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with Irma Vallecillo, Pianist
Some of our best American composers have not been prolific songwriters. I think William Schuman's Orpheus with His Lute has everything a song needs: it is simple, moving and beautiful. But it is a single song, written for a proposed production of Henry VIII and has no companion pieces. Elliott Carter's three settings of Robert Frost constitute almost half of the solo songs he wrote, and Elie Siegmeister's arrangement of William Billings is the only solo Billings song I have seen. That is why I have compiled this American Sampler to be able to record songs I love without having to worry about assembling a group by each composer. I have simply picked thirty-one of my favorite songs and put them together the way I would in a recital: organized to show each one to greatest advantage. I have deliberately not grouped the songs by composer, period or style, except for John Musto's little cycle, Shadow of the Blues: I kept it together because it so powerful as an entity.
Frequently people ask me where I find all these songs. Singers and pianists would like to perform them, and music lovers would like to know more about the composers and their work. So the following is meant to be a helpful guide to the songs on this compact disc, in alphabetical order:
Samuel Barber is published by G. Schirmer. This wonderful text, a set of stage directions, comes from Ulysses by James Joyce and is part of Barber's cycle, Despite and Still.
Robert Beaser, who does not normally compose rapidly, wrote the tune of Quicksilver in an afternoon. His friend, the poet Daniel Epstein, wrote the words to fit the tune. It is available from European-American Music.
William Billings wrote David's Lamentation as a choral piece. Elie Siegmeister arranged it as a solo in his anthology, A Treasury of American Song published by Consolidated Music Publishers, now available through Associated Music Publishers.
William Bolcom's wonderful Cabaret Songs are published by E.B. Marks and both Waitin' and George are in the volume.
Elliott Carter's Three Poems of Robert Frost, of which we have recorded the first two, are published by Associated Music Publishers.
Henry Cowell's Three Anti-Modernist Songs are settings of hostile reviews collected by Nicholas Slonimsky in his Lexicon of Musical Invective. I particularly love Cowell's decision to set this clever verse damning The Rite of Spring in Stravinsky's neo-classic style. The songs are still unpublished and can be found in the Americana collection at the New York Public Library.
Celius Dougherty was a famous accompanist, one of the best of his day, and he wrote songs for many of his clients. These are two of my favorite comic pieces and were both published by G. Schirmer. Love in the Dictionary is still in print in Songs by 22 Americans edited by Bernard Taylor. The Bird and the Beast is out of print but can be ordered by writing G. Schirmer.
John Duke wrote about 250 songs and many are avilable from a number of different publishers. Bells in the Rain can be found in the volume, Contemporary Songs in English, edited by Bernard Taylor and published by G. Schirmer.
William Flanagan's small output of songs was divided between Peer-Southern and C.F. Peters; they are all still in print. The Howard Moss poems, including Horror Movie, are with Peters.
Charles Griffes previously published songs are being reissued by G. Schirmer, and many songs not previously available have been put out by C.F. Peters. The Lament of Ian the Proud is in Volume I of the G. Schirmer series.
Morten Lauridsen's delightful cycle A Winter Come on poems of Howard Moss includes both of these songs. It is published by Peer-Southern.
John Musto is being recognized as one of our most gifted young song composers. Shadow of the Blues is published by Peer-Southern.
Ned Rorem's Spring comes from the cycle Hearing on poems of Kenneth Koch published by Boosey & Hawkes. For Poulenc is one of the set of Four Songs published by E.C. Schirmer. It was written for a memorial concert shortly after Poulenc's death.
William Schuman's Orpheus with his Lute can be found in the G. Schirmer volume, 20th Century Art Songs, which, incidentally, are all by Americans.
Warren Swenson's songs are regrettably still unpublished. They can be obtained by writing the American Music Center, 30 W. 26th Street, New York, NY 10010 or the composer in New York City. No One to Love is from Seven Songs by Stephen Foster, and The Lepidoptera Waltz is from The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast.
Louise Talma is still composing vigorously at eighty-five. Her songs are published by Carl Fisher but are only obtainable by special order. All three of these are in the volume, Louise Talma: Seven Songs.
Ben Weber liked to describe himself as a "twelve-tone romantic." His emotionally powerful Mourn, Mourn resets a text that John Dowland wrote for one of his lute songs. It appears in a volume called, New Vistas in Song, published by E.B. Marks.
Kurt Weill is best known as a theater and cabaret composer, but he wrote his Four Walt Whitman Songs for voice and either piano or orchestra, definitely with the concert stage in mind. Kurt Weill might seem to be a strange choice to include in an American Sampler since he didn't move to the US until he was thirty-five, but there is no doubt that this music sounds as American as any native born composer's does. The songs are published by European-American Music.
Hugo Weisgall wrote his set of Soldier Songs on texts dealing with war. I find this witty Cummings poem to be as effective a piece of anti-war writing as I have ever seen. The cycle is available through Mercury Music/Theodore Presser.
Maury Yeston, who is best known as a composer of musicals, has not published I Don't Wanna Rock and Roll.
Glory be to God for dappled things
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches wings;
Landscape plotted and piecedfold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Orpheus with his lute made trees,
And the mountain tops that freeze,
Bow themselves, when he did sing:
To his music plants and flowers
Ever sprung, as sun and showers
There had made a lasting spring.
