The Wind on the Moor

Diane Benn writes:
Primary school children from four Bradford schools are gearing up for the performance of a lifetime when they perform their very own Brontë Opera at Haworth church on Thursday 30 March 2006 at 1.30 p.m. and 6.30 p.m. in front of an invited audience.

The opera, entitled The Wind on the Moor is the result of a nine month project managed by the Parsonage in partnership with Operahouse, an organisation comprising a team of established professionals who offer music based creative projects for primary schools across the country.

The opera project, which has been made possible with funding from the Arts Council, Yorkshire Museums Libraries and Archives Council and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, is based on the early lives of the Brontës, in particular their childhoods. Children have taken part in various activities focusing on the Parsonage, its collection, the village of Haworth and the surrounding landscape. They were encouraged to explore the Brontë story and respond to it, imaginatively, emotionally, and creatively through musical composition, writing and singing, dance, drama and mime.

Taking part in the project are Frizinghall Primary School in Bradford, Myrtle Park Primary School in Bingley, Lees Primary School in Haworth and Margaret McMillan Primary School in Bradford.  

Virginia Rushton, Project Director and Operahouse Artistic Director, said the process had been "...exhilarating and exhausting! The journey from blank page to performance is always exciting for a composer, but on this project we have had 120 young composer-performers and their teachers so we are off the scale in terms of excitement!"

She added, "As the journey has progressed, it has gathered pace and is now racing towards the premiere. Harnessing all the energy and ideas, keeping the creative process on track, supporting the class teachers as they came to grips with techniques for writing songs, and simply managing such a large group of children has been a challenge. But we knew what we were aiming for, and I think we have achieved something unique for each of us and for our audience"

Andrew McCarthy, Audience Development Manager at the Parsonage, said, "We have focused on the Brontë experience of childhood in Haworth and the contrast between this industrial village in which they grew up and the extraordinary imaginary worlds they created in their early writing... The children and teachers involved have enjoyed themselves immensely and have totally engaged with the project. They are looking forward to the final performance on 30 March with much anticipation!"

The team of professionals who have guided the children throughout the project with Andrew McCarthy are:

Alison Prince - renowned author who created Trumpton and The Sherwood Hero and who has won many children's literary awards for her work on over 40 books

Virginia Rushton -  Project Director and the founder of the Operahouse organisation in London

Mark Robinson - Musical Director who has worked extensively with the Northern Sinfonia, London Festival Orchestra and is a Fellow in Music at the University of Bradford

Andrew Keeling - composer who has worked with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, the Metropole Orchestra of Amsterdam and whose work has been performed and broadcast throughout the world.

Final rehearsals for the performance were held at West Lane Baptist Chapel in Haworth on Wednesday 1 March 2006 where pupils perfected their new found skills and put the finishing touches to their production.

Cornelia Parker

In response to questions about when the DNA samples will be taken, it is necessary to put the whole thing into context, as the situation develops. You get the breaking news on this site.


The answer is, 'perhaps after a month or two" because the relevant person from Bradford University will be turning up in a month's time to make an assesment. A date for the results can not be given yet.


The next question is about whether or not it will actually happen, because it is not absolutely definite. It is all connected with the presence of artist Cornelia Parker, pictured above, who is also doing some preliminary research at the Parsonage in preparation for an exhibition which will open on 16 September this year and which as yet has only a provisional title - Cornelia Parker at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.


She was nominated for the 1999 Turner Prize and is widely exhibited worldwide. One of her themes is "relics" and she has stated that she is interested in the relationships between fiction, reality and fame. She has a particular interest in the Brontës.


In the last three years, she has had solo exhibitions at Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin, Italy, ICA, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Aspen Museum of Art, Colorado, Chicago Arts Club and the ICA, Boston. Recent group exhibitions include Days Like These at Tate Britain.


Some of her installations can currently be viewed at Norwich Castle Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Her work is represented in many international collections including The Arts Council of England, Tate Gallery, London and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.


More on Cornelia Parker soon.

More on DNA samples

Brontë Society Council gave the go-ahead for the DNA sampling at a meeting on Saturday. Here's some more information: the Parsonage has a relatively large quantity of hair, according to Director Alan Bentley, some of it of doubtful provenance. Some is genuine, some probably not.


