In this week’s episode, Anna Stephan-Robinson examines Katherine Ruth Heyman's 1920 song, "Tortie-Tortue," considering how the unjustly neglected composer's subtle changes transform a simple poem into a brief but compelling musical drama.

This episode was produced by Zach Lloyd along with Team Lead Leah Frederick. Special thanks to peer reviewers Hilary Poriss and Joseph Straus.

SMT-Pod’s theme music was written by Maria Tartaglia, with closing music by Yike Zhang. For supplementary materials on this episode and more information on our authors and composers, check out our website: https://smt-pod.org/episodes/

[Intro Theme by Maria Tartaglia.]

Here’s the opening phrase of an art song. Do any questions come to mind while listening?

[EXAMPLE 1: mm. 1-4 (all musical excerpts are from Katherine Ruth Heyman, “Tortie-Tortue,” recorded by soprano Linda Cowan and pianist Jerry Lee)]

If you focused on the lyrics, you heard the opening words name a character being addressed. Maybe you wondered who “Tortie-Tortue” is. She’s being asked a question, and you might wonder too, "what is she doing among us?” For that matter, who’s “us”? With a couple characters and a question, it seems to be the start of a story. What might happen next? Will Tortie-Tortue explain her presence, as requested?

If you’re interested in music theory, you might consider the sounds. Harmonically and melodically, why does the phrase begin here [plays F major chord with A top note], but end here [plays D minor with F top note]? Will that tonal relationship have any further significance, or maybe get expanded, later in the song?

If you’re interested in music history, its context, you might wonder who wrote this song, and when? Why did they write it?

These, of course, are questions that occurred to me, ones that I’ll start to explore in today's episode. Welcome.

[Bumper music]

You just heard the opening of “Tortie-Tortue,” composed in 1920 by Katherine Ruth Heyman. Heyman was a fascinating and talented woman who composed some 80 pieces, plus wrote a book, lectured, and co-founded an educational festival, all focused on modern music. But the author of her most substantial obituary, Arthur Farwell—whose press had published one of her songs—neglected to mention any compositions. In this episode, I start to reclaim the composer identity on Heyman’s behalf by exploring disconnection, reticence, ambivalence, and death in “Tortie-Tortue.”

“Tortie-Tortue” depicts a dialogue between a group of children and a woman who has witnessed a death, possibly that of her husband. The text is grouped into couplets; in each the children question Torti, and she responds with varying degrees of openness. With its alternating characters and repeating refrains, the text seems playful despite its grim subject matter, and may be a version of the ancient Greek “Turtle Game.”

Heyman uses a modified version of strophic form to set “Tortie-Tortue.” One singer portrays both the children and Tortie, who each have their own music. The children express their energy and curiosity in a lively compound meter, and the weary and wary Tortie responds with (mostly) longer note values. Additionally, while both characters’ melodies have a small pitch range of a major or minor third, the children generally sing higher than Tortie. Let’s listen to the whole first strophe, which establishes the scene. You’ll hear the children ask Tortie what she’s doing, and she answers literally: she’s weaving threads of wool and millet. Focus on the singer’s rhythms and pitches, to hear how the composer portrays the children differently from Tortie.

[EXAMPLE 2: mm. 1-8]

That first strophe set the tone not only for the story but also for the music. In each of the remaining five strophes, children basically sing the same thing, but Tortie’s melodies are varied. The effect is that the children’s emotional state is portrayed as relatively stable throughout (albeit intensifying), whereas Tortie evinces more of an emotional progression.

In the rest of this episode, we’ll examine the song in detail to get a handle on the effect of the composer’s musical decisions as she set this poem. Though we can’t ask her why she made the choices she did, we can examine the musical effects of her decisions. I think this examination will reward your attention. The song may seem simple and repetitive at first glance. In fact, that’s what I initially thought. But after getting to know this song, I’ve realized that the way that Heyman modifies Tortie’s melodies in each strophe turns a relatively simple poem into a dramatic little story. Before delving into how that happens, though, let’s take just a few minutes to talk about the composer’s life and career.

