In 1997, I was sitting behind the desk in my bookshop in Philadelphia, when an older couple wandered in. The man was evidently careful about his movements, understandable, even under the best of circumstances, since one had to navigate a foyer with some stairs and then usually a dog when entering the space.
After some time browsing, they approached the desk, and the man asked to see a piece of ephemera he noticed, a booklet on the composer and critic Virgil Thomson, that I had on low shelf beside me, waiting to be priced. This started a conversation, in the course of which it was revealed that he himself was a composer. When he told me his name, he seemed especially gratified that I knew who he was.
But John Duffy’s Emmy Award-winning music for the PBS television documentary “Heritage: Civilization and the Jews” was played quite often on the local classical music station, especially around the Jewish holidays. (Duffy himself was Irish Catholic.) He and I had a lovely exchange, and when he asked me how much I wanted for the book, I told him it was on the house.
The Duffys were in Philadelphia for the premiere of his new opera, “Black Water” (on a libretto by Princeton writer Joyce Carol Oates), at Plays and Players Theater, which was two blocks away from the shop. Perhaps in reciprocation for my generosity, he offered to comp me into the show.
This was on a weekday. At the time, I was working the weekend mornings at WWFM in Trenton-Princeton, so it would be around 1:30 or 2:00 by the time I got back to Philadelphia and found parking on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon.
That Saturday, I returned, and a friend of mine, who regularly sat the store in my absence, said that a kindly old gentleman had stopped by and dropped off something for me. John Duffy had gone to Tower Records and picked me up a copy of his CD “Freedom Works.” It was the only disc in stock that had selections from “Heritage.”
With the CD he left the following note, rendered in a shaky hand:
“Dear Ross: I wanted you to have a copy of FREEDOM WORKS. Tracks 6, 7 & 8 are based on my HERITAGE score. All best, John Duffy
“P.S. I hope you found BLACK WATER absorbing. Thank you for the Thomson book.”
Duffy already appeared unsteady when I met him, when he was only in his early 70s. He suffered from ill health later in life, but he held on until the 2015, reaching the ripe age of 89. He impressed me as an optimistic and gentle soul. In addition to his work as a creative artist, he went out of his way to help others in his field. He was founder and president of Meet the Composer, an organization that initiated countless programs to advance American music, from creation to performance and recordings.
On the same CD he left, with “Three Jewish Portraits” (from “Heritage”), was his Symphony No. 1 and “A Time for Remembrance” – a “peace cantata,” as he subtitled it – commissioned in 1991 by the U.S. government to mark the 50th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor that killed 2,403 Americans, wounded 1,178 others – sailors, soldiers, airmen, marines, and civilians – and precipitated the United States’ entry into World War II. After listening to the music, I promptly added it to my regular repertoire for radio broadcast on December 7.
In his booklet notes, the composer writes that it is “Dedicated to my sister, Agnes Duffy, Ensign, U.S. Navy, Nurse, IN HER MEMORY: and in remembrance of all those who die in war: the men, women, and children killed and maimed at Pearl Harbor; my cousin, Edward Quirk, Machinist’s Mate, USS Shaw; the men entombed in the USS Arizona; those at Hiroshima, Normandy, Bergen-Belsen, and more. MAY PEACE PREVAIL IN THEIR NAMES.”
The texts are taken from a poem by Rupert Brooke, a speech by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, an African American spiritual, and actual letters written by sailors aboard the USS Arizona. On the recording, the performance features James Earl Jones, narrator, Cynthia Clarey, mezzo-soprano, and the Milwaukee Symphony, conducted by Zdenek Macal.
I would love to share it with you here, but the audio comes and goes online. Occasionally somebody will post it somewhere, but after a little while, it will get taken down. I can’t find it streaming anywhere, but perhaps you will have more success, if you really dig. John Duffy is a fairly common name!
Duffy himself lied about his age when enlisting during the war. He became part of the Amphibious Scouts and Raiders, forerunners to the Navy SEALs, before deploying on the USS Hopping, a destroyer escort in the Pacific. His duties included detonating Japanese mines by shooting them from ship deck. When his ship took fire from shore batteries at Okinawa, the sailor standing next to him was killed. Duffy had to stand guard over the dead man’s body until burial at sea in the morning. That night watch determined the course of his life. “Since our time is so fleeting and unpredictable,” he later commented, “I knew I had to dedicate my life to music.”
John Duffy on his own war experiences and his decision to become a composer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBerCcmUyw4
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