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PROGRAM NOTESShould This Be Found: Six Songs on Scott's Last Expedition (2005)In 1910, Robert Falcon Scott made his second expedition to Antarctica, determined to be the firstman to reach the South Pole. A successful journey required an 800-mile trek to the Pole (includingclimbing a glacier) in temperatures sometimes approaching 50 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, thenthe arduous return. The five men who made the trek faced blizzards, fell in crevasses, experienceddehydration, starvation, frostbite, sun-blindness, and scurvy. For much of the expedition, theyhauled 200-pound sleds of equipment, sometimes restricted by ground and weather conditions to sixor seven miles a day of hard “manhauling.” When they arrived at the Pole on January 17, 1912,their hope of being first were dashed upon discovering that Roald Amundsen and his Norwegianteam had preceded them by thirty-three days. Disappointed, they turned back. Petty Officer EdgarEvans “died quietly,” according to Scott, on February 17, presumably of a brain injury incurred byfalls into several crevasses. A month later, Captain Lawrence Oates (who had taken care of theponies on the expedition), frostbitten and holding the men back, sacrificed himself by walking into ablizzard with the parting words “I am just going out and may be some time.” Captain Scott, Dr.Edward Wilson, and Lieutenant Henry “Bertie” Bowers trudged onward. One-hundred eighty-sixmiles from the base camp, and eleven miles from one of the depots that would have supplied foodand oil, they succumbed in their tent and were discovered eight months later. Why they couldn’t goon remains a mystery. Scott reports that they were kept from pushing forward by a blizzard thatraged for several days, although recent meteorological evidence suggests that there could have beenno blizzard in that region lasting so long. Susan Solomon theorizes that the plan for Bowers andWilson to travel to the depot and return to Scott with food and oil seemed impractical, given Scott’sseverely frost-bitten condition, and that his two companions simply chose to die with their captainrather than continue their trek.Discovered with the bodies was Scott’s journal, on which he wrote, “Send this diary to my wife.”The word “wife” is crossed out and replaced with the word “widow.” Scott’s journals makefascinating, harrowing, and deeply touching reading. The panoply of emotions he experienced isvividly represented by his excellent prose, and we find him by turns excited, defensive, insecure, andproud. He was insightful and sensitive, and his final letters to his wife and the families of the menwho died with him are heartrending. Whatever his skill as an explorer (and there has been muchcriticism of the miscalculations that may have doomed the expedition), there is no denying hisremarkable courage or that of his men, nor the spirit of affection and sacrifice that characterizedtheir relationships. One can barely imagine what they must have suffered; that they remained“unendingly cheerful” even as they faced certain death compels our admiration.Scott’s description of his expedition runs to nearly five-hundred pages. For the difficult task ofdistilling these thousands of words into six song texts, I turned to one of our country’s most admiredand virtuoso novelists, Richard Powers. What a masterful job he has done! A composer could not
have better material with which to work and by which to be inspired. The texts evoke theexcitement of the undertaking, the beauty of the Antarctic landscape, the humor of the penguins, thearduousness of the journey, the disappointment of dashed hopes, and the final days and hours oftranscendent courage. Humor, warmth, loyalty, patriotism, inventiveness, affection, andperseverance are commingled.On the structural level, the first five songs involve a recapitulation of opening or prominent material.Only the sixth is through-composed without recapitulation; the party does not return “home,” norcan the music. The first three songs are gesturally straightforward, each section having its ownunambiguous character. As conditions become harsher and the men march toward their doom, themusic takes on greater ambiguity and dissonance. “Impressions on the March” introduces bitonality(music in two keys at once), while “In Winter Quarters” presents music in contradictorytempos. “Summit, the Pole and Beyond” intensifies these impressions of bi-tonality and conflictingtempi, while furthering the sense of dislocation by juxtaposing bits of music from all but one previoussong.“The Voyage Out” depicts the giddy excitement of the Terra Nova pushing off from the dock aftermonths of preparation, the energy of the work on board, and the mass of people gaily wavinggoodbye. The cycle’s most blatantly programmatic music depicts the near shipwreck in stormyweather and the death of some of the ponies and dogs. The welcome appearance of the sun and thesighting of “some steep-walled berg, some patch of bluest sea” is rendered in luminous, undulatingmusical strokes, and the final stanza, lauding the crew and expressing hopeful expectations of asuccessful expedition, returns to the nautical, masculine strains of the song’s opening section.By contrast, “Land at Least” is a peaceful barcarole, depicting the gentle rocking of the boat, thebeauty of Antarctica, the unloading of the cargo (including the ponies, so long confined, for whomScott has so much sympathy: “After the sledges came the ponies,” he writes. “Poor brutes, how gladthey must be to scratch themselves!”) The last stanza glows with Scott’s description of the comfortof the hut they’ve built, where “peace, quiet, and comfort reign supreme.”“Penguins” is a light-hearted intermezzo before the inexorable tragedy that binds the last three songsof the cycle. The men were charmed by the little Adelie penguins, who were compelled by curiosityto run up to the men when they sang to them but were so bashful that they would run away whenthe men stopped. Scott misquotes a popular song from 1908 sung by the men to the penguins,“She’s Got Rings on Her Fingers,” which appears explicitly in the song. So does a brass rendition of“God Save the King,” which Cecil Meares would sing to the penguins in so off-pitch a manner that itnever failed to send them fleeing back to the water. In the last stanza, the penguins walk pasthowling dogs, straining at their tethers to tear them apart. The sinister music that begins and endsthe song represents the penguins’ last laugh. “‘Hello,’ [the penguins] seem to say, ‘here’s a game—
Page 1: Writing Another Future: Science Fic
Page 5 and 6: master’s degree from Illinois in
Page 7 and 8: Song 2: Land at LastAfter many frow
Page 9 and 10: Song 5: In Winter QuartersHere the
Page 11 and 12: THE COMPOSERSPerry Goldstein (born
Page 13 and 14: THE CONDUCTORDr. Linda R. Moorhouse
Page 15 and 16: assured acting.” (The Chautauquan
Page 17 and 18: Illinois Wind Symphonyflute / picco

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