Month: September 2013

When I first started researching my book, I briefly thought I might parallel 19th century Grace Church choirmaster James Morris Helfenstein with John Maclay, the current choir director of the Choral Society of Grace Church. But Helfenstein was the choirmaster for the vested choir of men and boys, a church choir, and the Choral Society is a community choir. It’s just not the same thing in so many ways.

So I didn’t research him much. But I was at Grace Church the other week, to discuss the talk I’m going to give there on September 29th, when I saw this painting of Helfstein’s wife Lillian. There’s no date, but it has a 1940s noir vibe to it, doesn’t it? It’s also kinda sordid, a little bit Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. Wait, what is that next to her under her hand? A dog or a fur … something? (Scroll down for more …)

The label on the painting reads: Lillian Spyr Helfstein, Mrs. James M. Helfstein, Painted by Elsie Whitmore Southwick, presented by her son, Gouverneur Morris Helfenstein.

I went back to my notes. Helfenstein took over as organist and choirmaster at Grace Church in 1894, when the Church decided they needed a musical overhaul. I felt a little bad for the existing musical director Samuel P. Warren, who’d been there for 26 years. He’d fought hard for the musical ways established under his direction, but that’s the way of the world, nothing lasts forever. Warren was out, and Helfenstein was in. Under Helfenstein’s reign a choir school was added, the music library was expanded, and music once again flourished at Grace Church.

Helfenstein was a law school graduate of Columbia, and he had a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, so he was giving up a possibly lucrative career. But it looks like there was a lot of family money. Ah, a little bit of Googling and I see he was descended from a Founding Father, Gouverneur Morris (so that’s where his son’s name comes from). Maybe he didn’t need to worry about making a living and could follow his passion, church music.

He and Lillian were married on June 8, 1915, when Lillian was 24 years old and James was 50! Here’s a picture of James. It’s also not dated so I don’t know how old he is here. And …

Here’s a picture of Lillian from a newspaper, a week after they were married. How sad, I just saw that Samuel P. Warren died in October that same year. James’s life continued to blossom and Samuel’s was completely and entirely over. (More below.)

Apparently in 1922, things between Helfenstein and Grace Church went south. In a May 1, 1922 letter to Rev. Charles L. Slattery (who had presided over James and Lillian’s wedding seven years earlier), Helfenstein writes, “From what you said at the conference and your subsequent and frequent notes it is evident that you are not satisfied with my management so I desire to place in your hand my resignation as Organist and Choirmaster of the Church.” It looks like part of the problem was Helfenstein thought the budget for music, which hadn’t been increased for many years, was inadequate. His salary is just fine he says, he is only “deeply interested in music and this School which I created …” William R. Stewart, who wrote a history of Grace Church, tried to intervene, siding with Helfenstein, but he was clearly not successful in mending the rift. Helfenstein had lasted 28 years, just a couple of years longer than Warren.

I found a few letters in the Grace Church Archives from Helfenstein’s son, Gouverneur Morris. In 1973 he donated some materials related to his father and the Church. There’s also some 1984 letters between him and Edyth McKitrick, the Church archivist at the time. Gouverneur thought a Dr. Bowie was responsible for his father’s departure, but Edyth points out to him that Bowie didn’t come to Grace Church until a year after his father left.

I would have loved to interview Gouverneur Morris Helfenstein, but it looks like he died on July 14, 2000. I wonder if he had children?

I found an informal history of the early days of the Grace Church School, written by some of the first choir boys. They had nothing but praise and affection for Helfenstein. James Morris Helfenstein died in February, 1953, and Lillian Helfenstein died in April, 1971.

I recently attended the book party for Emily Croy Barker’s new novel, The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic. It’s getting great reviews and I can’t wait to read it. From People Magazine:

“Centered on more adult concerns than the Harry Potter books, Barker’s debut is full of allusions to dark fairy tales and literary romances. If Hermione Granger had been an American who never received an invitation to Hogwarths, this might have been her story.”

For now I want to review the cake that was made for the party. Can you believe this is a cake?? It was made by Amy Kolz of Village Cakecraft. Unreal, right? This is a freaking work of art! Just gorgeous. Supernaturally photo-realistic. Scroll down for a picture of the book next to the cake. Mind-blowing.

