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Jacob Avshalomov
Twenty-Four Songs
Alyce Rogers
Mezzo-Soprano
with Linda Barker, Piano
Daniel Avshalomov, Viola
Marcy Fetchen, Clarinet & Melody Woolridge, Flute
Alyce Rogers' artistry and versatility have won her high praise across this country and abroad. She has performed extensively in Oratorio with such groups as the Music of the Baroque in Chicago, the Grand Teton Music Festival, the New England Bach Festival, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Carmel Bach Festival and eleven seasons with the Oregon Bach Festival conducted by Helmuth Rilling, with whom she has also toured and recorded. She has performed many roles with the Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, B.C. Opera companies and concert tours have taken her to Japan, Germany and Israel. She has been a soloist with Robert Shaw and Roger Wagner, and symphony engagements have included Seattle, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, Portland in both its regular and Pops series, the Boston Pops, the Portland Youth Philharmonic, and the Peter Britt Festival. She has performed nearly every major mezzo and contralto role in the Gilbert & Sullivan canon. She is active in recital work and has collaborated with the Oregon Ballet in Schumann's Frauenliebe und Leben. Ms. Rogers is also active as a vocal teacher and is on the Faculty of Portland State University.
Linda Lorati Barker is one of the most sought-after pianists in the Northwest. She has appeared as soloist with the Oregon Symphony, the West Coast Chamber Orchestra and the Portland Youth Philharmonic. She was also featured in a performance of the Shostakovitch Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Oregon Ballet. She appears frequently in chamber music with some of the finest musicians in the region.
A native of Portland, Oregon, Ms. Barker studied with Carla Vincent and Nellie Tholen. After receiving her B. Music from Oberlin Conservatory she took an M.A. at Indiana University where she studied with Menahem Pressler.
While residing in St. Louis, Missouri she was on the faculty at Webster College and at the St. Louis Conservatory. She now teaches at the University of Portland.
Jacob Avshalomov, (b. 1919, Tsingtao, China) Curriculum Vitae,
STUDIED with Aaron Avshalomov, Ernst Toch, Bernard Rogers, Aaron Copland and at Reed College and Eastman School of Music.
TAUGHT at Columbia University 1946-54; summers at Reed College, Tanglewood, Northwestern University, University of Illinois, Aspen School of Music
CONDUCTED U.S. Premieres of: Bruckner - Mass in D; Tippett - A Child of Our Time; Handel - The Triumph of Time & Truth; Sessions - Divertimento; Bloch Festival, Newport OR; Aaron Avshalomov 90th Anniversary Celebrations, Beijing, Wuhan & Shanghai; Portland Youth Philharmonic 1954-1994; Six International Tours
AWARDS: Ditson Fellowship in Composition; Bloch Award; Guggenheim Fellowship; N.Y. Music Critics-Circle Award; Naumburg Recording Award; Ditson Conductor's Award; Governor's Arts Award; American Symphony Orchestra League Award; Portland First Citizen
COMMISSIONS: Symphony: The Oregon; The Thirteen Clocks; Phases of the Great Land; Up at Timberline; Glorious th'Assembled Fires; Symphony of Songs
SERVICES: Ford Foundation Composers Project; Avshalomov Lecture Series 1958-1971; National Humanities Council, 1968-74; National Arts Endowment, Music Planning Section 1977-79; Pro Musicis Foundation
ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRIES: Who's Who in America; Who's Who in Music; Bakers' Dictionary of Music and Musicians; International Encyclopedia of Music; Mussiken Hvem, Hvad, Hvor, Copenhagen
Notes & Texts
I'm with William Byrd, when he proclaimed, "Since synging is so good a thynge I wish all men would learne to synge." The human
voice is the ultimate musical instrument. I still believe this even after having reveled for forty years as conductor of the Portland Youth Philharmonic. So it was no surprise to me, when I stepped down from my podium to concentrate on composing, and surveyed a lifetime list of works, to find that more than half of them are vocal and choral. This, of course reflects an abiding interest in poetry and devotional literature of various persuasions.
