Prof. Carol

I sold off most of my goat herd yesterday. Ostensibly it’s because things are so busy, but in reality it was retribution! A whole mess of teenaged-goats (last spring’s kids) broke out of the fencing and devoured the landscaping around our house. Imagine sticks where blossom-laidened crape myrtles used to be. There goes that photo-shoot for Better Homes and Gardens.

Goats like shrubbery.

Then the renegades discovered the garage. Don’t ask. Our fierce guard dogs apparently found the whole thing amusing. I love my goats, their pea-brain expressions, their goofy curiosity, and especially the noises they make. In our noisy world, we forget just how loud the bleating of animals is. Or used to be.  

In Mozart’s day, not much was louder than the sounds made by animals, especially when in labor! The clip-clop of hooves, the snorts, yaps, and squeals—all of it formed a soundscape for daily life. In that much quieter world, music sounded with far more authority. A trumpet commanded attention. A single fiddle-player was sufficient for a dance.

The caption on this 1850 lithograph by Currier & Ives reads: First Appearence of Jenny Lind in America.

I was shaking my head in wonder the other day, looking at the Currier & Ives graphic depicting Swedish soprano Jenny Lind as she sang her American debut in 1850 in New York’s huge Castle Garden. How did her voice fill such a hall? Today, massive speakers would be stacked ceiling-high.  But audiences had a different concept of “loud” back then. Plus, the lady really could sing!

“Lindomania.” That’s what the press called the transatlantic fervor over Jenny Lind. Nicknamed the “Swedish Nightingale,” Lind was brought to the United States by that legendary impresario P.T. Barnum, and paid $187,000 in advance.  

Why was a circus impresario promoting an opera singer? Well, think about it. The astonishing techniques required to sing the fancy operatic passages we call bel canto (beautiful singing) were positively unearthly to folks who’d never heard such “goings-on.” In fact, most people today go into shock, the first time they stand next to (not in front of, please!) a professional opera singer. The shattering power cannot be described.  

Everything real opera singers do, from inordinate breath control to acoustic force, comes from talent, yes, but from specific techniques of vocal production that require years of training. A regular person, no matter how attractive or facile his or her voice, cannot do such things, any more than a regular person can fly across the trapeze “with the greatest of ease.” The superhuman abilities of acrobats and opera singers fit nicely together in the world of 19th-century American entertainment.

Jenny Lind triumphed in America also because Mr. Barnum interwove her image with two irresistible claims: first, he promoted her virtue. This makes perfect sense when we recall that women of the theater have been seen as “questionable” throughout most of Western history. Secondly, P.T. Barnum gave concrete proof of her virtue by linking certain performances to that most irresistible calling: the charity benefit.

Ah, if only we could have been there! To hear her fabulous virtuosity flying through the air. Still, by all accounts, the crowds were even more moved by her rendering of soft, sentimental songs such as “Home, Sweet Home,” a mega-hit of the 19th century.

Because ultimately, in music, it is the soft sounds that draw us in. The delicate, the intricate, the multi-faceted colors that our ears taste within a softer frame. The purr of the cat, the gentle whinny of our favorite horse, and the contented “baaahh” of a well-fed goat. . .

Yikes, don’t remind me. We will fix the fence. And despite their crimes, those particular wayward goats went not to the meat locker, but to a lady who will harness their energies to produce the next generation of trouble-makers.

Carol Reynolds, aka Professor Carol, a retired music history professor from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, has launched Silver Age Music. Her latest product is a multimedia course: “Discovering Music: 300 Years of Interaction in Western Music, Art, History, & Culture.” Prof. Carol now lives on a ranch, raises goats, and writes and lectures on classical music (to humans).