WRIT Large 8.7: Looking to the Past

WRITL ARGE RETROSPECTIVE

DECEMBER 2019 VOLUME 8, ISSUE 7: LOOKING TO THE PAST

Š UNIVERSITY OF DENVER WRITING PROGRAM

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An Introduction to Issue 7

“Looking to the Past” My parents recently retired to Monte Vista, Colorado, in the San Luis Valley, and when I visit them, I drive through the small mining town of Walsenburg. Everything I know about Walsenburg I learned from Alice Major, whose essay “Souvenir” recounts the history of the mining strike that led to the Ludlow Massacre of 1914.

Major writes that “we don’t face the complexity of our stories because it would bring up questions, and uncomfortable ones. We’d be forced to truly remember our past.”

Writing about events half a world and four decades away, Kate Norris explores the lives and legacies of a group of women who served as freedom fighters in the Algerian War. In “Breaking Tradition,” Norris notes that despite their endurance, “very few of the[se] women received national praise or recognition”; a larger patriarchal culture did not value their efforts or their sacrifices.

Finally, Katie Beisel Hollenback focuses on a moment defined not by strike or sacrifice but by friendship, detailing the close relationship of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and Heinrich and Carl Bärmann, 19th-century German musicians. In “Great Duet for Sweet Dumplings,” Hollenback concludes that it “is sometimes easy to forget that one of the greatest joys in music is using it to connect with other people.”

In fact, all three writers in this last issue of the WRIT Large retrospective show us moments of connection, moments where readers are led to connect with the past.

These essays remind us that each new generation of college students encounters and engages with the past in acts of writing; and each individual writer teaches us to re-see the past—the towns we drive through, the history we read, the music we listen to—through their eyes and their words.

— Juli Parrish Teaching Professor University Writing Program

Contents pg. 5

Alice Major, “Souvenir”

Originally published in WRIT Large Volume 7 (2018)

pg. 15

Kate Norris, “Breaking Tradition: Algerian Women as Freedom Fighters”

Originally published in WRIT Large Volume 6 (2017) pg. 23

Katie Beisel Hollenbach, “A Great Duet for Sweet Dumplings: Clarinet

Pieces Inspired by Friendship”

Originally published in WRIT Large Volume 3 (2014)

pg. 31

Meet Our Authors

pg. 32

Call for Submissions

pg. 33

Acknowledgments

Souvenir

Alice Major

by

WRIT 1133 Writing & Research | Professor LP Picard Originally published in WRIT Large Volume 7 (2018)

THE SUMMER BEFORE MY FRESHMAN YEAR OF COLLEGE felt like teetering on the edge of a cliff—ready to fly but not quite launched. I spent most of it traveling along I-70, I-25, and lonely state highways. Denver was the most frequent point of departure, and the three-hour drive south to my hometown was my time to unwind. I’d spend most of it looking out the window.

Between Denver and Colorado Springs, the landscape is green, hilly, and covered with new housing developments. As you travel south, the buildings grow fewer and farther between, the landscape dryer and more rugged. On the left are the Great Plains, rolling into eternity; on the right are the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

About forty-five minutes south of Pueblo, there’s a handful of gas stations and road-side hotels. They look like they’d been blown up against the piñon-covered ridge behind them, stuck there by the necessity of fuel and food for travelers. Here is where we would exit, driving through the pioneer buildings and a notch in the ridge into Walsenburg.

This town of 3,000 residents, boasting two grocery stores and just as many stoplights, is my hometown. I spent my childhood nestled at the edge of the foothills. For the majority of the years I’ve lived here, all five blocks of the downtown area collected tumbleweeds. Sprinkled between ancient, empty shop fronts were a handful of insurance VOLUME 8, ISSUE 7

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(left) © Kent Kanouse (right) image provided by author

companies, banks, and the courthouse where we would meet my dad on his lunch hour.1 The summer before college, I was ready to leave.

I’d learned there was more to this world beyond the shop fronts and abandoned houses I’d grown up resenting. Ironically, by this time, the shop fronts and abandoned houses were starting to fill up.

Though the population has been slowly but steadily declining since 2000, income and the housing market are on the rise.2 It’s hard not to associate this change with marijuana. Since marijuana was legalized in 2012, the county has seen a notable increase of growers and tourists.3 It helps that the cost of living here is infinitesimal compared to the area around Denver.

Wherever they come from and for whatever reason, the influx is enough to support new retail business. A hip coffee shop opened in a historic hotel building the summer of 2013. I visited for the first time while I was buying dorm supplies.

As I waited for my caramel macchiato, I wandered around, listening to the baristas talk about the YouTube tutorials they used to learn espresso-making.

The coffee shop doubled as a gift shop for the tourists that drive through on their way to the Sand Dunes or Wolf Creek. Rugged purses hung from 1 2

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I grew up looking out my back window at two mountains, memorizing their twin silhouettes and their

My dad is a paralegal who used to teach Latin. My mom is a teacher who used to be a computer scientist.

According to 2015 figures on City-Data.com, the population of Walsenburg experienced a -30.8% change since 2000. In those same 15 years, however, median household income has increased from $22,005 to $26,277; median house value has increased from $62,100 to $89,561.

The town sold 330 acres of municipal land in 2015 to create a campus for cannabis greenhouses, hoping to turn Walsenburg into one of the nation’s largest producers of legal marijuana.

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horseshoe hooks on the timber walls near shelves showcasing Colorado flag shot glasses. One rack by the door held a slightly more area-specific souvenir: colorful plastic “explorer helmets” emblazoned with “ WALSENBURG COLORADO.” The hard hats were simple, with lamps on the front, the kind worn by miners in the tunnels.

Across the street is a new park, Miners Plaza—a monument to the town’s mining history. It includes scattered timber frames, like the ones that would prop up the tunnels, and a stage backed by the rusty outline of the nearby mountains. From the 1880s to the 1950s, coal mining was our main industry, and it is to this past that we look to build our future. It’s something to set us apart from other struggling cities in Huerfano County, a reason for festivals and coffee shop souvenirs.

The lopsided timbers and plastic hats seemed to whisper an appeal that this place was unique, that it should be appreciated. At the very least, they said, buy a souvenir. Remember this place after you pass through.

WRIT LARGE: DECEMBER 2019

ridges. They’re commonly called the Spanish Peaks, but their original name is Wahatoya—“Breasts of the Earth.” In their shadows, I swam and hiked.

I collected shattered glass from dust-covered camp dumps, tennis shoes frayed from cactus-cluttered hikes to see the foundations of company homes, and memories of joining my dad under the mining monument by the courthouse. The Wahatoya were a constant, soothing presence at the edge of town.

My mountains had been named by Ute and Apache for whom the peaks are sacred. Their admiration for the mountains is preserved in native legends, like one that history professor and politician George McGovern mentions in The Great Coalfield War: Before Walsenburg is reached a final abandoned spur points toward La Veta Pass at the foot of the Spanish Peaks, a valley described in Indian legend as once a paradise where pain and suffering were unknown until the white man invaded it, whereupon the angry gods of Huajatolla made La Veta as prone to grief as the rest of the world.4 I invaded the valley at three years old, the Irish/ Scottish/German daughter of a father from Boulder and a mother from Kansas City. However, my family and I were late to the party. White men began their invasion first as straggling trappers and traders and then, in the 18th century, in greater numbers as homesteaders. Their technology allowed them to work the land for everything it had to give. Supported by imports from the east, they had enough provisions to stick stubbornly to the windswept plains and foothills.

Their numbers, however, were limited. The New Mexico trading trails could only import so much, and, with the exception of the paradise-like 4

Cucharas River Valley, the land was semi-arid.

It could sustain far fewer people than other settled areas. In his book Killing for Coal, University of Colorado Boulder history professor Thomas Andrews says that the few colonial habitants of what is now Huerfano County were “driven to the point of distraction” by the isolation of wilderness.5 Andrews writes that Huerfano County’s isolation ended with the advent of the coal-driven steam engine. William Jackson Palmer, John Evans, and a variety of other entrepreneurs began building railroads to connect the area to cities back east, to the mineral mines in the mountains, to the Royal Gorge, and to the Raton Pass. Their trains needed fuel, and the timber had mostly been stripped from the Front Range by homesteaders and silver miners. Fortunately for their businesses, Palmer had the solution: through his travels in southern Colorado, he’d found massive outcroppings of coal.6 Palmer opened collieries7 first in Fremont County and then in Las Animas 8 and Huerfano Counties in the 1870s.

Immigrants flooded to the Trinidad Coal Field, drawn by the work in the mines and carried by the new railroads.9 In 1880, there were 1,500 colliers in Colorado’s mines, 7,000 in 1900, and 15,864 in 1910.10 Historian Caryn Neumann says that “the workforce itself was largely immigrant labor from southern and eastern Europe, including many Greeks, Italians, Germans, Poles, Slavs, Serbians, Austrians, and Montenegrins.” 11 The miners’ migration at the turn of the century was similar to the influx of marijuana growers in recent years. Once marijuana was legalized in Colorado, the prospect of work and prosperity spread through the media and the grapevine.12 A friend recently commented that one could work

An alternate spelling of Wahatoya.

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The county borrows its name from the volcanic plug called the Huerfano—Spanish for “orphan.” It’s essentially a giant pile of black volcanic rocks miles west of the foothills of the Wet Mountains, which are in turn a few miles north of the Spanish Peaks.

The area he discovered, called the Trinidad Coal Field, was a prehistoric swamp. The same volcanic activity that pushed up the Spanish Peaks and their dikes also pushed up and refined immense masses of coal.

