CIDRE Portfolio

Cheryl Whitehead

I am Cheryl Whitehead. During my career, I have taught music at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in the Miami-Dade County Schools, and the Guilford County Schools. In 2017, I began teaching high school English at the Greensboro Four Middle College at NC A&T State University and then moved to Chatham Early College. I am a classically-trained French horn player and a writer. My poems and articles about visual art have been widely published in literary journals and magazines across the United States. My poetry book, So Ghosts Might Stop Composing, was published in 2019.


I have an abiding interest in world cultures and the arts. I am particularly interested in making sure that my students become savvy, well-rounded, global citizens with an interest in and respect for people. 

Written Reflections:

1. Austrian Education System Reflection

The Austrian education system according to the article, School Education in Austria, mirrors the United States' educational system in important ways, particularly in regards to how a student's socio-economic background may limit their school choice. The article stated that "only 29% of differences in school choice is explained by student achievement." This indicates to me that economics, not surprisingly, determines how a student may or may not have a chance to pursue fields of study that are designed with a student's academic and intellectual interests in mind. The overarching question I must ask is, when will cultures around the globe learn that a student's background does not determine intelligence or abilities? When 71% of students end up on tracks other than the ones for which they qualify, that is indeed an area for improvement. This fact makes me ask myself what do governments gain from having an electorate that may prove less educated and content with their lives? To me this practice eventually breeds social and political unrest and strife.

2. Film Review of Amadeus, 1984

Directed by Milos Foreman

Written by Peter Shafer


Mozart in the Making


The film, Amadeus, wastes no time with trifling introductions. Flung headlong into the foreboding minor key of Mozart’s Sturm und Drang style 25th symphony, the viewer must grasp their chair arms and brace themselves for the vertiginous action skillfully rendered by film director, Milos Foreman, and Czech cinematographer, Mirolslav Ondricek. Inside the mood of the music, the winter wind swirls, a horse-drawn carriage rolls down dark, snowy, Viennese streets, and a man’s agitated voice shouts “Mozart!”. Through that narrator, composer Antonio Salieri, the story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart unfolds.


Mozart’s life, from child prodigy to renowned young composer (employed by the Prince Archbishop of Salzburg and Emperor Joseph II) comes to light on screen. Tom Hulce gives the performance of a lifetime playing the impish young Mozart who recognizes his supreme talent and genius, but struggles with immaturity, the controlling nature of mediocre nobles, and the ominous influence of his domineering father. F. Murray Abraham, forever underrated as an actor, plays composer-antagonist, Antonio Salieri. Through the movie’s action, Salieri finds himself swept away by Mozart’s once-in-a-lifetime talent, but he also struggles with jealousy because he realizes his own modest talents can never compare to Herr Mozart’s. In fact, he’s keenly aware that he will fall into the obscurity of mediocrity, while Mozart will become immortal, ubiquitous.


Now, if you are a stickler for facts and want a biographical film to contain mostly accurate historical information, this movie may not be for you. The film, based on Peter Shaffer’s 1979 fictional stage play, Amadeus, concerns itself with drama and atmosphere and, at times, facts take an ancillary role in the action. Musicologists have blasted the historical inaccuracies presented in the screenplay, and some fellow film reviewers have proven unkind. As a classically-trained musician myself, I refuse to allow my historical knowledge of Mozart to jade my perception of this monumental film. While I experience the film, Mozart’s Gran Partita, K. 361/370a, washes over me as the character, Antonio Salieri, describes the sublime oboe melody that rises above the court chamber ensemble. The opulent scene pulsates in a slow common time, and Salieri’s admiration of the young Mozart glitters in his voiceover description. 


With incredible skill, the filmmakers and below-the-line craftspeople bring 18th-century Vienna (or more accurately the streets of Prague) to life, and the actors dramatize the story of Mozart’s life with incredible skill. Also, this film shows that Mozart worked during his lifetime to find opera libretti like Die Zauberflote (The Magic Flute) by Emanuel Schikaneder and Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio) by Gottlieb Stephanie and set them to music to highlight the German language, which had up until then played second fiddle to Italian.


