The epistolary work I found myself working on this morning... someone writing about Savvie Marcoset and her, uh, misunderstood genius.
See if you can find all the places where our writer thinks he’s being subtle. Jax belongs to @comfy-whumpee
The Motherfucking Gallaghers masterlist
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The art vs. the artist: Separating Savannah Marcoset’s music from her misdeeds
By: Elliott Monroe Williams
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The problems caused by our modern obsession with “canceling” imperfect people are multiplying every day, touching every single aspect of our lives. Whether it’s a new scandal involving a professional athlete, celebrities like James Corden or Matt Damon, or even someone who simply said the wrong thing in a public place where their mistake was recorded and shared across the world, it seems like every day brings another person who “deserves” to be “canceled”.
What does it mean to be “canceled”? The MacMillan dictionary defines canceling, the verb, as withdrawing support from or ceasing to engage with a celebrity or public figure whose views you dislike.
It’s one thing to make a choice not to provide further opportunities for a platform or profit to someone whose views or actions you abhor. I support such a choice wholeheartedly and have made similar decisions myself. But does someone’s distasteful action or viewpoint mean you can’t enjoy their creations if you already loved them? Can you still read your favorite books if the author turns out to have repugnant views they simply won’t stop shouting to anyone who will listen? Can you watch the Tour de France during a doping scandal? Can you love a book written in the 19th century after discovering that the author of the book was abusive to his family?
In the case of classical music, is there any truly brilliant composer who wouldn’t be “canceled” if they were alive today?
Does enjoying their compositions mean signing off on their crimes?
From Beethoven through Guesaldo, composers have always behaved badly
They often say instability and genius walk hand-in-hand, and many of our most beloved historical composers were criminals in their own day. Ludwig van Beethoven was famously once arrested for and charged with prowling and vagrancy after walking the chilly streets with no hat, no coat, and no form of identification. He peered through the windows of Viennese citizens’ homes until the constable was called, and a local musician had to identify him.
Johann Sebstian Bach spent a month in jail for terminating a contract with an employer. Pietro Mascagni was arrested for embezzlement (although he was later acquitted of any crime) and was an enthusiastic supporter of dictator Benito Mussolini. While legal, you could argue that such open support for the authoritarian leader would likely lead to being “canceled” today.
Should a man who supported such a dictatorial government in his own time be held as someone whose music must be shunned even today, decades after his death?
Carlo Guesaldo, whose eerie madrigal compositions offered modernist sound centuries ahead of its time, was even known to have murdered his philandering wife and her lover, and potentially also his father-in-law, although this is likely a later embellishment. While he was never charged with the crime, he nonetheless did not deny it.
These men were brilliant individuals with eccentric personal lives. Does the decision to commit a crime mean we cannot enjoy their work without approving of every action they’ve undertaken? What if we speak not of an historical composer, but a modern woman whose crimes have made her a household name?
What about Savannah Marcoset?
A brilliant violinist convicted of serious crimes
Savannah Marcoset is arguably the most famous classical performer and composer worldwide, but it is unfortunately not for her music. She is currently serving a sentence of life without parole after being convicted of a series of crimes, including multiple counts of false imprisonment in the first degree, a variety of assault convictions, and also for obstruction of justice and attempting to intimidate a witness and jury tampering.
Already well-known as a childhood prodigy at her chosen instrument, the violin, Ms. Marcoset moved into releasing recordings of her own original compositions at the tender age of fifteen. By twenty, she was selling out venues like Carnegie Hall. Classical music aficionados declared her the second coming of Elliott Gould, a new eccentric genius who kept to herself off the stage but shone like a diamond under the lights, with her violin in her hand.
Shortly after finishing her undergraduate degree at the prestigious Juilliard School, she lost her beloved parents in a tragic, still unsolved aviation incident. In the chaos of her grief, she forgot to eat, to sleep, and even to pursue the music that had given her life such meaning before. Her uncle, in an effort to help her regain stability, provided her with an individual who would clean the home, keep her safe, and ensure she had someone to talk to through the worst of her grief.
To her shock and dismay, the man provided to her as an employee and servant turned out to be illegally purchased through a recently-uncovered human trafficking network in the UK.
By all accounts and by Ms. Marcoset’s admittance at her first trial, Jackson Gallagher - the man who had been abducted, sold into modern slavery, and ended up Savannah Marcoset’s unwitting servant - spent more than a year in her employ before the situation was discovered when he was able to pass a message on to his father when Ms. Marcoset took him to the UK to visit.
Gallagher was freed and sent back home shortly after, and Ms. Marcoset spent years in prison after conviction. She was granted parole on the condition that she remain under virtual house arrest, only able to leave for performances, recording sessions, and other professional matters. She also was forced to wear an ankle monitor so that her location could be tracked at all times.
Ms. Marcoset never left her home except for the short trips for performances that she approved with her parole officer. Journalists and reporters came to her home to interview her, and none saw any sign of anything amiss. And yet, shortly after her release, Jackson Gallagher disappeared from his father’s apartment. Declared missing and eventually presumed deceased, Gallagher would only resurface years later, showing up on his father’s front step with two small children and a story.
Savannah Marcoset, it turned out, had been hiding what she called her ‘husband’ and their eventual children together in her family’s home all along.
