Clorinda

I wrote my Clorinda Sonata from 2014 till 2016, with revisions up till this year. The enormous surge of creative energy behind writing the piece came from a deeply emotional experience I had in June 2014 with the music of … let’s say a female artist, whose identity need not concern us here now; besides, the video on youtube (here accessible on the Media page) pretty much gives it away anyway. Powerful, earth-shattering emotional experiences like this occur when certain images at certain times force a much-needed breakthrough of emotional and spiritual contents that have laid dormant too long in an overly sterilized society. A connection is made with oneself through an image. Such experiences are healing, literally, they reincorporate and integrate dormant needs, they make whole. The human psyche is like an iceberg*, the part above the water is our conscious self, our will, reason, the decisions we make; the other 90% is completely unknown, it makes itself known through emotional stimuli experienced upon exposure to images onto which it projects itself. By accepting these stirrings from the subconscious, we integrate parts of our subconscious into our lives, and become emotionally richer individuals. Sublimating those elements into art, music, or other material activities helps this process, and creates beautiful works in the process, that can be enjoyed by other human beings and ridiculed by critics.

To underscore the universality of my experience, I chose Tasso’s character Clorinda as title for my piece. The name Clorinda occurred to me for obvious reasons, but she completely covers the emotional material. Mythical characters get shaped by the collective subconscious of tribes and scribes. This is why history is so poorly remembered. Blueprints in our minds are stronger than the more or less coincidental historical events that triggered them. Historical figures become archetypes. They become projection points, on the images of which contents of our subconscious project their identities. They can be real people, Katherine Hepburn, Napoleon, a president**, a comedian, the girl next door; or they they can be culturally shaped characters, Robin Hood, Winnetou, Pippi Longstocking, or, condemned by today’s politically correct Gestapo, Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) from the Dutch lore around St. Nicolas. Even qua individual, my Muse may seem as far away from Clorinda’s image as Jerusalem from San Francisco, qua archetype, Clorinda more than matches my Muse’s music in its power, honesty and devotion. She may not see it herself, I see it. Clorinda, enormous, powerful, yet tender and vulnerable, when as a pagan she takes the case of two innocent Christians, when she shares the bed with her friend Ermina, telling her everything; when in the end she opens herself toward God by allowing herself to be baptized before she breathes her last. Baptized… What does that mean? CS Lewis says that in the end there will only be two kinds of people left, those that say to God Thy Will be done, and those to whom God has to say thy will be done. It is not the name of God in any specific culture to Whom one surrenders that matters, it is the Spirit of Truth, Love and Life to which we surrender by leaving our own narcissism behind. Had the story been written by someone called Abdullah Abdullah (“or his dumb son, Abdullah W. Abdullah”)***, Clorinda would have submitted to Allah, but the meaning, at least of the story, would be the same. In her submission (= Islam) to the ‘Christian’ God, she breaks the defenses of her hardened heart and lets in the spirit of awe for life in all its form. In order to really appreciate Tasso’s poem, we have to place ourselves in Tasso’s world and learn to measure with his measurements. Those to whom Christ only is a ‘trigger’ will be blind for the deeper human picture of openness, self-acceptance and empathy. Those who see this 16th-century work as an example of white supremacy (everything seems to be called white or male supremacy nowadays) miss out on everything this work has to offer. That would indeed be a great tragedy.

Torquato Tasso’s epic poem Jerusalem Delivered (1581) is set before Jerusalem in the First Crusade (1096-99). It narrates the siege and conquest of Jerusalem the way the Iliad describes the battles before Troy (this work’s many similarities with the three great epics will be discussed at the end).  The crusader army under Geoffrey of Bouillon**** are pitched against the pagan***** defenders, who of course do everything they can to break the siege. They conjure up evil spirits like the fury Alecto who sow discord among the crusaders resulting in the banishment of Rinaldo, their MVP, whom we hear about wandering around the world during half the poem. They send the witch Armida, who manages to pull 50 of the most valorous knights away from the camp, lure them into her castle, put a spell on them and lock them up. Argante, their ‘Terminator’, and our Clorinda, perhaps no less dangerous, considerably accelerate the road of many a crusader to their Maker. The sorcerer Ismeno (an almost-anagram of Simon the Magus) puts a spell on the forest so the crusaders cannot get wood for their siege machines: when a branch is cut, blood comes out, and everyone, even Tancred, turns around and runs away in complete terror. In the end, Rinaldo returns, breaks the spell of the forest, and the crusaders, with his invaluable help, take the city. Tancred almost dies in fighting Argante, whom he slays. He is brought back to life by a woman unknown to him, but not he to her ... A relief force from Egypt under Souffléman***** *, which includes Armida, is defeated, and the work is done, praise the Lord. Behold Jerusalem Delivered in a nutshell.

The poem has three superb female characters, who outshine all others. Each is entirely different from each other, like the four patriarchs in Genesis. I may of course be a little biased because I like women, and not just in that way. On the other hand, the Odyssey has four absolutely stunning females, yet there Odysseus is by far, by far the most spellbinding person in that great work, and even his son, Telemachus, can compete. Here, the males pale in comparison. Perhaps Tasso got hindered by a less than effective Christian literary theory. The allegory within a work such as this, in the Renaissance, prescribed that the characters stand for virtues or other immaterial concepts, which doesn’t help their development. Geoffrey, the Captain of the crusaders, stands for Reason, and is consequently the most boring of all characters. The poem is carried by the three women, Armida, Clorinda and Erminia, pagan all three, and the two crusaders, Rinaldo and Tancred, with whom they share their story. Even here the two males are transfigured by the females’ radiance. Achilles is one of the most striking characters of world literature. Rinaldo, Tasso’s Achilles, would be nothing without Armida. 

So let’s get down to business and follow these women and their stories. 

