After hearing Jennifer Higdon’s blue cathedral, Baltimore Sun music critic Tim Smith wrote “If you didn't know the personal story behind it, the music could still touch your heart; when you do know that story, it can touch your soul”. The piece was written in 1999 and was inspired by the loss of Jennifer’s younger brother, Andrew Blue Higdon, who died of skin cancer in June 1998. Jennifer Higdon details the personal story in her own words:

Most of ‘blue cathedral’ is me trying to come to grips with [Andrew’s] passing, and the idea of whether life would (for me) be about living or about death. I kind of wrestled with that throughout the writing of the work, and by the time I reached the end of the work, I had decided that Andrew would want me to focus on living.

As I was writing this piece, I found myself imagining a journey through a glass cathedral in the sky. Because the walls would be transparent, I saw the image of clouds and blueness permeating from the outside of this church.

I began writing this piece at a unique juncture in my life and found myself pondering the question of what makes a life. The recent loss of my younger brother, Andrew Blue, made me reflect on the amazing journeys that we all make in our lives, crossing paths with so many individuals singularly and collectively, learning and growing each step of the way. This piece represents the expression of the individual and the group…our inner travels and the places our souls carry us, the lessons we learn, and the growth we experience. In tribute to my brother, I feature solos for the clarinet (the instrument he played) and the flute (the instrument I play). Because I am the older sibling, it is the flute that appears first in this dialog. At the end of the work, the two instruments continue their dialogue, but it is the flute that drops out and the clarinet that continues on in the upward progressing journey.

This is a story that commemorates living and passing through places of knowledge and of sharing and of that song called life.

All of the text in The Paper Lined Shack was written by Della Holsinger. It’s doubtful that you’ve ever heard of her. She is not famous. One thing that makes her story so powerful is that none of the text is fictional. Rather, it is a completely factual account of actual events.

Della Holsinger was born Della Mae Blickenstaff in Illinois on 20 Sep 1881, and she died in 1977. So how did a piece written by Jeff Beal in 2019 come to use text from someone who died in 1977? The short answer is that Della is Jeff Beal’s great grandmother. It seems that while unpacking some moving boxes back in 1999, Jeff and his wife Joan came across the memoirs of Della which she had written for her 6 children near the end of her life. The pages had been in the possession of Jeff’s maternal grandfather, Harold Holsinger, and were passed on to Jeff by Jeff’s mother. 20 years later, when Jeff received a commission from the Saint Louis Symphony, he recalled some of Della’s words, and decided they could work well as a narrative song cycle. His wife Joan set about extracting passages and organizing them into something of an autobiographical story. The result is a 5-movement piece known as The Paper Lined Shack. There are photos that accompany the piece which will be projected during the performance. These are actual family photos of Della and her children.

The five movements are as follows:

1. Carefree Girl: Della describes some of her early childhood in Illinois. She is one of eight children, and the only girl. She describes her most prized possession, a girl’s bike.

2. The Red Chair: Della describes her wedding. She has met Franklin Holsinger, and they are “very much in love”. They start their married life in Indiana. The red chair is a prize that Della’s father has been saving for his first granddaughter. Franklin and Della’s second child Rosella wins the chair.

3. The Paper Lined Shack: With their first 4 children, Franklin and Della embark on a frontier life, and head out to Idaho. They are in “sagebrush land”, living in a shack with paper insulation. The winters are very cold.

4. Our Garden: Della describes the garden that Franklin has planted, especially the peas that he has planted for her, and notes they have plans for a fruitful summer. But while in the garden, Della receives word of her mother’s death. She feels the need to be with her father and brothers, but while planning the trip, Franklin becomes ill and also dies. She and Franklin are both just 29. Shortly after Franklin’s death, Della discovers she is pregnant and will soon have a sixth child. Della feels lost and helpless.

5. My Heart: In media shown along with the piece, a photo of Della begins zoomed in, but gradually pans back to reveal the vast and empty Idaho landscape, emphasizing how alone she is. In her memoirs, Della tells her children that she is writing down these stories so that they can “share her heart”. She notes that what she and Franklin planted in their garden was love, and “there our hearts bloomed”. In closing, she asks her children to “carry her heart”.

It’s easy to see how Della’s closing words fit perfectly with this concert’s theme “Love Lingers”. In writing this piece, Jeff Beal has carried his great grandmother’s heart in ways she could not have possibly imagined.