Historical Collections of The Hawaiian Islands - Queen Lili'uokalani and her Music - Part 1 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/hi/hifiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: by Darlen6 E. Kelley January 5, 2007 http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Historical Collections of Hawai'i Keepers of the Culture Queen Lili'uokalani and her Music - Part 1. Lili'u and childhood training. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Part 1. Queen Lili'uokalani, the last of eight rulers of the Hawaiian Kingdom, was a talented poet and accomplished musician. She sang, played the piano, organ, guitar, and autoharp, and was the most prolific member of the royal family of composers. Her three siblings who lived to adulthood -- her elder brother and predecesser on the throne, David Kalakaua; her younger sister, Mariam Likelike; and her younger brother, William Pitt Leleiohoku, left compositions from their own hands and a solid record of support for Hawaiian music, literature, and dance. The relative importance of nature and nurture is often debated in many discussions about talented families; both seem to have shaped the musical careers of these ali'i. Ululani, their great-great-garndmother, was the most famous huku mele of her era, and her son, Naihe, served as chief orator at the council of Kamehameha the Great. This heritage through their maternal bloodline may have predisposed the four siblings toward excellence in poetic expression in the social hierarchy. affording them lifelong exposure to the best music performed in the Islands - Hawaiian and European, ancient and new. Being born on September 2, 1838, six decades after British exploreer Captain Cooke sailed the first Western vessels into Hawaiian waters. thereby precipitating a multitude of wrenching dislocations for Hawaiian society. Just twenty eight years had passed since Kamehamehea the Great had completed his quest for hegemony for eight inhabited islands of the archipelago, establishing the Hawaiian Kingdom and monarchal sucession for his family line. By 1838, Hawai'i was nominally under the rule of Kamehameha III and governed in fact by his elder half-sister, the Kuhina nui Kina'u. A system of kapu, the basis of social order in the islands for many generations, had been formally disolved in 1819, and Polynesian religious traditions had increasingly been supplanted by Protestant Christianity. The New England missionaries who arrived in 1820, introduced not only a new faith, but new ideas of morality, government, and music. In the early nineteenth century, Honolulu was a sleepy village on a dusty plain, growing haphazardly around a fine harbor. The population about nine thousand people suffered problems typical of the times for whaling ports and for societies in stress. The town had three physicians, several mercantile houses, a commercial print shop, and tradespeople of all sorts. The mission church, Kawaiaha'o, was being transformed into a massive coral edifice, and Honolulu's meandering lanes were being strraightened and widened. Houses of wood, stone, and adobe sheltered a community of foreigners some four hundred strong, while most natives still lived in thatched houses. In one of those grass houses, part of a compound in the vicinity of what today is the Queen's Medical Center, Lili'uokalani was born to ali'i nui Anale'a Keohokalole and her husband, the high chief Ceaser Kapa'akea. To honor the kuhina nui Kina'u, then beset by eye problems, the infant was given the commemorative name ( inoa ho'omana'o ) Lydia Lili'u Loloku Walania Kamaka'eha -- literally, Lydia Smarting Tearful Anguish the Sore Eye. She was called " Lydia " in her youth and by some family members into adulthood, but for simplicity, she will be referred to in this account as Lili'u in her early years and " Lili'uokalani " after 1877, when King Kalakaua lengthened her name when he made her heir apparent. Ali'i customarily gave their children to other ali'i as hanai, and Keohokalole and Kapa'akea maintained the tradition, whose function was to strengthen the bonds between chiefly families, and, in some instances, to improve the status of a child. Lili'u was given as hanai to ali'i nui Laura Konia and Abner Paki. who almost seven years earlier had given their child, Bernice Pauahi, to the regent Kina'u. Much later. Lili'uokalani wrote of her early life, " I knew no other father or mother than my foster parents, no other sister than Bernice." All ali'i were honored with name poems or songs called mele inoa, and Konia adapted an old chant for at least one and possibly two of the mele inoa for her hanoi daughter. Both were set to music many years later and are still sung today, " Makalapua " ( beautiful ) being better known and more frequently performed than the second, " Nani Haili Po I Ka Lehua." ( Haili is Beautiful, Dense with Lehua.). The daily care and early education of children of ranking chiefs were generally entrusted to kahu, usually ali'i of lower rank. Naturally, strong relationships developed between their children and their kahu, who often indulged them outrageously. Lili'u was placed in the care of a woman named Ka'ika'i, about whom very little is known. We are told that, as a