CD116 Come to Me
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Come to Me Love Songs for Chorus by American Composers American Repertory Singers
CD116 $15.95
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CONTENTS |
| 1. James Hopkins: Come to Me in the Silence of the Night |
| Daniel Pinkham: Love Can Be Still |
| 6. David Conte: Charm Me Asleep |
Leo Nestor: Four Songs from the
Highlands |
| 11. Halsey Stevens: Go, Lovely Rose |
| Halsey Stevens: Campion Suite 12. There is a Garden in Her Face 13. Thrice Toss these Oaken Ashes 14. When to her Lute Corinna Sings 15. To Music Bent 16. Night was Well as Brightest Day |
| Jane Marshall: Two Madrigals: Then and Now 17. A Lover and his Lass 18. An Older Lover and His Lass |
| Samuel Barber: Reincarnations, Opus 6 19. Mary Hines 20. Anthony O'Daly 21. The Coolin (The Fair Haired One) |
Listen:
Charm Me Asleep by David Conte
"...this group [American Repertory Singers] has got to be one of our very finest domestic choirs specializing in modern American music...The program's title piece is from James Hopkins. His smooth, dreamlike setting of Come to Me in the Silence of Night, ...has apparently enjoyed considerable success...
Other discoveries include David Conte's feverish Charm Me Asleep, a splendid setting of Elizabethan poet Robert Herrick's restless verse. Also new to me is Jane Marshall, who contributes a delightful pair of bookend madrigals...The contrast between the initial song's blithe and bouncy air and the warmly reminiscent comfort of its companion piece is very touching.
Daniel Pinkham's Love Can Be Still is a cycle of four poems by Norma Farber, full of startling turns of musical pphrase, infusing Pinkham's unmistakable American idiom with some complex, late-Monteverdi tricks. But the pieces I like best are from Nestor himself: the four sentiment-drenched setting of Four Part-songs from the Highlands, including two traditional texts and two from Robert Burns. Three include lovely obbligatos for solo flute. Ca' the Yowes and Will ye Go, Lassie, Go? are especially haunting..." --American Record Guide Jan/Feb 2004
COME TO ME
Love Songs for Chorus by American Composers
This collection of songs of love and lovers, of tender companions and friends, is an encounter of four centuries of poetry with music of the 20th century. Such a gathering as this can only bear witness to love's endearing nature. As for love itself, Shakespeare counseled that it is holy, it is merely madness, it is like a child, it pricks like a thorn and it is a tender thing. So, "if music be the food of love, play on, give me excess of it."
James Hopkins: Come to Me in the Silence of the Night
Text: Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894)
Christina Georgina Rossetti, one of the most important women poets in nineteenth-century England, often found herself caught between worldly passion and celestial faith, a chronic wrenching struggle that was evident both in her life - forcing her to forsake two marriage proposals - and in her poetry. This conflict emerges in her works through the use of existential themes that turn from unrequited love to the renunciation of earthly love with subtle evocations of death. Virginia Woolf once said of Rossetti: "Your instinct was so pure, so intense that it produced poems that sing like music in one's ears - like a melody by Mozart or an air by Glück." Hopkins setting of Come to Me in the Silence of the Night exquisitely develops Rossetti's lyrcism, use of analogy, non-visual conceits, and short irregularly rhymed lines. This piece was composed in 1996 as a gift to the Pacific Chorale for their performance at the 1997 ACDA Convention in San Diego, California. It is dedicated to Mary Lyons, a musician, generous patron of the arts, and a dear friend of the composer. This success of Come to Me encouraged the setting of three other poems by Rossetti (May, Song, A Birthday) with harp accompaniment. This choral cycle known as The Rossetti Songs, was completed in the summer and fall of 1997 as the second commission for the newly created position of Composer-in-Residence for the Pacific Chorale. An optional harp part was later added to Come to Me, which in the the choral cycle is designated by its original title, Echo. After the completion of the cycle, the instrumental part was adapted for small orchestra (flute, oboe, clarinet, harp and strings). James Hopkins is Professor of Composition at the University of Southern California.