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Coal mines and their connected equipment.

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County southeast of Huerfano.

Most of the information in this section comes from Thomas Andrews’s Killing for Coal.

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Andrews says, “Colorado’s mine workforce accounted for fully 10 percent of those employed in the state.”

The evidence of their ethnic diversity survives to some degree in Walsenburg. I’ve seen it in the variety of traditional foods at potlucks at St. Mary Our Lady of Sorrows.

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“Can Weed Save Walsenburg?” asks Newsweek. “New Marijuana Greenhouses to Help Walsenburg Economy,” replies local KOAA News 5.

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in a growhouse with no experience for far over minimum wage. News about the work in the coal mines spread the same way. A young Italian man named Emilio Ferraro jumped on the bandwagon of American voyages and met his uncles in Trinidad. They then took him to Starkville,13 where his uncle got him a job making $2 a day—a lot for the 1890s.14 Stories about young men like him spread and the industry expanded.15 However we view it now, coal was an incredibly desirable product, as it fueled electrical plants, steam engines, streetcars, brickworks, and steelworks.16 The bricks established Denver’s urban core, and the streetcars provided a way for the businessmen to live up and away from the coal plants, whose thick black smoke hovered over cities and mines.

The skies above 21st-century Walsenburg are some of the clearest you could imagine, and the foothills the most peaceful place I’ve been to. It wasn’t always this way, though. The pollution from the mines once hung over the area like Denver’s smog, and it’s still visible in the red and black slag heaps dotting the landscape.17 My father told me what the slag heaps were when I was little, and we drove past them every week on our way to my grandparents’ house. I always knew that coal mining was part of our history,18 as much as I knew that cholla cactus and piñon trees were pretty much our only vegetation. I never questioned it—why should I? I was a child, picking up fragments of broken dishes from the coal camp’s dump and displaying them on my grandparents’ shelves, yawning as my father and I explored the just-visible foundation of a coal camp house.

I never knew that I was playing in the ruins of one of the most decried features of coal mines.

The company town was the brainchild of John Cleveland Osgood, Colorado Fuel and Iron 13 14 15

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“Sixteen Tons” was part of my childhood landscape, one of my father’s favorites. One morning I woke up to Dad singing in the garden outside my window, his shovel falling with the downbeats. It was a catchy tune with easy words, and it fell into the background, just like the foundations of the company home that Dad talked about.

The song came back to me when I was in high school choir. In 2014, our director added “Sixteen Tons” to the spring concert. I sang the lyrics over and over, and I had two choices: be a robot for four

A mine just south of Trinidad.

By the end of the 19th century, as McGovern says, more than half of Colorado’s coal output came from the Trinidad Coal Field.

Pueblo, fifty miles north of Walsenburg, grew up around the Minnequa steel plant.

Slag is part of the coal waste from the purifying process. The coal companies left their waste for us to deal with.

My neighbors have lived in the small brown house next to mine since we moved in. One of them, a grandmother, is the daughter of a coal miner. I remember playing in the shade of a pine tree as my parents talked to her over the fence. She was born in one of the coal camps that peppered Huerfano County, and she’d played on the steps of their one-room cabin just as I was playing in the pine needles. She intended never to leave Walsenburg, now that she owned a proper house.

Perhaps the most famous coal mining song of all time, it was made famous by Tennessee Ernie, whose jazzy, finger-snapping rendition was “the fastest selling record” of 1955, according to LIFE.

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You load sixteen tons, what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt.

Saint Peter don’t you call me, ‘cause I can’t go I owe my soul to the company store.

Andrews tells Ferraro’s journey in his book, including that the “green Italian” first went to “this shoe shop.”

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Company (CFI) tycoon. Osgood knew the importance of keeping his workers at least somewhat happy and healthy and, in a gesture of what George McGovern describes as “a novel example of industrial paternalism,” created a living environment for the miners that was as company-controlled as the tunnels they worked in. The miners and their families lived in company homes in company towns that were enclosed by company guards. Even “the doctors, priests, schoolteachers, and law enforcement were all company employees,” Caryn Neumann notes.

Company towns came complete with company stores. Miners were paid in company scrip, which could only be spent at the company store that sold basic necessities at inflated prices. Because the miners feared being fired for taking their business elsewhere, they could end up in a lot of debt.

Songwriter Merle Travis grew up hearing his father say that he couldn’t die because he owed too much money to the company store. His father’s far-toocommon woes inspired “Sixteen Tons.” 19

WRIT LARGE: DECEMBER 2019

hours a week, or think about the words.

I was born one mornin’ when the sun didn’t shine I picked up my shovel and walked to the mine Loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal And the straw boss said, “Well, bless my soul.”

For a while, I thought “number nine coal” was a kind of coal—like #2 is a kind of pencil. Then I did some research. Merle Travis grew up in Kentucky next to two coal mines: the No. 6 and the No. 9.

According to song historians Edith Fowke and Joe Glazer, No. 9 was notorious for having low ceilings and being extraordinarily difficult to mine. Loading sixteen tons of No. 9 coal was quite a feat.

Miners were paid by the weight of the coal they put into the coal cars. To get the coal from point A to point B, they essentially had to rip apart millions of years of geological engineering. The process involved using a pick to hack away the bottom of a “working face” 20 and then blowing the rest out with explosives. Once the explosion was done, if the ceiling was intact, the miners would retreat underground to collect the coal, shoveling it into cars to be weighed at the surface.

The checkweighmen were company appointed and therefore inclined to cheat. One of them could easily short the miners on their pay and none but him would ever know. George McGovern says of the miner, “as much a part of him as the pick he wielded was the tormenting conviction that he could never be sure of being fully paid for what he had sweated to produce.”

A miner’s sweat was spent not only on shoveling the coal for profit but also on other tasks required to secure and maintain the mines. According to Caryn Neumann, this work “included taking away rock to get to the coal, removing coal dust, laying track for the cars, and placing timbers so that the ceiling would not collapse.” Coal dust could explode, and improperly-placed timbers could result in cave-ins, so it’s ironic that the work to prevent these accidents was called “dead work.”

Because miners were not paid for dead work, they were tempted to streamline these tasks so they 20 21

could make a little more money that day. Sometimes streamlining meant cutting important corners, like checking to see if there was any methane or other hazards, which often caused accidents. A particularly bad one occurred in the Jokerville Mine near Crested Butte in January 1884. Thomas Andrews calls the explosion “Colorado’s first major colliery disaster,” and what a disaster it was. The Denver Tribune illustrates the fate of the 59 casualties: The clothing was burned and blackened, the faces in many cases were bruised out of all semblance to humanity. Hands were raised as if to protect the face, the skin and flesh hanging in burned and blackened shreds, arms broken, legs broken, and in some cases boots torn off by the force of the blast.

Colorado’s deadliest colliery disaster would come in 1911, when 121 men perished in an explosion and collapse at the Hastings Mine, outside Trinidad.

Cave-ins were less dramatic but just as deadly.

According to Andrews, they accounted for almost half of the 1,708 deaths of Colorado coal miners between 1884 and 1912.

Even if improper maintenance didn’t cause an immediate catastrophe, the conditions at the coal mines could cause other problems. Take black lung disease—coal worker’s pneumoconiosis. When a miner inhales coal dust, it builds up in his lungs, causing inflammation and eventually progressive massive fibrosis.21 Bad cases end in the victim suffocating to death after surviving years in the mines.

These local deaths aren’t without their remembrances. The ones I knew in my childhood were two statues, one in front of a mining museum and the other guarding a tiny patch of lawn on Main Street. The mining museum is behind the courthouse where we’d meet Dad on his breaks, so I grew up with that image of a coal miner, stoic with his pick over his shoulder. In my head, coal mining was a job just like the one my dad did. I didn’t understand why a job merited a monument with hundreds of names carved at its feet. I’m selfishly glad that I didn’t. The knowledge of the job’s horrific consequences would have cast a pall over

The exposed area of a coal bed from which the coal is extracted.

In 2016, NPR did a study on black lung cases in Appalachia, one of the U.S.’s major mining areas, and found an incredible number of PMF cases, more than previously reported. Former coal miner Charles Stanley says that even now, miners avoid NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) testing because they fear being fired. He waited until he was out of work before getting his first chest x-ray.

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Clockwise from left: © Ashley Van Haeften; © el-toro (flickr); © New York Public Library

golden childhood afternoons.22 Despite the wealth or even the simple occupation a job mining coal promised, it came with risks made worse by company policy. Coal miners wanted jobs, but they also didn’t want to die.

But protesting company policies alone was at best useless and at worst dangerous. Enter the union.23 According to the United Mine Workers of America, “The UMWA continues the fight we began in 1890 for safe workplaces, good wages and benefits, and strong representation for working families throughout North America.” In 1913, the UMWA (simply the UMW at the time) sent representatives to the Trinidad Coal Field. These representatives set into motion the chain of events that came to a bloody climax in April 1914. t

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I think the entirety of Colorado knew that 2014 was the 100th anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre.

It was widely publicized in newspapers and posters; on the radio and TV; and in events set up by libraries, schools, and other organizations. Whether most of the state knew what the Ludlow Massacre

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was—that was a different question. Was it something to celebrate? To mourn? To inspire rage?

My high school painted it as a piece of unique history to celebrate—not that it happened, but that it happened nearby. It was our legacy. My school held a presentation about it in April 2014, which included a variety of coal mining songs performed by my choir. Our selection included general coal mining songs, like “Sixteen Tons,” and area-specific songs, like Woody Guthrie’s ballad “The Ludlow Massacre,” rehearsed with mere sprinklings of historical context.

