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50@50 Homestead NM Residency

I’m always interested in finding out why particular landscapes attract certain groups of people. (FREE LAND!! IT’S FREE!) Ok, seems simple, but there’s more to it than that. The improvements required by the Act within five years were substantial. Who would do that? Ultimately, 60% would fail.

A multitude of circumstances, both here in this country and abroad, culminate to make this a pinnacle chapter in world history. The Civil war is raging. Because the South has seceded, the debate of “free versus slave state is off the table. The transcontinental railroad, linking Missouri to Sacramento also begins in 1863, with the last spike hammered in 1869.[1] Individual states created global advertising campaigns targeted to encourage emigration – not unlike what we do today for tourism. Europe’s mid-century famine and the long depression of the 1870s and 1880s drove thousands of people to American shores, and millions from the crowded industrial East moved westward. Homestead’s historian, Blake Bell is researching how American Landscape art and its proliferation by railroad companies and others, may have influenced the migration of the homesteaders.

I had this purely 19^th century vision of the average homesteader, but claims filed peaked between 1908 and 1917. European immigration to America swelled during this period.[2] By this time, trains crisscrossed the west – Bismark, Beatrice, Boise, Billings – and that’s just the B’s! However, our first homesteader here in Beatrice Nebraska did have to come by wagon, for part of the journey. The Oregon, California and Mormon Trails, and the Pony Express pass fairly close to here. Nebraska writer Willa Cather, a homesteader at age nine, wrote, “There was nothing but the land: not a country at all, but the material of which countries are made.”

My experience here has reinforced my philosophy that landscape shapes the culture of its place. Throughout the 30 states supported by the Homestead Act, the similarities of settlement paths resonate, yet the climate, soil, topography, vegetation and resources vary place to place. Sod houses, common on the treeless prairie, were non-existent in tree populated areas. A good crop choice in one location could end in failure somewhere else. The individual stories of each settler, each family, became intertwined with others’. Each region’s folklore stemmed out of those shared experiences, giving rise to the uniqueness of each place’s culture within the fabric of American culture.

In preparing to compose this piece, I researched the musical lives of the homesteaders. By 1890, most emerging towns in Nebraska had begun choirs, bands (ladies bands were separate), and started teaching music in the schools. Not only am I able to hear differently when surrounded by nature, also I hear my creativity louder and with greater clarity – as if the music in my brain found a short cut to the surface!  Fortunately, Homestead’s annual Monumental Fiddling Championships was scheduled during my residency.  Amazingly talented musicians from several states converged to perform under a big tent. With fiddling so predominant among homesteaders, I want to accurately reflect its characteristics. But I confess, I heard sounds I didn’t know the violin was capable of! How much of the nuances are improvised rather than notated?

This is a wonderful opportunity to compose for this national commemoration. My intent is to create a work that embodies the landscape and honors the homesteaders. I’ve had a blast!!