[Bumper music]

Born in 1872 in Sacramento, California, Heyman took to music from a young age. She achieved success as a pianist, becoming best known for playing and advocating for the music of Alexander Scriabin as well as for introducing John Kirkpatrick and Charles Ives. In addition to performance, Heyman’s professional activities included teaching, lecturing, and writing, not only music but also prose and poetry.

Heyman composed at least 80 pieces, most of which exist only in archives today. Some 60 had lyrics: either songs for solo voice and piano or accompanied duets for soprano and tenor. Most of her other pieces were for solo piano. I’ve chosen to examine “Tortie-Tortue” for this episode not only because of its musical interest, but also because it represents a feminist thread in her work. About a quarter of her 60 songs have some kind of gender implications, such as themes of women’s acceptable behavior, oppression by men, abandonment by a male partner, ambivalence about relationships, and parental themes such as lullabies, strongly correlated with motherhood in Heyman’s day.

Heyman’s music is stylistically eclectic. Despite her advocacy of modern music, many of her pieces use tonic-dominant relationships in a traditionally tonal manner. She’s highly influenced by the texts she set, authored by well-known poets such as Stephen Crane and Maurice Maeterlinck, by poets that are completely unknown today, and even some by Heyman herself.

I’ve given this background because I suspect you’ve never heard of Katherine Ruth Heyman before, despite her many and varied accomplishments. A quarter-century ago, Hilary Poriss published the only scholarly article that truly examines Heyman in her own right as a musician. Poriss argues that Heyman’s absence from the musicological canon results from the “deliberate acts” of omission that nearly all marginalized musicians faced, other than so-called “Exception women”—women who were considered “as good as men” on men’s terms, women such as Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel or Ruth Crawford Seeger.

The upshot is that when I became interested in Heyman, I could find very little information about her, and even less that I could feel confident about. It’s a scholarly vicious cycle in which the lack of basic information discourages people from studying this music, thereby perpetuating the lack of information. I could go on, but suffice it to say that Heyman’s gender is undoubtedly one reason for her neglect. Moreover, the largely tonal nature of her music and dearth of large forms and orchestral or chamber music may also be factors.

Bumper music

The text of “Tortie-Tortue” is from Horace Manchester Brown’s 1904 English translation of Pierre Louÿs’s Chansons de Bilitis. Louÿs had claimed that the original 1894 text was his translation of Greek writings by Bilitis, purportedly a contemporary of Sappho. Although some scholars were taken in by this hoax, it was soon debunked. Heyman identified Louÿs as the author on the title page of the song. Though she knew French, she used Brown’s translation, which was “Privately printed for members of the Aldus Society.”

The collection of 143 poems is divided into three parts, representing the three periods of Bilitis’s life. Several poems in the collection portray Bilitis and her companions engaging in same-sex relationships, and the Songs of Bilitis gained significance for what is now known as the LGBTQ+ community. In fact, the first lesbian-advocacy group in the US, the Daughters of Bilitis, later took their name from the book. While Heyman’s use of this material may have had personal significance for her, as I’ll briefly address at the end of the episode, this poem does not feature specific queer themes.

Heyman wrote her setting, which wasn’t published, in 1920. Soprano Laura Williams, a well-known performer/scholar of Arabic music, probably premiered it in 1925.

Having heard a little about the composer, let’s dig into the song and discover how she makes a compelling little drama out of a simple and repetitive poem. In each of the six strophes, the children question Tortie and she responds, initially reluctantly but gradually letting the story out. We already heard her overly literal, evasive answer to their general question about what she’s doing. In the remaining strophes, they keep questioning her, alternating between the general question—in today’s language, “what are you doing here among us”—and follow-ups to her responses. They ask everything twice. At some point the children’s questions seem to cross over from idle curiosity into interrogation.

Although the children open each strophe with the same basic melody, even their music undergoes some small changes that convey their increasing curiosity. Let’s start by comparing their music across Strophes 1 and 2. In both, the children start on the note A, harmonized by an F major chord. [plays and narrates F-major triad with A soprano note]. In the first strophe, they end on an F, harmonized by a D-minor chord [plays D-minor triad with F soprano note]. Although that isn’t where they started, it’s not too far away. F major and D minor are called relative keys, and they share two notes in common, as you just heard.