The Songs presented in this recording were composed over a forty year period which began a decade before I became a conductor. Almost all of them are for mezzo-soprano that being the range of the lovely fellow-student for whom most of the early Songs were written: Doris Felde, my dear wife of over a half-century. During all this time she has been writing poetry, and in recent years I have set 29 of her poems in songs and choral pieces. But that is a story for another place. The present list begins with:
SONGS FOR ALYCE 1976. This set was composed at the MacDowell Colony for one of the leading artists in the Pacific Northwest, Alyce Rogers. Over the years she has performed my Songs in recitals from Oregon to her native Massachusetts. In addition to a fine voice, she has brought a perfect understanding of the music and the poetry.
May Swensonwas one of the most gifted poets of her generation. We met during an earlier residence at the MacDowell Colony (1952). Her shyness made her a reluctant participant in the weekly readings; and I, not wishing to have her new work hidden from view, offered more than once to read in her stead. I became enchanted with many of her poems for their wit, subtlety and poignancy. A composer can hold off only so long before setting them to music. Emily Dickinson, of course, I came to know on the printed page, and like practically every other American composer, have been moved by her perceptive verse to set them often, both in choral works and songs.
Songs for Alyce
The Mountain
The mountain sat upon the Plain
In his tremendous Chair -
His observation omnifold,
His inquest, everywhere -
The Seasons play around his knees
Like Children round a sire -
Grandfather of Days is He
Of Dawn, the Ancestor -
-Emily Dickinson
Answer July
Answer July -
Where is the Bee -
Where is the Blush -
Where is the Hay?
Ah, said July -
Where is the Seed -
Where is the Bud -
Where is the May -
Answer Thee - Me -
Nay - said the May -
Show me the Snow -
Show me the Bells -
Show me the Jay!
Quibbled the Jay -
Where be the Maize -
Where be the Haze -
Where be the Bur? -
Here - said the Year -
-Emily Dickinson
A Day is Laid by
A day is laid by
It came to pass
The wind is drained
from the willow
Dusk interlaces
the grass
Out of the husk
of twilight
emerges the moon
Aftermath
of jaded sunset
of noon
and the sirens of bees
Day and wrath
are faded
Now above the bars
of lonely pastures
loom the sacred stars.
-May Swenson
The Watch
When I took my watch
to the watchfixer I
felt privileged but also pained to
watch the operation. He
had long fingernails
and a voluntary squint. He
fixed a magnifying cup over his
squint eye. He undressed my watch. I
watched him split her
in three layers and lay her
middle a quivering viscera
in a circle on a little plinth. He shoved
shirtsleeves up and leaned
like an ogre over my
naked watch. With critical pincers he
poked and stirred. He
lifted out little private things with a
magnet too tiny for me
to watch almost. "Watch out!" I
almost said. His
eye watched, enlarged, the secrets of
my watch, and I watched anxiously.
Because what if he touched her
ticker too rough, and she
gave up the ghost out of pure fright?
Or put her things back backwards so
she'd run backwards after this? Or he
might lose a minuscule part, connected
to her exquisite heart, and mix her
up, instead of fix her.
And all the time,
all the time-pieces on the walls,
on the shelves, told the time,
told the time in swishes and in ticks,
swishes and ticks, and seemed to be gloat-
ing, as they watched and told. I
felt faint, I was about to lose my
breath my ticker going lickety-split
when watchfixer clipped her
three slices together with a gleam and two
flicks of his tools like chopsticks.
He spat out his eye, lifted her
high, gave her a twist, set her hands right,
and laid her little face, quite
as usual, in its place
on my wrist.
-May Swenson
The Glass Town
A Church tow'r crowned the town
double in air and water, and
over the anchored houses
the round bells rolled at noon.
Bubbles rolled to the surface,
the drowning bells swirled down.
A sun burned in the bay,
a lighthouse towered downward,
moored in the mirroring fathoms.
The seaweed swayed its tree,
a boat beneath me floated
upside down in the sky.
