Dec. 25

Clara Barton, photo by James E. Purdy

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Dec. 25, 1821: Clara Barton born.

Q&A with Thomas Forrest Kelly

Thomas Forrest Kelly is the author of the new book Capturing Music: The Story of Notation. His other books include First Nights: Five Musical Premieres and First Nights at the Opera. He is professor of music at Harvard University, and he lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Q: Why did you decide to write Capturing Music?

A: The idea came from my wife Peggy Badenhausen, a painter, who wondered why I had written general-audiences books about music (First Nights, Yale 2000) and opera (First Nights at the Opera, Yale 2004), but not about the area of my scholarly research. So I thought I’d give it a try. 

My hope here is to interest people who are fascinated by the invention of technology in the past. There was Dava Sobel’s Longitude, about how hard it is to figure out how far around the earth you are; and Ross King’s Brunelleschi’s Dome, about the problem of covering Florence Cathedral.

I thought I’d try to explore the amazing invention of the first recording device for music—that is, musical notation. Whoever thought of making marks on a piece of parchment to represent the sound of a song, and used that parchment later, in another place, to reproduce the same song, started something without which we would know nothing of the music of the past.

Q: One of the intriguing characters in your book is Guido the Monk, who came up with a key development in the notation of music. What role did he play, and why were monks often the innovators on the musical front?

A: Guido really was an innovator. He operated at several monasteries, but it was his work in Arezzo that gets him his nickname of Guido of Arezzo; his project was to figure out a way to sing music from a book when you did not yet know the song (up until then notation was a reminder, not a prescriber).

And he did it: he invented the lines and spaces that define what each note is; he also came up with the names we still use for notes; Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La (one of them later got changed to Do, so that Rodgers and Hammerstein could write The Sound of Music).

Why monks? Well, for most of the Middle Ages, the only people who needed to know how to write were church people, clerical people, that is, clerks (same word as cleric). They needed bibles, prayer books, chant books, etc.

So although there was lots of music, we’re sure-- people have always danced, sung to their children, etc.—the only people who wrote down music, for a long time, were church folks.

Q: You discuss the role of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in the notation of musical rhythm. How did their composers figure out this new development?

A: How did they do it? I wish I know. It might have been from the need to coordinate multiple singers singing different parts at the same time; the result is a wonderful, mesmerizing, repeating rhythmic patterning that fits perfectly with the many repetitions of bays and arches in Gothic architecture, and with the multi-faceted stained glass windows of the cathedrals.

Q: You write, "We speak of 'reading' music as though it were the same thing as language." How are they similar, and how do they differ?

A: They are alike, of course, and in fact they can happen at the same time, when we sing a song. And notation, originally, was tied to writing, because it began as signs describing how to sing words.

But there can be music without words, just as there can be words without music. They use different parts of the brain, as we know. And when words and music come together the result can be magical.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I’m writing a book on medieval scrolls. Why, after the invention of the codex, did people still make scrolls? They did, and I’ve collected information on surviving medieval scrolls.

Some of the reasons for making a scroll: when you want to add to it, and thus you don’t know how long it will be when you start (we say “enroll,” which means to add to a roll or scroll); when you want a little scroll to hold in your hand in performance or rehearsal (we still say an actor’s rôle); when you want something archaic and ceremonial (like our modern diplomas); there are some fascinating objects, and I hope to make a beautiful book (it will unfortunately probably have to be in codex form).

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: I’m developing an online course for HarvardX based on my course (and related book) First Nights, which will probably launch next summer….

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Dec. 24

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Dec. 24, 1822: Matthew Arnold born.

Q&A with Charles King

Charles King is the author of the new book Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul. His other books include Odessa, The Black Sea, and The Ghost of Freedom. A professor of international relations and government at Georgetown University, he lives in Washington, D.C.

Q: What role did the Pera Palace play in the creation of modern Istanbul, and how was your book's title chosen?

A: The "midnight" in the title refers to New Year's Eve 1925, a moment when the new Turkish Republic transitioned to a common Western calendar and timekeeping system. I thought this was a telling and symbolic thing: an instant in which, for the first time, everyone in Istanbul and across the wider country agreed on what the hour and date were.

Previously, different religious communities in the country had reckoned time differently, with Muslims using one system, Christians another, Jews yet another--even though people in the worlds of business and international trade were in sync with the timetables and market schedules in the rest of Europe, of course.

I imagined what a New Year's party at the Pera Palace--the grandest hotel in the city--must have been like on that evening, a moment when the entire country was symbolically stepping into the modern world.

The hotel was built in the final decades of the Ottoman Empire, and at the time it represented the height of European-style luxury. It was in many ways a place that symbolized what modern Turks wanted to become: worldly, Europe-oriented, modern.

The book uses the hotel as a kind of literary device to follow the fortunes of Turkey in its transition away from a Muslim empire and toward a contemporary nation-state, with all the attendant violence and reinvention that this transition entailed.