After my post the other day about Alive Inside (about music bringing people back to life) I remembered a section in Oliver Sacks’s book Musicophilia. He’s describing a group of music therapy patients, people who were like the man in the video I posted yesterday. They are largely uncommunicative and leading what seems to be the saddest, quietest, most solitary existence. Until the therapist starts singing.

“One or two people, perhaps, start to sing along, others join then, and soon the entire group—many of them virtually speechless before—is singing together, as much as they are able to. ‘Together’ is a crucial term, for a sense of community takes hold, and these patients who seem incorrigibly isolated by their disease and dementia are able, at least for a while, to recognize and bond with others.”

It sounds like it’s as dramatic as the man in the video. Another reason to sing as long as you can.

Protesters in Union Square.

I’m not sure if I’ve told the story of how I got the stove pictured below. When I first moved into my apartment (around 1985) the apartment next door to me was empty and it remained empty for years. After a while I started using the door to the unused apartment as an art project. I’d put up signs like “Office of the InterGalactic Fabulous Losers League.” Once I dressed it up as if it was a crime scene, with yellow tape and keep out signs. I’d change the signs from time to time until one day someone started pounding on my door and screaming. I couldn’t understand a lot of what she was saying, but she was pounding so hard and savagely I almost called the police.

“OPEN THE DOOR! OPEN THE DOOR!” Right. Eventually she pulled herself together enough to tell me she lived in that apartment and to stop putting signs on her door. But I’ve lived here for years, I yelled back through the door, “and in all the time I’ve been here no one has ever gone into that apartment.”

Turned out she was warehousing the place, (paying rent on it but not living there). The apartment is rent stabilized and you’re not allowed to warehouse rent stabilized apartments. She was mad because my signs were drawing attention to the fact that no one was really living there. I didn’t know what her story was, so I promised to stop.

Not long after, someone told me this story about the apartment, and I have no idea how much, if any, is true: A young family lived there, a cop, his wife and their infant daughter. Sometime in the 1950’s or 1960’s the cop was killed in the line of duty. His wife picked up their daughter and fled the apartment, leaving behind most of their belongings. She never returned. Apparently she held onto the place and continued to pay rent every month, year after year, decade after decade, and the person pounding on my door was their now grown daughter.

A few years later I heard the super frantically trying to get into the apartment. Something was leaking inside and flooding the apartment below and he was desperate to get inside and fix it. He managed to break the lock and we both entered the apartment. It was like a scene out of Great Expectations and the home of Miss Havisham.

It looked exactly like you’d expect if the stories were true. We stepped back in time, to an apartment from the fifties, except someone had allowed it to slowly decay and fall apart. The wall paper was coming off in great big strips, everything was crumbling and falling to pieces, the mattress in the bedroom looked like it would disappear into dust if I touched it. I have to say though, it did look like someone must have come in every few years to clean it. There was dirt and cobwebs, but not as bad as I think it would have been had it been absolutely and completely abandoned for thirty or so years.

In the kitchen was this beautiful stove. It was love at first sight for me. “If you can move it, you can have it,” the super told me. I called my then boyfriend who knew what he was doing. He capped off the gas connection and the two of us lugged it next door into my apartment. I have cherished it ever since.

Also, it was obvious that the apartment was being warehoused, so whoever was holding onto it lost it, alas. But another young family moved in, a very nice family, and their now grown son continues to live there today!

The following quote is from Alyn Shipton’s book, Nilsson: The Life of a Singer-Songwriter. Percussionist Ray Cooper is describing Harry Nilsson’s voice. Imagine having a voice like this:

“The voice was extraordinary and clear, a boy’s choir voice in a man. Absolutely beautiful – a surgical instrument because it would heal you. You felt an overwhelming wave of warmth … that voice would come through and you almost couldn’t play, it was so beautiful, seriously beautiful.”

Sigh. If I can’t have a voice like that, I wouldn’t mind a next door neighbor who sang like that, someone I could listen to from time to time. Also, Ray Cooper is an extremely articulate, poetic man. Such an evocative description.

A quick snapshot from choir rehearsal on Tuesday. We have a lot of new singers this year. John, our director, said 60 people auditioned! I think around 12 or so made it in. We must be up to a billion singers by now.