If we consider this first half-strophe as a baseline or standard, Heyman has started her song with a tonal and melodic contrast, but a pretty mild one. In the second strophe, on the other hand, the children start the same but their last note is an F# rather than F. This changes the quality of their last chord: instead of D minor we hear D major. And, rather than the motion between chords with two common tones, we hear only one common tone. This is more surprising. Listen to excerpted versions of the two passages. We’ll hear just the beginning and ending of the children’s music in Strophes 1 and 2. This difference, though small, intensifies their curiosity.

[EXAMPLE 3: mm. 1(fade out/in)-4 and mm. 9(fade out/in)-12]

Though initially reluctant to answer, Tortie gradually lets the story out. She’s planning a funeral for a man—possibly her husband—who drowned. The drama is in how she lets it out: little by little, with hardly any emotion. Let’s examine how.

In the second strophe, Tortie responds to the question about why she isn’t dancing with the children by telling them she’s too full of sorrow. This is more emotionally straightforward than her previous response, but certainly not a full explanation. The musical setting reveals her reluctance to bare emotions. For one thing, she hesitates, waiting half a measure to begin her response. Also, she changes the pitch. Whereas the children had just finished on the chromatic note F-sharp, Tortie reverts to F, as if trying to deflect the subject.

Finally, the chord that fills Tortie’s hesitation is another musical manifestation of her disconnection from the children. It’s a B-flat major chord, which is used often in the key of F major, but hasn’t been heard yet in this song. Saliently, it’s directly juxtaposed with the D major chord, like this: [plays D major, B-flat major]. I hear this chord progression as unexpected like the one I just discussed, but maybe even clearer, because these chords occur one right after the other. On the whole, Tortie’s second-strophe response, with its rest, reverting note, and surprising chord, makes it clear that she prefers to withhold specifics. Let’s listen to this passage. We’ll hear the children ask for the second time why Tortie won’t dance with them and her answer: that she’s too sorrowful.

[EXAMPLE 4: mm. 11-14 (fade out)].

In the rest of the song, Tortie attempts—ultimately unsuccessfully—to maintain her reticence. With one important exception, her remaining responses change the children’s altered note back to its diatonic version and the accompaniment displays a similar chromatic relationship. I won’t go over all these in detail, but I will play the middle of strophe 3 for you. This features Tortie’s longest hesitation, nearly a measure and a half. It’s also the only line in the whole song that isn’t repeated. The relatively long wait and expanded note values really focus attention on the lyrics, highlighting the moment where we (and the children) first hear of death. Listen to what Tortie sings: “I cut a reed for the funeral flute.”

[EXAMPLE 5: mm. 20-26 (fade out)]

Mention of a funeral naturally encourages the children to ask what happened. But Strophe 4—the one with a unique musical relationship between the halves, and to me the most interesting and surprising passage—represents Tortie’s most successful moment of resistance, in which she willfully—but temporarily—seizes control of the narrative. Without hesitation, she simply refuses to answer. Her melody starts right on the downbeat and consists exclusively of longer notes that all start on beats.

These rhythms give the melody a somewhat square and steady character that I interpret as representing Tortie’s resolute mindset. But this isn’t the only way Tortie expresses her reticence. With just one exception, she sings all these longer notes on a single pitch: a near-monotone phrase. Further, the note she sings is D-sharp, harmonized in the key of B major (mostly). This is all surprising, to say the least. Each time the children questioned Tortie thus far, they started here [FM/A]. The first time they ended here [Dm/F], and the second and third times they ended here [DM/F#]. But Tortie always reverted to the note F [F], keeping the overall tonality close to or in the opening key.

When the fourth strophe starts with this motion again [FM/A, DM/F#], it’s natural to expect the same thing to happen. Instead, it’s as if Tortie’s new note forces the music around her into a whole new key, B major [BM], which features the only two notes that haven’t been heard in the song yet, B and D-sharp [B/D#]. To recap, in a very short period, the music has gone from F major [FM] to B major [BM]. Listen to the effect in context. We’ll hear the end of the children’s question (“What has happened him?”) and Tortie’s complete response (“I will not tell you”).

