Classical Gas Dept.

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March 1 was the Romans’ New Year. The mythology of the festival is tied to the mythology of the founding of the City itself. One of the story’s potent icons — twin palms — is still to be traced on the landscape of many Latin cities, including Los Angeles. From Fasti, Book 3, “March,” by Publius Ovidius Naso; translated by Sir James G. Frazer:

“Come, warlike Mars; lay down thy shield and spear for a brief space, and from thy helmet loose thy glistering locks. Haply thou mayest ask, What has a poet to do with Mars? From thee the month which now I sing doth take its name. Thyself dost see that fierce wars are waged by Minerva’s hands. Is she for that the less at leisure for the liberal arts? After the pattern of Pallas take a time to put aside the lance. Thou shalt find something to do unarmed. Then, too, wast thou unarmed when the Roman priestess captivated thee, that thou mightest bestow upon this city a great seed.”

“Silvia the Vestal (for why not start from her?) went in the morning to fetch water to wash the holy things. When she had come to where the path ran gently down the sloping bank, she set down her earthenware pitcher from her head. Weary, she sat her on the ground and opened her bosom to catch the breezes, and composed her ruffled hair. While she sat, the shady willows and the tuneful birds and the soft murmur of the water induced to sleep. Sweet slumber overpowered and crept stealthily over her eyes, and her languid hand dropped from her chin. Mars saw her; the sight inspired him with desire, and his desire was followed by possession, but by his power divine he hid his stolen joys. Sleep left her; she lay big, for already within her womb there was Rome’s founder. Languid she rose, nor knew why she rose so languid, and leaning on a tree she spake these words: ‘Useful and fortunate, I pray, may that turn out which I saw in a vision of sleep. Or was the vision too clear for sleep? Methought I was by the fire of Ilium, when the woolen fillet slipped from my hair and fell before the sacred hearth. From the fillet there sprang a wondrous sight – two palm-trees side by side.‘

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“Of them one was the taller and by its heavy boughs spread a canopy over the whole world, and with its foliage touched the topmost stars. Lo, mine uncle wielded an axe against the trees; the warning terrified me and my heart did throb with fear. A woodpecker – the bird of Mars – and a she-wolf fought in defence of the twin trunks, and by their help both of the palms were saved.” She finished speaking, and by a feeble effort lifted the full pitcher; she had filled it while she was telling her vision. Meanwhile her belly swelled with a heavenly burden, for Remus was growing, and growing, too, was Quirinus [divine name for Romulus, god of the curies of the people]. If you are at leisure, look into the foreign calendars, and you shall find in them also a month named after Mars.“

“It was the third month in the Alban calendar, the fifth in the Faliscan, the sixth among thy peoples, land of the Hernicans. The Arician calendar is in agreement with the Alban and with that of the city [Tusculum] whose lofty walls were built by the hand of Telegonus. It is the fifth month in the calendar of the Laurentines, the tenth in the calendar of the hardy Aequians, the fourth in the calendar of the folk of Cures, and the soldierly Pelignians agree with their Sabine forefathers; both peoples reckon Mars the god of the fourth month. In order that he might take precedence of all these, Romulus assigned the beginning of the year to the author of his being…. Walls were built, which, small though they were, it had been better for Remus not to have overleaped. And now what of late had been woods and pastoral solitudes was a city, when thus the father of the eternal city spake: ‘Umpire of war, from whose blood I am believed to have sprung (and to confirm that belief I will give many proofs), we name the beginning of the Roman year after thee; the first month shall be called by my father’s name.’ The promise was kept; he did call the month by his father’s name: this pious deed is said to have been well pleasing to the god...'”

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The ancilia were twelve identical shields of figure-eight design — eleven decoys made to disguise the one which was a magical war-talisman. The original, a gift from Minerva, fell from the heavens before Rome’s second king, Numa, with the audible promise ringing from the heavens, that under this shield, Rome would always be mistress of the world. Numa, the pious and gentle successor to the warlike Romulus, founded the laws of the Roman religion, including the college of priests called the Salii, the Leaping Priests. On the kalends of March, the patrician youths honored in the college each took one of the shields, and danced the corn up out in the Campus Martius, the Field of Mars. Failure to honor Mars in the dance would mean the crops wouldn’t rise, and the Roman arms would be defeated in the season’s campaigns. Leaping, springing, bouncing, capering, the youths performed ritualized imitations of “Spring” while singing the Carmen Saliare, Song of the Leapers. This ancient hymn had words in so archaic a version of Latin that classical Romans were baffled as to the meaning. But mystery is not the enemy of religion; neglect is. So the Salii sang the prayer as received, and leapt and marched in formation, until the civic religion and the Salian College were outlawed in the 4th century.

