making”: Queen Isabella of Spain, Evangeline (presumably Longfellow's), John Alden, and Pocahontas for the four leads, and a chorus including Sir Francis Drake, Leif Ericsson, Lincoln, Emerson, Susan B. Anthony, Betsy Ross, Salem Witches, Quakers, Franciscan Monks, and Rip van Winkle!50 Clearly the authors were willing to forgo ethnographic “correctness” in favor of symbolic potential.

  The framing of Shanewis's story as an “American” one has serious implications for the interpretati
on of Act 2, which is set on the reservation. Many reviewers commented on this colorful crowd scene, complete with ice cream and balloon vendors, a chorus of high school girls, and even (in name only) a “jazz” band. The critic for Musical Courier delighted in the novelty of the tableau but betrayed an alarming willingness to take it as an accurate representation of Native American culture: “The second scene, a summer powpow [sic] in Oklahoma, was undoubtedly true to life, with its tepees, its dilapidated Ford in the background, and the lemonade and peanut stands with their tawdry red, white, and blue bunting…. The first act was played in modern evening costume. The Indian costumes of the second act…were quaint and attractive.”51 The stage directions call for “full-blood Indians and half-breeds in ceremonial, mongrel or modern dress and white spectators in holiday attire.” Each group has its own music, ranging from the cries of the vendors and the unison singing of the Indians, to the lovers' operatic lines and the diatonic harmonies of the white crowd. In fact, the opera differentiates so meticulously that the “half-bloods” selling lemonade are explicitly separated from the “Indians”:

  Indians: The Sun walks in the south Whence come all light and brightness; But now he goes to the west Where dwells the end of all. So we forsake our ceremonies, So we cease from singing.

  Toy-Balloon Vendors (Boys): Balloons, balloons, just like the American flag!

  Lemonade Vendors (Half-Bloods): Lemonade! Ice-cold lemonade, very refreshing in the heat.

  Spectators: See the handsome man with the pretty Indian maid; I wonder is it a flirtation? The crops are looking fine, but we need more rain, we need more rain. This wind is destructive; the soil is dry! ‘Tis growing late!

  Jazz-band of eight young people: Za za za za…