Playing Haydn for the Angel of Death

(mellow music) - But let's have something else.

Let's do this wonderful thing for each other.

Let's prove that we can have civilization, even here.

♪ Play Haydn ♪ Play Haydn (car engine purring) (radio crackling through stations) - [Reporter] Poet and essayist, Bill Holm, died Wednesday, at the age of 65.

He was a teacher, a translator, and a world traveler.

But no matter how far he ventured, Bill Holm always ended up back where he started from, the town of Minneota, in the southwest part of the state.

- Bill Holm was the most famous Icelandic American poet, "Boxelder Bug Variations", and, particularly, this poem, "Playing Haydn for the Angel of Death," is, I think, among his greatest contributions.

He was a great teacher at Southwest Minnesota State University, and he made thousands and thousands of friends, because people instantly were gravitated towards him.

- I was a student at Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall, doing music education.

And so much of what singing is, is you're singing poetry.

So to have a resident poet among the faculty, Bill Holm, this legendary figure with the big, bellowing voice, who walked the halls.

- You could tell that I was not likely to be a success as a farmer.

- He was kind of like a, (chuckling) like the mythic creatures of Iceland.

He was like a giant, or a giant elf.

- [Daniel] Bill Holm was a complete giant out here in the prairie.

Born in Yellow Medicine Township, he called Minneota his home, and summed up so much of what Prairie life was and what it meant.

- Bill, I greatly admire Bill for, you know, he was a local boy who made good and went out and did things.

And it really inspired me.

I thought, do you know, if he's from here, and if he can go out and make a career in the arts, I can too.

And I just admired Bill, and I went to all his readings, and I audited his class sometimes.

But in 2009, Bill passed away, and ever since then, Dan and I have been throwing around the idea of setting some of Bill's poems to music, as a musical tribute.

So finally, it only took a global pandemic for us to find the time in our busy schedules to really get it together.

So Dan found this incredible composer.

- He invited me to his house for brunch.

He said, "I'd like to commission you to write a song cycle for this epic poem of Bill Holm's."

- Bill's greatest poem cycle, "Playing Haydn for the Angel of Death".

- "Playing Haydn for the Angel of Death".

- "Playing Haydn for the Angel of Death", arguably, his masterpiece.

- [Daniel] It deals with all the subjects that Bill loves most.

- [Ryan] All his philosophy on music.

- And the themes of life and death, and how we spend our time here on this planet.

- [Ryan] Here we are now in Iceland, October, 2022, giving the Icelandic premiere in Bill's ancestral homeland.

So we're very excited to be here, and to do this piece.

(gentle piano music) (paper rustling) - SMSU is the youngest university of the state system, and the smallest.

We've always been known as one of the most avant-garde universities, and I'm very proud to be part of that faculty.

My meeting with Bill Holm is one of these pivotal moments of my life.

I met Bill Holm when I was 17.

Yeah, I walked into Bill's house, and it was just teetering, literally teetering, with books.

In fact, Bill used to say, "The books are the only thing that are keeping the walls up."

And it smelled of cigarettes and last night's whiskey, and I thought, "Man, is this my joint!

This is how I wanna lead my life."

- And, of course, Rieppel has been a great gift.

He's full of beans, full of ambition, full of enthusiasm.

And aside from his powers as a pianist, he's an awfully good conductor.

(piano music) - Bill and I, I bet we spent at least three or 400 hours playing four hands together.

He was such a devotee of this art form.

And it's an art form that is vanishing quickly, because I, I don't know why, because it's a wonderful way to spend an afternoon.

It's just the most fun in the world.

And our team was called Big Guys with Grand Pianos.

(audience laughing) And part of (chuckling) the draw, if you will, was to see if we both could fit on the same piano bench.

(mellow piano music) - I think one of the reasons they picked me is because all four of us have a Southwest Minnesota connection.

I grew up in Laverne, Minnesota, and so I think they thought I might have a good sense of things that Bill might have appreciated.

I grew up on a big cattle farm.

My dad was a farmer and a commodities broker, and my mother was a very fine pianist.

