William of Orange (IMS Sidequest)

Episode 84-William of Orange (IMS Sidequest)
Monarchs and tango-tinged tunes
October 7, 2025
https://www.shannonheatonmusic.com/episode-84-william-of-orange-ims-sidequest

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[ Music: “Free the Heel,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories
Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

I’m Shannon Heaton, flute player and host of Irish Music Stories, the show about traditional music. And the bigger stories behind it.

And this is an IMS Sidequest in which I map music from my Perfect Maze album and share fragments from a few stories that helped me navigate the whole project.

[ “Apian Army” intro, from Perfect Maze

Artist/Composer: Shannon Heaton ]

I’d been writing music about bees and butterflies. On the side I was tuning into news about billionaires buying media outlets and promoting political candidates who promised to reward them. And I started learning more about oligarchies and monarchies.

I also learned about monarch butterflies—about migratory monarchs in New England who spend their winters in Mexico, in the warm branches of Oyamel firs in the Mexican mountains of Michoacán.

Vivid. Poignant. While an orange tinted politician (whose mother came from Scotland and whose third wife came from Slovenia) villainized immigrants and promised voters he’d expel Mexicans from the U.S., these ancient fir trees in Mexico stood ready to welcome another generation of American born butterflies

Those butterflies are named for late 17th century King William of Orange. His dad came from Orange in Southern France. As I read about orange kings, and orange and black monarchs, and the systems that offer them refuge, I wrote a piece of music called Tattered Wings.

[Music: “Tattered Wings,” from Perfect Maze

Composer/Artist: Shannon Heaton ]

So these sounds and little riffs are meant to evoke the swirling flight patterns, how motion pushes air under the butterfly’s wings. That fluttering, exciting dance. Which made me think of Astor Piazzolla and his new tango sounds. Piazzolla used old tango forms to make something new, something that infuriated the old garde, but that changed the face of Argentinian music. Nuevo tango: infectious, playful and virtuosic, beautiful, muscly bandoneon playing.

I developed that Pizzolla-esqe phrase in the third movement of my Flute Duel, which I recorded with flute player Mary Stolper and pianist Deborah Emery. .

[Music: “Flute Duel,” from Perfect Maze

Composer/Artist: Shannon Heaton ]

So, in this piece, I’m ‘pitting’ a classical flute style with an Irish approach. This is not Irish music. Though all three movements reference Irish rhythmic forms. And if a trad player like me plays the “Irish” part, you can do it with Irish style ornaments, etc. But really, I wrote the parts so that players who don’t know about Irish music can still play the role of the ’Irish’ flute. They can even play it on wood flute, on silver flute. I’m intending this as a welcome in to Irish flute style. But also as a real celebration of the distinctions of the different approaches.

The big climactic contrast of the styles comes near the end, with the cadenzas.

If a piece of music has been so far a conversation—maybe even a conflict between different voices, the candenza is a kind of catharsis. It’s a moment to abandon the confines and the compromises that are inevitable with a group.

(And now silver flute hands it off to Irish flute)

A cadenza is an unaccompanied fantasia. It’s a moment for just one player to flutter and flap around. It’s a time to fly free. It’s a classical adaptation of the kind of improvisation that can happen with folk songs and folk stories. It’s a more scripted riff, but there’s a lot more room for embellishment and personal flair. 

It was a fun challenge to weave these Irish forms and classical forms together. And e to try to tap into the dancing, undulating moves of Piazzolla’s world, too. To color sections with bright tones. A wash of tangerine, with bold black geometric patterns, dots of white and black.

There are migratory monarchs in Piazzola’s homeland. Though the Argentinian monarchs seek coolerclimates for their winters, unlike our Northern Monarchs, who winter in the Oyamel fir forests.

In between fits of music composing, I wrote this story for the trees.

[ Music: “Aristotle’s Air,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories
Artist/Composer: Matt & Shannon Heaton ]

By mid June, the Oyamels are empty nesters. After hosting millions of monarchs in their branches all winter, the trees gear up for the challenge of summer.

The warm months didn’t used to be so trying for the Oyamels. When the earth was cooler and wetter, the trees spent summers in their little microclimate absorbing moisture on warm days and spreading their branches, before welcoming back their orange roommates in late October. Green firs, towering above a carpet of salvia flowers, covered in a quilt of orange, black, and white; dotted with bright feathers of birds who also wintered with the Oyamels. Colorful and cozy coexistence—and safe for the butterflies whose childhood bellies full of milkweed made them poisonous to the ruby-throated hummingbirds, Black-backed Orioles, and Golden-cheeked Woodpeckers.

As many of the tiny migrators settled in their lush winter homes, Mexican people would decorate altars with marigolds. Orange flowers for Dia de los Muertos that look like butterflies, who signified the spirits of ancestors, returning to earth to visit.  The locals would sing and tell stories about their dead loved ones. And the little monarchs would begin nestling on the boughs of the Abies Religiosa (the Latin name for Oyamels, which comes from their cone-shaped tips, which look like clasped hands praying).

For at least one million years, Oyamels have kept monarchs from freezing on cold nights, and kept them from overheating on warmer days. But there are fewer Oyamel guardians these days. Deforestation and the heat, droughts, storms, and pests that climate change brings have decimated the forests. Hot days have also stressed milkweed plants, which are the primary food and host plants for Northern Monarch caterpillars.