Music historians and aficionados, when you sit down with your popcorn to watch Amadeus, allow yourself to become a part of the narrative without judging the fiction of it. The music alone will both amaze (The Queen of the Night aria from Magic Flute) and terrify (Don Giovanni). The grand scenery and costumes will set you down in mid-to-late 1700’s Vienna when Mozart was a burgeoning young genius. The movie is a master period piece and celebrates a flawed prodigy whose influence continues into the future. 



3. Book Review The Devil in Vienna by Doris Orgel



The Devil in Vienna by Doris Orgel is an excellent novel, particularly for middle schoolers, because of the accessibility of the language and the way in which the author unfolds the plot. The city of Vienna serves as a character in this book, and students will find themselves enveloped in the atmosphere of the times. The author’s precise descriptions help readers better visualize the grand city where the characters exist in the context of pre-World War II Vienna. 


Two best friends, teen girls, Inge Dornenwald and Lieselotte Vessely, stand center stage. They share the intimacies of best friends: hopes, dreams, worries, and uncertainties of the future as Europe becomes an increasingly inhospitable place for Jewish citizens. With the turn of every page, anti-semitism rises like a giant slow-motion wave. The reader discovers that Lieselotte’s father works for the SA (Sturm Abeilung), a paramilitary organization within the Nazi party and that she and her brother, Heinz, belong to the Nazi Youth. This creates the central conflict in the novel because Inge and her family are Jewish. 


An experienced reader and historian may begin to immediately compare this book to Night, the haunting personal memoir by Elie Wiesel. But whereas Wiesel’s book mainly documents the horrors of the transports to concentration camps and the survival of Eliezer among all the suffering and dead, Orgel’s book provides a picture of how easily a citizenry can become complicit in mindlessly following dangerous leaders, and the ways in which Jewish people managed to survive.  


Suspense pulsates as the sentences unfurl and the reader becomes uneasy, even tormented by what might happen to not only the Jewish population of Vienna and Europe at large, but specifically to Inge and her family. A Devil in Vienna will help young readers understand the prelude to the events of the Holocaust and provide insight and nuance about a friendship that may or may not withstand the political upheaval and madness of 1938.


4. Clio Waypoint Vienna Secession Building 

The Vienna Secession Building was designed by Joseph Maria Olbrich in 1898 for a group of artists who turned away from the conservative art aesthetics at the time. The most famous artist of the Secession was Gustav Klimt, but Koloman Moser was also an important figure in the movement and contributed to the design of the buidling. The motto written above the building's entrance is "To every age its art, to every art its freedom." 

5. Visual Analysis of Paintings: Egon Schiele, Four trees, 1917 (Leopold Museum Vienna)

I encountered Egon Schiele's painting, Four Trees, on a postcard in a bookstore in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1991. I was 27 years old and had not heard of Schiele, but the postcard began for me an obsessive interest in the artist and his work. The gaunt autumn tree with a smattering of leaves hanging on gnarled limbs juxtaposed between other trees with fuller foliage drew me near. The sky with thick colorful layers of clouds and waning shafts of sunset, plus the rolling landscape and mountains barely visible in the middle distance, stopped me. The muted colors of dusk mirrored my brooding ambivalence about the world. I, no longer young, nor old enough to have a real sense of my self, struggled to find my psychological footing. Schiele's painting understood me. Ironically, Schiele painted Four Trees when he was 27 years old, one year before he, his wife, and unborn child would perish in the flu epidemic that swept across the world. Schiele, though exceptionally young, possessed the genius and technique necessary to render a spare landscape that exposed the pysche of the modern 20th-century world.