According to my choir director’s summary of the events, a strike was first called in September 1913. The miners and their families spent the winter in tent colonies, harassed by the National Guard, until a firefight in April 1914 ended in over a dozen casualties. This is the version of the Ludlow Massacre that my school got—about as general and neutral as the histories in our textbooks.

Generic history then got combined with the aforementioned Woody Guthrie ballad. First, it is lyrically very simple. Perhaps straightforward to a more sophisticated—or sympathetic—listener, but

There’s another monument I remember. Right next to the old train depot and its yellow caboose stood a board that looked like a ten-foot-tall earring organizer. Bronze discs hung upon countless pegs. I always thought it was a foolish abstract art installation until we found a similar disc in the dump near my grandparents’ house. A family friend, one of the unofficial keepers of the local legends and history, explained the purpose: A miner would take the chips into the mines at the beginning of the work day. If the chip was not returned at the end of the shift, the bosses knew that the miner had been lost to an accident they would ascribe to negligence on the miner’s part.

Simply put, a union is an organization that advocates for workers’ rights.

WRIT LARGE: DECEMBER 2019

We took some cement and walled that cave up, Where you killed these thirteen children inside.

Now, you have to understand that I am the oldest of four and more protective of my siblings than a mama bear. So after I heard those lyrics, I couldn’t shake them, and I couldn’t put off learning the details anymore.

In September 1913, John Lawson, the president of the UMW, sent a list of demands to the coal operators in the Trinidad coal field: 24 1. 10% increase on tonnage rates 2. An 8-hour workday 3. Payment for dead work 4. The right to elect their own men to weigh their coal 5. The right to trade in any store and to choose their boarding places and doctors 6. Enforcement of Colorado mining laws and abolition of the company guard system 7. Recognition of the union If the demands were not met, Lawson warned, the miners would strike within a week.

In September 2014, exactly 101 years after that strike was called and a few months after my choir 24

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performance, the annual Spanish Peaks International Celtic Music Festival was held in Huerfano County. This year was a little different from years past. Normally, the three-day festival consisted of workshops, hooleys, singing circles, and musical performances, ending on Sunday afternoon with all the entertainers and festivalgoers excitedly gathered—albeit a bit tired—at one big concert.

In 2014, the concert was replaced by a one-woman play: For Tomorrow We May Die by Barbara Yule.25 It tells the true story of Mary Thomas,26 a young Welsh mother at the Ludlow tent camp. That day, on a sun-gilded afternoon in a mountain town where the aspens were turning, the Ludlow Massacre came alive for me.

Mary comes to the Trinidad coal field looking for her husband. With her bubbly personality, she makes many friends among the colliers’ wives.

When the strike is called on September 23, more than 90% of the workforce—over 11,000 workers, who spoke 24 different languages—meet the strike call. Mary and her friends are among them.

The companies couldn’t stand to have workers and their families living in company houses they weren’t working for, so thousands of people were promptly evicted. The UMW was prepared—it had leased land and prepared tents and ovens for their strikers. Tent colonies mushroomed over Huerfano and Las Animas Counties. The most important one of these was Ludlow, about 25 miles away from Walsenburg.

Mary tries to keep everyone’s spirits up through

Most of the following details are from Caryn Neumann’s account in St. James Encyclopedia of Labor History Worldwide, including the list.

Barbara Yule is also the founder of the Spanish Peaks International Celtic Music Festival.

The role of Mary was played by Tanya Perkins, a local actress and vocal coach. She was one of the people who initially got me interested in choir, so perhaps this added to the power of the play.

from left: © United States Library of Congress; © United States Library of Congress; © Beverly & Pack (flickr)

downright stupid to a group of bored teenagers.

Add that to a nasally recording full of odd mispronunciations like “potat-ers” and “Wal-ens-burg” and you get a recipe for copious mockery. Practicing that song was the low point of every already boring rehearsal. I had two choices: go with the flow and entertain myself with mockery, or actually listen to the lyrics.

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the difficulties of striking and living in a tent colony. The winter is cold and harsh, but they stay through it—not because of the tiny benefits the UMW pay the strikers, but because most of them believe in the UMW’s cause. Those that don’t are often peer-pressured into not breaking the strike.

The play unfolds from Mary’s perspective, so I filled in some of the details with my own research.

In offices far away from Ludlow, pencil-pushers scramble to find a solution to the turmoil. John D. Rockefeller Jr., CFI’s major stockholder, had never involved himself much in CFI business. Caryn Neumann believes that Rockefeller was unaware of the realities of a coal miner’s life. Instead of considering the union’s stance, he insists that mediation or protection from “union intimidation” would get the striking miners back to work. When mediation fails, company mine overseers and their sheriffs ask Governor Elias Ammons for state militia.

Ammons acquiesces.

I listened to Mary’s soliloquy with apprehensive sympathy. Violence from both sides make tensions rise. The cold wears down the families in the tent colonies. To top it all off, the CFI uses searchlights on the camp every night, waking the families up and stealing their little period of rest. Even staunchly optimistic Mary is growing anxious and tired.

Once again, research fills in the gaps in my memory and the limits of a one-woman play.

Even the state militia and their officers were getting tired. By April 17, 1914, most of the militia had been removed for various reasons—excess of 27

Later, Louis Tikas was shot in the back under dubious circumstances.

Public Domain / Denver Public Library

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force, cost, etc. Caryn Neumann describes the fatal piece of the puzzle: “Only one unit of 34 soldiers remained, but it was joined by a newly formed unit of 100 mine employees [hired guards] who received no guard training or uniforms before going into action.”

Back in the play, Mary, her friends, and her children are exhausted and ready for a peaceful end to a long winter. It appears that the higher-ups are as well, because on April 20, Major Patrick Hamrock meets with Louis Tikas, Greek union organizer. Mary is not privy to anything more than the fact that soon shots are fired.27 The soldiers and untrained employees join the melee, firing from the hills while strikers shoot from embankments around the camp.

This is worse than any of the scuffles beforehand; this is a daylong firefight. Women and children run for the shelter of hills and arroyos while the strikers keep fighting. Some women and children take refuge in cellars below the tents. Finally, the miners are driven from the tents, and the guardsmen set fire to the tent colony.

The most horrific part for me wasn’t the battle, or the pillaging, or the injustice. I was just as remotely angry about that as I was about, say, half of the actions of the British Empire. The most horrific part was watching tears stream down Tanya’s face as Mary received the news that her two best friends and their children had been trapped in a cellar as their tent burned above them. A dozen children and two women suffocated and died in a pit.

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Two years later, I walked into the new coffee shop for the first time and saw the WALSENBURG COLORADO explorer hats in neon pink and green.

They called back to the monuments of my childhood and the memories they kept—stories of subterranean life, work, and death, of its history and

its politics.

Most of the older residents in town know more about our fraught coal mining history than I do.

After all, they grew up with the stories, and many of them heard the tales from the people who lived in the company towns and worked the mines. But though they’ve heard the stories, they don’t tell them.

I fear we don’t tell the stories because it would uncover the complexity of the subterranean world.

Stories reveal that our history is more than cut-anddried economical benchmarks. It’s easier to present it as a nice, boxed-up timeline of the rise and fall of industries, not people. If we do that, then papers like USA Today and High Country News can sum us up in neat headlines: “old mining town turns to marijuana after prison, factory close.” We can market ourselves as a quirky tourist stop with ties to local history—come to our Mountain Mining Days festival!

I fear we don’t face the complexity of our stories because it would bring up questions, and uncomfortable ones. We’d be forced to truly remember our past. Can we really boast of our ethnic diversity?

Should we continue to put all of our hopes and dreams into one booming industry? Do we really want to bring back the prosperity we knew during the coal mining days?

Or do we want to just wear our explorer hats to candy-coated celebrations of history?

“Members of the Colorado National Guard, called in to suppress the UMW strike against CF&I, pose with their rifles drawn in the destroyed miners’ camp near Ludlow, Las Animas County, Colorado.”

Public Domain / Denver Public Library

In that moment, in a room full of retired Celtic music fans in plastic chairs, our town history became more than something to be enraged about. Just a few weeks prior, I’d experienced true loss for the first time when a woman I was close to passed away. A century of objective analysis and candy-coating no longer separated me from Mary and I was there with her, sobbing because a part of my heart had been torn away and it felt like a hole punched through my world.

On April 20, 1914, 25 people died in the hills half an hour away from the town I grew up in. It wasn’t the first labor-related clash, and it certainly wasn’t the last. It wasn’t even the deadliest. Nonetheless, it is credited by many—including McGovern and Neumann—with inspiring a lot of the New Deal workplace progress. It’s remembered with an anniversary, a monument on the site, and a handful of catchy songs. But after that September afternoon, coal mining could never be such a neutral subject for me. Never again would I pass a monument without questioning it, without wanting to find the story.

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(left) © United States Library of Congress: “Ruins of the Ludlow Colony near Trinidad, Colorado, following an attack by the Colorado National Guard.”

(right) © Mary Hockenbery

WORKS CONSULTED Andrews, Thomas G. Killing for Coal. Harvard UP, 2008.

Berkes, Howard. “Advanced Black Lung Cases Surge in Appalachia.” National Public Radio, 15 Dec. 2016, https://www. npr.org/2016/12/15/505577680/advanced-black-lung-cases-surge-in-appalachia.

Dowling, Stephen. “Bragg’s 20 Years on Campaign Trail.” BBC News, 7 Oct. 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3171574.stm.

Fowke, Edith, and Joe Glazer. Songs of Work and Freedom. Doubleday, 1961.

