Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE TALE OF THE WHOLE-TONE SCALE: OR, THE LADY WHO DIDN'T PLAY VERDI, by ALFRED FRANCIS KREYMBORG


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE TALE OF THE WHOLE-TONE SCALE: OR, THE LADY WHO DIDN'T PLAY VERDI, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: You, little lady, go all the way back to rossini?
Last Line: In the ranks of the youthful whose pranks live so long!
Subject(s): Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus (1756-1791); Music & Musicians; Women


You, little lady, go all the way back to Rossini? --
you must be older than Italy! --
Italy's fifty-two and you eighty-four? --
incredible truly, fantastic, what's more,
how you can sit down at that keyboard and play,
(on a piano which should be a spinet)
not Rossini, no, nor the Verdi
of tinkling Traviata, Rigoletto, Trovatore --
but the men of to-day, in their new-fangled rage,
crowding each score with outlandish,
barbarous modes and harmonics
and jagged, yawning intervals
it would take monkeys to bridge!
And the whole-tone scale, is that what I hear? --
not the chromatic, lugubrious chronic
of Wagner crawling half-steps at a time --
too slow for a lady born under the reign
of the simple, artless diatonic,
plain c, d, e, f, and g, a, b, c? --
but the whole-tone scale itself
these devils alone know the alphabet of,
with whole tones between three and four, seven and eight,
completely upsetting arithmetic? --
monstrous device of a Frenchman, Debussy,
filched from the Russian, Modest Moussorgski? --
Parisian aping the land of the snows,
where Bonaparte really met Waterloo? --
it makes one's blood run to one's toes!
And as if this weren't enough,
here come your latest Italians,
who ought to bend low to their fathers
and not to descendants of France,
who sway to that conquering dance
spreading imperial sound
over people who once bore the yoke
of a diminutive Corsican
content to rule ground!
Casella, Malipiero, Respighi,
Ildebrando Pizetti? --
whose names are so weird and so gruff,
they'd force your classics to groan in their graves,
if heaven should ever resound with such staves,
which it won't since they're destined for hell! --
you, gentle lady, perform one of these,
when the worst you might play
should be Mefistofele? --
Boito's red devil -- the worst one might say --
drove his minions about in a diatonic way!
Ah, let me consider you,
infinitesimal, so short and slight,
with hands scarce the size of young apples,
and it's you brave such terrible folk? --
you so harmless and they such a fright
even to this advanced age
cramming its page
with pomp and braggadocio,
with its new school every morning
turned an old school every night?
Wait, I must stop to catch up --
I'm breathless, though grateful you're through --
no more now, Contessa, turn this way, do --
it's oh, so much better to look just at you
than having those rascals storming my ear,
though your touch is ravishing, expert and clear!
You've come a long distance to go eighty-four --
felt many a battle beside the late war --
seen great kingdoms fall and il popolo rise --
known sadness a plenty to blind your small eyes:
and still, there you are with those twins opened blue,
with your dress spread about you, up from the floor,
as if you're a girl still ambling to school,
poking ten finger scales from the top of a stool:
the Gradus ad Parnassum -- eternal climb --
one moment -- reminds me of that jolly mime,
Papa Haydn: You remember that playboy
was once the instructor of Mozart? --
(who, though a German, touched the peaks of your art?) --
and how, just to prove what an old fellow knows,
no matter how radical his offspring grows,
dared him to strike eleven notes at once,
as one chord, do you see, so absurd to suppose,
the master must surely have changed to a dunce? --
and he the grandfather of all symphonies!
Now what do you think that old idiot did? --
solemnly laid his ten digits on keys --
and then smote the odd with his comical nose!
Child Mozart turned angry, what would he turn now? --
into showers of laughter since men beat with blows
a piano was once a mere light clavichord!
You chuckle? -- it's droll -- eh, what's that you say? --
your masters were Lalo and Massenet? --
him of Le Roi d'Ys and him of Thais? --
and yet it was you who revolved there and played
with your mouth puckered madly, your wrists thinned with bliss --
Contessa, how could you -- a moment ago? --
the room's still quaking from floor up to rafter,
it must be ghost Mozart still shaking with laughter
from hearkening his offspring's ridiculous scale --
but a truce to impostors
and mottle-skinned mongrels --
let's put our two heads a bit closer for this:
Now may I slow down and digress
since we're safe from all sound? --
for you ask, who am I
that I ask, who are you? --
never mind me, I'm nobody here
and little more yonder, out there in my land,
where people chase money, grow suddenly old
when they learn it's not matter, but souls they have sold:
a country discovered by one of your kin
and christened to honour another -- our first sin! --
a place with few legends, but one tale at least:
In Florida (a state shaped like Italy's boot,
with none of the wrinkles and minus the toe)
lies a fountain discovered by -- no, there you're wrong --
this dream was a Spaniard's, Ponce de Leon!
To stop the tale short, bring digression to port --
the fountain isn't there, of course --
never was and never will be --
any more than perpetual youth
(till folk cease chasing rainbows
and try chasing truth!):
but I'm absolutely positive
(watch out, I'm tacking home!)
that misguided man would have saved
himself and his men a most desolate trip
by waiting several centuries,
then pointing his ship --
not to my new land, America --
but quite a little nearer your ancient Rome,
and paid his respects here to you and your song:
for you, little lady, go all the way forward
in the ranks of the youthful whose pranks live so long!





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