child. Lili'u loved music and songs and Kaikai often entertained her, but there was no indication in what music or ongs Kaikai might have performed for her young charge. Later in life, Lili'u noted a few chants in the ancient style, and there is reason to believe she may have learned one of them from Kaikai. In 1842, Lili'u was enrolled in the Chiefs' Children's School, founded three years earlier after the Hawaiian chiefs petitioned American missionary leaders " to have a family set apart to teach the young chiefs of the nation." The first attempt to enroll Lili'u was unsucessful because, little girl that she was, she cried for her kahu. After five more weeks at home, however, she went back to stay. Only three years, eight months, and twenty-one days old, she was very young to be attending a boarding school. Among her school mates were Bernice Pauahi, her hanai sister; James Kaliokalani and David Kalakaua, her older brothers; Moses Kekuaiwa, Alexander Liholiho, and Lot Kapuaiwa, sons of the rengent Kina'u and her husband, Kekuanao'a, two of them who would become Kings, their young sisiter, Victoria Kamamalu; William Lunalilo, another fture king; Emma Rooke, who would marry Alexander Liholiho and become queen; and Jane Loeau. Lili'u and Victoria were the youngest children in the group, Lili'u being the elder by two months. Except for Moses and James, who died before adulthood, most of these young people. because of their elite social position, would maintain long and close associations. Amos Starr Cooke and his wife, Juliette Montague Cooke, were selected for the challenging task of organizing the Chiefs' Children's School and serving as its first teachers. School records, the Cookes' journals and letters, and their peridic reports to the mission board offer evidence of Lili'u developing her knowledge of music, including the ability to read and write it in Western systems of notation. Music was an integral part of school activities, an important aspect of daily devotional services, Sunday School, and church attandance. Regular hymn singing provided more than an opportunity for students to lift their voices in praise of God; it also imprinted Western tonal, rhythmic, and formal patterns of music on young, receptive minds. Presumably, an inborn aptitude and love for music made Lili'u particularly receptive to these and other musical stimuli tht she encountered informally during her first years at school. Such encounters were not confined to devotional contexts. " On the subject of music," reported Schoolmaster Cooke to the mission board, " this is attended to not as a study but as an amusement. It has charms for the students and many of thier hours of leisure are spent playing on the pianoforte, accordian and flute. It is very delightful to hear them play on the instruments as accompaniments to thier voices. The King, when he visits us, always insists upon thier singing and playing." Indeed, in 1843 the children of the school appeared publicly as a choir to sing " The Restoration Anthem " at a party celebrating the return of the Kingdom to Kamehameha III by British Admiral Sir Richard Thomas, after an upstart officer had unilaterally claimed the Islands for England. Lili'u is not specifically named among those playing instruments in her first years at the school, and perhaps use of the few instrumants was , like attendance at the church " singing school," a privilege reserved for the older students. Nonetheless, by the time she was six she had been well exposed both to singing and to Western instruments. Her hanai sister, Bernice Pauahi, took piano lessons from Mrs. William Hooper, wife of the Acting United States Commercial Agent, as early as 1843, and the following year, a Mrs. Calkins and a Mrs. Stevens taught piano lessons at the school. In addition, increasing numbers of foreign ships carrying musical bands called each year at Honolulu Harbor, and the children sometimes were invited to shpboard entertainments. Eventually, Lili'u received formal musical instruction at the school, but exactly when or in what form probably will be never known. In 1846, the year the school was integrated into the government education system and remained the Royal School, Mrs. Cooke began teaching singing daily, as part as the curriculum; if Lili'u had not yet learned the rudiments of music reading, she would have been introduced to them then. She may also have received her first taste of music throry, since the first Hawaiian Hymnal carrying information on the subject had been published in 1834, and in all likelihood a copy or two were available to the Cookes for use with their pupils. Further instruction was provided the next year, not only in music but also in drawing and painting, so what had been regarded as amusement in 1845 had become a serious study by 1847. That was when Bernice Pauahi and Jane Loeau began teaching the younger girls to sing and play the piano. Lili'u was nine, and undoubtedly the sight-reading skills she already possessed grew rapidly as her eye, ear, and vocal capabilities were augmeneted by the movement perception, or kinesthesia, involved in piano playing. In her autobiography, Lili'uokalani notes that " my facility in reading music at sight was always