Franklin, Raymond A., and David L. Gregory. “Labor Songs: The Provocative Product of Psalmists, Prophets, and Poets.” Journal of Catholic Legal Studies, vol. 50, no. 1-2, 2011, p. 297.

Garcia, Alexis, and Alex Manning. “Can Weed Save Walsenburg?” Newsweek, 26 Nov. 2015, http://www.newsweek. com/can-weed-save-walsenburg-398461.

“History of Crested Butte.” Town of Crested Butte, 12 June 2017, http://www.crestedbutte-co.gov/index.asp?Type=B_ BASIC&SEC=%7BF5DE677C-3C31-4EF8-BC84-006F489F66D3%7D.

Hughes, Trevor. “Old Coal Mining Town Turns to Marijuana after Prison, Factory Close.” USA Today, 22 June 2015, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/06/22/colorado-walsenburg-marijuana-facility/29110033/.

Jones, Corey H. “Walsenburg Was ‘Built on Coal.’ But Art Is Helping Fuel Its Future.” Colorado Public Radio, 19 May 2017, http://www.cpr.org/news/story/walsenburg-s-past-was-built-on-coal-will-its-future-be-art-or-history.

Lewis, Shanna. “Remembering the Ludlow Massacre 100 Years Later.” Colorado Public Radio, 18 Apr. 2014, http://www. cpr.org/news/story/remembering-ludlow-massacre-100-years-later.

Lockard, Duane. Coal: A Memoir and Critique. U of Virginia P, 1998.

McGovern, George S., and Leonard F. Guttridge. Great Coalfield War. UP of Colorado, 1996.

Mitchell, Kirk. “Coming Prison Closure Adding to Walsenburg’s Woes.” The Denver Post, 22 Mar. 2010, http://www. denverpost.com/2010/03/22/coming-prison-closure-adding-to-walsenburgs-woes/.

Neumann, Caryn E. “Ludlow Massacre.” St. James Encyclopedia of Labor History Worldwide. Ed. Neil Schlager. Vol. 1.

Detroit: St. James Press, 2004, p. 572-76.

“New Marijuana Greenhouses to Help Walsenburg Economy.” KOAA News 5, 7 Dec. 2015, http://www.koaa.com/ story/30689787/new-marijuana-greenhouses-to-help-walsenburg-economy.

Paul, Jesse. “A 1917 Coal Mine Explosion in Southern Colorado Killed 121. But It’s Just a Faint Memory in the State’s History.” The Denver Post, 11 May 2017, http://www.denverpost.com/2017/04/27/hastings-mine-explosion-1917 colorado-history/.

Quillen, Ed. “How an Isolated Railroad Kept Running for 119 Years.” Colorado Central Magazine, 1 Sept. 2003, http:// cozine.com/2003-september/how-an-isolated-railroad-kept-running-for-119-years/.

“Walsenburg, Colorado.” City-Data, 1 Sept. 2017, http://www.city-data.com/city/Walsenburg-Colorado.html.

“You Load 16 Tons... Coal Mine Song Is a Gold Mine.” LIFE, 5 Dec. 1955, p. 183.

Yule, Barbara. For Tomorrow We May Die, 2014.

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by

Kate Norris

HIST 3375 Empire: Revolt & Repression | Professor Elizabeth Campbell

INTRODUCTION AFTER HER ARREST IN 1960, ALGERIAN MILITANT DJAMILA Boupacha was subjected to systematic torture and rape at the hands of the French in order to compel a confession for her involvement in the bombing of a café in Algiers during the Algerian War (Whaley-Eager, 2008). Although Boupacha became an international symbol of women’s sacrifice during the Algerian War, she was not alone in her efforts for national freedom. At the heart and soul of the Algerian struggle for independence, thousands of women like Boupacha, veiled and unveiled, challenged the traditional Algerian social structure while fighting for freedom from the French on the front lines of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN). As Frantz Fanon (1967) so aptly writes in his book A Dying Colonialism: “This woman who was writing the heroic pages of Algerian history was, in so doing, bursting the bounds of the narrow in which she had lived without responsibility, and was at the same time participating in the destruction VOLUME 8, ISSUE 7

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of colonialism and in the birth of a new woman” (p. 107). In a nation where Islamic values permeate all structures of society, female involvement in Algeria’s war for independence illustrates the fascinating juxtaposition between Algeria’s deeply held ethnoreligious traditions and the nontraditional means the FLN took to gain sovereignty from France between 1954 and 1962.

Traced back to November 1, 1954, the Algerian War began when a group of Algerian militants known as the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) initiated a series of thirty fatal attacks against French police and military personnel around French-occupied Algeria. With fragility and paranoia at its peak, the FLN broadcast a radio message through Radio Cairo that called on all Muslims in Algeria to unify for the “restoration of the Algerian state, sovereign, democratic, and social, within the framework of the principles of Islam” (Evans & Phillips, 2008, pp. 56–57). Prior to these polarizing events, Algeria had been subdued under the weight of oppressive French colonization for 124 years. For the first time, widespread mobilization of Algerians against France was becoming strikingly apparent to both nations, inciting widespread hope for the people of Algeria. This cry for unity included Algerian women as well. Unlike many other colonized nations at the time, Algeria was considered to be completely under the French administration’s control, with large hoards of French nationals emigrating to Algeria in order to establish farms and begin new lives (Manar, 2014, p. 34). This large influx of French immigrants (known as pied-noirs, or “black feet”), acting in congruence with overwhelming French administrative control, violated traditional Muslim social, political, and cultural values that formed the bedrock of Algerian culture for so long. The Algerian War was an effort to preserve and restore the Islamic values their nation had been built upon, free from the influence of European colonizers. And, in so doing, for the first time in this Islamic nation’s history, women like Djamila Boupacha were sacrificing their lives alongside men for the independence of their country.

In this essay, I consider why women like Djamila Boupacha so eagerly chose to fight—and die—for a nation whose Islamic foundations had only designated a limited number of personal rights to them prior to the war. To support this argument, I focus primarily on three points of explanation 16

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and reasoning. First, women were fighting for the preservation of the dignity provided to them by Islam. Second, their sacrifice was in dedication to and protection of the men whom they perceived as having built their great nation. And finally, false promises and patriotic propaganda broadcast by the FLN essentially brainwashed these brave women into believing they were fighting for more than independence—they were fighting for equality.

But as I show, this was not the case.

THE PRESERVATION OF DIGNITY Built upon the patriarchal foundations of Islam, Algerian society left little room for gender non-conformity, both in historic and contemporary times.

The fourth Surah of the Qur’an—titled An-Nisa or, in English, “The Women”—makes this quite clear, stating, “Men are in charge of women by right of what Allah has given one over the other and what they spend for maintenance from their wealth. So righteous women are devoutly obedient, guarding in the husband’s absence what Allah would have them guard” (Qur’an, An-Nisa 4.34). At the onset of the war in 1954, France saw Algeria’s marginalization of its women as an opportunity to “keep Algeria French” by winning over “the hearts and minds” of Algeria’s female population (Sambron, qtd. in Vince, 2010, pp. 445-6). To accomplish this, the French quickly initiated a program of propaganda in 1955 that promised Algerian women emancipation from what was seen as an oppressive and patriarchal society. At the heart of France’s plan was a series of social reforms aimed at Westernizing Algerian culture and retaining the “l’Algérie française” by promoting education, employment, and voting rights for women (Vince, 2010, p. 446). The French also initiated a series of public unveilings in the streets of Algiers, seeing the veil as a symbol of oppression (Racco, 2014).

Ultimately, this propaganda yielded little success due to counter-actions taken promptly by the FLN as well as preexisting beliefs among Algerian women, many of whom regarded the veil as a sign of dignity for themselves and respect for their religion. In response to the French, the FLN promptly released counter-propaganda that emphasized the necessity for Algerian people to resist the Western rhetoric of the French and hold on to their deeply-rooted religious and family values at all costs. At

(left) © Movies in LA / Flickr.com/photos/moviesinla (right) still from The Battle of Algiers © Rachel Ann Cauilan / rachelannc.wordpress.com

the heart of this propaganda was the image of a traditionally-veiled Algerian woman. The FLN used this image as a representation of the national identity they were fighting to preserve (Keddie, 2006) by portraying the veil as a symbol of the “dignity and validity of all native customs coming under attack and the need to affirm them as a means of resistance to Western domination” (Ahmed, 1992, p. 164).

Impassioned by the FLN’s call to protect their “dignity and validity,” and enticed by the prospect of national independence from their oppressive colonizers, thousands of women quickly became involved in war efforts, breaking centuries-old traditions in the name of freedom and a new beginning for their struggling nation. However, threatened by the presence of women who were actively pushing the boundaries of Algerian tradition by joining the insurgency, the FLN encouraged women who did join to help through what they deemed “patriotic motherhood,” an idea that encouraged women to be good mothers and wives in order to “preserve traditional moral standards” for Algeria’s next generations (Helie-Lucas, 2004, p. 108). The idea was that women could assist the men in the insurgency against France by retaining Algerian traditionality and thus protecting the social, military, and political patriarchy. Men in the FLN and non-military Algerian men did not want women’s involvement to “disturb the social order in the future” (Helie-Lucas, 2004, p. 107). However, this did not stop women from joining the insurgency.