An underwater wind ruffled
the red-roofed shallows where wading stilt legged children
stood in the clouded sand,
and down from the knee deep harbora ladder led to the drowned.
Gulls fell out of the day,
The thrown net met its image
in the window of the water.
A ripple slurred the sky.
My hand swam up to meet me
and I met myself in the sea.
Mirrored I saw my death in the
underworld of the water,
and saw my drowned face sway
in the glass day underneath
till I spoke to my speaking likeness,
and the moment broke with my breath.
-Alastair Reid
Whimsies
Tweedledee & Tweedledoom
Said the Undertaker to the Overtaker,
"Thank you for the butcher and the
candlestick maker,
For the polo player and the pretzel baker,
For the lawyer and the lover and the
wife-forsaker.
Thank you for my bulging, verdant acre."
Said the Undertaker to the Overtaker,
"Move in, move under," said the Overtaker.
-Ogden Nash
Raker
Now all the fall is haze,
bittersweet with smoke
these elegiac days:
the raker leans on rake,
knee-deep in leaves gone bronze
and copper and dry browns;
he leaves a golden wake
on lawn; his curb-side blace
both funeral pyre and fire
of his unspoken praise.
-Philip Booth
Central Park Tourney
Cars in the Park
With long spear lights
Ride at each other
Like armored knights;
Rush,
Miss the mark,
Pierce the dark,
Dash by!
Another two Try.
Staged in the Park
From dusk to dawn,
The tourney goes on;
Rush,
Miss the mark,
Pierce the dark,
Dash by!
Another two Try.
-Mildred Weston
Threnos
I
No more for us the
little sighing.
No more the wind at
twilight trouble us.
Lo the fair dead!
No more do I burn.
No more for us the
fluttering of wings
that whirred in the air above us.
Lo the fair dead!
No more desire flayeth me,
No more for us the trembling
at the meeting of hands.
Lo the fair dead!
No more for us the
wine of the lips,
No more the
knowledge.
Lo the fair dead!
No more the torrent,
No more for us the meeting-place
(Lo the fair dead!)
Tintagoel.
II
What thou lovest well remains,
the rest is dross.
What thou lovest well shall
not be reft of thee,
What thou lovest well is
thy true heritage.
First came the seen, then (thus)
the palpable Elysium;
tho' it were in the halls of Hell
What thou lovest well is
thy true heritage.
What thou lovest well shall
not be reft of thee,
the rest is dross.
What thou lovest well remains.
Ezra Pound
Personae, & Pisan Cantos, LXXXXI
Wonders- 1960. Blake's "The Smile" is complete in itself, but "The Grain of Sand" consists of three widely separated stanzas from his Jerusalem. It was their similarity of structure and existential tone that caught my eye. This pair was composed in Rungsted, Denmark, just north of Copenhagen, at the summer cottage of a daughter of Carl Nielsen - whose enormous grand piano was still there for me to use.
The above three sets of Songs were originally written for unaccompanied chorus and were arranged for Alyce Rogers in 1974.
The Smile
There is a Smile of Love,
There is a Smile of Deceit,
And there is a Smile of Smiles
In which these two Smiles meet.
There is a Frown of Hate,
There is a Frown of Disdain,
And there is a Frown of Frowns
Which you strive to forget in vain,
For it sticks in the Heart's deep Core
And it sticks in the deep Back bone;
And no Smile that ever was smil'd
But only one Smile alone,
That betwixt the Cradle and Grave
It only once Smil'd can be;
But, when it once is Smil'd,
There's an end to all Misery.
The Grain of Sand
There is a grain of Sand in Lambeth
that Satan cannot find,
Nor can his Watch Fiends find it
'tis translucent and has many Angles,
and within every angle
is a lovely heaven.
There is a Moment in each Day
that Satan cannot find,
Nor can his Watch Fiends find it;
but the Industrious find this Moment
and multiply it, and when it once is
found it renovates every moment
of the Day, if rightly placed.
There is a place where
Contrarieties are equally True;
it is a pleasant Shadow
Where no dispute can come,
Because of those who Sleep.