Abies religiosa and the birds and butterflies that seek refuge in their sacred boughs will need a miracle (or a lot of funding and coordination) to survive. Only 2% of the original forest remains. Just the trees in the highest, most isolated areas, with more cloud cover and more moisture. Unless carbon dioxide levels stop creeping up, the remaining Oyamels in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve and the plants and animals they support may not adapt soon enough—the conditions are changing just too unnaturally quickly.

Activists have tried pressuring legislators to regulate emissions and pollution. More gardeners are planting milkweed to help restore the monarchs’ summer habitat. Some Mexican scientists are trying (controversial) assisted migration, trying to relocate the forest higher to save the firs and the butterflies that depend on them.  But the humans trying to slow climate change and boost tree and plant populations are unlikely to cross the finish line while ponderous obstacles (like politicians) roll back environmental rules, regulations, and research. It’s a race to make Oyamels great again.

In the 1500s, Martín de la Cruz wrote about the Oiametl in his manuscript about medicine and botany: mighty trees filled with a “precious and medicinal liquor” used to treat “the fatigue of those administering the government and holding public office.”

If modern rulers could take a sip of the nectar of the sacred Oyamel, perhaps they would feel some rest and refreshment. Perhaps they’d lose some interest in power and profit, and take more notice of the little pollinators who sustain us all.

I saw a beautiful monarch in our local woods on November 6th, 2024. It should have been heading to Mexico by then, along with millions of other butterflies. But my monarch didn’t make its exodus with the typical timeline. It had been so awfully warm. Maybe that’s why the creature was dancing a tango on dead leaves, the morning after 77 million Americans voted for God, guns, and a 78-year old convicted felon, who would go on to post “Long Live the King,” along with a photo of himself wearing a crown.

[ Music: “Bow for Rama,” from Perfect Maze

Composer: Shannon Heaton ]

Since the late 1700s, the word for King in the Thai language has been พระราม or Rama. I first wrote this tune Bow for Rama for my young friend Liam, who’d been reading a story about two kids who travel back in time and have to bow to an ancient king. (It’s from a Magic Treehouse book called the Day of the Dragon King, which I have not read. I think their journey was to ancient China. But when Liam reenacted the scene in the book with a VERY dramatic series of sweeping bows. I wrote a tune for him, with a melody that dips and swirls around at the end.)

I called it Bow for Rama to pay my respects to a few past kings of Thailand, including Pre Naresuan, for whom my son is nicknamed. King Naret wasn’t a Rama, since he ruled in the late 1500s. But he was a beloved, lucky ruler, And people still make wishes at his shrines. If you want something deeply, you ask Pra Naresuan. If your wish is granted, you return with an offering, usually a statue of a chicken. If you get something really good, it’s best to take two chickens, so that they aren’t lonely when they’re reborn.

Thailand is set up as a constitutional monarchy. In theory, parliament governs, and the royal family is revered (which means the King does have social and political sway). The U.S. was not established as a monarchy 250 years ago, though old William of Orange and other English kings governed the early American eastern seaboard until 1783.

Monarchs are all around us.

When I saw my local monarch butterfly hovering around rotting leaves in the forest, I wondered what the outlook was for a late little flier, whose fellows were already in or close to Mexico didn’t join the other butterflies headed to Mexico.

What’s the outlook for the U.S. based families who will face a winter course across the border, with all the promised mass deportations?

Or for the Oyamel firs whose habitat is simmering and shrinking?

Or for fractured America, infected with rumors and conspiracies. Some of the streams of info are artificial and won’t break down naturally.

The word rumor came on the scene in the late 14th century. It meant the same thing back then: Gossip. Hearsay. Personal reports and opinions without foundation.

By the late 1600s in England (and everywhere) people were spreading plenty of rumors. But they were also learning about science and philosophy. Sir Isaac Newton was inspiring curiosity in public health and medical discoveries. People were meeting in coffeehouses (AKA penny universities) to discuss and debate news, to read poetry, to stage plays.

Back when old William of Orange and his cousin/wife Mary were the joint monarchs of England, if more people had been isolated or less informed, casual coffeehouse rumors could have been distorted. Maybe that’s all it would have taken to hand King William of Orange and Mary II more power. If the coffee drinkers had been less inquisitive, maybe Parliament’s proposed Bill of Rights (establishing terms and conditions of a constitution) would have been less popular than the royal costumes, gilded bibles, orbs, and scepters, or than petty arguments.

But English people weren’t so easily diverted in the late 1600s. They were interested in economic theory, medical news, and foreign policy. They wanted boring legislation—they understood that collective laws would give people more power. And their orange king and his pious wife read the room. After William and Mary’s coronation the Orange monarchs approved the Bill of Rights, limiting their own royal power and defining basic civil rights for English people. (He also violated the people and forests of Ireland and beyond, But that’s a different story.)

The monarch butterfly is named after a king. But a kaleidoscope of monarchs is a social organism. There are no monos arkhes—no sole leaders in the butterfly collective. Though only one generation makes the annual flight to Mexico. And then a new generation journeys back North in the Spring. They survive by working together and passing the torch.

One single monarch in the woods of Massachusetts, Massachusetts in November—probably not gonna make it to the arms of the Oyamels. This pile of leaves will probably be the last golden refuge it sees. Good thing it’s beautiful.

[ Music: Tattered Wings reprise ]

Thank you for listening to stories about orange monarchs and tango inspired tunes. I hope you’ll tune in next time, for stories about roses and lotus flowers.

To order copies of the Perfect Maze CD… or to order sheet music for Flute Duel, Bow for Rama or any of the pieces on the album.. just head to shannonheatonmusic.com.