SACRIFICING TO PROTECT THEIR MEN AND COUNTRY WOMEN JOIN THE FIGHT

The roles taken on by women who joined the insurgency varied greatly, and most were not involved directly in wartime violence. Women were always in compliance with their male counterparts when it came to which roles they would assume, not only because men were the ones in leadership positions but also because their upbringing and customs had emphasized subservience to the socially superior male. Although an “enduring and iconic image” of the Algerian war is of Muslim women—often disguised in European dress—transporting bombs, guns, and documents over French checkpoints, these women made up a very small fraction of Algeria’s overall female insurgent population. Furthermore, these seemingly powerful women actually had very few capacities as insurgents due to the leadership and oversight of the men in the FLN (MacMaster, 2007, p. 317).

Known as fidayates, these urban-based militant women played an integral role in the functioning of terrorist cells within the FLN. An analysis of the backgrounds and duties of the women chosen to act within these terrorist organizations reveals various common threads, as explored by MacMaster in Burning the Veil (2012). First, fidayates generally came from trusted nationalist or bourgeois families, and many had received primary education in an era when only 1 in 10 Algerian Muslim women VOLUME 8, ISSUE 7

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completed primary schooling. Samia Lasekhdari and Zohra Drif, for example, were law students in university when recruited. Djamila Bouhired was recruited by her uncle, the well-known FLN militant Mustapha Bouhired (Vince, 2009, p. 317).

These school and family relationships provided the FLN with a reason to trust in the women recruited to carry out terrorist acts. Second, despite the integral role played by these women within their respective terrorist cells, command was still entirely in the hands of men. Although the women were often required to break the norms of respectability by wearing makeup, removing their veils, and wearing European dress to pass French checkpoints, this was all controlled by male decision-makers.

A classic illustration of this can be seen in an iconic scene from Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 film The Battle of Algiers in which three women are shown huddled around a mirror, removing their white haïks and applying makeup while tense, warlike drum music beats rhythmically in the background.

Portrayed as brave warriors going into battle, these women receive orders from a male insurgent before venturing past French checkpoints into Algiers in their “Europeanized” dress, where they will later plant baskets containing bombs in crowded locales.

However, although this scene portrays the women as equals in the Algerian War, Leonhardt (2013) notes that this is an “unrealistic depiction,” as no woman was ever in a leadership position within the FLN. Although the three women depicted in the film hold powerful roles—as they did during the true bombings in Algiers—their activities were closely managed by male FLN leaders such as the well-known Saadi Yacef, who is shown in the film giving the women strict orders and rules before they set out on their mission. Another critique, as explored by University of Portsmouth lecturer Natalya Vince, is that “the women chosen for such tasks often already looked and dressed in a European way and were part of a tiny minority who had received a French education alongside European students” (Vince, 2010, p. 452). This immediately disqualified the 80 percent majority of FLN women who came from rural areas and had little opportunity to adopt European customs and dress. The fidayates were truly a rarity rather than the norm.

Ultimately, regardless of whether a woman was an urban fidayate or a rural moudjahidines, attitudes 18

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from male FLN militants were non-discriminatory between these two groups, and the breaching of traditional gender roles by these women was “tolerated” by men because the war “demanded every sacrifice” (MacMaster, 2009, p. 317). As written by Fanon (1965), “Fathers no longer had any choice.

Their constant fear of shame became illogical in the great tragedy which the people were living” (p. 94).

DJAMILA BOUPACHA

Perhaps the most internationally recognized of the fidayates is Djamila Boupacha, a nationalist militant who joined the FLN at the age of 20 in hopes of liberating her country from colonial rule.

Boupacha’s story provides a captivating illustration of the approaches the French military took regarding female insurgents and the ways in which they took advantage of Algeria’s fierce Islamic tradition to punish these women. After her arrest in 1960 for allegedly bombing a café, Boupacha was subjected to torture and rape at the hands of the French military. Her treatment would later “arouse the most extraordinary storm, not only in France but all over the world” (de Beauvoir & Halimi, 1962, p. 194).

Sexual torture was the crux of her punishment, used as a weapon to “subvert the assumed values of sexuality in Algerian communities” by turning women into pariahs in their communities due to the loss of their virginity (Kunkle, 2013, p. 8).

According to Ryan Kunkle, historian at the University of Iowa, sexual violation of these women was also seen as a tool to emasculate Algerian men because they had failed to protect their women from such humiliations.

When Boupacha was arrested, French military forces were well aware of women’s inconspicuous roles in the insurgency, particularly the planting of bombs while disguised in Western dress. In response, Algerian women became the target of French military policy and were subjected to routine—and often violating—frisks, which involved the inspection of a woman’s pelvic area and were often conducted in front of family members and friends in order to humiliate the women (Kunkle, 2013, p. 8). Rutgers University professor Meredeth Turshen estimates that around 2,200 women were arrested and tortured during Algeria’s war for independence, and rape was consistently a “potent method of torture and abuse for women suspected of being nationalists” due to its violation of

deep-rooted Islamic values that emphasize the virtue of sexual purity (Turshen, 2002, p. 891). Gisèle Halimi, Boupacha’s legal counsel in her subsequent trial, went on to write a book about her client in 1962 (co-written with Simone de Beauvoir), aptly titled Djamila Boupacha. Simone de Beauvoir and Gisèle Halimi (1962) explain in graphic detail the abuse Boupacha endured, writing that she had been “deflowered” by French militants using a beer bottle, leaving her “passed out in a pool of her own blood” (pp. 35-40). Along with rape, Boupacha was subjected to electroshocks, cigarette burns, water torture, and beatings so bad that they caused “hemithoracic displacement” (p. 34). Miraculously, Boupacha never provided names or details of the FLN to her torturers, displaying her ceaseless resilience and dedication to the cause held by so many women in the Algerian War. ZOHRA DRIF

Another well-known fidayate is Zohra Drif, a law student best known for her involvement in the Milk Bar bombing of 1956 as well as her relationship with FLN leader Saadi Yacef. The daughter of a well-known Algerian judge, Drif ’s first exposure to nationalist resistance came during her high school years when she learned of the 1945 massacre of around 45,000 Algerian protesters in Sétif at the hands of the French. In 1955, Drif joined underground forces of the FLN; “she made a conscious choice of violence in 1956 because political response to French violence had proved ineffective” (Rholetter, 2011, p. 426). On September 30, 1956, Zohra Drif, Djamila Bouhired, and Samia Lakhdari successfully smuggled bombs across French checkpoints under the instruction of FLN leader Saadi Yacef, an event that would later be depicted on film in The Battle of Algiers. According to Yacef, these women were chosen based on their “feminine allure and European looks,” believing they could easily pass as French and thus pass checkpoints without wariness from officers (Horne, 1977/2006, p. 185). This had proven effective in the past; even infamous French General Paul Aussaresses described an instance in which Ali-la-Pointe “managed to elude our patrols because he was disguised as a woman” (p. 143).

After the women had cut their hair, removed their veils, applied makeup, and dressed in French garb, patrol officers in Algiers quickly overlooked

them as they crossed the various checkpoints around Algiers. These women were instructed to plant bombs in carefully selected French sites in Algiers including the Milk Bar—a popular French gathering spot—and the downtown office of Air France. With a bomb concealed in her beach bag, Drif entered the Milk Bar, ordered a drink and slid the bag under a chair before paying her tab and leaving casually without suspicion. Fellow fidayates Samia Lakhdari and Djamila Bouhired had both successfully placed their bombs at the cafeteria on Rue Michelet and the Air France office. Minutes later, both Drif and Lakhdari’s bombs exploded with such force that three people were killed, fifty were injured, and a dozen suffered amputated limbs. Only Djamila Bouhired’s bomb failed to detonate due to a faulty timer (Horne, 1977/2006, p. 186).

A 1950 Time Magazine article, “Capture of the Chief,” dubbed Drif and Yacef “uncrowned monarchs” in the Algerian War for their tandem organization of FLN attacks. In one iconic image of her arrest in 1957, Zohra Drif can be seen exiting a building surrounded by four men, three of whom are dressed in French military attire. Despite the cruel nature of the deadly crimes for which she was arrested, her face seems demure, and her hands are touching in a way that almost suggests naiveté. The arrest of Yacef and Drif marked the conclusion of the Battle of Algiers, which persisted from September 30, 1956 to September 24, 1957 and took the lives of many FLN fighters and French soldiers (Horne, 1977/2006, p. 571). In 1958, Drif was sentenced to 20 years of hard labor and was imprisoned in the women’s ward of the Barbarossa prison in Algiers.

In 1961, while still incarcerated, Drif composed and published a 20-page memoir titled La Mort de Mes Frères. Despite her great sacrifice to her country, Drif actively retains the subservient stereotypes of women in Algerian society. Drif ’s conceptualization of women comes almost exclusively from their labeling as a mother, sister, or wife. Their sacrifice—rape, death, torture, and loss—occurred in the fight to restore the threatened masculinity of the Algerian patriarchy (Vince, 2010, p. 220). This is demonstrated in one fascinating quote from La Mort de Mes Frères in which Drif (1960) writes that women’s participation in the conflict is “natural” because VOLUME 8, ISSUE 7

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Algerian women have seen their brothers, their husbands and their sons tortured and massacred before their eyes. Young girls have been raped in their houses of the Casbah, and across all of Algeria, in front of their brothers and fathers, who are powerless under the threat of the gun. (p. 9)

Drif suggests that women’s involvement was essential because the French stripped Algerian men of the means to protect their women, both physically and psychologically. This again demonstrates just how deeply rooted Algeria’s Islamic tradition truly was, even among women who sacrificed everything for the cause.

DJAMILA BOUHIRED

Another famous fidayate named Djamila Bouhired, a bomber during the Battle of Algiers alongside Zohra Drif, achieved astonishing recognition in Algeria and abroad for her hardships as a woman during the Algerian War and her subsequent trial.

