In part to surreptitiously extend my Halloween celebration into November, and in part to vicariously wallow in secret Puritan guilt in the lead-up to Thanksgiving, I’ve been spending the past couple of weeks revisiting a volume of Nathaniel Hawthorne favorites. Some of these I’ve not read for close to 40 years. Very much to the author’s credit, I still remembered most of them fairly well.

Hawthorne is never over-the-top macabre enough to bring genuine shudders in the manner of Edgar Allan Poe, nor do I think that was particularly his aim. His allegory is always just a little too refined. And in the 21st century, sadly, I think we are all a little too much inured to the horrors of history, hypocrisy, and the human heart for many of these tales to pack much of a surprise.

That said, for me “The Birthmark” will always remain a masterpiece of dread. Furthermore, at his best, Hawthorne can be atmospheric and even witty, both in his phraseology and in his depictions of wackadoodle witches’ sabbaths and deviled-ham Satans.

But for the most part, even though the stories are short, I feel as if he tends to overstate his point, if not outstay his welcome. We get it, Nate. Next!

It was while reading “The Celestial Railroad” that I recalled this piano piece by Charles Ives, and that gave me the idea to share a few links to some Hawthorne-inspired classical music.

“The Celestial Railroad”

Ives revisited the material in his Fourth Symphony’s second movement, subtitled “Comedy”

He also devoted a movement to Hawthorne in his Piano Sonata No. 2, the “Concord Sonata.” Here’s the whole thing. “Hawthorne” begins at 16:26. As instructed, the pianist employs a 14 ¾ strip of wood on the keys, the better to achieve Ives’ tone clusters.

A suite from Howard Hanson’s “Merry Mount,” after “The Maypole of Merry Mount”

Lawrence Tibbett as Wrestling Bradford, from “Merry Mount”

A selection from Margaret Garwood’s “The Scarlet Letter”

An aria from Daniel Catán’s “La hija de Rappaccini” (“Rappaccini’s Daughter”)

A suite from Vaughan Williams’ opera “The Poisoned Kiss,” inspired in part by “Rappaccini’s Daughter”