The pandemic has caused so many things to disappear from the Berkshires this past year. For many of us, not being able to experience music at Tanglewood or the jazz concerts at The Mount is high on our list of deprivations that we long to have back. For me, listening to music outdoors, whether in an open field or a carefully planned landscape, makes a connection between music, the natural world, and the art of gardening, and brings together so many things that I love
And even without a musical instrument on hand, the garden and the woods are filled with melodies — birdsong, the sound of a breeze rustling through leaves, the creaks of trees as they dance in the wind, and the percussive taps of a woodpecker. These are the sounds that I imagine inspired our forbears to create their own music millennia ago.
Throughout the past month, I had been seeing signs throughout the region promoting “Nightwood” at Edith Wharton’s The Mount, and I was intrigued. The mysterious moniker given to this sound and light show called to mind the novel of the same name, not by Edith Wharton but by Djuna Barnes. This very name combined a sense of wildness and romance. And the show, put together by Susan Wissler’s team at The Mount in collaboration with a lighting designer, a scenic designer, and a composer, evokes the mystery of an evening’s walk through the woods. The musical composition for the show was inspired by the idea of spending a night in the woods and, just like so many children’s fairytales that circle around a similar plot, it evokes mystery and allure, while the lighting and scenic design, to my mind, take on a Gothic element that makes me wonder if Wharton was ever inspired by her landscape to write Gothic fiction.
I visited the show earlier this week. Coming through the woods, a pair of trees marks the first view of the house, their trunks illumined. Torches that could have announced the entrance of Marlene Dietrich in a Josef von Sternberg production, riding in on horseback, clad all in white and dressed as Catherine the Great, light the path before us. Next on the route is a mysterious light show glowing in the woods, replete with its own soundtrack; this combination of changing light patterns and haunting sounds sets the stage for arrival at the house. Proceeding forward into the courtyard of the house, one is welcomed by a vision of a mirrored candlelit table, mysteriously glowing and illuming the forecourt of the house. It pays homage to Wharton’s view that there are two sources of light, the candle and the mirror that reflects it. Life and art, as you will, playing out the connection that has existed between art and nature since the time of William Shakespeare.
From there, the path leads into the perennial garden, across the mysteriously lit lime walk, and into the grotto garden, all of which have not only been illumined and filled with music but sit under the evanescent, otherworldly glow of Wharton’s other beloved art form, the architecture of the house, cast in a mysterious blue light that could evoke the heavens or a haunted specter.
All in all, “Nightwood” transports us, artfully, into a literary and musical experience that is so different from other holiday shows, and seems to do justice to The Mount’s creator by showing us both the light of the candle and its reflection in the mirror. And this new experience of place has been burned into my memory.
I so look forward to being back at The Mount in normal times, listening to jazz on a summer weekend, complaining about the crowds. And, like any good novel, for me the house and garden will now always tell a story on another level as well: one of a masked walk through a snowy woods taking in the world on my own. I hope this is the vision and memory of 2020 that I can hold on to for years to come.
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A gardener grows through observation, experimentation, and learning from the failures, triumphs, and hard work of oneself and others. In this sense, all gardeners are self-taught, while at the same time intrinsically connected to a tradition and a community that finds satisfaction through working the soil and sharing their experiences with one another. This column explores those relationships and how we learn about the world around us from plants and our fellow gardeners.