Bouhired was even the subject of numerous productions, including the film Djamila l’Algérienne

by Youcef Chahine (1958), the book Pour Djamila Bouhired by Georges Arnaud and Jacques Verges (1957), and numerous songs that recognize and idolize her sacrifice (Amrane-Minne, 1996, p.

345). The promotional poster of Djamila l’Algérienne is especially telling; Bouhired’s portrait rests in the foreground with an Algerian flag tied to a gun waving behind her. Around this portrait is a smaller scene of men fighting against each other on the battlefield, symbolizing her central importance and role in the conflict (Chahine, 1958).

Although very little literature is written about Bouhired’s personal life, her arrest and subsequent trial as a fidayate is adequately documented. Sentenced to death in 1957 for her role in the cafe bombing during the Battle of Algiers, Bouhired was quickly represented by an anti-colonialist French lawyer named Jacques Vergès, whom she would go on to marry in 1963. Vergès countered the arguments of the French government using what he called “the strategy of disruption” or “rupture strategy,” accusing the prosecutors of committing the same terrorist acts being alleged against the defendant (Kuhlman, 2002). In his wake, Vergès developed a massive public relations campaign on behalf of Bouhired and Algerian prisoners like her. The government of France quickly found itself 20

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pressured by both domestic and foreign entities, leading to the postponement of Bouhired’s execution and her subsequent release towards the end of the war (Kuhlman, 2002, p. 176).

FALSIFIED PROPAGANDA AND LACK OF PROGRESS Despite such fierce dedication by Boupacha, Drif, Bouhired, and women like them, very few women received national praise or recognition for their sacrifices, notwithstanding years of misleading propaganda released by the FLN guaranteeing compensation and equal opportunity for the women involved. In an effort to recruit both Algerian men and women in the face of conflict, FLN members readily used women in misleading propaganda efforts, advertising that “[w]omen could only achieve equality by fighting for a country freed from colonial domination” (MacMaster, 2007, pp.

92-93). The FLN’s wartime newspaper El Moudjahid played an integral role in this misleading propaganda, publishing weekly diary excerpts by a young female militant and celebrating the sacrifice of female fighters in the war against colonialism through romanticized stories (Leonhardt, 2013).

One piece of evidence from Wilaya IV proclaimed, Algerian women! Listen! Do you not hear the boots of the French occupier clicking on the road? Do you not hear the screams of the massacres or tortured Algerian women and men?

Do you not hear the proud call of Djamila Bouhired? ... Heroic and martyrised Algeria has its gaze fixed on you. (“Appel de l’ALN aux femmes Algériennes,” 1954) The primary goal of this propaganda was to provide an active resistance to French efforts to emancipate women and unify the country, not necessarily to recruit female fighters. However, the unfortunate fact remained: women were still seen as subservient in Algerian society. No amount of sacrifice could propel all women to total societal equality. Heroic female FLN figures like Djamila Bouhired remained a rarity.

When the war began to degenerate, the falsity of the propagandized promises became apparent.

The equality promised to them was nothing more than smoke: the majority of women in Algeria still found traditional stereotypes and discrimination to be a reality of their daily lives. Many male soldiers

(right) ALN R.A. propaganda poster “Révolution Algérienne” (The Algerian Revolution).

Courtesy of INA’s official website Audiovisual National Institute www.ina.fr © 1962.

not understand that we also wanted to be militants and to work...certain soldiers were scornful, they tried to assert their superiority.

Later, with the passing of months, they came to recognize our worth, especially during a skirmish or on operations. (Aitsiselmi, p. 145)

(left) © http://www.hostingpics.net/viewer.php?id=664878djamila.jpg

did not want women trained in combat and were concerned with the “sexual vulnerability” of their female counterparts, particularly among women required to deal with French soldiers in European dress (Leonhardt, 2013, p. 13). Urban moudjahidine were less concerned by women’s proactive role in the insurgency, as the majority of them had been exposed to more “modern” women in their city environments. Moudjahidine in rural wilayas, alternatively, became hostile in the face of young, educated Algerian women. Having rarely been exposed to the modern, educated Algerian woman, these men remained bound to traditional, patriarchal notions of gender. Women active in rural wilaya ranks were often met by blatant misogyny among illiterate soldiers who viewed these women as a “scandal and a disturbing sexual temptation” rather than as teammates in the fight for their country’s liberation. Men believed it was their duty to supervise these new female insurgents by imposing “draconian regulations,” such as segregated sleeping arrangements and degrading virginity tests (MacMaster, 2009, p. 320).

MacMaster (2009) notes that these men often had a tendency to come around gradually to these women. As written by FLN member Yamina Cherrad, There were some [men] who took us for girls who had come to get married; they could

One publication from an FLN journal (1956) even proclaimed “a new era in the Liberation of women...

It is no exaggeration to say that nothing could be achieved without their aid” (MacMaster, 2009, p.

321). The traditional Algerian gender roles were not truly changed in the face of war. For the majority of women in the FLN, the roles provided to them often fulfilled gender roles as closely as possible; Algerian women involved directly in combat were an absolute rarity. The majority of women involved in the Algerian War acted as nurses and aids to male insurgents and were never allowed to gain ranks in the military. When Dr. Mustapha Laliam joined the FLN, for example, the more experienced female doctor, Dr. Nafissa Haloum, was immediately demoted and Dr. Laliam was made her superior (MacMaster, 2009, p. 321). So, although the male-dominated FLN saw the value of women in the fight for independence, they did not necessarily see them as equals. The women were to carry out the roles designated to them for centuries, remaining safely within patriarchal control.

Opening image on page 15 “The Real Battle of Algiers” © Jacques Massu, Plon, 1971 [Public Domain] / Wikimedia Commons

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© Yacine Ketfi / Shutterstock.com

REFERENCES Ahmed, L. (1992). Women and gender in Islam. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Aitsiselmi, K. (2009). La femme Algérienne: De la bataille d’Alger au code de famille. In A. S. Fell (Ed.), Femmes face a la guerre (pp. 243–262). Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang.

Algeria: Capture of the chief. (1957, October 07). Time Magazine, 70(15). Retrieved from http://content.time.com/time/ magazine/article/0,9171,809954,00.html

Amrane-Minne, D. D. (1996). Des femmes dans la Guerre d’Algérie. Paris, France: Karthal.

Aussaresses, P. (2002). The battle of the Casbah: Terrorism and counterterrorism in Algeria. New York: Enigma.

Chahine, Y. (1958). Djamila l’Algérienne [Promotional film poster]. Retrieved October 30, 2016.

de Beauvoir, S., & Halimi, G. (1962). Djamila Boupacha: The story of the torture a young Algerian girl which shocked liberal French opinion. New York, NY: Macmillan.

Drif, Z. (1960). La mort de mes frères. Paris, France: Maspero.

Evans, M., & Phillips, J. (2008). Algeria: Anger of the dispossessed. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Fanon, F. (1967). A dying colonialism. Atlanta, GA: Grove Press.

Helie-Lucas, M. A. (2004). Women, nationalism, and religion in the Algerian liberation struggle. In M. Badran & M. Cooke (Eds.), Opening the gates: A century of Arab feminist writing (2nd ed., pp. 104–114). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Horne, A. (1977/2006). A savage war of peace: Algeria, 1954–1962. New York, NY: NYRB Classics.

Keddie, N. R. (2006). Women in the Middle East: Past and present. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Kuhlman, E. A. (2002). A to z of women in world history. New York, NY: Facts on File Publishers.

Kunkle, R. (2013). ‘We must shout the truth to the rooftops’: Gisèle Halimi, Djamila Boupacha, and sexual politics in the Algerian War of Independence. The Iowa Historic Review, 4(1), pp. 5–24.

Leonhardt, A. (2013). Between two jailers: Women’s experience during colonialism, war, and independence in Algeria (unpublished thesis). Portland State University, Portland.

MacMaster, N. (2007). The colonial ‘émancipation’ of Algerian women: The marriage law of 1959 and the failure of legislation on women’s rights in the post-independence era. Vienna Journal of African Studies, 12, pp. 91–116.

MacMaster, N. (2009). Burning the veil: The Algerian war and the emancipation of Muslim women, 1954–62. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.

Manar, E. P. (2014). Algerian War for Independence. In C. Johnson (Ed.), Worldmark modern conflict and diplomacy (pp.

34–39). Farmington Hills, MI: Gale.

Racco, P. (2014). The dynamism of the veil: Veiling and unveiling as a means of creating identity in Algeria and France.

The Undergraduate Historical Journal at UC Merced, 1(1), pp. 1–7.

Rholetter, W. (2011). Zohra Drif-Bitat. In M. Z. Zeiss, C. K. Oyster, & J. E. Sloan (Eds.), The encyclopedia of women in today’s world: Volume 1. New York, NY: Sage Publications.

Turshen, M. (2002). Algerian women in the liberation struggle and the civil war: From active participants to passive victims? Social Research, 69(3), pp. 889–911.

Vince, N. (2010). Transgressing boundaries: Gender, race, religion, and ‘Françaises Musulmanes’ during the Algerian War of Independence. French Historical Studies, 33(3), pp. 445–474.

Whaley-Eager, P. (2008). From freedom fighters to terrorists: Women and political violence. Aldershot, England: Ashgate.