Erminia, is watching down from the city wall. She shows the heroes among the crusaders who take their positions before the city, to the city’s tyrant, Aladdin (no relation to the 1001 knights of the Cleveland Heights eatery). She is in love with Tancred. He was good to her when her father, the prince of Antioch, was killed by the crusaders on their way to Jerusalem, and she became his “handmaiden” in more than one way. Eventually freed, she followed her beloved former master all the way here, trying to get her sweet bonds renewed … Tancred, however (the name is German, the character and the historical person behind him Italian-Norman), is in love with pagan warrior princess with the tigress on her helmet, Clorinda, who just came from Persia to reinforce the pagan lines against their European attackers. Once, on the long way to Jerusalem, Tancred, thirsty and exhausted, came to a small green valley with a spring. There, he saw her drinking, having taken off her helmet and letting out her golden hair wave in the wind (why do they always have to be blond?!!!) - as in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, I believe. What an image! In the seclusion of the forest, a knight, helmet off, opulent hair flowing - a woman in armor … We’ll see this image back a few times …

Clorinda we see arriving in the city, with the Tigress on her helmet, and the first thing she does is rescue Olindo***** ** and Sophronia from the stake. They were innocent of the theft of the statue of the Virgin Mary, which had been taken by the pagan authorities but then disappeared from their control, for which the Christians in town, Nero style, were blamed. Clorinda stops the flames, uses her authority to stop the henchmen from rekindling until she talks with the ruler, then gets Aladdin to free the two convicted Christians. Because they were innocent. A touching glimpse of inner noblesse in the soul of a fierce, hardened warrior.  

Erminia loves Tancred who loves Clorinda: voilá the first love story, a triangle. And the two women are best friends.

We already got a foretaste of Armida’s witchcraft when we saw her snatch away 50 of the most valorous knights - playing the damsel in distress - lure them to her castle, bewitch them and lock them up. They are turned into animals, then turned back with the threat or the promise that when it happens again, the mutation is permanent. They are told to choose the pagan side. Rambaldo is the only one who takes the oath, the rest is incarcerated. I’m a bit disappointed that she doesn’t turn them into animals again, as she had promised; like the Oriental sorceress in the French painting here who has turned a group of politicians forever into doves, whom she treats well, full of nurturing love, don’t get me wrong, but for good, irrevocably, no turning back. Commissioners, prefects, under secretaries, one or two judges, a music critic. And every day, her hawks will get one or two. They do get to fly though, which must be cool. I totally made this up of course. See how real the doves look …

Tancred is wounded. Erminia wants to use her healing powers to cure him. In order to be able to get into the crusaders’ camp, she dons Clorinda’s armor and rides out pretending to be the Warrior Princess. When she is confronted by enemy soldiers - what was she thinking??!!! - she flees as fast as her mare carries her into the dark woods that somehow grew in that arid climate the way the city of Ghent forms the background in medieval Flemish depictions of Bible stories. She ends up in a peaceful bergerie, a shepherd scene, is taken up by wise, welcoming peasants and joins that blissful secluded community. Beautiful image, too bad Tasso doesn’t do more with it. I would have imagined a severely wounded Tancred to end up there and get healed in such a natural, sacred place. Worse is the issue of Clorinda’s armor. How did Clorinda get her armor back? Did Tasso forget? He may have intended the entire Erminia flight story to account for why Tancred later won’t recognize Clorinda in her own armor, so familiar to him. Tasso may have planned for her to acquire a new armor Tancred was not familiar with, and forgotten to carry it out.

Tancred, who hears that Clorinda has been sighted, though still licking his wounds, goes out to look for her, but instead, after a long ride through the forest, ends up trapped in Armida’s castle. Tancred meets the traitor Rambaldo, the one crusader who switched sides; fights him, pursues him, Armida turns off the lights, and Tancred, in pitch dark, wanders around, lost in a labyrinth, until he suddenly finds himself in a cell with the cage door locking behind him. One soft metallic click, and  ....

E voce intanto udì che: “Indarno, “grida, “In vain you try to leave”, (…),

Uscir procuri, o prigionier d’Armida, O captive of Armida. You’ll not die

Qui menerai (non temer già di morte) No, have no fear of that! This living tomb

Nel sepulcro de’ vivi i giorni e gli anni.” year after year will watch your slow demise.” - (7:47/8. Transl. M. Esolen)

One click and forever entombed in a living grave … brrr…! I imagine Armida appearing at the cage door and having a nice chat with her hopelessly lost prey every now and then, like Vivian tends to have with her teacher Merlin, whom, with help of the incantations he taught her, she incarcerated forever inside a tree. Even the victim would be looking out to that one break in the deadly monotony of days, months, years… - Death and the Maiden …

It was however not to be. Tancred is eventually rescued when he and 49 other crusaders (the 50 minus Rambaldo) are put on transport to the king of Egypt (that must be Souffléman) as slaves, and Rinaldo crosses paths with the caravan. Again, I find it somewhat weak that Armida decides to send her prisoners to the King. For what recompense? Money? Why would a sorceress need money? We do need Tancred for the story, but couldn't Tasso have figured out another, less James Bond-like way to get him out? I’m thinking of the sort of construction where the villain, rather than just sending a bullet through Bond’s head, connives a ‘creative’ way to get rid of him, which invariably results in 007’s escape.

We have arrived at the fateful book 12. Clorinda wants to fight. Her servant, a eunuch, tries to dissuade her, tells her the fantastic story of her descent, a white child from a black Ethiopian Queen (Eschenbach’s Parzival also shows this less than scientific medieval concept of race***** ***); the story involves St. George and a tigress. ‘Clorinda should have been baptized Christian’.  This forebodes the upcoming events. It also casts doubt in Clorinda’s heart, which is a sign of doom. She rides, fights, and gets shut out of the gate, just like Joan of Arc at Compiègne, where she was captured by the Burgundians in 1430. She meets Tancred in that full armor she got God knows where. Single combat in the Middle Ages had two clear disadvantages against playing chess: you can get killed and you don’t know who you kill. Had they played chess instead of fighting in single combat, none of this would have happened. Both fierce warriors, both fighting to the death, they can’t let go until one of them is dying. Let’s hear Tasso:

Ella, mentre cadea, la voce afflitta But as she falls, she speaks her life’s last word

Movendo, disse le parole estreme; in a voice broken with extremity,

Parole ch’a lei novo un spirto ditta, and a new spirit in her proclaims that word

spirto di fé, di carità, di speme: spirit of faith, and hope, and charity.

