ROCK RIVER BRIDGE NOTES
Rock River Bridge is a suite of original musical works supported by surtitles and/or simple animation. By presenting stories from the lives of its protagonists Rudolf Schlesinger, his wife Mary Ann Dunn, and her father Patrick Dunn, it traces Rudolf’s arc from 1888 Moravia to Janesville, Wisconsin to his homestead in the New Mexico territory, ending in his murder in Chandler, Arizona in 1947. Intrigued by the few facts I could glean about Rudolf and his life (and death), the creation of Rock River Bridge sparked into life as I delved through the small treasure trove of Rudolf’s keepsakes, searching for clues.
Rock River Bridge just grew… first as genealogical study, then as a personal exploration into unfamiliar tools and processes (like composing), and finally as the years progressed I began to see and feel my life in the story. For example, early on as I struggled for months to realize my vision for Lordsburg, I suddenly came to a realization: like Rudolf and Mary, this happy music truly reflected my life.
Here are a few other notes:
• The episodes of Rock River Bridge jump around in time, yes. I made a conscious decision to go non-linear and organize the works based on dramatic pacing. That is why Rudolf dies in the first act.
• There are at least three interstitial works in the group, non-sequiturs included solely because I felt their textures belonged. Hoedown, Rosemaria (Antonin Dvorak), Wunderbarer König (Joachim Neander).
• Fantasy also plays a role here. Stille Nacht 1888 was perhaps my first fully realized musical idea. It uses a trope-y device to reflect my sheer horror and utter conviction that after 9/11 the shit storm of the W’s war was soon to hit. It did, and is still ongoing.
• The fact that Rudolf lost his arm in a farming accident in Wisconsin is not covered here. Nor is the fact that he somehow later built the required fence around his New Mexico homestead.
SYNOPSES
Intro & Overture
Etudes, tropes & tonepoems is probably too honest a subtitle. The mock-drama of the overture was written with a few themes that have not yet been composed.
The Missing Man/Daybreak
The missing man is Patrick Dunn, Mary Ann’s immigrant father who disappeared from the genealogical record, but whose literal loss might have affected his daughter’s separation anxiety I have ascribed to her.. c.f. Rock River Bridge below.
Hoedown/The Peddler
Rudolf listed himself as ‘peddler’ on a census form. Here he is at work, serving the Walworth County Poorhouse and Insane Asylum, thinking about teenagers. Fun fact: Rosa Mullen, Mary’s mother, died in childbirth here. One family theory posits that this is where Rudy and Mary first met.
Rosemaria
World’s shortest interstitial courtship. Based on a Moravian Duet (The Modest Maid) by Antonin Dvorak.
Goin’ Away
Leaving ain’t easy.
Rhinelander March
Rudolf’s brother, an immigrant farmer in upstate Rhinelander, dies of typhoid. The whole family attends a wake. Fun fact: there was a town named Slinger after the sheer number of Schlesingers there.
Rowboats on the Water
The more I developed this project, the more I thought about the afterlife and ancestral spirits. This is their story. Perhaps it will be mine as well.
Cottonwood: The End
Old man Rudolf walks home from a Chandler, AZ bar (where he reportedly nursed a single beer) on the eve of the anniversary of Mary’s death three years earlier. We can divine his state of mind from this one simple fact. The dirt road is surely dark. He’s struck in a hit-and-run and dies, body shattered, the next day. At least he was walking home from the bar.
Lordsburg
Life in the Animas Valley, in the bootheel of New Mexico, is hard. But they are happy.
The Poorhouse
I’m afraid I gave a bad rap to the Walworth Poorhouse and Insane Asylum where Rosa Mullen, wife of Patrick Dunn, died in childbirth. These institutions humanely filled acute social needs. See theory about the Mary/Rudolf hookup above.
Wunderbarer König (Joachim Neander)
I thought religion should be mentioned in a work about a non-believer.
Fireworks at the River
The ancestral rowboat shows up once more on the wedding night of Rudolf and Mary. The fact that they were married on July 4th speaks volumes about their love of country.
Teen Dreams
Young Rudolf arrives at the dock. He is filled with nervous excitement mixed with romantic notions of what he might find in Amerika. Nostalgia and regret soon take over. I have used this piece at a friend’s memorial as a setting for Tennyson’s Crossing the Bar.
Stille Nacht 1888
A fantasy composed on the eve of war. I pose the musical question “Why can’t we just get along?” In steerage liquor is consumed. Holiday music devolves into accusation. Trombones mock. Palestinian harmonica asserts autonomy against a hora-dancing jewish clarinet. They work it out and the ship sails on. As the music states in a taps-like epilogue, it’s definitely a fantasy. Thank you, Till Eulenspiegel.
Angela
Rudolf’s sister in Philadelphia, estranged by distance, yearns for family.
A Desperate Chase
Consumed by cabin fever and locked in a small house with nine children, Rudolf has taken his leave. (This may be depicted in the as-yet unrealized Throw Me My Hat.) Mary chases him down in a sequence played mostly for laughs, with a hint of pathos at the end.
Rock River Bridge
At this point I realized, with somewhat of a shock, that this suite was, at heart, a love and redemption story.
The Moon in the Trees
The cricket-y interstitial Prelude leads into a meditation on love and temporality as Mary says goodbye to 15-tear-old Albert, the eldest son (and my grandfather-to-be). He’s about to start a job at the Shakespeare Mine, where he’ll become a drover on a six-horse ore wagon, and eventually a Cat mechanic and operator.
Creatures of the Sun / Lost Dog
Rudolf and Mary have steadily built their homestead, adding parcel after parcel until the ranch quadruples its grazing land. (Grazing land it remains to this day.) Rudolf keeps a young bear. Sons will have dustups with Pancho Villa, daughters will marry locals; Mary’s dementia will become untenable and Rudy will sell the Schlesinger Ranch to a son-in-law. Rudolf and Mary will move to Arizona, where cotton (not copper) is king… and where Albert is building a successful business moving the land itself. But none of that has yet happened. Here and now, in the bootheel sun, just a stone’s throw from Old Mexico and a long, long way from Moravia, they are happy to simply work all day until the work is done.