Unsung workers made Newport's mansions run. Now, they're getting a musical tribute.
NEWPORT – Set against the opulence of The Breakers, a minister’s great-grandson will offer commissioned music reflecting the rich history that brought to life the wealthy world of Newport's Gilded Age.
Highlighting this year’s Newport Classical Music Festival – which runs from July 4-23 at multiple venues around the city – is “The Gilded Cage,” a piano quintet by Grammy-nominated composer and violinist Curtis Stewart, whose great-grandfather led the local African Methodist Episcopal church for a time in the 1950s. Stewart and his father, a musician whose memories inspired the piece, will attend the July 22 performance.
“My grandfather traveled with the Negro Baseball League, so my father was raised by my great-grandfather, an AME minister. My father has many stories of members of the church who serviced mansions like The Breakers – milkmen, carpenters, laundresses,” Stewart said in a phone interview. “We think about those who owned the mansions, but his stories got me thinking about the ones behind the scenes.”
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He took the stories, mined the passion in AME spirituals and set his imagination loose to craft “The Gilded Cage,” a name drawn from a quote he found describing the Breakers, when it was vacant and in disrepair following the departure of the Vanderbilts, as a "gilded cage" that was "much more interesting when it still had the birds inside it."
“Who were the birds?” he wondered. “Who gets the place in history – those who inherit the riches or those who maintain them?”
Although he has never been inside a Newport mansion, his mind conjured ghosts telling rich stories of the mansions and, in the way only composers’ minds work, those thoughts inspired musical notes.
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“I imagined what it would be like if the spirits of all the people who tended to The Breakers were swirling around. At the beginning of ‘Gilded Cage,’ that is the long, creepy string sounds swirling out of the harsh piano chords,” Stewart said. “It’s imagination-based, but it’s akin to how we deal with history – we can only imagine it.”
He blended in notes from spirituals like “Precious Lord,” which Aretha Franklin sang at the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral. Pieces cast in different ways tease throughout “The Gilded Cage,” with a full version playing at the end.
“Aretha was bending and weaving the song, riffing on words, singing new sections while interacting with the band. I expand on that to capture the spirit of the Black church – a calm response to an energetic outcry,” Stewart said.
Writing classical music, he said, he relies heavily on the feel of each note for meaning that is not conveyed through words.
“It’s about mixing the feeling you have toward an event and the information of the event so people can get the story,” he said. “You follow melody and themes, but it’s really about the feeling.”
“The Gilded Cage” starts out spooky and becomes more raucous before settling into a groovy beat, he said.
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“I think about the feeling I want to have when I remember these people,” Stewart said. “I’m soundtracking the feeling.”
The result, he added, is “less about classical music and more about witnessing a magical thing happening on stage – watching people have a feeling together.”
Free Fourth of July concert kicks off festival
The Fenway Quintet will perform a free "Patriotic Pops" concert at King Park on July Fourth at 7:30 p.m. For information and that and other festival performances, including "The Gilded Cage" on July 22, go to newportclassical.org/music-festival, or call the box office at (401) 849-0700.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Tribute to Newport mansion's unsung workers to debut at music festival