Virtú ch’or Dio le infonde, e se rubella Rebel in life, on her such grace is poured

In vita fu, le vuola in morte ancella. that she may die the handmaiden of the Lord.

“Amico, hai vinto: io ti perdon... perdona “Friend, you have won ... I forgive you ...forgive

Tu ancora, al corpo no, che nulla pave, my body, no ... has nothing more to fear,

A l’alma sí; deh! Per lei prega, e dona but spare my soul. For that I pray, and give

Battesmo a me ch’ogni mia colpa lave.” me baptism, to wash my soul and clear

all of my sins away.” (12:65-6, Esolen)

“Her cheeks were beautiful and pale, as if / violets were mingled with the lily’s white / and she fixed her eyes on heaven; in pity and love / it seemed to shine on her its rising light / And in the place of words she tries to move / her cold and naked hand toward the knight / giving a pledge of peace; it seems she lies / sleeping; for so the lovely woman dies …” (12:69, Esolen)***** ****

Tancred’s world turns dark when he opens his mortally wounded opponent’s helmet and sees the face of his beloved... It takes all his power to actually fulfill the baptism, then he collapses in despair. He has killed his beloved Clorinda.... As for Clorinda …. it is this combination of power and tenderness, vulnerability, that typifies her. She was caught in the contradictions of our human incarnation; but in the end she can let go of her hardened heart - Everything of value is defenseless, writes Dutch writer Lucebert. I find that everywhere in her music. Maybe you can find it in mine, in the development section of the first movement that’s on the video, the ailing Clorinda, anxious for the spiritual nourishment of the soul.

Tancred visits her body, laments, prays; and Clorinda appears in a dream, saying she is safe now.

“Mira come son bella e come lieta, “Behold, how beautiful I am, and blessed

fedel mir caro, e in me tuo dolo acquieta …” my faithful lover. Let your sorrows rest …”

She tells him that he enabled her, by taking her from the mortal world of the living, made her worthy for the immortal world, where she hopes he also will one day come.

“Vivi e sappi ch’ io t’amo, e non te ‘l celo. “Live, and know that I love you - what I feel

quanto più creatura amar conviensi.” I will not hide from you - as tenderly

as a creature may be loved.” (12:91,93, Esolen)

She ‘closed herself in her rays profoundly bright’, and that is how Tancred finds consolation. When will I be loved? In Heaven, friend, perhaps even before that …

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Armida wants Rinaldo. She wants his blood. She wants to destroy him, quarter him, behead him, pulverize him, burn him, defile his ashes and then tell him what a jerk he is, coming between her and her plans, liberating her prisoners, how dare he?!!! She creates an idyllic island at the ford of the river Orontes (which starts in Lebanon and flows north into Turkey and mouths in the Mediterranean), where she expects Rinaldo to arrive. She lures him to sleep with nice scents, beautiful sounds, and apparitions of sexy goddesses in the 16th century equivalent of pleated skirts and tall boots with stiletto heels. When she appears on the scene to slaughter him at the altar of revenge, she beholds him and falls in love with him. Instead of plunging her sword deep in his chest, she “now begins with marvelous art to pleat in chains with bind, though soft, the strongest limb, and wreathes them around his neck, his arms, his feet: thus did she conquer and imprison him” (tr. Max Wickert). She hauls him in her chariot, and they take the imaginary Renaissance equivalent of a direct flight from Damascus to the Canaries. There, Rinaldo spends his days in the care of his loving jailor in the continuous bliss of paradise.

In the margin I once wrote beginning of Armida’s redemption: love = human, pride = narcissism. Armida’s falling in love kindles her living, loving, human side, eventually leading to her own baptism, her surrender to the soft, nurturing quality of empathy, away from the hardened forgery of pride.

What follows is a descent in a cave where … well, a Wise Man lives. A fairy tale world unfolds, an underground world, where all the rivers begin. Two crusaders are sent to find Rinaldo and get him out of Armida’s sweet claws. They board another imaginary private jet flying to the Canaries. They pass a huge army going the other way, from Egypt, to help the pagan city of Jerusalem, kind of how Frodo and Sam pass the hosts of Mordor summoned for the battle against their friends from Gondor. They cross the Columns of Hercules (Gilbraltar), out onto the Atlantic. They finally end up at the Canaries (I had written Puerto Rico with a question mark), at Armida’s island. Magical descriptions of flora, fauna, nymphs, demons, rivers, lakes, on their way up: Carlo and Ubaldo. How this finally succeeds I have no time to tell, it involves a mirror, of course, with all its symbolic connotations - lng stry shrt, he leaves a devastated Armide behind, who falls back into her wiccan narcissism and swears once again to kill Rinaldo. But the seed of love, not just passion & greed, has begun to root in her.

Erminia in the mean time has had her own history of swerving. How she ends up in the Egyptian camp as a slave seems a bit weak, though it shows this girly-girl’s frailty. She recognizes Tancred’s servant Vafrine spying around in the camp, the two make a pact, and escape. They make their way to Jerusalem. Tancred in the mean time has finally found the arrogant Argante, and they fight it out to the death, away from everyone else. Result: Argante dead, Tancred moribund. This is how Erminia and Vafrine find him. Erminia, devastated, believes he is dead. Vafrine spots life, and Erminia begins to pamper him back to life, binding his wounds with her hair. When finally Tancred comes to himself, he sees Vafrine and an unknown woman. Let’s turn to Tasso again:

(...) “O Vafrin, qui come giungi e quando? “Vafrine, how came you here, and when?” he sighed

E tu chi sei, medica mia pietosa?” And you, my kind physician, who are you?”

