{"id":38314,"date":"2024-02-02T16:02:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-02T15:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/a2612fa8-5da8-49db-911a-28fb87a437b4"},"modified":"2024-02-02T16:40:09","modified_gmt":"2024-02-02T15:40:09","slug":"amelia-earhart-how-the-tragic-story-of-the-aviation-pioneer-inspired-a-thrilling-new-violin-concerto","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/rss_feed\/amelia-earhart-how-the-tragic-story-of-the-aviation-pioneer-inspired-a-thrilling-new-violin-concerto\/","title":{"rendered":"Amelia Earhart: how the tragic story of the aviation pioneer inspired a thrilling new violin concerto"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Charlotte Smith\n <\/p>

Published: Friday, 02 February 2024 at 15:02 PM<\/p>

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Legendary adventurer and feminist icon Amelia Earhart<\/strong> set two world records in 1932 \u2013 flying alone across the Atlantic Ocean in 15 hours, becoming the first woman and only the second person in history to do so; and subsequently flying non-stop across the US, again the first time a woman had achieved the feat.<\/p>

These magnificent records made Earhart an instant worldwide sensation. Independent and adventurous since childhood, she knew on her very first flight in December 1920 with experienced pilot Frank Hawks that her place was in the air. \u2018As soon as I left the ground, I knew I myself had to fly,\u2019 she revealed.<\/p>

The disappearance of Amelia Earhart<\/h2>

Her final adventure in a Lockheed 10-E Electra, purchased for her by benefactors of Purdue University where she served as a visiting aviation professor, might easily have become her greatest record yet \u2013 to be the first woman to complete a circumnavigational flight of the globe. But in a disastrous turn of events, Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan never completed the trip, failing to locate their refuelling stop of Howland Island, a tiny, two-mile strip of land in the Pacific Ocean, on 2 July 1937. Neither the plane nor its crew were found during an exhaustive search of air and sea, and despite numerous outlandish theories surrounding the incident, it is presumed the two ran out of fuel and ditched into the Pacific.<\/p>

It should come as little surprise that the intrepid Earhart has inspired a slew of articles and books, documentaries and films, songs and theatre productions. She was even immortalised in plastic as one of a new line of Barbie dolls introduced in 2018, depicting inspirational women. Yet the classical music world has failed to embrace her story \u2013 until now.<\/p>

The Amelia Earhart Barbie Doll<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>

The violin concerto inspired by Amelia Earhart’s life and story<\/h2>

Enter composer Michael Daugherty, whose violin concerto Blue Electra<\/em>, based on the life of Amelia Earhart, received its world premiere in November 2022 at Washington\u2019s Kennedy Center, just a stone\u2019s throw from her famous Vega 5B. Commissioned by violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, who performed the work over three consecutive nights with the National Symphony Orchestra under Gianandrea Noseda, the concerto is a vivid and often beautiful tribute to its subject.<\/p>

Its four movements each depict a different period in Earhart\u2019s life. The opening section, \u2018Courage (1928)\u2019, is a musical reflection on a poem written by Earhart before her first flight across the Atlantic \u2013 not only did this amazing woman set aviation records, she also wrote three books and numerous verses, eventually donated to Purdue University by her granddaughter. Daugherty responds to the poem with a soaring, tuneful opening, encapsulating ideas of heroism, ambition and the sensation of gliding thrillingly above the mundane.<\/p>

The second movement, \u2018Paris (1932)\u2019, shifts gear entirely, depicting an imagined high society \u2018Hot Jazz\u2019 soir\u00e9e in which Earhart, having just received the Legion of Honour from the French Government, is guest of honour. Certainly the most fun and upbeat of the concerto\u2019s movements, this slice of jazzy, bluesy<\/a><\/strong> nostalgia gives both soloist and orchestra the chance to shine in complicated rhythmic duets and finger- clicking syncopations.<\/p>

In the third movement, \u2018From an Airplane (1921)\u2019, Daugherty moves back in time via a \u2018musical rumination\u2019 on another poem written by a much younger Earhart, \u2018dreaming of the day she will be in the pilot seat of an airplane as it spirals through the clouds\u2019. Here the music is meditative and atmospheric, emphasised by ghostly harmonics in the violin part and augmented chords in the orchestra.<\/p>

And finally comes the work\u2019s devastating conclusion, \u2018Last Flight (1937)\u2019, a frighteningly programmatic depiction of Earhart\u2019s disastrous attempt to cross the Pacific Ocean in her Lockheed Electra, its rhythms shot through with the unmistakable SOS Morse code signal and climaxing with a repeated open string G in the solo violin part, taken up gradually by the entire orchestra and crescendoing to a wall of ear-splitting sound, before cutting off abruptly in a shattering silence.<\/p>

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Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan board the Lockheed Electra 10-E in San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1937 (Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>

How literal is Daugherty’s depiction of Amelia Eahardt’s disappearance in the music?<\/h2>

What does Daugherty imagine is happening at this point? Is this a musical depiction of the propellor stuttering and dying before the plane falls silently from the sky, or perhaps the plane has already hit the water earlier in the movement \u2013 in a series of downward swoops heard throughout the orchestra \u2013 before Earhart\u2019s last desperate signalling attempts are lost as she sinks beneath the waves?<\/p>

Daugherty is unsurprisingly non-committal when I catch up with him after the premiere. \u2018Yes, one could <\/em>interpret this as the plane crashing and then going silent,\u2019 he tells me coyly. And indeed, given the mystery surrounding Earhart\u2019s final hours, perhaps a degree of personal interpretation is best. Meyers also likes the idea of \u2018leaving it up to the imagination of the audience\u2019. But she does elaborate: \u2018For me, Amelia has crashed, and the water is coming up. It\u2019s incredibly haunting. I asked Michael where that idea had come from for those last bars and he said he\u2019d never written anything like it before, but that it just presented itself to him.\u2019<\/p>

The draw of the story: why Amelia Earhart?<\/h2>

It was Daugherty\u2019s body of previous works that initially drew Meyers to him, particularly his 2015 cello concerto Tales of Hemingway <\/em>and his Fire and Blood <\/em>of 2003 for solo violin and orchestra, inspired by artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. \u2018I love that Michael always uses a very interesting personality or story to create his scores,\u2019 she explains. \u2018But when I commissioned the concerto, I had no idea he would pick Amelia Earhart as his subject. He composed the work during the pandemic and when he sent me the score, it was perfection. I\u2019d never really thought about Earhart before, but I\u2019ve since become enamoured with her personality and brave soul. You can\u2019t help but think of what she went through in her very short time on earth. To fly as a female at that time in history in those tiny planes \u2013 she was the epitome of courage.\u2019<\/p>