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I am absolutely
delighted that some of Elie Siegmeister’s important
works are being released as a compact disc recording on
the CRI label, and I know that Mr. Siegmeister would have
had the same reaction. The
composer told me that he felt that CRI was of inestimable
value in allowing an important body of contemporary
American music to be heard and
to survive.
In the present recording, we can note some prime examples
of Siegmeisterian characteristics: brilliant melodic
invention; tender lyricism in a contemporary romantic
idiom; the wildness of violent rhythms and
biting harmonies; an almost surrealistic humor; taut,
precise architecture; a free, improvisatory quality;
dramatic expression. These compositions reveal a fierce
independence of any school or compositional formula, an
affirmation of life as the main inspiration for musical
expression. Siegmeister declared, “Music comes out
of life and should go back into it.” His music
continues to show the importance of this idea.
—Alan Mandel, 1999
Original notes by Alan Mandel from 1986:
Ways of Love
A prolific composer of songs—Elie Siegmeister’s
output is well over the one hundred mark—the
composer has touched on a wide variety of subjects. Yet
although love appears as a central theme in all of his
operas, it has served with relative infrequency as the
subject of his Lieder. When the Elizabeth Sprague
Coolidge Foundation commissioned him in 1983 to write a
work for voice and chamber ensemble Siegmeister selected
poems by five American poets: Lawrence Ferlinghetti, e.
e. cummings, Eve Merriam, Miriam Waddington and Langston
Hughes to write of love in its many guises. The six
songs, lyrical and with long-line melodies in
Siegmeister’s special way, present contrasted moods:
tender, raucous, elegamt, tragic, ironic, and finally, in
the current sense, “explicit.”
The cycle is dedicated “to Hannah.”
Five Langston Hughes Songs
Elie Siegmeister has long had a particular fondness for
the poetry of Langston Hughes. Whether it is because the
composer was born in Harlem or because the two men were
close friends for more than thirty years, the composer
has turned repeatedly to the poet’s work from 1933
to 1983 (and he says he’s “not done yet”).
The cycle begins with a bitter-sweet love song
“Ballad of Adam and Eve,” followed by
“three minute songs”—each lasting less
than a minute—”Motto,” “Hope”
and “Question.” The last of the five songs
(adapted from its original version for chorus and
orchestra in the cantata A Cycle of Cities) treats with
jazzy irony the rejected lover whose suicide attempts are
foiled because the water is “too cold” and the
building from which he intends to leap is too high. And
finally because “life is fine.”
Notes by the composer from 1979:
“The THIRD STRING QUARTET (1973)
reflects a place ‘somewhere near the soul’ (as
Ives said). My grandfather was Orthodox and an amateur
part-time cantor in the synagogue of the tiny Russian
village where the family lived before coming to America,
but I had rarely made use of this heritage in my music.
“The occasion arose in 1972, when Temple Adath
Jeshurun of Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, commissioned me to
write a string quartet that would include traditional
Hebrew themes. I was somewhat doubtful at first, but
after some research and reflection found four beautiful
old melodic phrases that seemed to lend themselves to
development by string instruments. I did not attempt to
write Jewish music, but simply my own music which would
take off from these lovely tunes.
“The first movement Andante con moto stems from an
ancient Jewish Yemenite chant, quiet and mysterious in
character. The music might be described as
‘muti-tonal’ (a mingling of tonal and atonal)
shapes in sonata form.
“The second movement, a scherzo marked Vivo, then
Allegro moderato develops two Yiddish chassidis tunes
from Eastern Europe. It is quizzical, fantastic-humorous,
and perhaps calls to mind an image of upside-down rabbis
and enchanted chassidim sailing through the air.
“The last movement, a Tema con variazioni (seven of
them), builds a sweeping, twenty-measure theme from two
Ashkenazic prayer fragments, then transforms it in
various ways, ending with a touch of the beginning.
“Langston Hughes, the great black poet, was my
friend and collaborator for over thirty years. We wrote
about fifty songs together, of which the two cycles MADAM
TO YOU (1964) and THE FACE OF WAR
(1966) remain my favorites. The first reflects the
typical Hughes’ earthiness, character portrayal,
joie de vivre, and love of common living. Just as his
famous “Simple” character was the
quintessential black man, ‘Madam’ Alberta K.
Johnson was the typical black woman of the Harlem
tenements, spunky, bright, in love with life, and
standing up (long before women’s lib) to all
‘put-downs,’ whether by the Census Man, the
Minister, the Rent Collector, or even Old Death himself.
In each of the seven songs of the cycle, Madam meets a
formidable antagonist, and always comes out the winner.
Befitting its subject, the music is down-to-earth,
breezy, light-hearted, or tender, but never complicated.
“Like Langston Hughes and many other artists, I
hated the Vietnam War. In 1966 I simply had to voice my
anger, and together with a dozen collegues, including
William Mayer, Ulysses Kay, George Rochberg, Aaron
Copland, George Crumb, and Ezra Laderman, I organized a
concert, “Composers for Peace”, in New
York’s Carnegie Hall. A few weeks before the concert
I had read Hughes’ poems, The Face of War, which
struck me as among the most powerful indictments of
man’s brutality to man—especially to the black
and brown man—I have ever seen. Working very
quickly, I dashed off five songs of the cycle for voice
and piano, then orchestrated them so they might be
performed at this anti-war concert.
“If Madam to You is a celebration of life, The Face
of War is an outcry, sometimes in harsh, almost atonal
musical terms, against needless, horrible death on the
battlefield. I’d like to think of these songs as in
some small measure an American counterpoint of a cycle I
have always deeply admired Moussorgsky’s Songs and
Dances of Death”.
ELIE SIEGMEISTER followed an independent
path in composition, working in a modern romantic idiom
that is always highly lyrical and communicative, often
spiced with strong dissonances, intricate rhythms, and
dramatic, folk and jazz elements. He created many works
deeply American in spirit and as many bearing an
introspective quality. Siegmeister’s thirty
orchestral compositions have been performed by major
orchestras throughout the world under such conductors as
Toscanini, Stokowski, Mitropoulos, Maazel, and
Comissiona. His eight operas have been produced in
France, Belgium, and Canada as well as in this country.
In addition he wrote chamber music, choral works, more
than one hundred solo songs, piano music and important
scores for Broadway, Hollywood, and the Ballet.
Siegmeister was born in New York and entered Columbia
College at age 15 where he studied with Bingham. He also
took private counterpoint with Riegger and studied for
four years in Paris with Boulanger. His own teaching
career included posts at Brooklyn College, the New
School, the University of Minnesota, and Hofstra
University. He served on the Boards of ACA, ASCAP and the
American Music Center.
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