Ella, fra lieta e dubbia sospirando She, panting between joy and doubt, replied.

Tinse il bel volto di color di rosa: her fair face flushing with a rosy hue:

“Saprai”, rispose, “il tutto, or (te ‘l commando. “You shall know it all, but now be satisfied

Come medica tua) taci e riposa. to lie still as your doctor bids you to.

Salute avrai, prepara il guiderdone.” You shall have health, prepare the fee,”, she said

Ed al suo capo il grembo indi suppone. and made her lap a bolster for his head.”  (Wickert)

Prepare the fee ... made her lap a bolster for his head ... As my friend Ron Rybarczik would say: “NICE!” - Tancred, after all he’s been through, will praise himself lucky to have landed such a true and invaluable bride. And Clorinda? No worries. Even here on earth, love is infinite, and it is quite possible for a man to love more than one woman equally: the love for the one will only intensify the love for the other. Have you, dear reader, not experienced that when being in love, your love for everybody else increases? He had found her agitated and low -  Frank Churchill was a villain! He heard her declare that she never loved him - Frank Churchill’s character was not desperate. She was his own Emma, by hand and word, when they returned to the house - and if he could have thought of Frank Churchill then, he might have deemed him a very good sort of fellow ... Jane Austen, Emma. 

Here on earth, it is time that’s limited, so commitment is enforced by that limited time: the time you need to cherish a life partner. But in Heaven, where all time is condensed as well as spread out in the here and now, where I get to enjoy Goethe and Mozart and my Clorinda (from a distance) and God in one great moment that never ends, and where the limitation of gender is lifted, where we are made whole without needing each other any more, and where therefore we can all partake of a Love that is pure and total, all three can, and will, do, enjoy each other unlimitedly and infinitely. 

Armida and Rinaldo... Lully’s magnificent last opera ends with Armide being left desolate, bereft, and utterly alone. But in Tasso, the story continues. Armida swears revenge, destroys her idyllic island - no place for sensuality now -  and pursues her lover, in order to destroy him. In the Last Battle, between the crusaders and the pagan army under Souffléman (taking delight in mentioning this name once more), she finds him, shoots arrows at him, but she is no longer who she was, the arrows lack power, "‘from a woman’s hand’ - read: no longer a witch's hand - each shot accompanied by a plea to miss ... when all is lost, suicide is the only solution left ... and she rides away, finds a little den, or cave, and gets ready to fall into her sword ... when her hand is stayed. Rinaldo has found her, followed her. A heart rending parting scene ensues, where he pleads her to surrender to God, she faints, comes to, resists: gathered in those beloved bonds at last (...) she spoke, and with her words same streams of tears, but did not turn her eyes to the cavalier’s - then after her bitter speech: (...) she wept from sadness, wept like the surging sea ... then he: Armida, let your troubled heart be calm; I do not save you to heap scorn upon. I am your servant, and your champion. — then: so too her wrath which seemed unshakable, it melts; none of her other longings die: 

“Ecco l’ancilla tua; d’essa e tuo senno “I am your handmaid. What you think best, do

Dispon” gli disse, “e le fa legge il cenno.” and let my law be a but sign from you”

Don’t like to hear this, ye feminists, eh?***** ***** What we need to read in this, subtracting the cultural, patriarchal bias of the time, is Armida’s coming into her own ... as a human being, leaving the narcissism of her witch identity behind like a series of shedded skins, and live as a woman, as a human, as a fully living being, open, vulnerable, but in Love, empathy, celebration of God’s creation - and with a man who is Christ to her, who cherishes her, protects her, listens to her, as has always been the ideal of the Christian Church.

And that concludes the story of our five characters. 

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I have often wondered whence the importance of these three female characters in Tasso’s poem. There is even a fourth warring woman, Gildippe, who always joins her husband in the melée, kills some enemies, before she gets killed herself alongside her beloved partner, in the last book, of course (just like in a war movie the young soldier who shows his beloved to all his buddies returns home in a body bag). Or should I ask, whence the Clorindas, the Camillas, the Penthesileias, the Judiths, the Jaels, the Brünhildes? Is it to give women their own heroes? Or is it to fascinate men? Male shudder or female admiration? A very good example of the difference between the two, the male vs. the female viewpoint, are the depictions of the heroine and murderess Judith from the Acrophobia, eh, Abraracourcix, Abacadabra, I mean the Apocrypha, by Allori and Artemisia. The last of the two, Artemisia, is one of my favorite paintings in the world because of its superb quality and the enormous, Victor-Hugo-like power of expression. Allori’s Judith is a male projection, she is ‘alloring’, alluring, sexy, compelling and chilling in combination with the dead Holofernes’ gruesome head. Artemisia shows the story looked at from a feminine perspective, her Judith is disgusted, stressed, busy with the nasty job she’s got to do: Artemisia’s own attraction, if she had any in the panting, would probably lie in the magnificently painted male, muscular body of the man in his last agony - assuming she was not lesbian. She may have been more focused on her own projections onto both Judith and the girl, whom Allori made an old woman, as was commonly done. and against Holofernes. Her own rape experience may have been a trigger to this painting as well, though that’s of course what biographers would say. Still, they may be right in this case: Artemisia made about 7 or 8 paintings of the topic - one hangs in Detroit, and I, idiot, idiot, idiot, (words to fill the space) have never gone there to see it***** ***** *