Cozeulodoizeso; omnia vero adpatula coemisse iamcusianes duo misceruses dun ianusve vet pos melios eumrecum…Divum empta cante, divum deo supplicante.
Tr.: O Planter God, arise. Everything indeed have I committed unto (thee as) the Opener. Now art thou the Doorkeeper, thou art the Good Creator, the Good God of Beginnings. Thou’lt come especially, thou the superior of these kings …Sing ye to the Father of the Gods, entreat the God of Gods.

— R.G. Kent’s translation of one of the Carmen Saliare fragments. Note the conflation of Mars with Janus (Dianus Virbius, the Double-Man) who was the older Italic god of the New Year. From the identification of the God of Crops and War as also the Doorkeeper, comes the custom of leaving open the Gates of the Temple of Janus during the times that Rome was at war, and only closing them during (infrequent) times of peace.

Included in Ovid’s recounting of the mythology of March 1 is a homily on the story of the Sabine women — the raped fore-mothers of the Romans. By turning aside the martial wrath of both their outraged Sabine men-folk, as well as their hot-spurred Latin abductors, the Sabine wives saved their generation of infants, sparing the Roman people who would be descended from them: “Hence the duty, no light one, of celebrating the first day, my Kalends, is incumbent on Oebalian [Sabine] mothers, either because, boldly thrusting themselves on the bare blades, they by their tears did end these martial wars; or else mothers duly observe the rites on my day, because Ilia [Troy] was happily made a mother by me. Moreover, frosty winter then at last retires, and shorn by the cold, return to the trees, and moist within the tender shoot the bud doth swell; now too the rank grass, long hidden, discovers secret paths whereby to lift its head in air. Now is the field fruitful, now is the hour for breeding cattle, now doth the bird upon the bough construct a nest and home; ‘tis right that Latin mothers should observe the fruitful season, for in their travail they both fight and pray.“

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Civilization seems these days more like a devourer of the green fields; a distracting opiate against natural activity on the land; and a bar to those who might seek a meaningful re-ligion with Nature’s God. If we miss the flow, the flood, the flowers, the festivity, we miss life itself. But don’t take it from me, take it from the Gershwins! ‘Meadow Serendade’ was cut in Philadelphia from the original 1927 “Strike Up The Band.” Click for the music! (The plot of the satirical show was lightly anti-war — it was all about America’s declaration of war upon Switzerland over the Cheese Tarriff.)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pNtZpw5mF_DljY0EDDhAHO914qxis843/view?usp=sharing
A single lead-sheet was found in the famous Secaucus Warehouse; in 1990 the great John Mauceri, of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, back-orchestrated it from fragments left in the score, and recorded it with Brent Barrett and Rebecca Luker. But there was never any sheet music: the song was never published. I wanted to use it in a cabaret a few years ago, and set out to jot down a fake-sheet; but the Gershwin chromatics and harmonics were too much to “jot,” and without them, the singers couldn’t hear the part, so we cut it from our show. Covid-19 nudged me to go back and finish the difficult work of doing a proper arrangement ‘by ear.’ With its classical bucolics, and its Jewish-sounding poignancy, it’s both a brilliant satire of milk-fed American nostalgia for rural life, and a moving tribute to it. Anyway, it’s too good a song to allow it to languish as forgotten or unheard Gershwin. Sing, and leap along:

HE: Though my voice is just a sing-song
I must burst into a Spring Song —
‘Hey nonny-nonny, piminy-miminy mo!’
Fondest mem’ries seem to waken
To my boyhood days I’m taken —
‘Hey nonny-nonny, piminy-miminy mo!’
In the dearest section of my recollection,
Back to fields of clover I’m conveyed.
In that charming locale, Nature must get vocale,
Listen to that MEADOW SERENADE…

CHORUS:
I hear the rustle of the trees from the nearby thickets
Where the oriole is calling,
And the bobolink is bawling
For his mate.
I hear the sighing of the breeze and the chirping crickets,
Where the whip-poor-will is wooing,
And the katydid is cooing
To his Kate.
And I can hear the cowbell chorus
That’s now being played.
Hummingbirds humming for us,
From deep in the shade.
There’s music in my heart
As my thoughts go winging
Where the Spring is ever singing
That MEADOW SERENADE.

SHE: In that meadow now, there lodges
A garage for Buicks and Dodges.
‘Hey nonny-nonny, piminy-miminy mo!’
You had Prince and Rover (what dogs!)
Now you’ll find them there, as hot dogs —
‘Hey nonny-nonny, piminy-miminy mo!’
Get a Coca-Cola! Buy a New Victrola!
Through the scene the billboards are displayed.
You can fill your car there, even find a bar there —
HE: Bring me back the MEADOW SERENADE!
(repeat Chorus)