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A Great Duet for Sweet Dumplings

CL ARINET PIECES INSPIRED BY FRIENDSHIP

Katie Beisel Hollenback

by

MUAC 3545: The Making of Romantic Music | Professor A. Banducci Originally published in WRIT Large Volume 3 (2014)

FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY WAS NOT ONLY AN extraordinary composer of music during the 19th century, but like many of his contemporaries, he was also a steadfast composer of letters. Two of Mendelssohn’s most frequent yet under-emphasized epistolary contacts were Heinrich and Carl Bärmann, father and son clarinetists who catapulted the clarinet past the level of orchestral instrument to solo instrument.1 Mendelssohn adored these men greatly, particularly Heinrich, and his adoration is clearly visible in his letters to the Bärmanns. In one of his many doting letters to Heinrich, Mendelssohn writes: I would give the whole of Paris to be able to hear even for a minute that sweet world of magic tones of every grade that stream from your wooden instrument so light and bright, so mellow and low, flowing and glowing, clear and dear, pure and sure, clinging and singing so sweetly.2 The Bärmanns in turn were equally fond of Mendelssohn and happy to play the clarinet for him, especially when he wrote pieces for them to perform. Many musicians are aware that Mendelssohn’s Konzertstücke für Klarinette, Bassethorn, und Pianoforte 3 (Concert Pieces for Clarinet, Basset Horn, and Piano) were written for the father and son duo. What is frequently overlooked, however, are the specific ways the Bärmanns influenced the making of the Konzertstücke and, in VOLUME 8, ISSUE 7

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turn, how the Konzertstücke influenced later works of Carl Bärmann, in particular his Duo Concertant for Two Clarinets. This trio of connectivity undermines the popular notion that Mendelssohn was the only member of this group to produce works as a result of the friendship. Connections between their musical works and letters also reveal that the Bärmanns had a more direct contribution to the creation of the Konzertstücke besides being their dedicatees, most likely because they played these works with Mendelssohn rather than just for him.

As I will demonstrate, Mendelssohn himself reveals how he wrote his second Konzertstück with a favorite musical theme of Heinrich Bärmann’s in mind. Echoes of both Konzertstücke persist in Carl Bärmann’s Duo Concertant for Two Clarinets, 4 which was published decades after Mendelssohn’s death (it is possible Carl was thinking of the Konzertstücke after his father’s and Mendelssohn’s deaths because Carl completed the orchestration of the second Konzertstück’s piano accompaniment, which Mendelssohn began but was unable to finish). In all of these works, common themes and styles can be noticed that reveal further the strong relationship between Mendelssohn and the Bärmanns.

Mendelssohn most likely met Heinrich Bärmann at his family home in Berlin, although it is likely Mendelssohn had already heard of Heinrich before this time due to his interest in Carl Maria von Weber’s works, many of which were also written for Heinrich. The Mendelssohns were wealthy, and his mother, Lea, would invite notable musicians to their house to play with her musical family, which also included his sister Fanny.5 Mendelssohn used music as a way to be closer to people he loved and admired, even from a young age. Clarinet scholar Pamela Weston notes that at only fifteen years old, Mendelssohn wrote his first dedication to Heinrich Bärmann in 1824, the Clarinet Sonata in E-flat Major. Heinrich was forty years old at this time. Mendelssohn was much closer in age to Carl Bärmann, who was only one year younger than 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

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him. Although a fairly large age gap existed between Mendelssohn and Heinrich, they remained very close throughout their lives, and Mendelssohn visited the Bärmanns at their home in Munich whenever he could. As he writes in a letter to Heinrich regarding such a visit, “They were the jolliest days I ever passed, and I have you specially to thank for this.” 6 Mendelssohn’s admiration for Heinrich and Carl Bärmann fueled the creation of the first and second Konzertstücke für Klarinette, Bassethorn, und Pianoforte, which I firmly believe were originally written for the purpose of spending time together as friends. The father and son duo not only played these pieces together, but Mendelssohn also participated by frequently playing the piano accompaniment part (Weston points out that the friends also enjoyed playing works of other composers together, particularly those by C. M. von Weber). In both Konzertstücke, Heinrich played the clarinet part and Carl played the basset horn, which is an early member of the clarinet family with a longer bore and lower pitch range than the modern clarinet. Though camaraderie was possibly the original motive for writing these works, they evolved into popular showmanship pieces that could be, and still are, found in the concert hall. The first Konzertstück was first performed by the three musicians on January 5, 1833 in Berlin.7 The piece was very successful, and the Bärmanns played it frequently with different pianists during their tours.

Shortly after the first Konzertstück was written, the Bärmanns made plans to tour Russia. Since the first Konzertstück was so successful, Heinrich asked Mendelssohn to write another for their next tour, and of course Mendelssohn was happy to oblige.

It has been said that Mendelssohn wrote the second Konzertstück in one day, in the amount of time it took for Carl to make his homemade Dampfnudel and Rahmstrudel (sweet dumplings and cheese strudel). Carl Bärmann described the scene of this day, illustrating how both he and Mendelssohn had

Heinrich Bärmann (1784–1847). Carl Bärmann (1810–1885).

Felix Mendelssohn, Paris, to Heinrich Bärmann, Munich, 16 April 1832, in Letters of Distinguished Musicians, 406–407.

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Konzertstücke für Klarinette und Bassethorn Nr. 1 & Nr. 2, Op. 113 & 114 (Breitkopf und Härtel, 1875).

Carl Bärmann, Duo Concertant for Two Clarinets, Op. 33, 1870.

Pamela Weston, Clarinet Virtuosi of the Past (London: Robert Hale & Company, 1971), 143.

Felix Mendelssohn, Rome, to Heinrich Bärmann, Zürich, 14 February 1831, in Letters of Distinguished Musicians, 393.

Weston, 144.

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until five o’clock to complete their respective tasks (for Carl dumplings and strudel, for Mendelssohn the new Konzertstück). When five o’clock came, each man presented their work in a covered dish. Mendelssohn was said to have claimed that Carl’s “dumpling composition” was more ingenious than his.8 The events of this particular day are the reason why Mendelssohn’s original title for his second Konzertstück was The Battle of Prague: A Great Duet for Sweet Dumplings or Cream Strudel, Clarinet, and Basset Horn.

Mendelssohn did, however, send a more polished edition of the piece later on to Heinrich. With this version Mendelssohn included a letter, which now stated the title of the work to be Grand Duo ordered by Mr. Bärmann, composed on a favorite theme of Mr. Bärmann for Messrs Bärmann, by F. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, amongst others. As this title, along with the rest of this letter from Mendelssohn to Heinrich, reveals, Mendelssohn received inspiration for these pieces not only from his friendship with the Bärmanns, but also from favorite musical ideas of Heinrich Bärmann. Mendelssohn continues in this letter: The following are my intentions: see the first movement, of which your theme forms the subject; my fancy painted to me Herr Stern, after you had won all his money at whist, and he had flown into a passion (you will soon see him, give him my compliments); in the adagio, I wished to give you a retrospect of our last dinner at Heinrich Beer’s, where I was obliged to compose it.9 The clarinet depicts my ardent yearnings, while the tremor of the Basset horn represents the grumbling of my stomach. The last movement is purposely kept cold, because you are going to Russia, where the temperature is supposed to be ditto.10 I believe there are two possibilities for what Heinrich’s “theme” might be, both of which appear in earlier clarinet works of Mendelssohn. The first possibility is the second Konzertstück’s opening theme, in which the clarinet and basset horn are in unison in octaves (see Example 1).

Example 1. Beginning of Mendelssohn’s Konzertstück no. 2, mm. 1–2

A different version of this theme can be found in Mendelssohn’s first Konzertstück.

This version of the theme has a very different character from the opening theme of the second Konzertstück, defined by a soft, legato phrase rather than a fortissimo, staccato statement, but the rhythm and pitch intervals are very similar (see Example 2). Since Heinrich was already familiar with the first Konzertstück, it is possible he related to Mendelssohn his fondness for this theme, persuading Mendelssohn to use it again in the second Konzertstück.

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Example 2. From Mendelssohn’s Konzertstück no. 1, Allegro con fuoco, mm. 17–19

Cited from the preface of Mendelssohn’s Konzertstück No. 2 by Sabine Meyer, Wolfgang Meyer, & Reiner Wehle of Trio di Clarone, 1997.

Heinrich Beer, the brother of Giacomo Meyerbeer, was a tenor. He married the granddaughter of Felix Mendelssohn’s great uncle.

10

Felix Mendelssohn, Berlin, to Heinrich Bärmann, Munich, 19 January 1833, in Letters of Distinguished Musicians, 415–416.

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The second possibility for what Bärmann’s theme might be can also be found in the first Konzertstück, as well as in one of Mendelssohn’s earlier works for Heinrich, the Clarinet Sonata in Eb Major. This theme, which might be better described as a motive, is part of the first theme of the second Konzertstück following the opening phrase. This rhythmic theme is a descending eighth note pattern where each pitch is repeated before descending to the next pitch (see Example 3).

This pattern can be found as the very first theme in the third movement of Mendelssohn’s Clarinet Sonata in Eb Major. Mendelssohn wrote this piece eight years before the first Konzertstück, and the eighth note pattern in question is found as the main recurring theme in the third movement of the clarinet sonata, though it is found as sixteenth notes rather than eighth notes (see Example 4).

Another version of this theme is present in the second movement of the first Konzertstück, in a relaxed triple meter (see Example 5).

It is possible this rhythmic motive seen in all three of the above examples is Heinrich’s “favor-

ite” theme, since he had seen it before in the earlier clarinet sonata dedicated to him by Mendelssohn.

The fact that it is present in the second Konzertstück suggests that Heinrich may have expressed his liking of it to Mendelssohn.

Also notable in this letter about the second Konzertstück is the slightly silly yet very illustrative way Mendelssohn has described the movements.