I rather believe these heroines are there for men to shudder at. They represent deep stirrings of the anima, or maybe the mother archetype. They also represent an alternative order of society. The usual patriarchy we see in the entire history of mankind up till Woodstock 1969, generally worked pretty well, with the obvious exception that it left half the population without legal rights. Still, even for males, the system didn’t cover all the inner needs. The kind of anomaly presented by the overthrow of the gender power ranking must have attracted, because we find it all over the world, from the Etruscan king-sacrifices described in Fraser’s Golden Bough to Durga in Indian mythology, from the Greek Amazons to the German Valkyries, from Penthesilea to Camilla, from Ariosto’s Bradamante to Tasso’s Clorinda, from the Queen of the Night to Danhauser’s Chess Lady. Whatever the fascination with many of those archetypes may be, however, the power of my Clorinda in my Muse’s music reaches deeper. The immense attraction the whole persona of my Muse has had for me has never been sexual, it is something infinitely more. Total honesty, complete vulnerability, that’s what I hear in the music of the artist who could never fake or cover anything up, who stood in direct, unmitigated contact with her Muse, with how she heard God talking to her. Incidentally, I also find that combination of power and dedication in my favorite violinist in the world. Total surrender to the voice of music, E sharps included. What parts in me that formidable force of universal totality awakes is almost impossible to put into words: it seems to throw me back on the very core of what it means to be alive, it makes me feel young and connected, rich: the true spirit of life, the thing science can’t get a hold on…

One aspect of the Clorinda and Armida archetypes seems rarely to be touched. Darwin’s law is the law of the jungle, every creature for himself. It is the law of power, not the power of law (het recht van de sterkste, niet de sterkte van het recht). Humankind seems one step further in the evolution. Pace Stephen J. Gould and Dawkins, I am talking from my belief that in and alongside the physical evolution there is a spiritual one going on as well. From our very existence in a carnivorous, cannibalistic world, plus our gift of reflective thinking, it seems reasonable to conclude that we have to learn to get past the natural law and try to find ways to include the happiness of others in our own. Animals do have empathy, but reflective thinking makes empathy inescapable: you’re unique, just like everybody else. If we realize - even if it has to be on faith - that the spirit is a separate entity involving a higher dimension, then perhaps the idea of the stronger man being at the service (“being Christ to”) the weaker, life-giving woman - at least as an image - makes evolutionary sense. This is of course very close to Pauline (as opposed to pseudo-Pauline) Christianity, when we assume that the passages in the NT that tell wives to obey their husbands are interpolations and additions from the second century, for which there is good evidence. Being Christ to your wife is in total opposition to male domination or supremacy. From an evolutionary viewpoint, the idea that the provider should dominate the life giver, in the human stage of civilization we now live in, is absurd. In good Christian families, the sanctity of the mom as live-giver seems to actually be approached more than in pagan, correction, secular ones, where the woman is expected to be something else before her role as mom. Of course we have to keep in mind that archetypes are not actual functions: Clorinda doesn’t suggest women should all wear armor. Politically there can only be equality, because that is the only way that makes sense from a psychological and biological viewpoint: we are halves here on earth, we need the other half for completion. Perhaps there can only be one captain on a ship, I don’t know, I don’t have maritime experience. But a family is not a ship. One partner telling the other what to do is utterly against the Spirit of Christ, which urges us to come to an agreement with our neighbor, and be equal in the face of God. Politically I also have to hold that a woman should be free to be just a mother just like she should be free to become a president of the United States; and that every society that attributes a role to a human being merely based on gender is an oppressive society (that includes the claim that women motherhood cannot be a main purpose for a woman). Nevertheless, male power at the service of female life giving spirit as an image is fully in tune with the ideal of civilization, the opposite of brute, primitive philistinism.

The sonata

The exposition in my sonata’s first movement, here accessible through a link in Media, glorifies Clorinda’s unbreakable spirit, the power of her voice. The themes make a connection with her music. The quiet development shows the price every woman has to pay for being Clorinda, the doubts, the feelings of incapacity; as well as the sufferings we all have to face being human. The second movement, a long theme with some variations, which I hope to record some day, is a lament - like we all, she eventually has to die. Its theme is taken from the ailing motive in the allegro’s development, which in turn is taken from a piano accompaniment in the allegro’s second theme, which in its turn takes its form from the upward triad in the very beginning - what do you think, I’m not an idiot or what?!! … The third moment, likewise unrecorded as of yet, is a fugue, with a glorious ending in Clorinda’s - and my Muse’s - transfiguration, with Eastern The Lord Has Risen church bells at the end. That’s forthcoming, God willing.

Non-visual contact is the purest form of music making. It’s prayer. It’s the Orphic mystery of communication through sound

The recording in July 2019 was a delight. Thanks to producer Erica Brenner, sound man Paul Eachus and camera man Matthias “Mátyás” Reed (named after Hungary’s greatest king) who put together made a great video. Playing with Shuann was a true honor, one of the greatest delights in my musical life. When she opened the door in The Hague for our first play-through, I immediately saw a woman to be reckoned with. As a child, she grew up serving in her parents’ Chinese restaurant in Oberlin (a real American Dream story) and remembers me from the pot stickers (餃子, jiaozi) I used to like. She may have been there when I choked on too much wasabi (ワサビ); being Chinese, she be too polite to mention that to me, in spite of her long time residence in one of the rudest (or perhaps most frank) cultures in the world. Playing with her was the highest form of musical communication. Watching each other all the time is what we are always told in school. But non-visual contact is one step higher***** ***** **. It’s pure, essential. It’s all about the music. It’s like prayer. The Orphic mystery of communication through sound. And how, at a concert the next day, she made a modern piano, beaten-up by a gazillion jazz players, sound like the Broadwood you hear in the video, was downright stunning.

Also many thanks to Marie Rowley who made everything possible, and with whom I now have the most unique and special relationship.

