Up the Ocklawaha, Op. 6

Composer: BAUER, Marion Eugénie

Quick Facts

  • A “tone-picture” for violin and piano
  • Written in 1912 and published in 1913
  • Dedicated to American violinist Maud Powell1

About the Piece

  • Up the Ocklawaha represents Bauer’s first piece that extended beyond repertoire for voice and/or piano.
  • The piece was inspired by Maud Powell. In 1912, Powell traveled up the Ocklawaha River while touring in Florida. Powell wrote a poem about the experience and asked Bauer to set the poem to music.
  • The following shortened version of Powell’s poem appears in certain publications of the piece:

A boat glides silently up a swift and tortuous river.
The bark-stained waters race madly through a mighty swamp.
Giant cypresses stand knee-deep in noisome ooze,
losing their birthright in the vampire clutch of the deadly Tillandsia (Spanish moss.)
The trees seem shrouded in death rags.
The mournful swish of the dying branches against the Hiawatha
as she pushes up-stream, is the primeval forest’s last
whispered appeal to humanity for release from its awful fate.2

Sources

  1. “Up the Ocklawaha, Op.6 (Bauer, Marion)” IMSLP, accessed May 10, 2023, https://imslp.org/wiki/Up_the_Ocklawaha%2C_Op.6_(Bauer%2C_Marion).
  2. Sarah Grace Shewbert, “The Versatile Marion Bauer (1882-1955” (MA thesis, University of Portland, 2008), 132-134.

Cut IDs

25380