Egon Schiele, Self-portrait with peacock waistcoat (Lower Austria State Gallery, Krems an der Donau, Austria), 1911, & Sunflowers, (Wien Museum), 1909

Schiele's paintings, Self-Portrait with Peacock Waistcoat and Sunflowers mirror one another in extreme verticalness. The first painting presents the male figure with splashes of color on his face and hands that allude to a peacock's plumage. The white circle behind the figure's head glows with religious undertones and accentuates the artist's self assurity. In the darkness of the painting, the figure's chest opens to a galaxy of sorts, stars slipping between contorted fingers. The play of light and dark, the raised eyebrow, the sideward glance present a young artist (or human beings at large) grappling with inner struggles, but also understanding the vastness of the human experience. Sunflowers reverses the idea of light and dark; the background is white and the flower's colors, especially the bloom itself doesn't blaze yellow, but presents as brooding dark brown (like Schiele's hair in the self-portrait). This painting of sunflowers differs greatly from the loud, colorful swirls of van Gogh and from the vibrant glimmerings of the sunflower paintings by his mentor Gustav Klimt. The very bottom of Schiele's painting suggests through calculated splashes of blue, red, and yellow paint that rebirth, or reflowering will occur as the soil is full of promise for regeneration. The slender stems, and the muted, brownish-green of the drying leaves mirror the intensity of the life cycle and human beings' constant grappling with existence and death.

6. Four Cultural Insights from Vienna

Cultural Representation 1: In the Leopold Museum, there was a wall of pictures of famous artists, musicians, and thinkers from turn of 20th-century Vienna. Schoenberg was included as the leading composer of the Second Viennese School. However, I haven't heard one measure of Schoenberg's music since I've been in Vienna. I find it unfortunate that only Haydn, Mozart & Beethoven, (also Johann Strauss) stream from speakers everywhere, but composers like Schoenberg are excluded. For whatever reason, in all cultures people tend to get stuck on a few creatives who they lionize, while they leave out geniuses like Schoenberg. Despite his gargantuan contributions to Viennese culture, Schoenberg remains put aside. Was it his relocation in the U.S. in 1933 (because of the rising tide of anti-semitism) that caused the Viennese people to forget his music? Whatever the reason, Schoenberg doesn't get the playtime he deserves.

Cultural Representation 2: This large placard above lists the names of 16 people from the 13th municipal district of Vienna who died in concentration camps during the Holocaust. The names are Regine Zeilinger, Dr. Josef Weininger, Berta Matzner, Therese Matzner, Olga Pollak, Berta Pollak, Hilda Muller, Elsa Roubitschek, Julie Hasterlik, Robert Low, Friederike Low, Helene Diamont, Ignatz Diamont, Sali Rosalia Dreikurs, Martha Dreikurs, and Oskar Muller. Chillingly, the placard's fourth column's heading had the word Schicksal, which I learned means "FATE". The placard was in a bucolic, suburban neighborhood of Vienna, and the reason I noticed it at all in the environs was the writing in Hebrew at the top. On the back of the placard were the words (translated into English) "Racism and anti-semitism do not necessarily lead to murder... but hate is always the first step towards physical annihilation. Let's be careful." Though I appreciate the gesture, I wonder if it's more symbolic than effective in quelling the kind of rhetoric that causes catastrophes like the Holocaust.

Cultural Representation 3: This is an interior shot of the Kunst Historisches Museum Wien. Above the middle arch are mural paintings contributed by Vienna Secession artist, Gustav Klimt. I enjoy Klimt's work immensely and appreciated seeing it on display, but I asked myself, who does the opulence benefit and who gets to tell their story? Who is represented by the most famous artist of the turn of the 20th century in Vienna? 

Cultural Representation 4: While busy traveling in a more residential section of Vienna today, I noticed this beautiful graffiti on a train that had stopped to pick up passengers. It made me think of the Hop On, Hop Off Bus Tour that our cohort went on in Vienna. The graffiti throughout Vienna, some not attractive, some quite beautiful, was mentioned by the tour bus driver. He said to combat graffiti artists tagging places that were deemed inappropriate, the city provided an opportunity for street artists to tag walls on a bridge embankment along the Danube. The graffiti on the facade of the train in the picture represents to me the voice of "the unheard person" who clearly has something to express and share with the public. Graffiti serves often as the important voice of  countercultures around the world.