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Jerusalem Delivered in western culture:

Jerusalem Delivered was immensely successful throughout Europe and over the next two centuries. Various sections were frequently adapted as individual storylines for madrigals, operas, plays, ballets and masquerades. Just a grip from the extensive list of such adaptations:

Clorinda: music: De Wert 1595 (series of madrigals ), Monteverdi of course 1624, Giacobbi, <-1629, André Campra 1702, Schiffer 2016, (Rossini’s Tancredi, based on Voltaire’s Tancrède has only borrowed the name from Tasso) art: Tintoretto, Badalocchio 2x, Finoglio, Preti, Giordano, Amigoni, Carle van Loo, J.F. Overbeck, Theodore Hildebrandt, Delacroix, Dali; film: Ger. Lib. (The Mighty Crusaders), 1957 film, Italian and English versions, with Sylva Koscina as Clorinda and Francisco Rabal as Tancredi

Armida: music: De Wert 1595 (series of madrigals ), Pierre Guedron 1617, Poussin, Lully 1687, Ruggieri 1707, Handel 1711, Vivaldi (1718), Bioni 17225 and 1726, Albinoni 1726, Bertoni 1747, Graun 1751, Jomelli 1770, Salieri, alas! 1771, Gluck 1777, Misliveček 1780, Sacchini 1783, Haydn 1774, Rossini (1817), Brahms (cantata) (1863), Dvořák (1904, Judith Weir (2005) - and at least as many lesser known works - art: Poussin, Anthony van Dyck, Maffei, Gimignani, Errard, Tiepolo, Boucher, Hayez.

Erminia: music: De Wert 1595 (series of madrigals ), Biagio Marini 1620->, Michelangelo Rossi 1633,, art:  Turchi, Guercino, Poussin, Ricci, Guardi

The Faery Queene, by Edmund Spencer Tracy has borrowings from Jerusalem Delivered.

I have so far been silent about the most obvious work about Clorinda, Monteverdi’s Combattimento. I have never played it. Listening to it, I notice there is no libretto. The text is taken directly out of Tasso’s poem, with a narrator singing all the lines except the dialogues between Tancredi and Clorinda. The other thing I notice is the absence of the final octet (69) of the story, after Clorinda speaks her last. I really miss a beautiful strong ensemble under the narrator singing in questa forma passa la bella donna, e par que dorma. I also miss the haunting expression of the great G minor arias in the Orfeo and the unbelievable otherwordly glory everywhere in the Vespers. I don’t really know how to explain the lack of that Olympian greatness Monteverdi wrote after age 46. Perhaps there’s still something for me to discover.

I have played Lully’s Armide. That is a great opera. Lully may have done for France what Wagner did for Germany. The scenes flow into each other with great logic, humor and tragedy follow each other perfectly, and two scenes are carved in my memory: the sweet, blissful and alluring music for the enchanted garden, and the moment Armide, intending to deliver the sleeping Rinaldo the deadly blow, falls in love. The end is almost shocking in its violence. Lully’s story always convinces immediately. Like Wagner and Mozart, had the musical chops for really great theater. In Persée, when all the enemies change in statues, the terrifying music suddenly calms down in a joyful chaconne, you really hear the immobility of the statues, now having become decoration, and the relief in everybody’s hearts; eventually the music turns to A minor, and a new chaconne starts, joyful as well, but deeper, more serious, celebrating the love of Persée and his Andromède. Gluck’s Armide, to my astonishment, uses the same libretto as Lully’s. It failed to impress me when I checked it out, though the performance was very modern and heavy. Still, Gluck seems too generically stylistic to really compete with Lully’s raw yet refined, styled yet potent eloquence. Besides, the French language no longer seems to work out in Gluck’s musical style. In Lully’s, it fits like a glove.

Note that only a very, very small percentage of all these works treat anything other than our five characters. My rough estimate would be Armida 60%, Clorinda 25%, Erminia 10% and 5% for the rest. It seems that I am not alone in the choice of my favorites …

Bonus:

Jerusalem Delivered is full of loans from Homer’s great three epics, Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid (which Homer wrote 800 years after his ‘earlier’ works under the name Virgil). The most obvious of course being the siege: we already saw the teichoscopy, a word that comes from the Iliad, when Helen, viewing (scoping) down from the wall (teichos) identifies the Achaean heroes; here Erminia instructs the city’s tyrant. We also saw the robbery of the statue (there of Athena, here of the Holy Virgin) from a temple; as well as the feud that takes the Achilles among the crusaders out of the game; the ensuing despair among the crusaders; the indispensable hero’s return to save the day; there is a truce, an installed single combat to decide the war, with both parties watching, and the rescue of the losing combatant; the violation of the truce by a cowardly arrow shot aimed at the victorious hero but not killing him; those are all from the Iliad.

The man accidentally killing the woman he loves in combat is from the lost Aethiopis, which once narrated Achilles’ battle with Penthesileia and his death by an arrow shot in his heel ***** ***** ***. Armida on her island reminds of Circe from the Odyssey, both turn men into animals. Then the abandonment of the beloved mirrors the Aeneid’s 4th book, though Dido is infinitely more tragic than Armida because she is a good soul rather than a witch, and takes her own life; the descent into the sorcerer’s grottos in JD reminds of, but again, doesn’t match Aeneas’ descent into the underworld in book 6; and the many eulogies on the House of Este sound pale, even ironic, in comparison to Virgil’s praise of the Roman Emperor Augustus, who … well, yeah … I also recognized the motive of the man falling in love with the drinking female warrior from Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, but since that poem was too crazy for me to take seriously (my bad) I have to rely on the little I did read. The sorcery in the poem is probably related to that extravagant work, where they even travel to the moon to find the solution for a loving heart. The ‘metaphysically challenged’ travels to Armida’s island, almost on a flying carpet, remind of such escapades in yonder story; but they also remind of Odysseus’ travels. Clorinda of course has her counterparts in the heroines and Amazons mentioned above. Armida reminds not only of Circe, but also of Calypso, both from the Odyssey. Erminia has undertones of both Nausicaä (the English pronunciation of which I’m sure makes me nauseous) and Penelope, but has of course many other lookalikes, given that she represents the traditional heroine of the entire history of mankind up till the 1960 when every value was turned upside down, when the ugly became beautiful, the weak became strong, when one-parent households, addicting substances and prosti-tuition became glorified and true families frowned upon.