Hair samples are connected to most of the family, with the exceptions of Emily and the young Elizabeth. Some of it was obtained through Ellen Nussey.


Apparently it is possible to find out about the time of the year, diet and pregnancy from a couple of hairs, and also about the presence of toxins.

Nora chooses Jane Eyre

Popular Romance writer Nora Roberts has selected Charlotte Brontës Jane Eyre as the most romantic Valentine's Day book. In her February 10-12, 2006 article in USA Weekend she wrote:


It's got it all. The brooding complicated hero with a secret, the forthright, intelligent heroine, compelling atmosphere, brilliant writing, the complicated and romantic meeting of two minds and hearts - and the mad woman in the attic.


Charlotte's 158 year-old yet timeless Victorian novel continues to speak to our hearts.


A waft of wind came sweeping down the laurel-walk, and trembled through the boughs of the chestnut: it wandered away - away - to an indefinite distance - it died. The nightingale's song was then the only voice of the hour: in listening to it, I again wept. Mr. Rochester sat quiet, looking at me gently and seriously. Some time passed before he spoke: he at last said:  "Come to my side, Jane, and let us explain and understand one another."




Posted by Randall Grimsley, Region 7 contact for the American Brontë Society




NB Nora Roberts is a publishing phenomenon, especially in the USA, with over 75 million copies of her books in print. Her work has been optioned and made into films, excerpted in national magazines and translated in over twenty-five different countries. She currently has over 130 published novels to her credit with more to come.

Ruth as Jane

Our congratulations to Ruth Wilson, fresh out of LAMDA, who will be Jane Eyre in a new BBC TV production directed by Susanna White. Shooting begins in a few weeks.

To date, Rochester is uncast.

Jolie and Depp?

Rumour has it that Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp have been lined up to play Cathy and Heathcliff in a new movie version of Wuthering Heights.

We'll keep our ears open......

One Mighty Voice

The schools' opera project One Mighty Voice began last September and is now moving into its final phase. The project has been a huge challenge involving a hundred and twenty schoolchildren from diverse communities in Bradford.


The project has proved to be more complex and demanding than some of the Parsonage's previous special education initiatives and working in conjunction with a large artistic team, teaching staff and Heads from the participating schools and several departments from within Education Bradford has required considerable organisational skills.


The work which the children have done has been inspiring: everyone involved is gaining hugesly from participating. The children have now completed the libretto to an opera which will be called The Wind on the Moor and much of the score is also complete.


It is now a question of rehearsal prior to two public performances on 30 March. This will be a fitting culmination to a fascinating creative process which should raise the profile of the Parsonage not only as a provider of innovative education services but also as a suporter of contemporary creativity.


More about the project will be posted on this blog in the next few weeks.

Virtual Parsonage

Interactive 3D Virtual Reality Tour of the Brontë Parsonage Museum £14.99

Explore the fascinating home of the Brontë family. Walk through their home in your own home! This expertly prepared computer program will run on on most PCs.

Minimum requirements:

Windows 95 or higher
Pentium 1 GHz or higher
64Mb RAM
Graphics card: 8Mb AGP or PCI graphics card or better
4X CD ROM drive
32 bit Color Monitor
640 x 480 Resolution
Soundcard

To purchase the above, or to see what else the Museum Shop has in stock, go to http://www.bronte.org.uk/gifts/store.asp

The Museum shop sells a wide range of books, gifts and other material about the Brontës and these are now available to purchase online or by mail order. For mail order enquiries simply use the shopping basket as normal. You will then be given the choice to either order online via a secure connection or print out the completed order form.

Branwell the Mason

It’s Mozart’s 250th of course, and there’s plenty on him in the media. I was reading about the strong Masonic influences on his music recently.

For example, Wilfred Mellors (distinguished musicologist and composer) wrote:

The final trilogy of symphonies is the grandest possible Masonic credo: no 39, in the Masonic ritual key of E flat major, almost always associated with healing grace, and sometimes majesty; no 40 in tragically purgatorial G minor; and no 41 in ‘white’ C major, representing the triumph of light, and in the process embracing a synthesis of homophonic and polyphonic principles (sonata and fugue).

Now I am one of many who has tried to delve into the background to The Magic Flute, with limited success. I can see that Pamina is the object of conflict between the forces of light and darkness and light and so on, but not an enormous amount beyond that. Perhaps my disadvantage is that I am not one of the brethren.

