Category: music

The Cigarette Waltz

A couple of days ago we heard a ballet called The Cigarette Waltz by a French composer, Edouard Lalo, on one of the Iowa Public Radio (IPR) classical music programs. The announcer told a little anecdote (most of which I didn’t hear) about the saying “Smoke‘em if ya got’em” which he traced to the World War II era, reflective of the general idea that you can do what you like if you have the means. I didn’t get the connection, frankly.

I was curious about why the ballet Namouna (Valse de la cigarette) was connected with cigarettes. The first thing I did was to look up the ballet on the web. I found the version done by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by—Yondani Butt. That’s actually a better joke than the one by the IPR radio show host.

At first the only thing I could find out about Lalo was that his name is the answer to a crossword clue, which is “composer of the Cigarette Waltz.” I followed several dead-end leads. There’s no real connection with Lalo himself that I could find, unless you count his “hemiplegic attack” (a stroke from smoking?) which prevented him from finishing the score for the ballet.

I read the Wikipedia article summarizing the ballet, which didn’t mention cigarettes.

And finally, I found a Google book entry after using the search terms “why is Namouna called the cigarette waltz.” The book’s title is “Traveling Sprinkler Deluxe: A Novel,” written by Nicholson Baker, published by Penguin Group in 2013. It might help to read the Wikipedia synopsis of the ballet before you read Baker’s passage, which mentions a cigarette:

“It’s true that there is an opera by Edouard Lalo called The King of Ys about the flooding of Ys, based partly on a forged Breton ballad by Theodore Hersart de la Villemarque, and true that Debussy had wildly applauded Lalo’s ballet Namouna while at the conservatory, and had memorized parts of it, including perhaps the scandalous waltz in which Namouna rolls a cigarette for her paramour…”

It’s still not exactly clear what’s going on with the cigarette, but because the waltz is described as scandalous, I wonder if there was something salacious about the rolling of the cigarette. The slave girl Namouna is, after all, flirting with Ottavio.

Baker’s point is probably that the ballet is not so much about the cigarette as it is about a larger issue, judging from my general sense of his passage. Larger than a cigarette anyway.

There’s a book titled “Cigarette Waltz: Seventeen Short Stories Adaptable for Theater” by Philip-Dimitri Galas” but I was unable to access any inside text.

Alas, I couldn’t find Cliff Notes about it.

The Good Old Days

I’m not a fan of country music, generally. I usually listen to the Big Mo (AKA John Heim) blues show on KCCK 88.3 on Friday nights. I also listen to the Music Choice channel on TV, either Easy Listening or Light Classical.

However, a few nights ago I heard the song “Grandpa, Tell Me ‘bout the Good Old Days” on Easy Listening. It was a haunting instrumental that I can be a sucker for sometimes. I noticed the rhythms that alerted me to its country genre, though.

On the other hand, the melody had that quality which makes me want hear nothing else for a while. An artist named Danielle Nicole sang “Bobby” on a Friday night blues in the second week of February, which did that for me.

How I feel about this kind of music reminds me of the Greek myth of Odysseus, who on his long journey back to Ithaca following the Trojan war, he and his crew of sailors encountered the island of the Sirens. Their voices made anyone who heard them forget everything but their haunting voices. The sailors wasted away, leaving hills of their skeletons. The only way to pass the Sirens safely was to stop the ears of the crew with wax. But Odysseus wanted to hear the song and made his men lash him to the mast so that he could not join those who gave up their lives to hear the music. He ached for knowledge in the lyrics even more than the melody of the songs the Sirens sang, and for the deepening of the spirit which absorbed the souls of those who heard the hypnotizing cadences. Just hearing the melody could extinguish the will to live.

The good old days melody didn’t extinguish my will to live, of course. But it was easy to get caught up in it and I noticed how deeply I reminisced. I looked up the lyrics and, at first, thought they were just quaint. Then they began to sound ironic to me.

The song (and I mean mainly the melody although the irony of the lyrics was part of the spell) seemed to raise the image of a bubble, which I know sounds strange. I remember blowing soap bubbles when I was a kid. They are delicate, bright, beautiful, but fragile—just like those so-called memories of what some older people call the good old days. You don’t even want to breathe too hard on them, which would hurt the spell, the illusion that there are such things as shiny, clear, light as air memories of a past without sorrows that float forever.

Of course, the bubbles burst as I got older. Innocence doesn’t last long in the world. It seems like every generation has to learn this all over again. The joys are replaced by broken promises, sorrows, and regrets.

Eventually, a golden haze settles over the anger, shame and guilt, softening the broken edges of the world which cut our souls. And the golden stories of the good old days that never happened save us for a little while every now and then—as long as there are those willing to sing them. Because we can almost always find the bubbles when we need them. Be careful not to listen to the Sirens too long. And if you do, be careful not to breathe too hard on the beautiful and fragile bubbles.

How much better would it be if we make the good times happen here and now?

Featured image picture credit: Pixydotorg.