The Joseph M. Schwartz Memorial Essay, 2005: dancing around the Maypole, ripping up the flag: the Merry Mount caper and issues in American history and art.

From: Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature | Date: March 22, 2005| Author: | Copyright information

To the imagination of many American artists--about a dozen poets, novelists, storytellers, historians, dramatists, and composers--Merry Mount has meant more than just a bump in the road near Quincy, Massachusetts. Like Watergate, it has become more important for what it means than for what it is, living in legend long after losing any significance as a place in itself. Among the literary artists and composers who have drawn meaning from the seventeenth-century capers at Thomas Morton's tiny plantation, Merry Mount, are Peter Ackroyd, Stephen Vincent Bendt, L.S. Davidson, Howard ...

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THE JOSEPH M. SCHWARTZ MEMORIAL ESSAY, 2005
; ...RIPPING UP THE FLAG: THE MERRY MOUNT CAPER AND ISSUES IN...dramatists, and composers - Merry Mount has meant more than...s tiny plantation, Merry Mount, are Peter Ackroyd...iconic Maypole that Thomas Morton erected there, and...historiography, however, Merry ...
LAVISH `MERRY MOUNT' PRODUCTION FILLS GAP IN SYMPHONY'S REPERTOIRE.(Entertainment)
; ...of Hanson's rarely performed opera ``Merry Mount.'' Even those well-versed in opera do not know ``Merry Mount,'' which was given its stage premiere...director for 40 years. ``I don't know why `Merry Mount' has not been performed more often...
Merry Mount
; HANSON Merry Mount * Gerard Schwarz, cond; Richard Zeller...recording of Howard Hanson's masterpiece Merry Mount. The work enjoyed a triumphant premiere...Hawthorne called "The May-Pole of Merry Mount." Not surprisingly, it is Stokes's...
AGE, DISUSE HAVEN'T TARNISHED THE BEAUTY OF `MERRY MOUNT'.(Entertainment)(Review)
; ...Schwarz in reviving Howard Hanson's 63-year-old ``Merry Mount'' is whether a retrograde, unapologetically romantic...risk on something so stylistically out of fashion. ``Merry Mount'' could not be more American. Its subject matter is...are forgiving if the music holds their interest. ...
Reviews: The Rudest awakening
; ...monogamous. He writes of one Thomas Morton who back in the 17th century...over the trading outpost at Merry Mount, which was a scandal to the...liberty to do good; in Morton's Merry Mount you were at liberty - that...The Plymouth Puritans or Merry Mount? Which is right? ...
"May-Pole of Merry Mount": Hawthorne's "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso."
; In his 1991 essay New Roots for |Merry Mount': Barking Up the Wrong Tree, John F...Nathaniel Hawthorne's The May-Pole of Merry Mount. Birk discounts Sheldon W. Liebman's...served as Milton's chief influence on Merry Mount, stating that the greater bulk of the...
CD REVIEWS CDs of American operas are not the stuff Puccinis are made of
; ...Natoma" and stopping at Howard Hanson's "Merry Mount" of 1933. The other CD (Nonesuch 79458...Emperor Jones" (1933) and Howard Hanson's "Merry Mount" (1934), both works worth a contemporary...Wrestling Bradford's soliloquy from "Merry Mount." His singing here, and in a live excerpt...
(sound recording reviews)
; Hanson: Symphony N. 4 (Requiem); Suite from Merry Mount; Lament for Beowulf; Serenade; Pastorale. Seattle Symphony...first Pulitzer Prize given to music. As for the Suite from Merry Mount: The Met premiered the opera in 1934 but it did not stay...
In review: Seattle
; ...undertook two concert performances of his three-act opera Merry Mount (given only sporadic hearings since its 1934 stage premiere...on October 28 and 29. If these performances did not reveal Merry Mount as a neglected master piece, they did justify the effort...
VIOLINIST MIDORI TO OPEN SYMPHONY'S SEASON.(Entertainment)
; ...Howard Hanson's birth, the symphony will perform in concert the composer's 1934 opera, ``Merry Mount,'' based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's ``The Maypole of Merry Mount,'' Oct. 28-29. Works of Henri Lazarof and David Stock will be given their world premieres...