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Music in Patrick O'Brian's novels
Music examples from the Jack Abrey era
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  Movie still: HMS Surprise encouters a fierce storm at Cape Horn
 
HMS Surprise encouters a fierce storm at Cape Horn (©2004 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Universal Studios, and Miramax Film Corp.)

Don't call me Ishmael.

Like Melville's character, I did feel called to the sea, but I'm afraid I won't be shipping out anytime soon.

When I was a lad, books like Captains Courageous and Two Years Before the Mast, The Sea Wolf and later, Moby Dick, all gave me dreams of being a sailor. But after several Channel crossings and a sailing weekend on Lake Superior, I've found I don't have the stomach for it. It seems I'll have to keep my sailing adventures to the printed page, and the silver screen.

Fortunately, a writer-friend of mine, Kij Johnson, loaned me a copy of Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, and I joined the club devoted to "the best writer you never heard of" (as Kenneth Ringle called him in The Washington Post).

With Peter Weir's new movie "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" opening on November 14th, I expect the audience for O'Brian will be growing.

I could go on for pages singing the praises of O'Brian's prose, the depth and humanity of his characters, his incredibly rich language, the texture of his historical settings, and, of course, all of the sailing lore. Others have done this better before me, however.

But as a classical music broadcaster, I have to give O'Brian especially good marks for the way he treats music in his novels. How could you not love a writer who ends a rollicking sea adventure, The Letter of Marque, with everyone on deck singing an aria from Mozart's Cosi fan tutte!

In the very first novel of the series, Master and Commander, we're introduced to Jack Aubrey in a music room scene worthy of Jane Austen (no surprise, since she was a favorite author of Patrick O'Brian). An Italian string quartet is playing "Locatelli's C major"—a bit of poet license, perhaps, since Locatelli doesn't seem to have written any quartets (in The Hundred Days there is a reference to Locatelli's C major TRIO, however).

 

  Musical Evenings with the Captain, volume 1
 
Musical Evenings with the Captain (volume 1)

audio Listen
"Musical Evenings with the Captain"
PIETRO ANTONIO LACATELLI
(1695-1764)
Sonata in G Major, Op.5 No. 1 for 2 Violins and Basso Continuo Andante
Alexander Tenenbaum (Violin), Dorothy Lawson (Cello), Mela Tenenbaum (Violin), Philharmonia Virtuosi of New York (Ensemble), Richard Kapp (Fortepiano)
ESS.AY CD1047
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Sitting on one of the little gilt chairs is our very human hero, in his best Navy uniform, staring intently at the bow of the first violin.

    The high note came, the pause, the resolution; and with the resolution the sailor's fist swept firmly down upon his knee…The words 'Very finely played, sir, I believe'were formed in his gullet if not quite in his mouth when he caught the cold and indeed inimical look and heard the whisper, 'If you really must beat the measure, sir, let me entreat you to do so in time, and not half a beat ahead.'

At the end of the program, Jack Aubrey is still offended enough with his neighbor's condescending remark and attitude that he's ready to "snatch up his little gilt chair and beat the white-faced man down with it." But he chooses to be civil, instead, and we discover that his aloof neighbor is Maturin, the man who will accompany Jack Aubrey not only on his many adventures to come, but in many an evening of chamber music—Jack on the violin and Stephen Maturin playing the cello, flute, or piano.

And so, in the space of four pages, we meet our two heroes—yin and yang, or chalk and cheese—and we find ourselves in Patrick O'Brian's world. A world where serious music is taken seriously, and, where people don't take their music vicariously—they make it themselves.

Patrick O'Brian obviously had a great love of, and sensitivity to, music. In The Ionian Mission we learn that even though Stephen Maturin and Jack Aubrey were very different,

    ... almost as unlike as men could be, unlike in nationality, religion, education, size, shape, profession, habit of mind, they were united in a deep love of music, and many and many an evening had they played together, violin answering `cello or both singing together far into the night.

In the same novel, Aubrey asks Maturin if he has ever met Bach. When Maturin asks him which one, Aubrey says the "London Bach," i.e. Johann Christian Bach, to distinguish him from Johann Sebastian Bach, whom Aubrey calls "old Bach."

 

  Musical Evenings with the Captain, volume 2
 
Musical Evenings with the Captain (volume 2)

audio Listen
"Musical Evenings with the Captain, volume 2"
JOHANN CHRISTIAN BACH (1735-1782)
Sonata in D Major Opus 16, No1 for Violin and Keyboard Allegro
—Mela Tenenbaum, violin; Richard Kapp, fortepiano
ESS.A.Y CD1056
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audio Listen
From the movie "The Master and Commander: the Far Side of the World"
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750)
Prelude from the unnaccampanied Cello Suite No.1 in G Major, BWV 1007
—Yo-Yo Ma, Cello
Decca B0001574
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In a scene in the second novel of the series, Post Captain, we are treated to the parallel between the wind that drives a sail, and the wind that brings life to music:

Jack wanders into a chapel

    An organ was playing inside, a sweet, light-footed organ hunting a fugue through its charming complexities…he had scarcely…settled himself in a pew before the whole elaborate structure collapsed in a dying wheeze and a thick boy crept from a hole under the loft and clashed down the aisle, whistling. It was a strong disappointment, the sudden breaking of a delightful tension, like being dismasted under full sail.