So what were the Masonic influences on Branwell? What did he get up to at the Lodge of the Three Graces (currently number 408) in Haworth, which is still operating and which can date itself back to 1792? This apparently had plenty of ups and downs one and a half centuries ago (the members met irregularly and there were often financial problems) but there were connections with the Brontës in the 1830s

The official history of the lodge records:

Between 1825 and 1831 Meetings are recorded and purport to be regular and were
always closed in perfect harmony. Candidates were initiated, but obviously the
irregularity of the meetings indicate that all was not well. In 1825, three meetings were recorded, 1826 (1), 1827 (2), 1828 (2), 1829 (1), 1830 (7) and 1831 (12). In June 1831 it was proposed at a Lodge of Emergency, that a new warrant be applied for
immediately, and that five guineas for the warrant, and all incidental expenses, be paid out of the surplus of the Lodge, and that every member pays for his register fee, and Grand Lodge certificate, at his own expense.

No further mention is made of the new warrant or of the reinitiation of members.
The new warrant was granted on the 24th August, 1831, the Lodge No. being 862. A
regular meeting 19th September, 1831 is recorded and also in October as if nothing of
any moment had occurred. Here the Minutes end. But there is recorded in the back
pages of the first minute book reference to a Meeting of Emergency when it was
resolved to have a public procession on the 2nd September,1833, and that John Brown
and Joseph Redman (whose Grand Lodge Certificates are now displayed in the
Lodge) should attend Mr. Bronte who would preach a sermon in the Church to the
Brethren at 12 o'clock. The concluding resolution is that the Committee should meet
at the Black Bull, Haworth, on Monday, 2nd September, 1833, at eight o'clock in the
morning. The total cost incurred was:


Rev P Bronte preaching - ten shillings
Band wages - One pound and ten shillings
Ringers and singers - four shillings
Eating and drinking and band - one pound and ten shillings
Beer etc Band - one pound and fourteen shillings
Cheese and bread visitors - two shillings and eight pence
Beer at dinner - thirteen shillings and four pence
Writing letters - three shillings and sixpence


So, I can well imagine Branwell listening to a sermon, enjoying the band and supping ale in the Black bull….but what else was there?

I would be grateful if someone out there is more clued in than me and can supply specific details.

Richard Wilcocks

New from Parsonage Shop

Authors in Context: The Brontës by Patricia Ingham, Oxford University Press, 2006, 273pp, paperback, ISBN 0-19-284035-5 £7.99

Authors in Context examines the work of major writers in relation to their own time and to the present day. Combining history with lively literary discussion, each volume provides comprehensive insights


The Brontë Society Conference 2004: The Brontës and Education, edited by Bob Duckett, The Brontë Society, 2005, 100pp, paperback, ISBN 1-9030076-09-7 £9.95

Contributors and contents are as follows:

Tom Winnifrith The Brontës weren’t very good teachers but had the right ideas.

Coreen Turner “With what eagerness…� Patrick Brontë’s education and his influence on his children.

Carolyne Van Der Meer Education in Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and Villette.

Margaret Hulmes The Brontë heroines as disciplinarians.

Yukuri Oda Wuthering Heights: education as an intermediary factor.

Mary Summers Parents beware! Anne Brontë’s message on education

Richard Wilcocks Education, Education, Education: the Brontës today.

Andrew McCarthy Education at the Parsonage Museum.

Marianne Thormählen Where we are today: issue resolved and issues outstanding.

Live in Belgium or the Netherlands?

You don't have to live there to send for a copy of Selina's book, though...


Brussels in Brontë Times
A Historic Picture Album
by
Selina Busch

Available from the author price £20

Write to: Selina Busch
Kerkstraat 7
4001 MA Tiel
Netherlands


Appeal to kindred spirits......

I am a lifelong Brontë admirer who has recently moved to Brussels, as a result of which I have become interested in the Brontë Brussels connection. After re-reading Villette and The Professor, it was enlightening to read the books on the Pensionnat Heger and other Brussels places produced by my neighbours in the Netherlands, Eric Ruijssenaars and Selina Busch.

