Historical Collections of The Hawaiian Islands - Queen Lili'uokalani and her Music - Part 2 ************************************************ 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 8, 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 2. Lili'u - Young adulthood and Early Compositions. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Part 2. Lili'u left school in 1855, the year that Paki died and willed the large, relatively new house where they lived to Bernice. Bernice moved in with her husband of five years, businessman Charles Bishop, and became mistress of the house.making it a center of exuberant social activity. Thus at seventeen, blossoming into young womanhood, Lili'u became a participant in the life of the Court. Of this period she later wrote," The King Kamehameha IV, Alexander Liholiho, would often appear informally at our doors with some of his friends; the evening would be passed in inprovised dances.... and the night would be half gone ere we noticed the flight of time." And what might they have been dancing? Quadrilles, waltzes, polkas, and mazurkas were popular in Honolulu at the time, and where there was dancing, of course, there was music. The increasing foreign population to Honolulu and continuing visits of ships with their own bands had eroded missionary-inspired prohibitions that in earlier years have precluded such entertainment. When two of her old schoolmates, Liholiho and Emma Rooke. married in June 1856, Lili'u was a bridesmaid, and parties, picnics, and balls filled thd social calendar. Willy-nilly, the future queen's social and musical horizons continued to widen. In November 1856, Lili'u accompanied her hanai mother on an extended visit to the Islands of Hawai'i and Maui. Konia was following the ali'i customs of seeking improved health by moving to areas of tranquillity and equable climate, and the sites she selected -- Kona on the island of Hawai'i and the town of Lahaina on Maui -- were favorite destinations then as they are today. Given the social whirl left behind in Honolulu, it is hardly surprising that Lili'u found Kona " excessively quiet and dismal," but the trip may have provided her with opportunities to learn about some of the legends, people, and places of importance on Hawai'i and Maui. Lili'u continued to make periodic interisland trips over the next thirty years and was inspired to write many songs about places whose physical features and flora she knew and loved. Early in 1857, the sojourn on Maui was interrupted by a sequence of wedding engagements quickly made, broken,and remade among four of the Royal School students --- Prince William Lunalilo, Luli;u herself, her brother David Kalakaua, and the King's sister Victoria Kamamalu. This frantic exercise in nuptial diplomacy apparently was designed to conceal and discourage a liaison between Victoria and an unsuitable lover of common blood. The upshot for Lili'u was engagement to the handsome, urbane, literate Lunalilo. When Konia died later that year, Bernice and Charles Bishop became guardians of nineteen year old Lili;u, and they disapproved of her pending marriage to " Prince Bill." probably in part because of his fondness for alcohol. Lili'u severed the engagement, she said later, " due to incidents which came to the surface ere long." During those years of initiation into court life and early romance, Lili'u began to produce love songs, the earliest of her surviving compositions. Among them is " Nani Na Pua Koolau " ( The Flower of Ko'olau ), which later was published both in Hawaiian and English, one of her first works to appear in print. A precise date cannot be assigned to the piece, but the published versions identify the arranger as " L.K. Paki," indicating that Lili'u wrote before her marriage, in 1862. Another composition ascribed to this period is " Lia I Ka Wai Mapuna " ( One Desired at the Spring ), whose melody has eluded a lengthy search. Honolulu source in the mid 1850's brought Lili'u back into contact with her future husband, John Owen Dominis, whom she remembers in her autbiography as a schoolboy peering over the fence at the ali'i of the Chiefs' Children's School. The young American had attended school with them for only a few months, but perhaps that was when he became firm friends with the future King Lot Kapuaiwa. Throughout his adult life, John Dominis relied on Lot and other friends among the ali'i for government positions. Lili'uokalani and John Owen Dominis married in September 1862, after a genteel two year engagement. The groom was thirty, the bride just two weeks past her twenty-fourth birthday. John took his bride to live at Washington Place, a large, white house on Beretania Street that had been built by his father, a sea captain, and which today is the official residence of Hawai'i governors. They shared the house with John's widowed mother. Lili'u promptly discovered that there was room in the home for only one mistress. Prince Lot, aware of the frictions at Washington Place, invited the newlyweds to join his entourage on a trip to the island of Hawai'i, a trip that Lili'u afterward referred to as a "bridal