She was very sophisticated.

She had a great sense of style.

That's my mom when she was young.

This is her piano.

So it's a-- - Beautiful.

- prized possession.

But they, from a young age, always nurtured music in my life.

Sometimes when I'm playing, I'll put her picture up there.

I write what's called art songs.

Very simply, it's just the marriage of poetry and music.

It's a collaboration of a singer and a pianist.

Both parts are equally as important.

- I love Martha's writing.

And she taught voice for many years, and she knows the nuance of the voice.

But it has been challenging, because when Bill wrote, he didn't have the thought of setting it to music.

So it can be challenging to find where (chuckling) the poetry will fit in the voice.

And also, there's a lot of quotations in this piece.

- So Bill himself used a lot of composer names in this poem.

(projector whirring) Bill mentions some specific Haydn pieces, and then he mentions Bach and Beethoven and Schoenberg, and Brahms and Shostakovich.

No, not Shostakovich, Rachmaninoff.

And so I did use quotes from all of those.

This is one that I used, an existing piece that's very profound as well.

(mellow piano music) And then the voice comes in, and so it's almost, almost verbatim.

The piano part is Haydn.

- It's been a real challenge to get them all to gel together, but Martha's done a stunning job.

- I just mess around, you know, till I find what I want.

So, if I'm writing about water, I might have, (mellow piano music) I might have like a lilting six, eight.

(mellow piano music continuing) And then I always right hand first.

I leave my left hand there, otherwise I'll forget as soon as I lift my hands up.

- [Interviewer] Can you help me define what is classical music?

- Oh my gosh, I have to think for a minute.

(dramatic violin music) That is such a big question.

Let's find some Bach.

The "Goldbergs".

(gentle piano music) Classical music is like an umbrella term for many different time periods in history, medieval, renaissance, baroque, romantic.

It's classical because it's not rock and it's not jazz, and it's not (laughing).

Classical music is timeless.

I mean, think about it.

We're still listening to music from 400 years ago with the greatest of love and affection.

That's pretty amazing.

(bell ringing loudly) - [Daniel] Semester started a few weeks ago here at SMSU.

That's always kind of an explosion of activity.

I have been practicing the song cycle again, getting it ready, polishing it.

Martha Helen Schmidt and I have sat down and gone through some things, revised some things that we thought maybe could work better.

It's always a challenge to try to be a performing musician while you're a full professor.

But Ryan and I are very excited to perform in Reykjavik.

- Yes, I love Iceland.

(laughing) (wave crashing gently) (mellow music) (mellow music continuing) (mellow music continuing) (mellow music continuing) (mellow music continuing) (mellow music continuing) - [Daniel] Well, there have been many emails going back and forth, and phone conversations as well, about how to prepare for this concert.

It was difficult to find a venue at first, but we are going to be performing in the Free Church in Reykjavik.

Beautiful little sanctuary, used often for these kind of events, chamber music, and what would be called "Liederabend", evenings devoted to art song.

So it'll be a perfect venue for that.

(lively piano music) (Ryan laughing) Don't look at me when that happens.

- (laughing) Oh, my gosh.

- I wouldn't mind you trying the 15.

- You wanna do that?

The Wagner?

(pages rustling) - The Rachmaninoff.

- Number nine.

- Number nine.

- Number nine?

Number nine?

- Oh, that's not the one.

But yeah, let's do that.

(Ryan singing in baritone) - Sorry, I think we're off.

I waited too long.

- [Daniel] Let's just try, can we try from measure four?

- Yeah, yeah, that's good.

(bright piano music) - We are really anxious for the production to be just as perfect as possible.

- You repeated that verse.

That's what you did.

- No.

- Yes, you did.

- No.

- Yeah.

- I guarantee you I didn't.

- Okay.

Well, I have, it's a real, it's a real mixed bag of emotions, you know.

It's really incredibly exciting to see this project come to fruition, and to be in Iceland.

But I think we've all experienced something, a loss of someone.

(gentle piano music) - [Daniel] Iceland was Bill Holm's centering point.