When Jack tells the organist of his disappointment, the elderly parson/organist replies

    'Alas, I have no wind…That chuff lad has blown his hour, and no power on earth will keep him…A musician, sir?'
    'Oh the merest dilettante, sir; but I should be happy to blow for you, if you choose to go on. It would be a sad shame to leave Handel up in the air, for want of wind.'

Is it strange for a man of war to be a man of music? Not a bit. Frederick the Great of Prussia would take his flute into battle with him. He concertized nightly, after dinner, with C. P. E. Bach providing keyboard accompaniment and his teacher, J. J. Quantz, looking on and saying, "Bravo," after every movement (there are worse gigs!).

In his notes to the CD "Musical Evenings with the Captain, Volume I" Patrick O'Brian speculates that many an 18th century naval officer, once on board ship, would attempt to master the German flute "with the help of a manual adapted to the meanest intelligence." Mozart wrote his first flute quartets for a naval surgeon with the Dutch East Indies company. In The Yellow Admiral Mozart's Oboe Quartet even figures into the plot!

 

  Mozart Flute Quartets
 
Mozart Flute Quartets with Emmanuel Pahud.

audio Listen
"Mozart Flute Quartets"
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791)
Flute Quartet in D, K285 Adagio
—Emmanuel Pahud, flute; Christoph Poppen, violin; Hariolf Schlichtig, viola; Jean-Guihen Queyras, violoncello
EMI Classics 56829
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audio Listen
"Musical Evenings with the Captain, volume 2"
MOZART: Oboe Quartet in F Major, K370 (368b)
Rondueau: Allegro
—John Ferrillo, oboe; Mela Tenenbaum, violin; Richard Brice, viola; Jerry Grossman, cello
ESS.A.Y CD1056
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O'Brian says the tastes of most musical amateurs in the navy at the time of the Napoleonic Wars were conservative. Mozart at the most modern, with "occasional stragglers like Clementi and Hummel."

    Yet even so, what vast expanses of joy and delight lie between these limits: quite apart from men of the rank of Handel, Gluck or Haydn there were many, many admirable composers of charming music—Avison, the lesser Bachs, Paisiello, Albinoni, Molter, Fasch, the Zelenkas, Locatelli, even Arne—to name only a few—and it is in these wide plains, this great wealth of talent that Aubrey and Maturin wandered at large whenever duty, the dangers of the sea and the violence of the enemy allowed them to do so.

     

  Charles Avison: 12 Concert Grossi
 
Charles Avison: 12 Concerti Grossi

audio Listen
CHARLES AVISON
(1709-1770)
Concerto No. 9 in C
—The Brandenburg Consort; Roy Goodman, violin
Hyperion CDA66891
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audio Listen
JAN DISMAS ZELENKA
(1679-1745)
Capriccio II in G major - Gavotte
—Heinz Hollinger, Hans Elhorst, oboe; Mafred Sax, Faggott; Barry Tuckwell, Robert Routch, horn; Alexander van Wijnkoop, Violin
Archiv 423 703-2

 

 

Peter Weir’s new film is adapted from the novel The Far Side of the World. Together with Master and Commander and The Letter of Marque they have nearly thirty smart musical references ranging from "a great deep roaring Dies Irae" (from the Mass for the Dead) that startles the quarterdeck, to an "often-played yet ever-fresh" sonata of Corelli.

audio Listen
"Dies Irae" (from the Mass of the Dead)
—Schola Cantorum of Amsterdam Students, director Wim van Gerven
Sony Classical SBK 66 278
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I was happy to hear filmmaker Peter Weir say in a recent interview that he listened to "hundreds of CDs" while planning and directing his new movie "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World." Russell Crowe, who plays Jack Aubrey in the film, is a musician himself; however, his band, 30 Odd Foot Of Grunts, probably doesn't play a lot of Locatelli and Mozart.

If you want to explore the musical side of Patrick O'Brian's world further, "Musical Evenings with the Captain" Volume I & Volume II offer a selection of the kinds of pieces that would have been a part of the Aubrey/Maturin world.

The soundtrack recording from Peter Weir's new film, "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" has a nice chamber arrangement of part of a Mozart violin voncerto that would have been well suited to the gathering in the Captain's cabin. It also has some Bach, Corelli, and Boccherini pieces that fit the mood of the novels.

 

  Music from the motion picture Master and Commander: the Far Side of the World
 
Music from the motion picture Master and Commander: the Far Side of the World

audio Listen
"The Master and Commander: the Far Side of the World"
MOZART: Violin Concerto No. 3 K.216, 3rd movement
—Richard Tognetti, Violin; Emma-Jane Murphey, violoncello
Decca B0001574
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John Zech is a music host on MPR, and the host of the daily show Composer's Datebook.

For a more detailed look at the theme of music in the Aubrey-Maturin novels, a good resource online is at www.io.com/gibbonsb/reper mtoire.html .

 

 

 
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