Come to me in the silence of the night Come to me in the silence of the night; O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet, Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live. |
Daniel Pinkham: Love Can Be Still
Text: Norma Farber (1909-1984)
Norma Farber was a poet, singer, actress, playwright, mother, and a prolific author of children's books. She published twenty-one books for children, included among these an historical novel (Mercy Short) for middle readers. Next to the Bible, Pinkham has set more of Farber's poems than any any other author, living or dead.
Love Can Be Still, a cycle of four poems by Farber, was composed by Pinkham in 1975 on a commission from the Kansas State University Concert Choir, Rod Walker, director. This cycle of songs for five voices contains a wonderful dichotomy. Pinkham's style and harmonic language are clearly that of an American composer, yet the techniques of Monteverdi's late madrigals are heard with great subtlety and logic: homophonic duets, trios or an expressive solo emerge from a five-part exture; dramatic, haunting tone colors sustained as in a dramatic "recitative" only to be interrupted by motivic duets; short incisive motifs that climax with all five voices stating the motif in a chordal fashion. Pinkham is prolific and versatile composer whose music has been aptly described as "complex, unexpected, innovative, yet accessible."
Take me walking in your mind Take me walking through a clearing And there count me your companion Where we walk and wend in wonder, Take me walking in that country
After the storm a star came closer,
Since death is life again I sing, and sing again, Since death is life again I sing, and sing again Since death is life again, I sing, and sing again,
Love, bone-quiet, said barely: See, Love, bone-quiet, said: Listen, this tree Love, bone-quiet, said: Come, agree |
David Conte: Charm Me Asleep
Text: Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
Charm Me Asleep is based on a poem (To Music - To Becalm His Fever) by one of England's leading "cavalier poets," Robert Herrick (1591-1674). A disciple of the Elizabethan dramatist Ben Jonson (1573-1637), Herrick's lyrics show significant classical influence. It is, however, through his simplicity, his sensuousness, his attention to design and detail, and his utiltilzation of words and rhythms that he so ably and affectionately serves his muse. Charm Me Asleep is the entreating of one who is tormented by fever and illness, of rambling pleas for the Muse (Music) to calm him, to lull him to sleep, to guide him in his flight to heaven. Conte crafts the delirium of the feverish torments through rapid transitions of tonality and assymmetrical meter. Appropriately, the calm of being both charmed and taking flight are told with tonal clarity and metrical simplicity. During Herrick's lifetime, songs such as this were accompanied on the lute. Even in the chromatic complexities of this piece, one senses the soft strumming, the soothing strokes of the Muse in the midst of the delirium. The work was commissioned by Chanticleer in celebration of its fifteenth anniversary and premiered 3rd August 1993 at the World Symposium on Choral Music in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Charm Me Asleep Charm Me Asleep, and melt me so Thou sweetly canst convert the same Fall on me like a silent dew, |
Leo Nestor: Four Songs from the Highlands
Text: Robert Burns/Traditional Scottish Ballads
In 1786, as a result of farming misfortunes and the attempts of his father-in-law to overthrow his marriage, Robert Burns decided to leave Scotland. In order to raise passage money he published a volume of original verse. At a time when Scottish dialect was considered unfit as a medium of dignified writing, his poetry met with such unexpected success that he remained in Scotland. His true contribution to the national spirit, however, was in his songs, many of which sprang from actual experiences and were composed to old melodies. Ca' the Yowes (Call the Ewes) first appeared in the publication Scots Musical Museum (1790). The manuscript, which contains the opening bars of the tune, is preserved in the British Museum. Burns noted that this beautiful song "is in the true old Scotch taste." O, My Love Is Lie a Red, Red Rose, originally set by Burns to the tune Major Graham, only became popular in 1821 when it was matched with the tune Low down in the Broom. Nestor's tune is original. The anthem of Scottish folk music Wild Mountain Thyme, is popularly known as Will You Go Lassie, Go. This love song is derived from two songs of quest: one for healing herbs - thyme, and another for water from a magical fountain. Brought to America by the Scots, the song is most popular in the Southern States, particularly Tennesee and North Carolina.