7. Travel Writing: THE SCHOENBRUNN EXPERIENCE

He who cannot put his thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of dispute. --Friedrich Nietszche 

The heat strangled the air. The most amiable children became cross and disagreeable as their shouts and cries disturbed the atmosphere of the Schoenbrunn Palace's grand entrance. The sun scorched every ornate swirl of ironwork, every bare strip of unclothed skin, and glinted from the palace's yellowish-orange facade. Such was this mid-July day in Vienna, a place I had never associated with such heat, but with snow, swirling winds, disagreeable winters that prompted citizens to dream of warmth we travelers from afar experienced as it aimed its wrath at us, mere humans wandering the world to experience something different than ourselves, our country. Were we here to find some fine form of humanity, not so flawed as ours? Or were we to gaze in a cloudy mirror that refused to define humanity as one more perfect than another?

With tickets in hand we broke off into small groups of teacher-wanderers and began our sojourn back and forth through time. We wiped sweat from our faces, and swatted at some unfamiliar, yet pesky flying insects. The palace before us undulated in waves of oppressive heat. My co-traveler, a man from Liberia who is no stranger to wandering the world, immediately noted the effort that must go into maintaining such a formidable group of structures and surrounding grounds. I envisioned the inital building of the structures, the materials brought in by human workpower. The men and women who labored to bring to life the vision of architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach. The Schoenbrunn Palace with all its structures, galleries, gardens, cafes, and zoo, had been pieced together over time as much by the muscle, the sweat, and the consternation of workers, so an imperial family could rule in a land of their own power and opulence. In the Palace's Hall of Mirrors, a young prodigious Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had sat at the harpsichord thrilling Maria Theresia, Holy Roman Emperor Francis, and the imperial family's children. The odd twang of plucked harpsichord strings echo in my head. Exuberant applause follows. And as the music dissipates in the stately air, so do the names of the people who built the Schoenbrunn Palace and surroundings. 

Later as my teacher-companions and I ventured deeper into the interior of the palace and listened to narration, via headsets, in a British-English accent, I noticed a woman of middle age ghosting through the room with a bottle of spray cleaner and a rag. We listened to the grandiose details about the materials brought in to construct ornate wooden walls for specified rooms. We listened to hear who slept in what bed and with whom, and if the royal marriages proved happy or unfulfilling. All the while the woman wiped away any smudges that may have appeared on the glass cases that housed artifacts from the imperial family's past. The glass cases became mirrors to the swarms of sweltering tourists who pulsed open-mouthed through the rooms admiring the elaborate Rococco decorations and designs. Black electric fans hummed feebly to cool the torpid air.

When our group emerged from the womb of opulence, another teacher in our group said "If you've seen one of these palaces, there's no need to see another." And I nodded in agreement. Schoenbrunn Palace, Versailles, and Biltmore House all signify who among us takes a place in the record of history, no matter what century, no matter what country. The heat of the dispute is that royalty maintains immortality of a sort, while workers, the men who erect a powerful family's structures and take care of grounds, the women who feed the aristocracy and polish the past, become letters of oblivion's alphabet. Their names simply evaporate like the perspiration that beads on our skin.

Schoenbrunn Palace

Gloriette

Palmenhaus

Schoenbrunn Zoo

8. Lesson Plan: World War I Poetry in a Musical Context, Six Songs on Poems by Georg Trakl, Opus 14 by Anton Webern Link for Lesson Plan 

Georg Trakl (born Salzburg, Austria) 1887-1914                                               Anton Webern (born Vienna, Austria) 1883-1945

by Daniel Wimmer                                                                                                   by Max Oppenheimer

9. Three Technical Projects on Selected Cultural Theme

History, Memory & Politics: The Second Viennese School and the Vienna Secession fascinates me because any astute citizen can see how music, art, and politics shape history and a given place in time. My theme fits into the curriculum for Honors English II, Unit 5: Society, Government and Choices. Studying literature in the context of history and memory and politics helps students to better grasp why certain things happen. I have also found that whenever music and art are explored in relation to history, memory, and politics, the students become more interested. Art and music take any topic from abstraction to tangible quicker than most any other sort of media.