-William Blake
Lullaby-1941. This vocalise was written for Cosima, the infant daughter of my fellow-student at Eastman School of Music, William Thompson. When I first appeared at Rochester, on a shoestring, I met him in Bernard Rogers' composition class. To live in I found a tiny room above a restaurant and next to an aged cigar-maker in a rambling two-story building just across from the School. My abode needed whitewashing and Thompson promptly offered to help, working with me through the wee hours.
The Lullaby soon found its way into the second movement of my Sonatine for Viola and Piano (see Albany Records TROY216).
Biblical Songs -1944-5. "Ruth's Song" was composed in hours snatched from army basic training (WW II) as a confirmation of my recent marriage troth. Psalm 23 and "How Long O Lord" are from my Cantata of that title, written for my Columbia University Chorus.
Ruth's Song
And Ruth said,
Entreat me not to leave thee,
or to return from following
after thee. For whither thou
goest I will go, and where thou
lodgest will I lodge.
Thy people shall be my people
and thy God my God. Where thou
diest will I die, and there
will I be buried; the Lord
so do unto me, and more also,
if aught but death part
thee and me.
How Long, O Lord
How long, O Lord, shall I cry,
cry unto Thee of violence and
Thou wilt not hear? Look Ye among
the nations and behold, for lo,
I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter
and impetuous nation that march
through the breadth of the earth to
possess dwelling-places not their own.
Their law and their majesty proceed
from themselves; they come, all of them,
for violence, their faces are set eagerly
as the east wind; and they gather captives
as the sand.
Isaiah
Psalm 23
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down
in green pastures;
He leadeth me beside the still waters;
He restoreth my soul.
Yea, though I walk through the valley
of the shadow of death, will I fear no evil,
Thou art with me.
Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me,
Thou hast anointed my head with oil;
my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy
shall follow me
all the days of my life;
and I shall dwell in the
house of the Lord forever.
A Psalm of David
From The Chinese -1937, 1940. "On the T'ung T'ing Lake" was my very first Song, written at my Father's elbow in Shanghai. It was originally for high voice. "Moon in the Yellow River" is Chinese only by courtesy: Denis Johnston in that play refers to Fu Yi and Li Po, and I wrote the Song for a college production.
With the sounds of China still ringing in my ears I wrote the next three Songs to poems by Li Po himself; they were in a volume which my Father had given me as a farewell gift when I left China for the United States.
"Taking Leave of a Friend" was my first essay in chamber music. It was written for Doris, her violist brother Max and a flutist friend, in 1939. Two years later I showed it to David Diamond in Rochester; he gently noted a couple of places where the prosody could be improved, and I did better. But over the decades I let the piece rest in the piano bench, conscious of its other juvenile faults. Then, when my mother-in-law passed away in 1983, this poem came to mind, and I decided to rewrite the Song in her memory since she had liked it despite its failings. Re-writing early pieces late in life is a dangerous practice, but many composers risk it nonetheless. I like this version better, and so does my wife. You'll just have to take our word for it.
On the T'ung T'ing Lake
The autumn night is vaporless on the lake.
The swelling tide could bear us
on to the sky,
Come let us take the moonlight
for our guide
and sail to buy our drink
where the white clouds are.
Li Po
Moon in the Yellow River
Fu-Yi loved the blue hills
and the white clouds,
Alas, he died of drink.
And Li Po also died drunk
He tried to embrace a moon
in the Yellow River.
Denis Johnston
The Ch'ing T'ing Mountain
Flocks of birds have flown
high and away;
A lone drift of cloud, too,
has gone wandering on.
And I sit alone with the peak
towering beyond.
We never tire of each other,
the mountain and I.
Li Po
Taking Leave of a Friend
Blue mountains lie beyond the north wall
Round the city's eastern side
flows the white water.
Here we part, friend, once for ever,
You go ten thousand li, drifting
away, like an uprooted water-grass.
O the floating clouds, and the
thoughts of a wanderer.
O the sunset, and the longing
of an old friend.
