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Violin Sonata "Emma Lee"
1990

violin
piano

duration 17' 

first performance:
John Daverio and Sandra Hebert
NuClassix Residency Series / 1st & 2nd Church, Boston / January 1991

RECORDING—first performance
SCORE
Emma Batchelor of Sussex, England
Emma Lee of Lonely Dell, Utah
Doctor Grandma French of Winslow, Arizona

PROGRAM NOTE
Emma Batchelor was born in Uckfield, Sussex in 1836. She was an early convert to the Mormon church and travelled the long and arduous journey to what became Utah—first by ship to Iowa City then overland pulling her belongings in a handcart. She became a plural wife of John Doyle Lee. A few months before their marriage he had been involved in the Mountain Meadows Massacre, in which emigrants headed for the California Goldrush were attacked and killed by a group of Indians and Mormons. This event was to cast a long shadow over the Lees' lives. In order to escape local ill-feeling Lee set up home with Emma at Lonely Dell in Arizona, establishing a ferry crossing over the Colorado River. Here Emma raised a family, farmed and attended the ferry. In 1877, twenty years after the event, Lee was arrested for his part in the massacre. His refusal to name the others involved, and the eagerness of the church leaders to close this still embarrassing affair, led to pressure to convict Lee. He was found guilty of being ringleader and executed. After Lee’s death Emma moved to Winslow, Arizona, married Frank French, and became known as a midwife and healer. This work quietly honors a remarkable woman who, like many others, braved ferocious conditions to carve out a new life for herself in the western States.