On my way up to the Bard Music Festival last weekend, I stopped in at the Kensico Cemetery, in Valhalla, New York, to pay my respects to Sergei Rachmaninov. Árni Heimir Ingólfsson had told me about his recent visit to the grave, and I decided to make my own pilgrimage. Kensico is a vast, verdant burial ground a little north of the city; Lou Gehrig, Danny Kaye, Tommy Dorsey, David Sarnoff, and the New Yorker's Peter Arno are among the notables who reside there. Rachmaninov lies in a secluded grove with his wife, Natalie, and their daughter, Irina Wolkonsky. An Orthodox icon rests at the foot of the cross:
A thoughtful soul had recently deposited a bottle of Russian lager and two cigarettes:
According to Kensico's history, Valhalla, a little town just to the east of the cemetery, was so named in 1861, at the instigation of "the local postmaster's wife, a student of literature, mythology and Wagnerian operas." She must have been well up on her Wagner to have known about the role of Valhalla in the Ring cycle, none of which had been performed in 1861; Das Rheingold did not have its premiere until 1869. Here's a picture of the Valhalla fire department (insert your own jokes):
Previously: At the Grave of Zemlinsky, At the Grave of Schnittke, At the Grave of Fibich, At the Grave of X. Scharwenka, At the Grave of Enescu