recognized by my instructors," and recalling a boy named Willie Andrews, who she said could read music, she reports that she and Willie sang new songs to introduce them to the class, after which the other students followed their lead. Mention of Willie Andrews dates this instance of musical leadership to 1849 or later, when the school was no longer run by the Cookes. As for the writing of music, it was not unusual for piano teachers to teach music theory and to reinforce the undrestnding of music symbols by requiring their students to use them in written exercises or compositions. If Bernice and Jane had been taught to write music symbols as part as their piano lessons, they may have required the same of Lili'u and their other students, and Mrs. Cooke probably included some writing exercises in her instructions as well. In any event, Lili'u seemed to have acquired enough skills in the use of musical notation that she could begin composing at an early age. In her auobiography. she remarks that she could " scarcely remember the days when it would not have been possible for me to write either the words or the music for any occasion on which poetry or song was needed. To compose was as natural to me as to breathe." It is more difficult to determine how Lili'u developed the ability to express herself as a poet in the Hawaiian language than to determine how she came into possession of musical skills. English was the language of instruction for the fourteen years of her formal eduacation, and for the first nine of those formitive years she was a boarder at school.which limited her contact with adult Hawaiians. Mrs. Cooke reports "that in 1843 all studies were in and still in the English language. Hitherto the would have learned more if their studies had been pursued in native, but from this time forward they will learn a great deal faster for having the English language. They now use very little native even among themselves in common conversation." When she had entered school, Lili'u must have had as firm a grounding in Hawaiian as a three year old could have. Some further continuity in her Hawaiian language education undoubtedly came from conversations with schoolmates whe were older than three when they enterd school and, therefore, had more expressin to the language. Also, the children's access to adult native Hawaiian speakers of high rank may have been more generous than the boarding school life would seem to allow. They were permitted to visit with relatives from time to time. When the students fell ill, their kahu and families went to the school and stayed for a while to attend to the patient. Victoria Kamamalu's kahu, the talented John Papa 'T'i, eventually was appointed kahu for all the students at the Chief's Children's School and visited in that capacity, though his services were in such demand by the court that he was often absent. Finally, Hawaiian was the language of worship at Kawaiaha'o Church, which the children attended, and an interesting study would be a degree to which Lili'u may have drawn on religious language in her lyrics. On the face of it, one might suppose that the Hawaiian language of the prayer book and the pulpit would have been of little help to her, a poet whose principal subject for the songs she wrote was love, but the cadences or diction she heard in the halls of Kawaiaha'o, like the music she heard there, may underlie some of her compositions. At best, however, those sources seem to casual and too slight to turn Lili'u into the poet she became, even if she had a genetic advantage in that regard. Though it can not be documented, it seems likely Lili'u had the benefit of tutelege in Hawaiian language and poetics from her hanai parents after the Royal School discontinued boarding in 1850. For the following five years, Lili'u lived at home with Koania and Paki while atteding the school by day, and daily interaction with her ali'i foster parents would have presented normal, meaningful opportunities for Lili'u to learn the classic forms of Hawaiian speech. Moreover, Konia was a poet herself, and from her, at least indirectly, Lili'u may have assimulated some of the poetic sense that began to flower a few years later. This and other experiences undoubtedly shaped Lili'u as a composer, but one balance, nature seem to have exerted a stronger influence than nurture. Her schoolmates all had the same or simular opportunities for musical learning, were receptive to music, and enjoyed performing as singers or instrumentalists, but only Lili'u and her brother Kalakaua became composers. The younger siblings, Likelike and Leileiohoku, who did not attend the Royal School and grew up in other households, also went on to become composers. What distinguised the musician Lili'u from her sister and brothers was the sheer number of works she produced, her ability to notate her songs, and later her attention to perserving and publishing them. She commented in her autobiography, " These songs, in which our music circles then excelled, are to be heard amongst our people to the present day. And yet it still remains true that no other composer but myself has ever reduced them to writing." ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ To be continued in part 2.