Retelling history, and Aram Khatchaturian

In a recently explored passage of Fahrenheit 451, the protagonist questions his firefighting profession in front of his boss Beatty.

"Was-was it always like this? The firehouse, our work? I mean, well, once upon a time..."
"Once upon a time!" Beatty said. "What kind of talk is THAT?"
Fool, thought Montag to himself, you'll give it away. At the last fire, a book of fairy tales, he'd glanced at a single line. "I mean," he said, "in the old days, before homes were completely fireproofed " Suddenly it seemed a much younger voice was speaking for him. He opened his mouth and it was Clarisse McClellan saying, "Didn't firemen prevent fires rather than stoke them up and get them going?"
"That's rich!" Stoneman and Black drew forth their rulebooks, which also contained brief histories of the Firemen of America, and laid them out where Montag, though long familiar with them, might read:
"Established, 1790, to burn English-influenced books in the Colonies. First Fireman: Benjamin Franklin."


We reached the consensus that history had been rewritten. We asked why history might be rewritten. They said "To get people to follow you. To make yourself seem better than you are. To act as if what you're doing is the norm, something that's always been done."



Today, to follow up our discussion of a dystopian fictional world, we looked at rewriting of history in US history and the present: The story of Thanksgiving. They looked at textbook excerpts, bits of John Smith's journal, videos for school children, children's books (illustrated) youtube videos made by native folks, they listened to speeches by native folks

 - it was too many texts for one day, that I acknowledge - 

and they were asked to consider who the purpose and the audience for these texts were. They were asked to compare histories. These are some of the interesting questions that emerged:

- Why is the version told to school children so different?
(Because kids can't handle the violence and wouldn't understand the concepts of death and slavery).
- Is it all right that kids get the sugar coated version? 
(Yes, because they'll learn the right one when they grow up). 
- When are they old enough to learn the truth?
(Middle school)
- How will they learn the true story?
(Various answers, most being "Their parents. Their teachers. One person said "They'll look it up."
- If we only know one version of the story, how do we know to look it up to find out alternatives?
....silence.

Tomorrow I hope to reiterate with them that there is a shared responsibility to find out and preserve the truth. We need to have multiple voices in print (not just the fireman's manual of the story). We also need to accept our own responsibility - yes it's up to parents and teachers to tell us the truth, but we also need to be critical readers ourselves and demand multiple perspectives on an issue.

I was surprised how little they seemed to know about the true nature of relations between the native Americans and the pilgrims. Many of them, when asked at the beginning of the class for their understanding of the history of Thanksgiving, gave the sterile version - the two sides exchanged tricks on how to survive the winter, and celebrated with a harvest meal. I will find out tomorrow during the debrief how they felt the activity went.

Here's a piece of true history, though there are no other witnesses for you to compare my story with. 

When I was in elementary and middle school, I took piano lessons with a marvelous teacher named Deb. I played a piece called (by the editor of my book, at least) "Ivan Sings" by Aram Khatchturian. I was obsessed with it, and after all these years it remains one of the two pieces I can still play by memory. It is slow, and sad, even mournful. I always slowed down the tempo, and drew out the phrases that tugged at heartstrings. My household must have felt like Marianne Dashwood's household when she continued playing a funeral soundtrack after her father had died.

Aram Khatchaturian in 1964.

Tonight I was listening to Performance Today, one of the greatest programs on Public Radio, for the life it breathes into classical music and its composers and context (if I could do for literature in my classroom what Fred Child does for classical music on the air, I would be happy). The first piece of the house was a lullaby by the same Khatchaturian, from his ballet Gayane. This link on youtube plays a slightly slower version than was on the episode, which can be found here.

I cannot believe how lucky I am that I get to come home and listen to music like this. 

Incidentally, Khatchaturian was once censured and banned as an unacceptable form of music in the Soviet Union, (he was Armenian). Here's the section from wikipedia:

Denunciation and restoration (1948)

In mid-December 1947, the Department for Agitation and Propaganda (better known as Agitprop) submitted to Andrei Zhdanov, the secretary of the Communist Party's Central Committee, a document on the "shortcomings" in the development of Soviet music. On 10–13 January 1948, a conference was held at the Kremlin in the presence of seventy musicians, composers, conductors and others who were confronted by Zhdanov:^[39]

We will consider that if these comrades Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Myaskovsky, Khachaturian, Kabalevsky and Shebalin namely who are the principal and leading figures of the formalist direction in music. And that direction is fundamentally incorrect.

Thus, Khachaturian and other leading composers were denounced by the Communist Party as followers of the alleged formalism^[15] (i.e. "[a type of] music that was considered too advanced or difficult for the masses to enjoy")^[6] and their music was dubbed "anti-people".^[40] It was the Symphonic Poem (1947), later titled the Third Symphony, that officially earned Khachaturian the wrath of the Party.^[39][41] Ironically, he wrote the work as a tribute to the 30th anniversary of the October Revolution.^[42] He stated: "I wanted to write the kind of composition in which the public would feel my unwritten program without an announcement. I wanted this work to express the Soviet people's joy and pride in their great and mighty country."^[43]

Musicologist Blair Johnston believes that his "music contained few, if any, of the objectionable traits found in the music of some of his more adventuresome colleagues. In retrospect, it was most likely Khachaturian's administrative role in the Union [of Soviet Composers], perceived by the government as a bastion of politically incorrect music, and not his music as such, which earned him a place on the black list of 1948."^[44] In March 1948,^[25] Khachaturian "made a very full and humble apology for his artistic "errors" following the Zhdanov decree; his musical style, however, underwent no changes."^[44] He was sent to Armenia as a "punishment",^[15] and continued to be censured.^[25] By December 1948,^[25] he was "restored to favor later that year when he was praised for his film biography of Lenin.

He first performed at the Moscow Art Theater, which I walked past several times in Moscow last spring, and which had and still has a reputation for playing adventurous and avant garde art.