Soon after I came on the faculty in 1998, he purchased the house in Hofsos, Iceland.

His house is named Brimnes.

When he bought Brimnes, and he always referred to it as that, he started spending most of his free time, any free time he had, and certainly all of the summers, in Iceland.

Both Ryan and I went to Hofsos spend time at the house.

- [Ryan] I never thought quite that I would be here in Iceland giving this premiere of this work, and then getting to go up to take a pilgrimage up to see Bill's house.

Oh, I know that one.

(gentle piano music) It's quite a special thing.

And we hope to be back and do another concert up in Hofsos one of these days.

We'll see.

(chuckling) - [Daniel] Of course, he was almost entirely Icelandic, in terms of DNA makeup, and he was very proud of that.

He loved the independence of thought that the Icelanders represented.

- [Martha] Icelanders love their books.

They love to read, they love poetry, they love authors.

- [Daniel] They have the claim to be the longest surviving democracy in the world, which is true.

And Hofsos is one of the great immigration centers, from which Icelanders then went to either Canada or the United States.

- Iceland Immigration Center connects, or help people who is looking for their background roots, whose ancestors left Iceland from 1870 to 1910 or so.

There was a terrible cold time period in Iceland, so people left, just to try to find their better life.

People in Iceland were starving.

They're not starving anymore, so.

Here.

I can show you over here how it works.

Here is a list of people who left.

And there is the name of the farm they left from, and the year when they left, and the name and dates, and the place they left from, and the name of the ship, and where they end up.

So, some pretty good information.

- My own Icelandic ancestors, who had been living, I suppose, on salt cod and hard tack, living on farms so poor that they could hardly grow enough hay to feed a few sheep or one cow, came to the New World.

A vast, alien territory awaited the new settlers to North America's Midwest.

- [Daniel] Well, immigration was central to Bill's output as a writer.

- [Martha] He comes from Icelandic immigrants, and a lot of them moved to Minneota, Minnesota.

- [Daniel] That part of the state could not be more different from Iceland itself.

There are no volcanoes in Minnesota.

There weren't medieval sagas being written around the corner.

There are no grand vistas, except for the horizontal grandeur that Bill Holm often talked about in his writing.

But Minnesota was its own thing for a long time, much like Iceland is its own thing.

- [Ryan] Iceland's connection with Minnesota is very prominent, and it was so important to Bill's life as well.

I mean, he could trace his roots right back to Hofsos.

- Here's a little history of Hofsos.

This is 1989.

And this was the situation when I start to rebuild the little town.

And even you see the house of Bill Holm here.

My feeling for one of the houses here was this would be a really good house for someone who was sitting and writing poetry and whatever.

So I sold Bill this house.

And almost every day, we sit, me here, just two really good friends.

When he woke up very early in the morning, he walk over the bridge here, to show me or read for me what he was writing.

So I was used to be the first one who heard what he was doing.

I'm very proud of this.

- And I think, for Bill, he himself, in a sense, re-immigrated to Iceland.

For him to come here was a consummation of something that he grew up with, this idea that you could go to a different place.

And that's why it's so important, I think, that we're here.

(car engines rumbling) (bright piano music) (Ryan practicing scales loudly) - [Martha] The performance in Iceland was so special.

And you could see the Northern Lights that night, so that was magical to begin with.

There were friends of Bill's, who were also friends of of Dan's.

There was a woman named Wincie, who set the whole thing up.

Before the concert even started, a choir came processing in from the back, singing to her.

(choir singing) They kinda surrounded her a little bit, and sang a bunch of songs, including "Happy Birthday" in Icelandic.

(audience applauding) (piano playing tune of "Happy Birthday") (audience singing "Happy Birthday" in Icelandic) (speaking in Icelandic) First half of the program, they read some of his poetry.

Marcy Brekken, his widow, read some.

That was very moving.

- This is the kind of thing that Bill loved.

(audience laughing) "The fish is half her size.

Soon she will eat part of it, in order to grow old and wrinkled, And with luck, half remember the pleasure of catching something wet and slick and still alive, surrounded by those who adore you just for being alive yourself."