I have noticed that many people, even intellectuals, have trouble grasping the Iliad’s greatness. It is not about the war, even though it describes some aspects of it extremely realistically, and we cannot escape the notion that, as my Latin teacher once put it, “war is not just now, but also then, a terrible thing”. Still, it is not a pacifist pamphlet, as one author claims. If is infinitely more than political propaganda. For instance, it does seem to accept young men’s inclination to war as a means to manifest themselves. As every great piece of literature, the Iliad is the deepest testimony to what it means to be human, in all its aspects: the introduction, from the walls, to the heroes of the enemy, because they too deserve to be seen and honored; the fight between Achilles and Agamemnon going at it as two adolescents in their puberty; Achilles’ inconsolable grief at the death of his beloved friend***** ***** ****; Hector saying goodbye to his wife and 7-year old boy, who suddenly becomes frightened by the hard reflection of the sun in his dad’s helmet; the contrition, not only of Achilles, but also of the arrogant king, who will still be as arrogant, but did make a big gesture for his capacities. Most of all, however, it’s the inner growth of a warrior who thought he was a god, but learns to accept his humanity upon finding out he isn’t, that his choices affect other people, also affect himself; who is then enabled to make one of the most Christian gestures we have in all of literature when he gives the body of the man he hated most in the world, the man who killed his best friend, the man whose body he had just defiled by dragging it around the city from his chariot through the mud , back to the begging father so he too could have a decent burial. The Achilles at the end of the work has transformed into an entirely different, infinitely wiser person than who he was in the beginning; yeah, he has grown from a person into an individual.

The Odyssey has an equally great scope, which I leave alone for now, because I intend to honor it with its own article here. Both epics are very readable in the translations by two Roberts, Fagles and Fitzgerald, both by far my favorite translations I have ever read in any language.

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Footnotes:

* Iceberg reminds me the time that a friend whom I called Moshe - he called me the same, we were both Schlomo when talking about ourselves and Moshe when spoken to - stood up in a mixed company and said: I know a great joke! He then froze for a few seconds, then followed it with ...  but I have to call someone to remind me how it went. He later told me that he made a phone call into a household in the south of France, where everyone had their siesta. He woke up the entire household to get to that friend who could tell him the joke again. That’s why it was 20 minuets or so before he came back to the company to tell the joke. It was worth the wait. A Jewish American and a Chinese are sitting across each other in the train. Suddenly, the American kicks the Chinese in the shins, owww! it really hurt. “What’s that for?” the Chinese asks, offended (he was second generation, so no accent - it actually was a she, a self-professed transgender female, but that’s not relevant here). “That’s for Pearl Harbor.” - “Pearl Harbor, but that was the Japanese!” - “Japanese, Chinese,” says the New Yorker, “all the same sort of cholerye!” - A charged silence falls for five minutes. Then the Chinese kicks the American. “Owww, what was that for?” - “That was for the Titanic!” the Chinese says, merrily. - “But the Titanic, that was an iceberg!” - “Iceberg, Goldberg, Goldstein, all same cholerye …”

** I am convinced that most expressions I hear about a US president are coming from projections, either positive or negative. Ask yourself how rational your opinion really is when it concerns a president, especially the current one.

*** Credit to David Letterman or whoever worked for him for this joke. I have reason to believe that George Bush is much more intelligent and moral than the mainstream press gives him credit for. I also have reason to believe that he has the open-mindedness, so often lacking on the left, to like the humor of the joke.

**** Godfrey of Bouillon was in the Middle Ages considered one of the Nine Worthies. The Nine worthies were three Biblical heroes, Joshua, David and Judas Maccabaeus, three classical warriors, Hector, Alexander and Julius Caesar, and three Christian fighters, Arthur, Charlemagne and Godfrey, traditionally formed the Nine Worthies. I once made a list of female ones, according to the same categories: Deborah, Judith and Esther; Nausicaä, Penelope and Camilla; and Joan of Arc, Maria Theresa and Condie - (Nausicaä was the daughter of the Phaeacian king who, when Odysseus appeared on her shore, naked, covered with brine, looking like a monster, was the only girl who didn’t run home to daddy). The last three women probably should have been saints. Oh well …

***** I’m avoiding the words Islam and Muslim to keep out of the clutches of the politically correct Gestapo. In fact, at that time, the Islam enjoyed a higher level of civilization than Christian Europe, which as a culture was soon to benefit greatly from the opportunities and connections with the alleged “infidels” provided by the crusades. We are also aware that crusades have nothing to do with the true spirit of Christ. That’s why I have avoided the name Christians everywhere where crusaders would do. As for the nomenclature, I notice that Tasso uses ‘pagan’ as well as ‘infedele’, whatever other epithets he may employ (moro). Finally, I always admired the refinement with which Christian culture identified the various ways in which people ‘wrongly believed”. I thought that pagans never heard of the Christian God, heathens had heard about Him but refused to bother, infidels did believe in God but not Christ, and heretics did believe in Christ but ‘in the wrong way’. This beautiful system of distinguishing who is who has either been abolished by the politically correct Gestapo or their black-shirted precursors, or else I made it all up myself and there has never been anyting in it.

***** * Tasso’s ‘Solyman’, is about as remote from Suleyman as my Souffléman (not my invention). If a certain Grammy-winning singer of my acquaintance ever gets to read this, I trust he will get a smile on his black bearded face.