In the glow of my revived Brontë enthusiasm it occurred to me how fitting it would be to have some sort of branch of the Society based in Brussels, to enable members here to meet each other and perhaps organise the odd event. I know that the Society recently organised a trip to Brussels, but I don't know whether members living here have ever organised events on their own initiative.

Since there are not likely to be a large number of us, the kind of meeting I had in mind would be very informal and on a modest scale: maybe just a reading-club type discussion of one of the books, an informal talk perhaps given by one of the members, or even just viewing a film version of one of the works.

I originally thought of a branch for members in Belgium; I have contacted those I have been able to locate and some people have responded very positively. But although there may be more members here I haven't contacted, there are probably not quite enough to make it feasible to organise meetings, so it seems logical to include the Netherlands as well, particularly as Eric and Selina are interested in the idea.

Could any Belgian or Dutch members I haven't contacted, and anyone else who is interested, please get in touch with me? By “anyone else� I mean members in other countries who live near enough, or have the time and inclination to travel, to a central point convenient for all such as Brussels.


Helen MacEwan

Please contact me by email:

helen.macewan@cec.eu.int

New from the Parsonage Shop

My Mother’s Wedding Dress by Justine Picardie, Picador, 2005, 335pp, hardback, ISBN 0-330-41306-6 £12.99

Justine Picardie (who will be speaking as a guest of the Brontë Society in Haworth on the Friday of the annual June Weekend for members) is a fashion writer for Vogue and the Daily Telegraph. In this, her latest short story collection, she combines fashion with literature, adding her thoughts on the history of her family.

The history of the black wedding dress belonging to her mother is her starting point. She ends with her research into a family ring which once belonged to Charlotte Brontë.

Each chapter concentrates on a different item of fashion, some belonging to the author and some which are known to many in Western culture, like the “little black dress� or the school uniform.

Justine also examines how fashion is described in literature and how it influences the reader’s perception of the characters, quoting from a wide range of sources like CS Lewis’s The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe and Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca.

The Family of Blogs

Greetings to the moving forces behind the other blogs devoted to all aspects of the Brontës, especially to Cristina and the mysterious M, (Manuel?) the constantly energetic and well-informed people who put up such interesting material on Brontëblog. Thanks for linking to us - now we're linked to you.

The one you are reading is young: we are green and feeling our way a bit in this blogging game. Please be patient if we make mistakes because it could take a while before we find out about all the tricks which are available.

I currently edit the Brontë Society Gazette, true, but this blog is not supposed to be a substitute for it, not least because many members of the Brontë Society do not own a computer. The printed version of Gazette is an essential part of the membership.

We will probably end up with an eclectic style of operating in the coming weeks and months: you will read about events at the Parsonage of course, and news of happenings elsewhere connected to the Brontë Society, but hopefully we will be sent photographs, reviews and creative work as well. It will be easier to talk about our emphasis or our focus after we have been running for a month or two.

Feel free to use what you find here, but say where you found it. I am sure that your blog will be 'raided' now and then - take it as a compliment.

Richard Wilcocks

Two Poems

Photo taken in Milan 2005


Two of my poems inspired by Haworth and the Brontë atmosphere:


HAWORTH SKY


Grey thundering morning clouds
In a rainy August day
What a gloomy atmosphere
For this new happiness of mine

It was only some hours since
I saw the best of all dawns
An orange cloudy golden heaven
Mixed with violet shining spots

It’s incredible to have it so dark
On this huge heather-flowering moor;
It might only be a little Brontë spell
To let me feel somehow a part of them!

MADDALENA DE LEO Haworth 5/8/1999



CAPTURED DREAM


Always was I haunted
By an urgent desire
It is now fulfilled
And found its way at last.

‘…To live in Haworth
As its real inhabitant
To ramble the moors
All over by daylight

To reach Top Withens
And see its ruins
To feel that atmosphere
And the Brontë world around’

And this I really saw
A sort of paradise
With nature at its best
And no contamination at all.

MADDALENA DE LEO

Haworth 12/7/2005

Sezione Italiana

The new website of the Brontë Society's Italian section is well worth a visit. It can be found at http://www.bronteitalia.it/

Creative Writing Weekend

This will take place at the Parsonage on Saturday 8 (10am - 4pm) and Sunday 9 April 2006. The weekend will include a unique opportunity to view some of the more unusual and rarely seen objects in the museum's collection.