His descriptions are clearly evoked in each movement and, as we shall see, most likely later influenced the work of Carl Bärmann. The “yearning” Mendelssohn speaks of in the second movement is depicted by two-note motives in the clarinet part that resemble “pleading” towards a resolution that does not come until the third “plea” from the clarinet (see Example 6). In addition, the basset horn is a perfect instrument to imitate Mendelssohn’s “grumbling” stomach because of its darker tone quality and lower pitches compared to the clarinet.

Mendelssohn portrays his indigestion using constant ascending and descending sixteenth notes in groups of six (see Example 6).

Mendelssohn describes the last movement

Example 3. From Mendelssohn’s Konzertstück no. 2, Presto, mm. 19–21

Example 4. From Mendelssohn’s Clarinet Sonata in Eb Major, Allegro moderato, mm. 1–2

Example 5. From Mendelssohn’s Konzertstück no. 1, Andante, mm. 37–38

Example 6. From Mendelssohn’s Konzertstück no. 2, Andante, mm. 106–107

Example 7. From Mendelssohn’s Konzertstück no. 2, Allegro grazioso, mm. 196–199

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of the second Konzertstück as “cold.” Though it is sometimes difficult to pinpoint the characteristics of “cold” music, I view the term in this context as having a similar meaning to “strict” or “frigid.”

The lack of expressive and free lyricism that was found in the second movement, combined with very strict and fast rhythmic lines, could contribute to the “cold” aesthetic. The bulk of the movement is comprised of continuous sixteenth note diatonic scalar and arpeggiated runs (see Example 7) rather than having a distinct, lyrical melody like that of the second movement (see Example 6).

Overall, it is easy to find Mendelssohn’s inspiration for his Konzertstück no. 2 both in Heinrich Bärmann’s musical ideas and in their shared experiences together, which included what sounded like a rather entertaining dinner at Heinrich Beer’s according to Mendelssohn’s letter.

Mendelssohn, however, was not the only one to be compositionally inspired by the relationship between the three musicians. As Mendelssohn looked to Heinrich Bärmann for musical insight, Carl Bärmann looked to Mendelssohn. Carl formed his own friendship with Mendelssohn during their youth. Because the two were only separated in age by one year, they were sharing similar experiences of striving to become known in the current musical world and helped each other to be successful in it.

In a letter to Carl, Mendelssohn attempts to offer some advice in regards to organizing a concert: My dear good Bärmann, For some time past, even before I got your letter, the subject of your concert had been on my mind, so I hasten to answer you to the best of my knowledge and ability.

You played so charmingly, and pleased so universally, that it really would be a pity not to give a concert or a soirée. Much will depend on your selecting a suitable time, otherwise, you could not reckon on a well-filled hall.11 Mendelssohn’s eagerness to help Carl reflects a strong friendship, as well as Carl’s less thorough knowledge of performing compared to that of his famous father or Mendelssohn. Nevertheless, Carl Bärmann knew the clarinet extremely well and composed a good amount of work for the instrument. Duo Concertant for Two Clarinets was one of these compositions, and although it was published in 1870, twenty-three years after Mendelssohn’s death, influences from Mendelssohn’s Konzertstücke (which Carl finished orchestrating after Mendelssohn’s death) can be found in it.

The very beginning of Carl Bärmann’s Duo Concertant audibly resembles the beginnings of both Konzertstücke. All three pieces begin with bold dotted rhythms (see Examples 8, 9, and 10).

Example 8. Clarinet entrance of C. Bärmann’s Duo Concertant, mm. 8–9

Example 9. Beginning of Mendelssohn’s Konzertstück no. 1, m. 1

Example 10. Beginning of Mendelssohn’s Konzertstück no. 2, mm. 1–2

11

Felix Mendelssohn, Leipzig, to Carl Bärmann, 6 March 1843, in Letters of Distinguished Musicians, 447.

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Carl also utilized sixteenth note lines in both clarinet parts that ascend and descend in opposite directions, much like Mendelssohn did (see Examples 11 and 12).

Example 11. From C. Bärmann’s Duo Concertant, Var. IV, mm. 4–5

Example 12. From Mendelssohn’s Konzertstück no. 1, Presto, mm. 121–123

Carl Bärmann’s Duo Concertant also includes a section resembling Mendelssohn’s “grumbling stomach” movement in the second Konzertstück. The first clarinet has a melodic line consisting of some tension and release, which is illustrated by accents on the dissonant ‘D’ flat, which is not part of the main key of Eb major (or F major as written for Bb clarinet) followed by a diatonic ‘D’ natural. This resembles the passage in the second Konzertstück that Mendelssohn described as his “yearning” (See Example 6).

The second clarinet plays a repeated sixteenth note figure, which of course represents Mendelssohn’s “grumbling” stomach (see Example 13).

Example 13. From C. Bärmann’s Duo Concertant, Rondo, mm.140–142

The resemblance of Carl’s Duo Concertant to Mendelssohn’s Konzertstücke strongly illustrates the influence Mendelssohn had on Carl, especially given that Carl wrote his Duo Concertant during a time when teaching had become his main focus as opposed to performing. Composing the Duo Concertant must have roused fond memories for Carl of working with his father and Mendelssohn.

As we have seen, Mendelssohn and the Bärmanns placed great value on their friendship and saw extremely high quality musicians in one another. The three of them took great pleasure in displaying their fondness for each other not only in letters but also in their music. The Bärmanns were in an elite group of musicians highly regarded

by Mendelssohn, who had no problem vocalizing his opinion when he experienced

12 13

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Felix Mendelssohn, Berlin, to Heinrich Bärmann, 27 September 1834, in Letters of Distinguished Musicians, 428.

August Lewald’s biography of Heinrich Bärmann was published in Der Freimüthige on August 16,1834. See Weston, 146.

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music or musicians not up to his standards. For example, Mendelssohn describes his disregard for the clarinetists he had heard in Berlin in a letter to Heinrich: Here, where I have been several times at the opera, they puff away at the clarinet as if it were mere wood; a sort of pea-shooter, for each time the clarinet comes in, the noise is like a shower of blows, and quite startles you when they cut in sharply, so coarse and clumsy and screeching, and yet tame.12 In the same letter, Mendelssohn describes how reading a recently written biography of Heinrich (which I believe is the biography written by August Lewald in 1834)13 made his “mouth water for the

sounds of a good clarinet.” Mendelssohn did not hand out this high praise to just anyone, as seen by his harsh description of the Berlin clarinetists.

Mendelssohn’s deep admiration of the Bärmanns only further solidifies their reputation of being true masters of the clarinet. Thanks to this friendship, clarinetists today are still able to enjoy wonderful pieces produced by these musicians and can find traces of each man in the other’s work.

It is sometimes easy to forget that one of the greatest joys in music is using it to connect with other people. The case of Mendelssohn and the Bärmanns brings into new light the happy reality that behind these exceptional composers and performers was a friendship shaped by music.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bärmann, Carl. Duo Concertant for Two Clarinets, Op. 33. Mainz: B. Schott’s Söhne, 1870.

. Vollständige Klarinettenschule, Op. 63. Offenbach am Main: Johann Andre, 1864.

Bärmann, Heinrich. Concertino for Clarinet and Orchestra, Op. 27. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1828.

Lewald, August. Biography of Heinrich Bärmann in Der Freimüthige, Berlin, 1834.

Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix. Konzertstück für Klarinette und Bassethorn no. 1, Op. 113. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1875.

. Konzertstücke für Klarinette und Bassethorn no. 2, Op. 114. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1875.

. Clarinet Sonata in Eb major, 1841.

Meyer, Sabine, Wolfgang Meyer, and Reiner Wehler. Trio de Clarone. Preface to Konzertstück für

Klarinette und Bassethorn no. 2, Op. 114 (Felix Mendelssohn). Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1875.

Nohl, Ludwig. Letters of Distinguished Musicians: Gluck, Haydn, P.E. Bach, Weber, Mendelssohn, trans.

Lady Wallace. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1867.

Todd, R. Larry. “The Unfinished Mendelssohn,” Bard Music Festival: Mendelssohn and his World. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1991.

Weston, Pamela. Clarinet Virtuosi of the Past. London: Robert Hale & Co., 1971.

Opening image on page 23 © nito / Shutterstock.com

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Meet Our Authors ALICE MAJOR

written for volume 7 in 2018

Alice Major is a sophomore and Colorado native. She has never been skiing, but most of her childhood was spent clambering around the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. She is now double majoring in English and music with a focus in voice. DU’s Catholic Student Fellowship is half of her life. In her rare spare time, she runs and talks about dogs.

KATE NORRIS

written for volume 6 in 2017

Kate Norris is a senior from Parker, Colorado, who is studying Psychology.

She enjoys distance running and watching hockey. One of her hidden talents includes being able to quote the script of Happy Gilmore by heart.

KATIE BEISEL HOLLENBACH updated for volume 8

Katie Beisel Hollenbach received a Bachelor of Music degree in clarinet performance from the University of Denver, twice placing in the Boulder Philharmonic Young Artists Concerto Competition, as well as traveling to Assisi, Italy as a finalist in the International Clarinet Association’s annual research competition. She recently completed her PhD in musicology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and now works as the assistant director of admissions, recruitment, and community outreach at the University of Washington School of Music.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We are very grateful to Doug Hesse and the DU University Writing Program for funding and supporting this project. We would like to thank all of our present and former colleagues who have generously contributed to WRIT Large over the past eight years.

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WL R E T R O S P E C T I V E ( 8 .7 )

LOOKING TO THE PAST

DECEMBER 2019