- [Daniel] One of the people we're working with in Reykjavik is the the great Anna Sigriour.

Anna is stupendous.

She's a great singer.

She will also be singing on the first half of the performance with me several songs that she performed with Bill.

(mellow piano music) (singing in a foreign language) - [Martha] And then the "Playing Haydn for the Angel of Death" was the second half of the program.

(mellow piano music) - The piano tells things to your hands.

You never let yourself hear from others.

Calm down.

Do your work.

Laugh.

(piano music intensifying) - The first verse is actually read by Ryan, while Dan is playing a piece that Bill wrote, 'cause he also composed.

But this line, listen to this line.

"To understand this language, you must sometimes patiently play the same piece over and over for years.

Then, when you expect nothing, the music lets go it's wisdom."

How amazing is that sentence?

- Play Haydn.

♪ Play Haydn ♪ Play Haydn ♪ First when I was young ♪ He seemed simple ♪ Even simple-minded - Haydn is a very interesting composer, in that he is somewhat of an acquired taste.

(light piano music) It's not operatic, like Mozart, it's not virtuosic, like Beethoven.

It's very cheerful for the most part.

And somehow that's not glamorous enough, it's not sexy enough.

And in fact, Haydn is one of the greatest composers of all time.

I've always shared that with Bill, my love of Haydn.

Haydn is a great metaphor for that which is small and seemingly inconsequential, and in fact can be a portal into how we view the universe and how we view our own lives.

♪ Too easy, too thin, too cheerful ♪ ♪ Gaiety and dancing in our powdered wig ♪ ♪ No hammer blows and unjust fate ♪ ♪ And unjust fate - [Interviewer] Would you like to read your favorite line from the song cycle, or do you have some, a line or two, that really sticks out to you?

- Yes, I do.

"But oh, the mystery of Haydn is the great reason for not dying young, for living through rage and ambition without quite forgetting their pleasures.

Suicide, craziness, the bottle, war, all rob you of what is inside Haydn.

Take this advice: Toughen up and live."

♪ Take this advice ♪ Toughen up and live - And then what happens after that is death comes out, and death sits in a straight-back chair under a lilac bush in the garden.

And it's creepy.

♪ My death sits in a straight-back chair ♪ ♪ Under a lilac bush ♪ In the garden behind my house ♪ - Bill had a lilac bush behind his house, and there was a chair sitting there, an empty chair sitting there all the time, to remind Bill of his own Angel of Death, that waits for him, that waits for all of us.

♪ When Haydn's own Angel of Death came calling in Vienna ♪ ♪ He found an old man with worn out wits ♪ - And although that can be a disconcerting thought, it's important to remember that, you know, we are just visitors here, and that we should have, you know, we should do as much good and have as much fun as we can during this short period of time.

(audience applauding) (waves crashing) (gently soaring music) (gently soaring music continuing) (gently soaring music continuing) (gently soaring music continuing) (gently soaring music continuing) (gently soaring music fading) - That's the end of the piece.

But then there's an epilogue, and it's a separate poem, called "Letting Go of What Cannot be Held Back", that they wanted added to the cycle.

And again, I took one of my favorite piano pieces, (mellow piano music) Haydn pieces.

(mellow piano music continuing) "Let go of the dead now.

The rope in the water, the cleat on the cliff do them no good anymore.

Let them fall, sink, go away, become invisible as they tried so hard to do in their own dying.

We needed to bother them with what we called help.

We were the needy ones.

The dying do their own work with tidiness.

Just the right speed, sometimes even a little satisfaction.

So quiet down, let them go.

Practice your own song now."

Isn't that incredible?

And it's true.

You know, when people are dying, we're the needy one.

We're trying to help, but we're really the needy ones.

They know what they're doing.

(chuckling) They're doing it with the all the grace that they can muster.

And you have to let them go, and practice your own song.

I just think that's beautiful.

So that's a little bit about the piece.

♪ We needed to bother them with what we called help ♪ ♪ We needed to bother them with what we called help ♪ (waves gently crashing)