These remarkable artefacts, along with the powerful atmosphere of the Parsonage and its surroundings, will be explored as starting points for writing.

Workshop leader will be poet and short story writer Sue Wood.

Booking in advance is essential. The fee for the whole weekend is £30 per person, £20 concessions.

To book, contact the Education Officer susan.newby@bronte.org.uk

Wild Workshops

Art and craft workshops for children between the ages of 5 and 11 will be held at the Parsonage on Friday 24 February. The price is £3.75 for each child. Contact the Education Officer by ringing 01535 640185 or by emailing susan.newby@bronte.org.uk

Reading this in the USA?

To join the American Brontë Society, email Theresa Connors: Tj7continents@aol.com

Scribblemania

The annual poetry competition for children sixteen years and under is now underway. The closing date for entries is 31 July. Entry is free.

Forms are available from the Education Officer - susan.newby@bronte.org.uk

Mythic Power

Shared Experience's play Brontë has received much attention and many positive reviews in the last few months. This one appears in the most recent Brontë Society Gazette, which is distributed to members:





Shared Experience’s Brontë goes beyond the surface of everyday life and makes visible what is hidden: this play successfully does just what director Polly Teale intends.

Ten years ago, with Nancy Meckler, she performed the same service with her Jane Eyre. At the West Yorkshire Playhouse one evening in September I was impressed to such an extent that I felt inadequate chatting about it on Radio Leeds the following day in a four minute slot between the music requests: I was just pulling out random raisins from a very rich cake. Brontë is significantly nutritious.

Along with Paula Rego, whose images appear on the set - the facade of a burned house - Polly Teale is intrigued “by the mythic power of the mad woman, by Charlotte Brontë’s repulsion and attraction to her creation, by the mad woman’s danger and eroticism.� A central character returning, she writhes into the action from the shadows whenever approriate, grovelling, growling, slithering and crouching on the floor. A Christian whore in the tradition of Mary Magdalene perhaps, her clothing is in shades of red, just as it was in Jane Eyre.

Her accent, when she manages to gasp out a few distinguishable words, has a strong Jamaican flavour. She is the Bertha in Wild Sargasso Sea, the creole removed from respectability, the poor ghost whose life was written for her by Jean Rhys.

From the start, it is made clear that we are watching make-believe. Diane Beck (Emily), Catherine Cusack (Anne) and Fenella Woolgar (Charlotte) come on to speak to us as themselves, becoming their characters only after they have put on their corsets and dresses. In the spirit of Brecht, Shared Experience believes that the audience will become a mass of mindlessness if there is too much immersion. We must remain sharp.

Yet there is still much of the supernatural about the production, as there must be. Cathy drifting on the moor is ectoplasmically white, scattering feathers; a young Jane sees herself as a spirit in the mirror of the Red Room at Gateshead Hall; the female beast is a recurrent nightmare; the denizens of the Parsonage are constantly haunted by their creations, the mysterious threatening the rational.

Charlotte definitely burns Emily’s unfinished and unknown novel, holding the pages over a bucket. There is a hasty mention of the fact that this remains unproven. Fenella Woolgar brings out Charlotte’s practical, organisational side brilliantly, her front against what is submerged.

If forced to prise an individual from such a powerful ensemble, I would choose Diane Beck as Emily. She reinforces the established view of Emily with her need to be alone and her contempt for convention, and adds much more. I was particularly interested in her relationship with Branwell, the bringer of knowledge, carnal and otherwise. The insight was in the empathy, the lack of recoil.

Matthew Thomas’s Branwell is a slightly lovable binge drinker, forgivable in spite of his abuse of Charlotte and his describing her as a weasel. When he stands on the table wearing a green sash and shouting “Land ahoy!� we immediately recognise his early inspirational qualities.

David Fielder is very professionally versatile as Patrick Brontë, Arthur Bell Nicholls, Rochester and Charlotte’s tutor. Nicholls comes across as creepy and clumsy, a pathetic extra on the turbulent scene, almost funny.

Brontë has been cut back to the essentials: the second part is a miracle of pruning and of timing, and the result is a triumph. The production’s first tour started at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford in September and ended at the Lowry, Salford in December, but we can be sure that it will run and run.

Richard Wilcocks

(Photo of Charlotte burning Emily’s novel by Mark Pennington)