[EXAMPLE 6: mm. 29-34].

Tortie seems to remain in control at the beginning of Strophe 5. Though the children’s melody—its pitches, rhythms and harmonization—is like Strophe 3, it’s transposed up by a half step to begin in F# major, a key in keeping with Tortie’s recent key change. The children sing a little higher than before. Even if you—like me—don’t have absolute pitch, you may feel increased tension from the slightly higher key. Heyman used the words “anxiously” and “fearfully” as performance directions here, but even if I didn’t know that, I think I’d still assess the children’s emotional state as both scared and morbidly curious. I do think this difference is audible in context, but it’s especially obvious when you hear the beginnings of Strophes 3 and 5 back-to-back.

[EXAMPLE 7: mm. 17-18 and mm. 35-36, fading each out].

Tortie begins to lose her hold on the narrative in the second half of Strophe 5, and by the end of the strophe, she’s lost it. Though still in the higher key and still using long notes on beats, she’s abandoned her near-monotone in favor of melodic intervals like in Strophe 1. Though she didn’t want to, she tells them: “he has fallen in the sea.”

The final strophe, where the children ask Tortie how it happened, is back in the original key. So soon after B major, F major is almost shocking. [Play BM, FM] To get from one to the other, Heyman writes three major triads in direct succession, which I’ll play for you now: B major [BM], D major [DM], F major [FM]. Though surprising, the key change is actually quite smooth. B major has the notes B, D-sharp, F-sharp [arpeggiate BM], D major keeps F-sharp, and changes D-sharp to D-natural and B to A [F#, D#, D, B, A], and then F major keeps the A as a common tone but changes F-sharp to F-natural and D to C [A, F#, F, D, C].

Each of these chord progressions is called a “chromatic mediant” relationship. The term describes the motion between two major triads a third apart. As you just heard, the two triads share one note in common and have their other two notes either a whole- or half-step apart. Using two of these moves in a row allows Heyman to quickly connect two rather distant-sounding keys.

We’ve actually already examined a similar progression, though a milder one because it occurs only once. In most strophes, the children began in F major but ended in D major [FM, DM], as we discussed earlier. Now, that progression is reversed and preceded with another identical progression. Let’s listen to the last measures of Strophe 5 and the beginning of Strophe 6, and see if you agree about the surprising effect of these rapid harmonic shifts.

[EXAMPLE 8: mm. 41-44, fading out]

Once back in their key, the children pump Tortie for details one last time. I think she has no choice but to give in and tell them how: “from the backs of white horses.” As with nearly of her other responses, she says it twice, but in this case, the two statements greatly contrast. The first time, the performer is instructed to sing very softly, “under [her] breath.”

Tortie’s restatement really changes things. She alters her dynamics, rhythm, and most prominently pitches. Regarding dynamics, she answers her pianissimo with a strong forte. She makes several rhythmic changes. First, she stretches out the beginning words so that [“From the backs” becomes “from the backs”]. Then, instead of singing the next few notes evenly, she sings them with a dotted rhythm; I’ll speak to demonstrate the rhythm. She changes [“backs of white” to “backs of white”]. Because the children have sung a similar rhythm many times, I hear this rhythmic change as a reference to their music.

Finally, the pitches. Thus far, Tortie has never sung higher than A [A], and each of her strophes had a very small range. Her melody in Strophe 1 had [F, G, and G-sharp], Strophes 2 and 3 [D and F], Strophe 4, in the higher key [just D-sharp and one D], and Strophe 5 [F-sharp, G-sharp, and A]. In fact, even including the children’s notes, the singer has only sung these notes [D, D-sharp, F, F-sharp, G, G-sharp, A, A-sharp]: a pretty limited range.

Although her melody in the final strophe starts similarly, with just [F, G, and A-flat], the restatement features a dramatic octave leap to high F on the word “horses.” It’s even sustained for a full measure with a fermata, after which she descends back to the low F to conclude, which might depict the man’s fall. As she does, the piano plays a version of the children’s questioning music, and the song ends dramatically.