She was eventually tried and convicted of her crimes, and will never again see the outside of prison walls. She attempted to publish a memoir, whose release was canceled after intervention by Jackson Gallagher’s legal representation, Collins McKay of McKay, Kline, and Benson. McKay successfully argued it would cause emotional harm to her two children, the project was canceled, and Ms. Marcoset’s memoir languishes in a safety deposit box in an undisclosed bank. Ms. Marcoset continues to grant interviews, however, and has recently recorded and released a new album, which will be released in February, titled Permanent Pause.
With the news of her new album, interest in her story has been renewed. Many classical music fans are calling for a boycott of her work, while others make the point that the proceeds will go entirely to a trust that will profit not Marcoset herself, but her two children by Gallagher.
Can we appreciate good music from bad people?
If misdeeds must be eternally punished, even as the person might grow and change with time, this insists that someone is never better than the one time they were at their worst. Do we judge Beethoven by his slovenly housekeeping or even his way of looking into the homes of others while wandering the streets?
Do we cease to listen to Mozart because of his propensity for arrogance and a sometimes less than pleasant demeanor? Do we turn away from Guesaldo’s genius when learning of his single act of double-homicide?
No, we do not.
We acknowledge unfortunate realities, of course, but even so we equally acknowledge the great men and women of music as part and parcel of their time and place. Noblemen in a time when nobility lived above the common law applied to others, composers during the days when what we call classical music was what everyone revered and flocked to see. Celebrities of their time who acted within the more lax boundaries of their day.
I would argue Savannah Marcoset, in some ways, is the same.
Sure, she is a modern musician, but she was raised by a family whose criminality only recently came to light, and continues to insist that she was unaware of her parents’ true occupations until after their deaths. For someone who grew up in a household in which servants were, by and large, unpaid and had been with the family for generations, is it so strange that her sense of what counts as ‘freedom’ was so wildly out of touch?
Of course, I don’t excuse her crimes, and the law has duly punished her for them. She will never see the outside of prison walls, and is only given a single hour each day to exercise outdoors. Jackson Gallagher has successfully ensured she has no legal rights to her two children whatsoever and will likely never see them again. While she is allowed visitation, her visitors must be approved by the prison warden. Beyond her interactions with guards and staff, she lives an utterly solitary life.
She even admitted in a recent interview with a journalist in People Magazine that she doesn’t even know what her children look like, and worries often about them, with no chance to settle maternal worries, as Gallagher has resettled back in the UK.
In many ways, she has been returned to those early days after the loss of her parents, when she lived in a great big building entirely alone, with only her music for comfort.
Some of her greatest work was written while she was in the midst of the crimes she was convicted of. Firecracker, which she herself called ‘a story of falling in love’, was written even while she held Gallagher as a captive within her home. She acknowledged, after conviction, that the idea for the title had been his, a childhood nickname he hoped would gain the attention of the family still searching for him. Its follow-up, Five Stones Thrown (the title is another name for a game called jacks, and Marcoset has admitted it was a sort of personal joke), is perhaps the greatest album of her career. A woman at the top of her industry, channeling her pain, uncertainty, and fear into music the likes of which we haven’t seen in decades if not centuries.
Deciding whether or not Ms. Marcoset’s work has redeeming value shouldn’t be a decision on whether or not she is a good person. Clearly, she has committed heinous crimes she is rightfully being punished for. I don’t support her music because of what she has done, but in spite of it. I don’t believe good music should be subjected to the whims of human misdeeds, but valued far beyond the silly little lives we lead.
In short, separate art and artist, but know who profits off the sales
In the case of Savannah Marcoset, I would never buy another album of hers if I thought she would make a cent off the sale. She is a woman who committed heinous, violent crimes against a man who could not escape her.
But I also know she won’t make a cent.
I take comfort in the fact that all proceeds of sales of her work from the day of her conviction have been moved into a trust that her two children will be able to access once they reach the age of 25.
That said, I know how difficult it is to hear music the same way once you know what was happening during the time it was composed. Firecracker and Five Stones Thrown are albums that tell a story of an all-consuming love, both the good and the bad, but it was a love lived as horror for the other person forced into the story. Gallagher still lives with the physical, tangible results of that horror even today as he parents the children he shares with Ms. Marcoset.
Still, the music is divine, and such perfect melodies should not be lost to our shifting sense of right and wrong. We shouldn’t “cancel” music because the composer is imperfect. It is imperative to separate art from artist, because very few of us have lived pristine lives, and those who create art - musicians, artists, actors, and others - are far from likely to be perfect themselves.
Bad people often make exceptional art.
Every time I purchase a new album by Savannah Marcoset, I do so knowing that she won’t see a dime. Jackson Gallagher and his two children as a result of the crimes she committed against him will.
In that way, it’s them I support by separating art from artist, and not Ms. Marcoset at all.
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Elliott Monroe Williams lives in New York City with his girlfriend Bree, his dog Fuzzles, and an ill-tempered iguana named Joe. He has written for the New York Times, NPR, and a variety of online publications focused on classical music.
You can find his other writing on Savannah Marcoset in the archives on his personal website, elliottmwilliams.com.
Editor’s Note: Jackson Gallagher did not respond to repeated requests for comment on this piece prior to publication.