Farewell tae Tarwathie (Farewell to Tarwathie), first played by Scottish whalers, is known in the new world as the cowboy classic The Railroad Corral. Tarwathie was a farm in the lap of Mormond Hill, near the village of Strichen in Aberdeenshire. When times were hard for the highland drovers they would exchange their crooks for berths on whaling ships. Eventually thousands left the highlands taking both their herding and whaling experience with them. Many settled in Canada and many more were lured out West to become ranchers or cowboys. The Scottish and Gaelic country tunes which they played on tin whistles and fiddles gradually took on the flavor and lyrics of the new world.
Nestor trades the tin whistle for a tender, faintly melancholy, flute obbligato in three of the four settings: shimmering tone clusters in like fog o'er the heather; lissome airs and motifs are passed among voices and sustained lush divisi writing; subtle meter changes and tonal modulations give poetic emphasis. The Four Part Songs from the Highlands was commissioned for the Chamber Singers of California State University, Hayward, Dr. David Stein, conductor, in celebration of the University's fortieth anniversary.
Ca' the Yowes Ca' the yowes, tae the knowes, Hark the mavis' eenin' sang. Fair and lovely s thou art, Waters wimple to the sea, Ca' the yowes, tae the knowes, O, My luve is Like a Red, Red Rose O, my love is like a red, red rose, As fair thou art, mu bonnie lass, Til a' the seas gang dry, So thee weel, my only love,
Oh, the summer time is comin', I will build my love a bow'r If my true love he were gone, Oh, the summer time is comin',
I am bound now for Greenland Fareweel tae my comrades, The cold coast of Greenland Our ship is weel rigged Where the icebergs do float The cold coast o' Greenland And the birds here sing sweetly There is no habitation And there'll be no temptation |
Halsey Stevens; Go, Lovely Rose
Text: Edmund Waller (1605-1687)
A prominant and famous speaker in the House of Commons, Edmund Waller was arrested as an accomplice in the royalist conspiracy of 1643 and banished to France. While in exile, Waller's first collection of poems was published. Eight years later, he was pardoned and returned to England where he re-entered Parliament and served until his death. His poetry, like his politics, shunned the artifices of the times. Choosing conventional subjects, familiar images that allowed for graceful classical allusions, Waller was revered as the master of the couplet, which is characterized by its smoothness and simplicity of diction; each line is marked by regular beats and by an observance of caesura. While the "heroic couplet, " a stanza of two rhyming beats in iambic pentameter, was the object of his perfection, love was his theme and variation of verse. Go, Lovely Rose, written for 'Sacharissa' (Lady Dorothy Sidney), Waller's unrequited love, is the consummate example.
Stevens, a distinguished composer, critic, and scholar (world authority and author of the first full-length work on the life and music of Bela Bartók in Englsih, 1953) parallels Waller as a craftsman of the miniature. Much of Steven's music depends on his mode of development. Go, Lovely Rose relies on a three note motif, which is varied, developed, extended and transformed amid asymmetrical and changing meters. Like Waller, Stevens composed this piece for his love, his wife, Harriet. He called it his "Prelude in C# Minor" because of its popularity.
Go, Lovely Rose Go, lovely Rose, Tell her that's young, Small is the worth Then die that she |
Halsey Stevens: Campion Suite
Text: Thomas Campion (1567-1620)
The English physician Thomas Campion established himself as a composer and poet in the 1590s. His celebrated lyric poems are distinguished for their fine musical quality and charm, more than 119 of his lute-songs and poems were published in his four Bookes of Ayres (1601-1617). This "true son of Apollo" said of his work, "I have chiefly aimed to couple my words and notes lovingly together." The Campion Suite features five poems from the four Bookes of Ayres. The melodic make-up of the suite is defined by large intervals; rather than ornamenting in the traditional sense, Stevens expands the melody through harmonic variances. The songs are largely homophonic in texture; the melodies, although fairly simple, are defined by their pliant melodic contours and the composer's command of tone color and harmonic shading.