Since I am certified in music and in secondary English, I'm interested in the Second Viennese School composers Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern, and how their music broke away from romantic European tradition and plunged headlong into the modern. Schoenberg led his pupils, Anton Webern and Alban Berg, into the turbulent waters of atonality, and he taught them the twelve-tone technique he developed. Around the turn of the century, while the composers worked, they became familiar with painters, Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Oskar Kokoschka (associated with the Vienna Secession). The artistic trio also moved away from past traditions and toward expressionism and modernism. Also, poets like Georg Trakl, who served as a pharmacist in the Austrian army during World War I, wrote searingly about his war experiences. Since I teach high school English, my theme will explore how the composers of the Second Viennese School used modern texts in their compositions. For example, my lesson plan will focus on a composition by Anton Webern called Six Songs on Poems by Georg Trakl, Opus 14. The students will have been working on World War I poetry (Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, etc.) and in the middle of that unit in which we will read informational texts, fiction, and poetry, the students will learn about the Viennese poet Georg Trakl's poems and how Webern set the poems to music to explore the political and historical climate of the early twentieth century, including the catastrophic effects of World War I.

Project 1: Where I'm From poem (see in upper right corner of this section)

Project 2: StoryMap: Click on The Arts in Turn of the Century Vienna 

Project 3: 1SE Project Visual Arts: Gustav Klimt and the Legacy of The Vienna Secession  and Vienna Secession: Schiele, Gerstl, Kokoschka 

Journal 1 — Klimt and the Legacy of The Vienna Secession

On Friday, July 14, 2023, a warm, beautiful day in Vienna, I trekked alone to the Belvedere Museum to experience the artwork of the most famous member of the Vienna Secession, Gustav Klimt. Klimt’s influence shows strongly in the work of Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, and in the antagonistic expressionist paintings of Richard Gerstl. A viewer can see the strongest influence of Klimt in Egon Schiele’s work, and rightly so, since Schiele was encouraged and mentored by Klimt. Schiele’s earlier paintings strongly echo Klimt’s, but around 1910, the young Schiele began to develop a style more angular and intense. In the one second snippets from the museum, the paintings of the four men riff off of each other like the jagged melodies of members in a jazz quartet. Gerstl, ironically had disdain for Klimt’s style, but Gerstl’s rebellion against Klimt’s style shows the influence. 

Journal 2 — Vienna Secession: Schiele, Gerstl, Kokoschka

Late on a perfect Tuesday afternoon, I visited Vienna's Leopold Museum. This was my second trip to the Leopold. I pined to be in the same room with the work of Egon Schiele again before I left Austria. I studied the incredible brush technique and texture of his work. I marveled at the stormy intensity of his ideas, yet I also gained an incredible respect for Richard Gerstl and wonder what would have happened had he lived past 24 years old. Schiele and Gerstl remind me of John Coltrane in that they worked feverishly, nearly manically, practicing and producing their art until their lights burned out (Schiele died in the 1918 flu epidemic and Gerstl took his own life in 1908). In essence, they were powerful shooting stars. Oskar Kokoschka, who lived into his 90s, was one of the few secessionists to have time to develop his talent and ideas. To this day, Schiele has remained the most important of the three artists, yet neither Gerstl, nor Kokoschka deserve to slip into the dust of obscurity. I'm excited to have learned about Richard Gerstl. I have great respect for his prodigious ability and unwillingness to follow any establishment, including the influence of Gustav Klimt, who Gerstl felt was "too haughty and bourgeois" according to Zachary Small in the article The Short, Scandalous Life of Austria's Most Tortured Artist. 

Where I'm From poem

Where I'm From Poem Video.mp4