Adagio.FM - Bear McCreary - The Collapse of the Saint Francis

Request	Buy	#	Track Listing	Length	Played
		01	The Collapse of the Saint Francis Bear McCreary	15:36	125

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Background & Historical Notes to The Collapse of St. Francis.

By:	Saffron
Date:	15 Apr 2008
Rating:

This comes directly from Bear McCreary's website and is the Background and Historical Notes for this piece.

Background

The Collapse of Saint Francis is a dramatic piece scored for full orchestra and mezzo-soprano. The inspiration for the work comes from the 1928 failure of the Saint Francis Dam in Southern California. Both the text and the music were written in the Fall of 2000 by Bear McCreary. The piece was premiered by the USC Symphony Orchestra on January 19th, 2001, by Donald Crockett, conductor. The mezzo-soprano part was written for the voice of Melanie Henley Heyn, and she sang the premiere.

The piece centers around the tragic figure of William Mulholland, creator of the doomed dam. After completing this week, McCreary sent a copy to Catherine Mulholland, William's granddaughter who had just published a biography of her grandfather entitled William Mulholland and the Rise of Los Angeles. In her response to McCreary, she said that she was "moved with your dramatic treatment of an event forever painful to all our family."

The following Spring, The Collapse of Saint Francis placed First in the Arts category of the USC Undergraduate Symposium for Scholarly and Creative Work. In April 2002, this piece was awarded Honorable Mention by the ASCAP / Morton Gould Young Composers Award.

Historical Notes

William Mulholland and the Saint Francis Dam

William Mulholland (1855 - 1935) was Chief Water Engineer for the city of Los Angeles when he oversaw the design and construction of the Saint Francis Dam. He was not an educated geologist or engineer. Despite this, through his dedication and hard work, he established himself as an authority on water systems. The Owens Valley aqueduct, which he also supervised, was essential in the development of Los Angeles as an independent city capable of supporting its booming population. Located on this aqueduct, in San Francisquito Canyon, the Saint Francis Dam was designed to hold two-years' worth of water for the city of Los Angeles.

Initial construction of the dam was completed in 1926. The reservoir was filled within ten feet of the spillway by April 1927. On March 12, 1928 the keeper of the dam performed a routine check of the site. A small leak was discovered in the west abutment. Mulholland was called to the scene to inspect it and he determined that it was not a major concern.

At 11:57 PM of that evening, the dam fell beneath the awesome force pushing against it. A wall of water ten stories high charged through the canyon, stripping away everything in its path: trees, cars, buildings, the very earth itself --and people. The tremendous wave took nearly six hours to reach the Pacific Ocean, a distant 65 miles away.

Shortly after the break, all emergency personnel had been notified. Many authorities could only blast their sirens up and down the streets, warning people to leave their homes. Still, for others, there was not even time for that.

In all, property damage alone was in excess of $7,000,000. Several days passed before the dead could be accounted for, totaling a stunning 450 persons. This official number is possibly an underestimation, since there was an unknown number of migrant farm workers camped near Santa Clara. Of the officially dead, 140 were workers in a single Water & Power Department work camp. And 42 were students of Saugus Elementary School - half of the school's student body. One body was found in San Diego.

The Saint Francis Dam disaster marked the greatest engineering failure in State history. The destruction inflicted on California was second only to that of the 1906 earthquake and fire in another namesake of Saint Francis - San Francisco.

Politically and spiritually, Mulholland was crushed. Even though the official inquest found against prosecution, Mulholland took the brunt of the blame and anger, virtually alone. A woman who lost her entire family posted a sign, with letters in dripping red paint: "Kill Mulholland." In the courtroom, when footage of the devastation was shown, Mulholland sobbed and muttered, "I envy the dead." His final statement at the inquest was, "Don't blame anyone else, you just fasten it on me. If there was an error in human judgment, I was the human." Mulholland died, seven years later, a broken man.
However, recent studies of the San Francisquito canyon by geologists revealed that neither Mulholland nor the geologists of his time could have detected the causes of the dam's collapse. Unbeknownst to Mulholland and his team, the rock surrounding the foundation absorbed enough water to become unstable, allowing the dam to slip under the pressure of the water. History has forgiven Mulholland, although he never had the chance to forgive himself.

Within an hour of the dam's collapse, William Mulholland arrived at the scene, one of the first to survey the damage. Better than anyone, he knew the scope of this disaster.

-Bear McCreary

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