***** ** Olindo is Ashkenazi pronunciation for Ah! Linda!

***** *** Parzival’s half brother Feyrefiz is half black, half white, with alternating large spots over his body like Holsteins or the wild horses that used to run over the American prairies, descendants of the horses brought by the Spanish conquistadores. Two other ideas come to mind. —- One is a movie I once saw about a white business man who was confronted with a black son he didn’t know he had engendered out of marriage. When the racist priest (this is the only time in my life that I have ever seen racism among clergy) told him that God was white because Jesus was white, answered: “I am white, but my son is black.” —- The other is a story by the unforgettable French author Alphonese Allais, where a certain pregnant Mme Duzinc suddenly developed an irresistible desire for mahogany furniture, ivory appliances and other such tropical artifacts. The baby came, and turned out to be African. The last sentence stated that nine moths ago, Mme Duzinc avait crû devoir partager le lit avec (had thought it necessary to share the bed with) un attaché de la délégation Haitienne.

***** **** D’un bel pallore ha il bianco volto asperso / come a’ gigli sarian miste viole / e gli occhi al cielo affisa, e in lei converso / sembra per la pietate il cielo e ‘l sole / e la man nuda e fredda alzando verso / il cavaliero in vece di parole / gli dà pegno di pace. In questa forma / passa la bella donna, e par que dorma.

***** ***** Why do Sumo wrestlers shave their legs? ——- So they are not mistaken for feminists. - Badum, ksssh ….

***** ***** * Toledo also has an Artemisia, Lot and his Daughters. She is one of my favorite painters, bested by no one, equalled by few.

***** ***** ** 1) I was lucky to learn that in my first year in conservatory, when in the Brahms clarinet trio we had a general pause of two beats, to resume all three together. the teacher, pianist Edith Grosz, challenged us to not watch each other and resume the music blindly together, that would make an awesome effect. I never forgot that. —— 2) my dad was also a fantastic accompanist. He was always with you. Once he played a concert with a (good) amateur pianist, of whom I had to tell him afterwards that, well, he deserved better. I did however notice that she was always with him. My dad’s reaction: Excuse me? I was always together with her!

***** **** *** One of Four Questions I sometimes ask around is Which Greek epic has as subject the Fall of Troy? The answer is: none. The Iliad ends way before the event with the Trojan Horse. Both works, the Iliad and the Odyssey, were part of what is called the Epic Cycle, of which the Aethiopis was also a part. Of this 8 oeuvre Epic Cycle, the Iliad was the second, the Aethiopis the third, the Odyssey the seventh. From what we know, the Iliad and the Odyssey, with their 24 books each, were by far the most substantial in quantity; they must have been preserved because they were also the best in quality —- —- —- The other three Questions I have are: 2. in which country lies Homer’s Troy? - which is not Greece: 3. Kate Bennet Wadsworth’s Shakespeare and …? (which is totally. after of personal taste) - 4. Who is your second favorite Bach? - sometimes replaced by 4a Did Wagner like Hitler and how do we know?

***** ***** **** Now everyone sees homosexual love in Achilles’ and Patroklos’ relationship, which is fine with me, but that does deny the possibility for something as old and as valuable, the non-sexual - ‘platonic’ suggests there being some sexual attraction, which is not what I mean - profoundly loving friendship between two men; a century ago, gay love had no place in literary criticism; today, non-sexual love between two straight men is ignored).

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Illustrations:

1. Clorinda si scontra con Tancredi, by Paolo Domenico Finoglio(a) - detail

2. Iceberg called Goldberg because I call it so.

3. God. After Giovanni Lanfranco (1582 - 1647)

4. Circe (my title) by Conrad Kiesel (1846 - 1921, German, active in the US).

5. Clorinda saving Olindo and Sophronia, by Eugène Delacroix, 1856, detail

6. Vivian beguiling Merlin (fastening him forever inside a tree with a spell he taught her), by Edward Burne-Jones, 1873/4

7. Tancred baptizing Clorinda, 1535, by Tintoretto (1560-1635), Houston.

8. Tancred and Erminia by Pietro Ricci (1606-75) - why do I find hardly anything by this great artist?

9. Judith with the head of Holofernes, by Christofano Allori (1613)

10. Judith slaying Holofernes, by Artemisia Gentileschi (1614-20), Uffizi, Florence.

11. Peggy Kriha Dye and Colin Ainsworth in a Toronto production of Armide. My Clorinda sonata could as well have been written for this Columbian (= from Columbus, Oh.) soprano, whose formidable dramatic talent a Wolverine colleague of mine once praised with it doesn’t matter what she sings …

11 & 12. Emma Hart, future Lady Hamilton, future Mistress of admiral Nelson, by George Romney, 1782-4, detail.

Caroussel: (click on the right partial picture to see the entire image, then click in the next partial picture to the right, etc.)

1. Clorinda saving Olindo and Sophronia, by Delacroix, 1856 —- 2. Clorinda saving Olindo and Sophronia by Jacopo Amigoni (1682 - 1752), detail —- 3. Clorinda saving Olindo etc. by Mattia Preti (1613-99) ——- 4. Argante, Rinaldo (?) and Clorinda in battle, by Johann Friedrich Overbeck, 1819-27 —- 5. Tancred Baptizing Clorinda, by Theodore Hildebrandt ca. 1830; 6. Erminia finds the wounded Tancred, Anthony van Dijck (1599-1641) - 7. Armida and Rinaldo, Nicolas Poussin, 1629 (I love the movement in his art) —-- 8. Armida conjuring possession of a man (my title), by Selina Fenech —- 9. The Kiss, by Gustave de Jonghe (1829--93 …“Armida kissing Andrew Parrot” would be my title) —- 10. Circe (sic), by Charles Hermans (1839 - 1924) —- 11. Artemisia’s self portrait, —- 12. Judith with the head of Holofernes, Simon Vouet, 1620; another fantastic example of the alluring female from the male perspective. 13. Portrait of Artemisia by Vouet (1623): I once saw an exhibition of this French baroque painter in Paris. He sure loved yellow dresses … —- 14. Emma Hart, future Lady Hamilton, future Mistress of admiral Nelson, by George Romney, 1782-4. It’s Romney’s anachronistic and presaging portrait of my Muse. 15. Death of Clorinda, Salvatore Dalí, 1969.