We ride away from each other,
waving our hands, while our horses
neigh softly.
I shrug my shoulders
and heave a long sigh,
gazing into the west.
Li Po
Two Old Birds -1957. Katherine Hoskins' poem entitled Cote d'Azure simply cried out to be set to music. I found it in the New Yorkermagazine (where I also found the Whimsies). It was clear at once that the woman's voice in the poem needed the partner referred to; the clarinet seemed just right. It was an instrument I had become very familiar with in writing my Evocations (under the benevolent tutelage of Aaron Copland).
Two Old Birds
Since my life's been spent
In a passionate attachment
For someone
From the age of one;
Since my time's been lost
Waiting for the post
Or telephone;
Since I have grown
Up from hand to mouth
On love
And have thoroughly enjoyed the
not altogether to be despised,
If not notorious, glory of my youth;
Since I can or will not change,
Where should I range
When body falters and beauty dies —
When I must meet old age,
I, no sage?
For him I'll cake on rouge and powder
And wear a parrot on my shoulder.
God grant my sight fade with my eyes
When mirrors are not kind.
God send me a foolish wambling man,
Also purblind.
We'll be absurd —
Two old birds —
Treasonous to grandparenthood,
rightly scorned by all the good
Who cackle and play cards,
Gossip, and decry the moderation
Of the younger generation.
When candlelight recalls romance,
He'll make a wobbly amorous advance
(Both of us a little merry
From too much sherry),
But I shall have a fan
And tap his hand
and say “Come, come!”
And send him home —
Both relieved to stop play-acting
When the part gets too exacting.
Katherine Hoskins
Who Is My Shepherd -1949. John Malcolm Brinnin's poem was written while we were both in residence at "Yaddo," that artists' haven near Saratoga. He was a wonderful reader and teacher. At one of the periodic showings of work-in-progress Brinnin brought in these brooding verses; his title, incidentally, was Oedipus' Cradle Song. My setting was originally for Tenor.
Who Is My Shepherd
Who is my shepherd
that I shall not want?
Who with earth-roughened hands
will loose the spike that joins
my ankle-bones and bear me home
and have me in his house?
I seek a father who most needs a son,
yet have no voice to call one or
the other, nor wind nor oracle to
publish me, where I am meant to die.
Who is my uncle that shall intervene?
assist the turning wheel,
that like the running tower of the Sun
will smash my king's house,
and my cockle-shell.
Who is my mother that shall
make my bed?
who with gold-beaten rings
will quicken me
that I beget my son
where my cold father
with his lust lay down.
Who is one blind that has already
seen blood where it will fall soon?
He knows my ways and how I
rule this ground,
in his perpetual light will I be found.
The day is in the sea,
the night grows cold.
Is the event long passed?
The suckling beast knows where
I lie alone.
I seek a father
who most need a son.
John Malcolm Brinnin
Fed By My Labors -1940. The California sculptor, Gordon Newell, also wrote poems. I set this one after we met through his sister-in-law, a classmate of mine from Tientsin. When our family visited him at Big Sur, some twenty years later, he gave me another poem; and then were out of touch until a chance meeting in Carmel in 1993, when he was 90. I then told him that I'd used our early Song in my Symphony of Songs, and that I often recalled his remark, long ago, about doing creative work in obscurity: he had said not to worry about that - "the life's the thing!"
This Song has undergone a second transformation: after developing it symphonically I revised it in the light of what the Symphony had done to it. Anyone interested in comparing this original with the orchestral version see Albany Records (TROY160).
Fed By My Labors
Fed by my labors
those lines drawn on the ground
have become ribs of rock
and cast shadows
where the clear sun stretched
his long length before.
Some of those stone spines
have raised themselves higher
than my head above their
thrilling start, and now
the warm winds of autumn
must find new ways to pass this hill.
When the first rain comes
it will feel gently for its old
accustomed slope and then strike hard in fury
to take again its threatened realm.
Gordon Newell
O Time -1966. When commissioned to write a work for Boston's second Winterfest I based my Cantata "City Upon A Hill" on J.F. Kennedy's speech and illuminated it with poems by earlier American writers. Anne Bradstreet's is one of the most moving (originally set for chorus).