There is a Garden in Her Face There is a garden in her face, Those cherries fairly do enclose Her eyes like angels watch them still;
Thrice toss these oaken ashes in the air, Go burn these pois'nous weeds in yon blue fire, Then come, you fairies, dance with me a round;
iWhen to her lute Corinna sings, And as her lute doth live or die,
To music bent is my retired mind, All earthly pomp or beauty to express,
Night as Well as Brightest Day Night as wll as brightest day hath her delight, Love and beauty, mirth and music yield true joys, Joy is the sweet friend of life, the nurse of blood, |
Jane Marshall: Two Madrigals: Then and Now
Text: #1 William Shakespeare; #2 Jane Marshall after Shakespeare
Marshall's setting of A Lover and His Lass is a frolic in Shakepeare's merriments of spring, "the only pretty ring time," and the delights of young love. With lilting syncopations and "contemporary" harmonies it is an adventure in the witty, the surprising, and the affectionate. Appropriately, it was composed as a gift for the sixteenth wedding anniversary of the composer's son (Peter) and his wife (Allison Vulgamore). The both of whom are also musicians. An Older Lover and His Lass, the second of the set, is actually the older of the two - perhaps appropriately so - and was written for the composer's husband in 1995, the year in which they both celebrated their 70th birthdays. The return of melodic and rhythmic materials from the first setting, although languid by comparison, reminds the "old lovers" of their youth ("hey and a ho and hey nomino!"). The lyrical quality and "traditional" harmonies portray a contentment that only old lovers possess, like that of settling into a comfortable, familiar old chair.
A Lover and His Lass It was a lover and his lass, Between the acres of the rye And there fore take the present
An older lover and his lass, Between the acres, stalk by stalk They therefore laud the seasoning time |
Samuel Barber: Reincarnations, Opus 6
Text: James Stephens (1882-1950)
James Stephens (1882-1950) was one of the leading figures of the Irish literary renaissance, a movement aimed at reviving ancient Irish folklore, legend, and traditions in literary works. Two of the songs in the Reincarnations cycle are, in the words of Stephens, "after the Irish of Raftery," i.e., they are translated and reworked from the Gaelic songs of the blind Irish poet/harpist Anthony Raftery (1784-1835); Samuel Barber, distinguished himself as a "melodist" and was often at this best when writing for voice. Stephens' poems provide Barber with soaring lines and rhythmic swing, with imagery enough to suggest harmonic color and tang. Reincarnations is Barber at the height of his lyrical prowess: intense, brooding, and compelling.
Mary Hynes of County Clare is said to have died in 1769 in the Thoor Ballylee tower. This passionate love poem is arguably the best-known verse not only of Raftery but also of the Irish language. An exercise in vocal agility, Mary Hynes is set with the contrapuntal flair of a renaissance madrigal amid "Stravinskian" rhythms and dissonances.
Anthony O'Daly is a lament to the martyred leader of the Irish resistance movement known as the "White Boys." Raftery was present in 1820 when O'Daly, falsely accused of firing at another man, was hanged. Barber sets the name "Anthony" to an unforgiving drone sounding either above or below the melody in all but four measures; the melody spirals from beginning to end on the sequencing of a three-note motif repeated in canon. The Coolin is based on an old Irish tale of unknown origin. The word coolin refers to a lock of hair or a "curleen" that grew on a young girl's neck, thus a term of endearment. This song of pasoral enticements is appropriately cast as a Siciliana. Alternating meters of 12/8 and 9/8, dovetailing poetic lines dance until day's end amid tenderness and amity.
Mary Hines She is the sky
Since your limbs were laid out Not a flower can be born! Anthony!
Come with me, under my coat, And we will talk, until But an eye to look into an eye; What if the night be black! Stay with me, under my coat! |
--Geraldine M. Rohling
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