In 1849, 107 wagons full of prospectors and their supplies set out from Utah. Their destination? California, where, just the year prior, American carpenter and real-life gold-digger James W. Marshall had just struck it rich. Thus began the great American Gold Rush, but these prospectors, dubbed “‘49ers,” wouldn’t get to California as quickly as they hoped.
Though they had learned the lesson of the Donner Party disaster of a few years prior (don’t cross the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the winter, because you’ll have to eat each other), they chose a southern route that would prove almost as dangerous. This route led them to a desert along the California and Nevada border, where they would wander for months, plagued by little food, and even less water, before eventually making it to a California settlement. That desert region was named “Death Valley” by one of those pioneers, and 100 years later, their adventures would be immortalized in the music of Ferde Grofé.
By 1949, Grofé had cemented his reputation as a musical painter of American life, having composed everything from a tone poem celebrating the life of Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne (1931), to a short suite capturing the excitement of The Kentucky Derby (1938), and even a six-part telling of the movie-making process in his Hollywood Suite (1938), along with a whole lot of patriotic music to support the World War II effort. So when the nonprofit group The Death Valley ‘49ers was looking for music to accompany a celebration of the Death Valley prospectors, Ferde Grofé was the obvious choice.
Grofé conducted the premiere with the Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra in Desolation Canyon at Death Valley (presumably with enough water for everyone), during a pageant that featured a caravan of wagons, and narrated by It’s a Wonderful Life actor James Stewart.
The first movement, “Funeral Mountains,” is a foreboding set piece named for the mountain range on Death Valley’s eastern edge. Its atonal, 5/4 time leads us slowly through the mountain range and into the canyon.
In “‘49er Emigrant Train,” Grofé’s second movement, we catch up with the wagon train, seemingly hopeful, lurching and rolling through the canyon. As in his Mississippi Suite, Grofé bows to contemporary exoticism in his depiction of an “Indian” attack on the wagon train.
“Desert Water Hole” continues the story of the ‘49ers’ journey. It depicts the joy, possibly, of finding water, through a medley built around Stephen Foster’s contemporary hit “Oh! Susanna.”
A “Sand Storm” threatens the ‘49ers in the final movement, complete with wind machine. The prospectors persevere, though, and as they emerge from the whipping winds, Grofé welcomes them to the end of their journey, featuring all the drama a mid-century centennial celebration can muster.
Grofé’s suite might tie too pretty a bow on the actual story of the ‘49ers. Although the group only had one recorded death, they spent months wandering through a world that can still humble any road tripper, even with A/C and a full tank of gas. Still, Grofé’s story of the ‘49ers sets the scene well enough without losing sight of what Grofé loved most: the awe-inspiring American landscape.