Let’s listen to the whole song; I’d like you to consider the interpretation that I’ve posited. The singer portrays two characters: a group of children and a woman. The children question the woman, who is initially reticent. They wear down her resistance and she gradually divulges a climactic event: the possibly violent death of a man who fell off a horse into the sea.

As you listen to this conclusion in context, I invite you to interpret the climax for yourself. Is Tortie’s octave leap a despairing wail? Is her use (and the piano’s use) of the children’s rhythm a capitulation to their questioning, indicating that she’s lost her independence and succumbed to the group? Or does she conclude with a triumphant shout? Perhaps her rhythm in both the voice and accompaniment demonstrates not that she’s capitulated, but rather that she’s appropriated the children’s music. How would you understand it?

[EXAMPLE 9: Complete song]

Earlier, I asked why you haven’t heard of Heyman. To wrap up, I’ll ask another “why” question: why should we care about this unknown composer and song? I hope by now you agree with me that this music is interesting and compelling, just like other music we care about. Beyond this single piece, Heyman wrote other noteworthy music and made significant contributions to the art form. She might not have been as prolific (or as “modern”) as some contemporaries, but being aware of her music not only starts to honor her legacy, it also provides a fuller understanding of concert music in the twentieth century.

This particular song might also give a clue about the composer’s life. In a chronological list of her compositions, Heyman lists Lucy Bates as the dedicatee of “Tortie-Tortue.” Bates was a dancer and close friend who served as the secretary of the Scriabin Circle, which Heyman founded. Letters written during the 1930s from Heyman to Bates show a strong bond between the women, and Bates stayed with Heyman in the hospital during her final days in 1944.

Though Heyman did write songs depicting traditional gender relationships, I surmise that she and Bates might have been romantic partners, motivating the dedication of this song whose text is drawn from an important lesbian-themed collection. If so, the fact that the song avoids overt queer themes might have supplied a kind of plausible deniability. I am, of course, speculating here, drawing some inspiration from Ellie Hisama’s analyses of Marion Bauer’s music, which are informed by potential, if not fully documented, facts about the composer.

Before concluding, I’d like to offer a few words to my colleagues who teach music theory. I’ve found “Tortie-Tortue” a great piece to use in the classroom. The simple voice melody and sustained chords make the song accessible, whether students are reading notation or analyzing aurally. Students can examine how a variety of musical parameters—including harmony, rhythm, rests, register, dynamics, even performance directions—create a dramatic musical story. Instructors who teach performance and analysis might find it useful as well, as it isn’t technically demanding and allows room for original interpretation, having only one existing recording.

I’d like to close with an invitation to all listeners. If this episode has sparked your curiosity about Katherine Ruth Heyman and her music, please check out my website, linked on the SMT-Pod page. You’ll find a longer biography of the composer, recordings and scores of 12 additional songs, a sample lesson plan for undergraduate music theory, and a comprehensive spreadsheet of music theory concepts I’ve found in the 13 songs I’ve studied.

Thanks for listening!

My sincerest thanks to everybody whose work allowed me to make this episode. I’ll start by appreciating my incredibly talented colleagues who recorded “Tortie-Tortue” in the West Liberty University recording studio: soprano Linda Cowan, pianist Jerry Lee, and engineer Jamie Peck. Archival research was supported by West Liberty University. Matt Harder skillfully recorded this episode in the WLU studio. My peer reviewers, Hilary Poriss and Joe Straus, provided vital input and support during the process; I am so fortunate and grateful that both of them agreed to participate. My SMT-Pod team, Leah Frederick and Zach Lloyd, ably and enthusiastically facilitated the process of writing, recording, and editing the episode, and of course I appreciate the amazing work of SMT-Pod editors Megan Lyons and Anna Rose Nelson, not just with this episode but with the whole season. Finally, I want to thank all the scholars, musicians, and students with whom I’ve discussed these ideas, most prominently Anita Hardeman.

[Outro Theme by Yike Zhang.]

Visit our website, smt-pod.org, for supplemental materials related to this episode and to learn how to submit an episode proposal. And join in the conversation by tweeting us your questions and comments @SMT_Pod. SMT-Pod’s theme music was written by Maria Tartaglia, with closing music by Yike Zhang.