A multimedia, multidiscliplinary exploration into a community’s past through music, narration, and installation  (1995, rev. 1998), later resulting in a 39-minute symphonic work of stereo audio, which is featured here.

Inspiration: During a rummage through the attic of Barton McLean’s 1790 farmhouse,  in between the floorboard  cracks appeared an 1890's tintype photo of seven elegantly-dressed ladies for what appears to be an outing in the park.The remarkably clear photo reveals those bright eyes of the seven young women--reflections of their hopes and expectations for the future; a mirror of our own thoughts and aspirations.  They stand there so poised and hopeful, now forgotten shadows of the past.

Forgotten Shadows first appeared as an audiovisual installation, sponsored by the small historic village of Petersburgh, NY, and supported by NYSCA funding.   In this version,  Barton McLean made five similarly ordinary and forgotten people of Petersburgh living in the early 1900s era extraordinary through an audiovisual installation presented in the Petersburgh Veterans Memorial Hall in December, 1994 for one week. The work also had a multidisciplinary focus  using a fusion of sound, visual elements (photography, lighting effects, setting of personality artifacts, etc.) and prose, all contributing to integrating the essence, the emotional aura of five lives into an artistic work.

McLean undertook extensive local research on each subject, interviewing local descendents and historians.  Above all, the viewers of the installation experienced a feeling of poignant reverence--for the subjects, for a forgotten time, and above all, for the timelessness of their existence. By affirming the validity of the subjects' own existence beyond that fading two-dimensional photo image frozen in time, we affirm our own as well.

Forgotten Shadows -- the Music
Later, McLean extracted the best from the installation material, fusing it into a coherent, quasi-symphonic electroacoustic tape work.  Used as a constant thread in the 39-minute musical tapestry are tunes that were sung and played during that period. The sheet music was largely supplied by Hilda Allen, geneaologist-historian, musician, and long-time resident of Petersburgh after considerable thought, research, and remembering on her part. Some of the tunes are, "Santa Lucia," "When You and I Were Young," "Oft in the Stilly Night," "Varsoviana," "Hand Organ Polka," "Long Long Ago,"  and "Good Night Ladies." The music was composed in a modern recording studio at McLean’s house using computers and synthesizers. Several models for quotation composition presented themselves, among which were Charles Ives and Lukas Foss, as well as McLean’s principal teacher and mentor, Henry Cowell. McLean chose to strike out on a somewhat different path from these, in that he tried to present as much of the complete tunes intact as possible, while still maintaining a contemporary rigor and “bite” to the texture. Ironically, when McLean composed the work in 1993, the room which housed his studio in the north end of the 1790 farm house contained original stencilling completed in the early 1800s before wallpaper was invented. So, blending the old with the new was a very natural thing for him to undertake.

Central to the literary idea of the work is a phrase uttered by 90-year-old Victoria Green which serves to frame the composition, appearing at the beginning as well as the end.  The words are, simply, “that is all gone now ... you can’t hardly see where it is.”

Forgotten shadows of the past ...are we all destined for a similar fate, hastened perhaps by the new urgency of the Millennium?

Some details follow from the original installation program:

Physical layout, set design (from the installation):  Jeanne Ferland
Historian advisors:  Peter Schaapock and Hilda Allen
Musical advisors:  Hilda Allen
Interviewees: Charles Bently, Victoria Green, Hilda Allen, Donald Hewitt,  Hazel Thomas, Mildred Southgate
Musicians and musical groups heard in the work (all recorded originally by McLean or by local townspeople):
  Priscilla McLean-Soprano
  Earl Hewitt-Musical Saw
  Thomas Elkin-Ragtime Piano
  Richard Blair-Music Boxes
  “Big Jack” Eaton, fiddle
  Cincinnatus, NY, Congregational Church Choir, Marjorie Wilbur, Cond.
  Cincinnatus, NY, 4th of July Marching Band, Alton Wilbur, Cond.
  Children of Petersburgh recorded in play
  Dr. & Mrs. Ray Bogucki-farm implements

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Concert version (39 minutes) released on a CD Composers Recordings Inc. (CRI CD 846) in 6/2000, and is now available online through New World Records.

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Forgotten Shadows is © and ℗ 1996 Barton McLean