tour". Whatever the level of domestic tensions in the Dominis household, they did not inhibit Lili'u from exercising her creative abilities -- quite the contrary. Whether for solace, distraction, escape, or sheer pleasure, after two years of marriage, Lili'u began her composing career in earnest. At Washington place in 1864, she composed " Onipa'a ( Stand Firm ), a simple piece written for a singing school. Throughout her life, Lili'u devoted time to visiting schools of all kinds, and this song may have been aspired by visiting a class. Its subject, though is political, urges students to support the new constitution promulgated that year by Lot, who had ascended the throne a King Kamehameha V after the death of his brother in 1863. The new monarch not only was a friend from youth but also employed John Dominis as his personal secretary. Three other songs from 1864 were written at Hamahamo, the Waikiki residence of Lili'u's maternal grandfather, 'Aikanaka. Waikiki had long been a favorite recreational area for ali'i, and in the ensuing years Lili'u would often seek respite there. Hamahamo was located roughly where present day 'Ohua Avenue opens onto Kuhio Beach. It passed hands on 'Aikanaka's death. The three songs composed there in 1864 were; " Ehehene Ko 'Aka.( Giggle,Giggle Goes Your Laughter ) ; " He Ali'i No Wau " ( I Am Indeed a Chief ); and " Pipili Ka Ua I Ka Nahele " ( The Rain Clings Close to the Forest.). In 1866, Lot asked Lili'u to compose a new anthem for the Kingdom to replace the British song " God Save The Queen.," which was then being used. Fired by the request, within a week she had completed " He Mele Lahui Hawai'i " ( The Hawaiian National Anthem), and by July 1867, the song was printed and was available for purchase in Honolulu. The first of her compositions ever published. This decidedly Christian song served as the national anthem for ten years until her brother, by that time reigning as King Kalakaua, set it aside in favor of his own composition, " Hawai'i Pono'i." Lot further inspired and encouraged Lili'u by inviting her and Kalakaua to assist Abraham Formander. inspector general of schools, in an extensive study of Hawaiian history based on gleanings from the oral tradition. Formander's project was important to Lot because the King wanted to reestablish in the Islands the primacy of Hawaiians and Hawaiian culture. In several ways, it was important to Lili'u as well, and she set to work assisting Formander on translations of mele and legends. Besides strengthening her awareness of her people's history, the task must have given Lili'u fresh insight into Hawaiian poetic expression and heightened her confidence as a Hawaiian composer. It would be worth studing the Fornander records to see if her work with oral literture influenced her compositions. When premature death took Victoria Kamamalu in 1866, Lili'u stepped into her role as choir director and organist at Kawaiaha'o Church. She served in that capacity for several years, and there she conducted the premiere of " He Mele Lahui Hawai'i," The October 12, 1867, issue of the newspaper Ka Nupepe Kuokoa carried an item titled " Singing Club of Kawaiahao organized by Princess Lydia Kamakaeha Dominis and her pupils.," which announced a meeting of the club and stated its goal of raising money to pay for a new organ. Three months later, a short article with a wry closing appeared in the same journal:: " We saw some young people of the Kawaiahao choir practicing on the organ and the teacher who is teaching them piano and organ is Princess Lydia and a young white man who was her teacher. We cannot say when the children will graduate." Interestingly, the Hawaiian press already was referring to Lili'u as " princess," long before she officially received that designation. The young white man mentioned in the artcle was one of the several private music instructors Lili'u engaged in the course of her adult life. Presumably, their coaching enabled her to increase her proficiency in composition and also to widen her instrumental range to include the organ, guitar, and autoharp, as well as piano. Between 1866 and 1868, Lili'u lost both of her biological parents and ' Aikanaka, her maternal grandfather. Her mother's experience with the unique honor Puna residents bestowed on visiting ali'i inspired the first three lines of the stanza of " Ima Au Ia Oe E Ke Aloha " ( I have Sought Thee, My Beloved ). The English version Lili'u wrote reads as follows: " Let us roam through the beauties of Puna And we twain drink the water Koolihilihi, Sweet waters rippling in the brooklets, And happiness shall ever be ours." When the Duke of Edinburgh visited Honolulu in July 1869, at Lot's behest Lili'u came out of mourning for her mother and assisted with official entertainment of the British royalty. The duke himself was a composer, and he and Lili'u probably discussed their compositions. This Courtly honor was complemented by an even more remarkable honor from the commercial sector, the publication of her early composition," Nani Na Pua Ko''olau by the Boston firm Oliver Ditson Company, probably the first U.S. publication