Q: You write, "For more than half a millennium, the West's image of the Islamic world has been shaped by its encounter with Istanbul." How does Istanbul during the 1910s-40s compare with the city today?

A: The book is about the origins of the modern city, and so much of what we see today dates from the interwar years. The winding street layout around the Grand Bazaar, for example, is not particularly ancient: it was created as part of an urban renewal program in the 1930s and 1940s (previously it had been even more winding and alley-filled than today).

The beautiful expanse of gardens in the old city between the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque was similarly a product of wholesale re-engineering (including the massive leveling of private houses and shops) in the same period.

Even the interior of the city's greatest ancient monument--the Hagia Sophia itself--was unveiled to the public in the 1930s. The stunning mosaics inside were uncovered by Thomas Whittemore, a Boston archaeologist who convinced the Turkish government to allow his team to restore the Byzantine mosaics for public view. 

The fact that we think of Istanbul as a Turkish city was also in many ways a product of the period covered by this book. It was a time when the city's ancient non-Muslim minorities--Greeks, Armenians, Jews--left the city in droves, many of them pushed out by anti-minority policies pursued by the new Turkish government.

Of course, many of the things we see in the city today were products of a later period, such as the bridges over the Bosphorus, the demographic changes that brought millions of ethnic Kurds to the city, and more recently the controversial rebuilding programs pushed by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But all of that began with the move away from the old imperial city chronicled in the book. 

Q: What changes occurred for women in Istanbul during the period you cover in the book, and what is the legacy in today's Turkey?

A: The early Turkish Republic sought to liberate women as a group. The veil disappeared (even though Islamic veiling had been mainly practiced by upper-class Ottomans and was not a universal feature of the city), and women were allowed to vote and run for public office. In fact, in the 1930s, there were more women in the Turkish parliament than in the U.S. Congress.

The first Muslim Miss Universe, Keriman Halis, took to the stage in 1932, a woman who represented for many Turks the height of their country's modernity and a kind of social advancement for women--even though today we would hardly see a beauty contest as representing women's empowerment. 

But many of the issues that still bedevil Turkey today were wrapped up in the status of women. How could a woman be religiously observant while still also being politically empowered, with a strong public voice? When women, both secular and religious, spoke out and sought to form their own political party, for example, it was quickly closed down in the 1920s.

Women in Turkey today face many of the dilemmas that an earlier generation faced: how to combine religion, feminism, and politics in ways that make sense to all of Turkey's women, whether they are from cosmopolitan Istanbul or from the more conservative interior of the country.

Q: You describe the future Pope John XXIII working with Jewish groups to try to help Jewish refugees pass through Turkey on their way to Palestine. How did this partnership come about?

A: Angelo Roncalli, the future John XXIII, was the apostolic delegate--or papal representative--in Istanbul in the 1930s and early 1940s. He had a great love for Turkey and the Turks, even spending time learning the language (which he found a kind of penance, he joked, because he found it so difficult).

During the Second World War, Turkey remained a neutral country, which meant that it was a hotbed of espionage by both Axis and Allied powers, who could work relatively freely there. The country's neutrality also provided an escape route for Jews seeking to flee Axis-dominated Europe and find shelter in Palestine.

In a remarkable story of cooperation and courage, Roncalli used his network of church officials to ferry immigration certificates to embattled Jewish communities in Europe, especially in Hungary. From there, Jews could board boats and trains to Istanbul and from there continue on toward Palestine. 

In the book, I detail the story of the many individuals--more than 13,000--who were saved from almost certain death by the actions of Roncalli and a small band of rescuers, including representatives of the American War Refugee Board and the Jewish Agency, which would become the future government of Israel.

Roncalli's biography is well-known--especially now that he has been elevated to the status of a saint by Pope Francis--but the fact that thousands of Jews found safety via a Muslim-majority country is still one of the least known chapters of the Holocaust.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I have a number of things going at the moment. But sorry: I'm always coy about new projects until I've settled on exactly which direction I'm pursuing next, though.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: People should go to Istanbul. They will find it one of the most magical and enchanting cities they have ever visited. But in addition to the Byzantine and Ottoman monuments, they should dig into the world of the hidden Islamic jazz age, the period my book covers.

Many of the buildings, neighborhoods, and sites connected with the book are still there, and they provide a fascinating entree into the hidden era when Istanbul and Turkey began their journey toward modernity.

A plug for some friends of mine: one of the best ways to discover the city is to eat your way across it. Istanbul Eats has amazing walking tours that let you sample some of the best street food and traditional eateries you'll find anywhere. 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Dec. 23

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Dec. 23, 1908: Yousuf Karsh born.

Q&A with Greg Nichols

Greg Nichols is the author of the new book Striking Gridiron: A Town's Pride and a Team's Shot at Glory During the Biggest Strike in American History. It looks at the success of a Western Pennsylvania high school football team in 1959, during a crucial steel strike. He lives in Los Angeles.

