Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

Novels:

• Alexandre Dumas (père), The Three Musketeers (1844-45): D’Artagnan fellows refuse a commission, leaving it instead for their friend.
• Allegra Goodman, The Cookbook Collector: A Novel (Random House, 2010): “We’re always told there are recipes for disaster and recipes for happiness, but where exactly those recipes are to be found is anyone’s guess.”
• L.K. Madigan, Flash Burnout: A Novel (Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2009), “shows the toll addiction and neglect can take not only on family members, but also on friends and others in the community around them. The book covers issues of sexual abstinence, safe sex, underage drinking, using alcohol to escape, honesty in relationships and more.”
• Sarah Dunant, In the Company of the Courtesan: A Novel (Random House, 2006): “. . . a book about a prostitute and a pimping, juggling dwarf.”
• Tessa Hadley, Late in the Day: A Novel (Harper/HarperCollins Publishers, 2019): “. . .  it’s not just Zach who has held the four of them, and the two marriages, together; it’s the power structures they agreed to in their 20s, the vows they took when they were different people.”
• David Wright Faladé, Black Cloud Rising: A Novel (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2022): “What does Etheridge owe his father's family? The issue comes to a point when he confronts his white half brother, who is fighting with the Confederates, on the battlefield. What does he owe his country, and his race?”

From the dark side:

• Martin Michael Driessen, The Pelican: A Comedy (Amazon Crossing, 2019): “. . . the three characters at the center of Oyamada’s strangely chilling novella push their respective rocks up the hill at ‘the factory’ day in and day out . . .” This is a story of betrayal.

Poetry

Poems:

• Alfred Noyes, “The Highwayman”

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Fritz Busch was a conductor who was known for adhering to composers’ intentions. “In the opinion of Grove, Busch was 'the soundest type of German musician: not markedly original or spectacular, but thorough, strong-minded, decisive in intention and execution, with idealism and practical sense nicely balanced'. The Times called him 'a virile, faithful and extremely skilful interpreter of Mozart' and continued, 'His beat like his bearing was one of quiet authority; his interpretations were fully alive without fuss or idiosyncrasy but devoted wholly to the projection of the music as he conceived the composer to have intended it'.” Here is a brief video of his conducting and a link to his playlists.

Conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt was known for “bringing the scholarship and sensibility of historical performance to the mainstream repertoire with sometimes controversial, but always illuminating results.” An advocate of “historically informed performance”, “. . . he researched, performed and recorded early music encyclopedically.” “His 1982 book Musik als Klangrede (Music as Speech) was the first to comprehensively describe the theory of historically informed performance practice. He emphasises again and again that when making music every idea must develop from original sources.” Here he is leading a masterclass, in rehearsal, and in performance. He left an extensive set of playlists.

Johannes Brahms’ three string quartets, Op. 51 and Op. 67, evidence a seriousness of purpose in the unwavering commitment of each voice to each other and to the whole.

•   Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 51, No. 1 (1873) (approx. 30’)
•   Quartet No. 2 in A minor, Op. 51, No. 2 (1873) (approx. 31-40’)
•   Quartet No. 3 in B-flat Major, Op. 67 (1875) (approx. 30-32’)

Christoph Willibald Gluck, Orfeo ed Eurydice (1762, rev. 1774) (75-116’) (libretto): Orfeo descends into hell to save his beloved, and places her happiness above his own welfare, passing the test of fidelity. Here is are links to the 1762 version on video featuring Liebau & Mehta (Luks), and top-rated audio-recorded performances featuring; Ragin, McNair & Seiden (Gardiner) in 1991; and Fink, Cangemi & Kiehr (Jacobs) in 2001. Here are links to performances of the 1774 version with video featuring Kozená & Bender (Gardiner) in 1999; Mehta & Liebau (Luks); and Molinari & Bevan (Dantone) in 2023. Other top audio-only recorded performances are by Simoneau, Danco & Alari (Rosbaud) in 1956; Croft, Delunsch & Harousseau (Minkowski) in 2002; and Davies, Bevan & Bottone (Bates) in 2019.

Other major works:

•   Anaïs Mitchell, “Hadestown” (2019) (approx. 123’) is a contemporary version of the Orfeo and Eurydice story.
•   Louise Farrenc, Piano Quintet No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 30 (1839) (approx. 28’)
•   Erich Korngold, Die Kathrin (1936) (approx. 162’): in this opera, Kathrin and François fall in love but circumstances and other people with nefarious motives obstruct and impede them at every turn. After five years apart, in hardship, they are reunited, and have a five-year-old child. The opera ends with the lovers in each other’s arms – and alive! Here is a performance conducted by Brabbins.
•   Carl Czerny, Romantic Fantasy No. 1 on Sir Walter Scott's "Waverley", Op. 240 (1832) (approx. 20’) - a main theme is “loyalty to (the title character's) family and the principled people he meets”.
•   Franz Joseph Haydn, La fedeltá premiata (Fidelity Rewarded) (1780) (approx. 202’): “Composed for the re-opening of the Esterhaza opera house in 1781, La fedelta premiata, a pastoral semi-buffa opera, concerns itself with the goddess Diana’s decree, due to some sort of previous sacrilege, that every two years a couple of faithful lovers be sacrificed to a sea monster until some heroic (duh) character offers his own life.”

From the dark side:

•   Richard Wagner’s opera Die Walküre (1856) (approx. 237-243’) (libretto) is the second in the composer’s epic Ring cycle. It is a story of disloyalty within a family. Here are links to live performances with video, conducted by Mehta, and Adam Fischer. Excellent audio-recorded performances are conducted by Keilberth in 1955, Solti in 1962, and Karajan in 1965.

Music: songs and other short pieces

• Kenny G, “Forever in Love”
• Frank Sinatra, “Always” (lyrics)
• The Beatles, “When I’m Sixty-Four” (lyrics)
• Alan Jackson, “Remember When” (lyrics)
• Nawang Khechog, “For as Long as Space Endures”

Visual Arts

• Wassily Kandinsky, Couple Riding (1906)
• Marc Chagall, Couple and Basket with Fruits
• William Hogarth, David Garrick and His Wife (1757)
• Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of a Married Couple (early 1600s)
• Francisco Goya, Loyalty (1616-23)

Film and Stage

• Toy Story 3: In the third of the Toy Story animated films series, the characters are loyal to each other even in parting.
• Hannah and Her Sisters, Woody Allen’s typically twisted exposition on fidelity and infidelity
• The Last Metro: “a gently comic, romantic meditation on love, loyalty, heroism and history”
• Goodfellas, on the ethical limits of loyalty
• Talk to Her (Hable con Ella), this film about a man and a comatose woman is “not about sympathy but about loyalty”; a “tragic comedy about need, its liberating and shackling powers”
• The Whales of August: about loyalty among sisters, though neither of them has entirely earned it

From the dark side:

• Missing, a story of betrayal by the U.S. government
• The Shop on Main Street, about a man on the edge of betrayal in Nazi Germany
• The Red Shoes: This adaptation of Anderson’s fairy tale, here repeated as real life, is a story about betrayal
• The Seven-Year Itch: exploring challenges to marital fidelity, with humor
• The Silence: indifference between sisters
• Le Trou (The Hole): five cellmates plan an escape , which fails when trust is betrayed.