of a Hawaiian Song." Among the pieces Lili'u wrote in the latter years of the decade are several composed on the island of Hawai'i , collaborative works with her sister Mariam Likelike and others, and songs dediated to family members such as the lovely " Pauahi 'O Ka Lani" ( Pauahi, the Chiefess ) for her foster sister Bernice. Three of the new songs -- " Puna Paia 'A'ala " ( Puna's Bowery Walls ), " Paia Ka Nahele" ( The Fragrant Woods), and " Ahe Lau Makani " ( There is a Breath ) took the form as waltzes, a fresh departure for Lili'u. Their lyrics are full of romance, and the rhythmic buoyancy and grace of the music place them among her most memorable melodies. The first concrete evidence of collaborative songwriting for Lili'u appears in the 1867 composition " Thou E Ka Nani Mae 'Ole" ( Thou Art the Never Fading Beauty ), for which sixteen year old Miriam share credit. A year later, minor adjustments were made in the song, Lizzie Kapoli was named as a third collaborator, and the title was changed to " Liko Pua Lehua" ( Tender Leaves of the Lehua Flower ). With a few more modifications involving only the lyrics, the song also came to serve as a mele inoa for John Owen Dominis. This is one of several instances in which Lili'u made multiple use of a single tune. By the close of the 1860's. Lili'u had established the compositional style that characterizes her work as a whole. The form was invariably strophic, with each stanza of the text sung to the same tune, like the hymns, folk songs, and popular music Lili'u encountered in church, school, and the social life of her times. Most of the compositions were love songs in the old tradition of mele ho'oipoipo-- full of nature metaphores, nearly always happy, and veiled by allusion and indirection. Not all her work fit the pattern, of course. Life was changing in the islands as well as the foreign culturial influence current in the kingdom. Songs of the 1860's such as the national anthem and " Onipa'a " which supported the 1864 constitution, defy classification in traditional categories of Hawaiian mele. Her comositions of the decade are also unusual in that one-third of them are waltzes, in later decades, a much smaller fraction of her songs use waltz meter. +++++++++++++++++++++ Some Lyics-- " Ahe Lau Makani " ( There is a Breath ) ( 1868 ) 1- " There is a breath so gently breathing,. So soft, so sweet by sighing breezes, That as it touches my whole being, It brings a warmth unto my soul. Chorus We, fair one, together, shall enjoy such moments, While murmuring wind sweeps o'er my fatherland. 2- There is a breath so soft and balmy, Brought by sweet zyheyre. Lililehua, And while wafted to my bosom, It brings a yearning for one I love." +++++++++++++ He 'Ala Nei E Mapu Mai Nei ( Soft, Constant Breeze ) 1- " There is a fragrance perfuming the air. A steady, gentle wind Brought it here to me, It warms me with your love Chorus O companion of the soft, constant breeze, Bearing fragrances of my land. 2- There is a secret perfuming the air, The misty Lililehua rain. Brought it unto my bosem. It warms me in my heart. 3- There is a fragrance that saturates, A cool, soft breeze Brought it to cling to me, Warming me with feelings. 4- There is a fragrance wafted here, The sweet calls of birds Brought it to find me Being warmed by your voice. ++++++++++++++++ He Mele Lathui Hawai'i ( The Hawaiian National Anthem ) [ First Published ] Composed in 1864 Declared first National anthem in 1866. 1. "Almighty Father, Heed us Who turn to thee With humble hearts, May peace abide In these isles From Hawai'i to Ni'ihau, Under thy protection. Chorus Long may the life of the land abide Through thy eternal righteousness, Through thy great power. Grant life, life to the King. 2. O Lord, care for Our King here. May his reign ever continue Upon the throne. Grant him love Within his heart, And by thy patience, Grant life, life to the King. 3. Under thy great love abide, The chiefs of the Kingdom The citizens and the entire public. Guard them With patient love, Grant us life Through thy everlasting power. ++++++++++++++ The Hawaiian National Anthem [ Changed later 1874 ] 1. " Almighty Father bend thine ear, And list a nation's prayer, That lowly bows before thy throne, And seeks thy fostering care, Grant thou peace thro'out the land, O'er these sunny, sea-girt isles, Keep the nation's life, O Lord, And upon our sovereign smile, Chorus Grant thy Peace, thro'out the land, O'er these sunny, sea-girt Isles, Keep the nation's life, O Lord, And upon our sovereign smile. 2- Guard him with thy tender care, Give him length of years to reign On the throne his fathers won, Bless the nation once again . Give the King thy loving grace, And with wisdom from on high, Prosperous lead his people on, As beneath thy watchful eye. 3- Bless, O Lord, our country's chiefs, Grant them wisdom so to live, That our people may be saved, And to thee the glory give. Watch thou o'er us day by day, King and people with thy love, For our hope is all in thee. Bless us thou who reign'st above. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ To be continued in part 3.