Q: How did you learn about the record-breaking Braddock Tigers of 1959, and how did you meet their coach, Chuck Klausing?

A: In early 2009, I landed in Braddock in search of a miracle. I had been reading early accounts of the town's new mayor, an ambitious guy who was helping to radically reverse the popular perception of the town as a dangerous and wilted former steel manufacturing hub.

I was conducting interviews with a group of newer residents, who were mostly young, hip, and artistic, trying to get to the heart of what their impact had been, if any, on the fortunes of the average resident. It was fascinating stuff, and it kept me coming back to Braddock again and again.

During one early trip, a resident listened to my introductory spiel, nodded, and said, "You want a story? I've got a story for you. Ever hear of the Braddock High Tigers?" Turns out this man, Joel Rice, had been doing some early research, compiling newspaper clippings and old archival material relating to the Tigers.

He showed up the day after we spoke with a stack of papers and commanded I start reading. It turned out that Klausing was alive and well, enjoying his retirement about an hour away in the town of Indiana, PA.

I reached out to him, and everything began falling into place. It wasn't the story I set out to tell, but it's the story that found me and one I'm so honored to have had the opportunity to work on.

Q: What did the high school football team mean for the town in 1959, especially during a very difficult steel strike?

A: You really can't overstate the importance of the Tigers to Braddock in the late 1950s. In the PA borough system, these little mill towns operate as wholly independent municipalities. They have their own police and fire services, their own library systems (courtesy of the Carnegie foundation), and their own school boards.

In the 1950s, many of these towns had a mill where the vast majority of the working age men toiled; steel production was far and away the dominant industry. As a result of these dynamics, people identify extremely closely with their town, with their mill.

When the strike came along in '59, workers expected it would be settled quickly. But it wasn't; labor and management dug their heels in and the strike ended up lasting 116 days.

During that time, the economies of the towns up and down the Monongahela Valley virtually collapsed. Workers drew no salaries, had nothing to do all day, and largely survived on government aid.

The only bright spot was football. The strike coincided (virtually to the day) with the high school football season. Incredibly, the Braddock High Tigers were on the brink of a national record, though they would need to be perfect to pull it off.

For workers, that quest became a proxy to the larger fight, a symbol of the region's might and of Braddock's resilience in particular.

Q: How would you describe race relations in Western Pennsylvania at that time?

A: Western Pennsylvania in the 1950s is often held up by those who lived there/then as a kind of idyllic slice of American harmony. But the fact is it was an incredibly racist place.

African Americans arrived in the area from the south in large numbers during the Great Migration. In need of work, many took low-paying jobs in the mills.

White workers believed the new black labor force was undercutting wages. Worse, managers often hired black workers as scabs. This was during the most contentious period of the long movement to organize the steel industry, and the enduring image for many white workers was a steady stream of African American men crossing their picket lines.

The country itself was at a racial crossroads in the mid-1950s, of course, and was far from a beacon of progress. Black students couldn't use the library or the local gym in Braddock, had to deal with blatantly racist teachers and administrators, and black athletes were typically run off of any teams they tried to join.

That's what was so remarkable about Klausing's Tigers. The team was about even split racially between black and white players. Klausing was a legitimately progressive guy in an era, in a region, and in a sport where that kind of thing was exceedingly rare. 

Q: How did you research all the details that you include in this book, and what surprised you most?

A: I wasn't alive when the events of the book took place, and I'm from Southern California, not Western Pennsylvania. So yeah, I had my work cut out for me.

My approach was to talk to everyone and anyone who was around when the Tigers took the field. Klausing was my primary source, but I interviewed dozens of players and countless fans to reconstruct this amazing story.

I also had to learn a lot about football, a sport I played but have complex feelings about. There were lots of surprises along the way, but the big one was that the sport -- thanks particularly to Klausing and his coaching staff -- really did serve as this overwhelmingly positive force in the lives of these kids.

There's a lot of scandal around football right now, and much of it is well-deserved. But in Braddock in the 1950s, the team served as a grounding influence for a group of boys dealing with abusive home lives, a rapidly changing world, and, in the case of the black players, rampant racism. Klausing was a real stand-in father figure, and that's exactly how his players speak of him to this day.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I'm hard at work on a new book! I'm following a team of incredible engineers who are helping paraplegics walk and are extending the normal capabilities of able-bodied individuals.

The book is all about the first commercial bionic exoskeletons, but it's really about a fundamental challenge that seems like it should be so simple but has proven extraordinarily sticky: How in the world do we make a machine walk like a human?

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: Just that I'm extraordinarily grateful for efforts like this, which serve to build communities of readers and writers. Thanks so much for the hard work, and thanks for giving me a microphone and a few minutes to share. 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Dec. 22

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Dec. 22, 1639: Jean Racine born.