O Time
O Time
the wrack of mortal things
that draws oblivion's
curtain over kings
their sumptuous monuments
men know them not,
their names without a
record are forgot;
their parts, their ports,
their pomp's all laid
in the dust,
nor wit nor gold nor
buildings escape
time's rust.
But he whose name is
graved in the white stone
shall last and shine when
all of these are gone.
Anne Bradstreet
Postscript: In publishing several books of Songs a few years ago I noted that it might be a futile exercise, since the song recital is almost in full eclipse. However, there are still some singers who prefer the intimacy of the recital-room to the grandeur of the operatic stage; and some of them find an audience which comes to savor the subtleties of poetic utterance invested with music, without the distractions of costumes, scenery or inane librettos. To such artists and their following these Songs are offered.
Jacob Avshalomov
Assisting Artists
Daniel Avshalomov is the violist of the American String Quartet, now in its third decade of world-wide esteem. The Quartet is heard in over eighty concerts each season in North America, Europe and the Orient. Their performances are broadcast widely and have been recorded on five labels. For ten years the ASQ served as Quartet-in-Residence at the Peabody Conservatory, and since 1984 has filled a similar role at the Manhattan School of Music, where Daniel is also on the solo faculty. Before joining the Quartet Daniel was principal violist for the orchestras of the Spoleto, Tanglewood and Aspen Festivals, as well as for the Brooklyn Philharmonia and the American Composers Orchestra. He performed as solo violist with the Bolshoi Ballet on its American tour, and was a founding member of the Orpheus Chamber Ensemble. Outside the ASQ Daniel has appeared with orchestra and in recital on both coasts and in the Midwest. As a featured artist with such groups as the Da Camera Society, Marin Music Fest and La Musica di Asolo, he has shared the stage with Norbert Brainin, Claude Frank, Maureen Forester, Bruno Giuranna, Isaac Stern, and the Guarnieri, Juilliard, and Tokyo Quartets.
Marcy Fetchen, Clarinet, studied in Portland with Stan Stanford and played Principal Clarinet with the Portland Youth Philharmonic in its tour to Germany. After graduating from Portland State University she continues her studies at Michigan State University with Elsa Ludevig-Verdehr.
Melody WoolDridge AVRIL, Flute, studied in Portland with Salvador Brotons. While there she played in the Vancouver, (WA) Symphony and the Portland Youth Philharmonic with which she toured in Japan, Korea and in Germany as Principal Flute. She continues her studies at the University of Alabama and recently won a competition at the Southeast Music Center in Georgia.
Jacob Avshalomov
Twenty-Four Songs
Alyce Rogers, Mezzo-soprano
with Linda Barker, Piano · Daniel Avshalomov, Viola
Marcy Fetchen, Clarinet · Melody Wooldridge Avril, Flute
Songs for Alyce
1 The Mountain Sat Upon the Plain (2:11)
2 Answer July (2:29)
3 A Day is Laid By (2:38)
4 The Watch (3:46)
5 The Glass Town (3:58)
Whimsies
6 Tweedledee & Tweedledoom (:59)
7 The Raker (2:33)
8 Central Park Tourney (1:04)
Threnos
9 No more for us (2:19)
10 What thou lovest well (1:48)
Wonders
11 The Smile (3:24)
12 The Grain of Sand (4:36)
13 Lullaby (2:05)
Biblical Songs
14 Ruth's Song (3:04)
15 How Long O Lord (3:12)
16 Psalm 23 (3:38)
From The Chinese
17 On The T'ung T'ing Lake (1:37)
18 Moon in the Yellow River (:51)
19 The Ch'ing T'ing Mountain (1:38)
20 Taking Leave of a Friend (6:36)
with Flute & Viola
21 Two Old Birds (4:02)
with Clarinet
22 Who is My Shepherd (4:58)
23 Fed by my labors (3:14)
24 O Time (3:17)
Total Time = 70:18
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