Every thing that heard him play,
Even the billows of the sea,
Hung their heads, and then lay by.
In sweet music is such art,
Killing care and grief of heart
Fall asleep or, hearing, die.
aunt lucy during the recent
is more did tell you just
what everybody was fighting
hundreds) of socks not to
mention shirts fleaproof earwarmers
etcetera wristers etcetera, my
bravely of course my father used
to become hoarse talking about how it was
a privilege and if only he
self etcetera lay quietly
eyes knees and of your Etcetera)
When frost moves fast and gardens lose their ground
And gold goes downward in the trees, no sound
Accompanies departures of the leaves,
Except when the wind hurtles into air
Dead shapes the coming winter will inter;
Then the thinnest music starts to stir
A faint, crisp scraping in the startled ear:
The leaves that feed the new leaves of next year.
Lightly falls from the finish'd Sabbath,
On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking,
Down a new-made double grave.
Up from the east the silvery round moon,
Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon,
And I hear the sound of coming full-key'd bugles,
All the channels of the city streets they're flooding,
As with voices and with tears.
I hear the great drums pounding,
And the small drums steady whirring,
And every blow of the great convulsive drums,
Strikes me through and through.
For the son is brought with the father,
(In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell,
Two veterans son and father dropt together,
And the double grave awaits them.)
Now nearer blow the bugles,
And the drums strike more convulsive,
And the daylight o'er the pavement quite has faded,
And the strong dead-march enwraps me.
O strong dead-march you please me!
O moon immense with your silvery face you soothe me!
O my soldiers twain! O my veterans passing to burial!
What I have I also give you.
The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and the drums give you music,
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
Love: A strong, complex emotion or feeling of personal attachment, causing one to appreciate, delight in, or crave the presence or possession of the object, and to please and promote the welfare of that object; devoted affection or attachment; specifically: the feeling between husband and wife; brother and sister; or lover and sweet-heart; One who is beloved; a sweet-heart; animal passion; the personification of the love-passion; Cupid; in some games, as tennis, nothing.
Funk & Wagnalls Students' Standard Dictionary
Mourn, mourn, day is with darkness fled,
what heaven then governs earth,
o none, but hell in heaven's stead,
chokes with his mists our mirth.
Mourn, mourn, look now for no more day
nor night, but that from hell,
Then all must as they may
in darkness learn to dwell.
But yet this change, must needs change our delight,
that thus the Sun should harbour with the night.
and sang the best soprano
In beads, brocade and pins
he sang if you happened in
through the door he never locked
and said, Get yourself a drink.
till tears fell in the cognac
and the chocolate milk and gin
and on the beads, brocade and pins.
When strangers happened through
beside an apple pie he'd baked
and stabbed him in the middle
for this particular stranger
who was in the United States Navy.
The funeral was at the cocktail hour.
We knew George would like it like that.
Tears fell on the beads, brocades and pins
because George was a virgin.
Oh call him Georgia, hon,
You can call me Georgia, hon,
Sleep falls, with limpid drops of rain,
Upon the steep cliffs of the town.
Sleep falls; men are at peace again
While the small drops fall softly down.
The bright drops ring like bells of glass
Thinned by the wind, and lightly blown;
Sleep cannot fall on peaceful grass
So softly as it falls on stone.
Peace falls unheeded on the dead
Asleep; they have had deep peace to drink;
Upon a live man's bloody head
it falls most tenderly, I think.
Dr. Unlikely, we love you so,
You who made the double-headed rabbits grow
From a single hare. Mutation's friend,
Who could have prophesied the end
When the Spider Woman deftly snared the fly
And the monsters strangled in a monstrous kiss
And somebody hissed, “You'll hang for this!”?
Dear Dracula, sleeping on your native soil
(Any other kind makes him spoil),
How we clapped when you broke the French door down
And surprised the bride in the overwrought bed.
Perfectly dressed for lunar research,
Your evening cape added much,
Though the bride, inexplicably dressed in furs,
Was a study in jaded jugulars.
The Wolf Man knew when he prowled at dawn
Beginnings spin a web where endings spawn.
The bat who lived on shaving cream,
A household pet of Dr. Dream,
Unfortunately maddened by the bedlam,
Turned on the Doc, bit the hand that fed him.
And you, Dr. X, who killed by moonlight,
We loved your scream in the laboratory
When the panel slid and the night was starry
And you threw the inventor in the crocodile pit
(An obscure point: Did he deserve it?)
And you took the gold to Transylvania
Where no one guessed how insane you were.
We thank you for the moral and the mood,
Dear Dr. Cliché, Nurse Platitude.
When we meet again by the Overturned Grave
Near the Sunken City of the Twisted Mind
(In The Son of the Son of Frankenstein),
Make the blood flow, make the motive muddy:
There's a little death in every body.
And the pear is, and so's
What will next prove a rose.
You, of course, are a rose—
And what of love that old men dead and gone
Have wintered through, and written messages
In snow so travelers, who come too warm
To what may grow too cold, be safe from harm?
They know the fire of flesh is winter's cheat
And how the icy wind makes young blood sweet
In joining joy, which age can never have.
And that is what all old men know of love.
Who Wrote This Fiendish “Rite of Spring”?
Who wrote this fiendish “Rite of Spring”,
What right had he to write the thing
Against our helpless ears to fling
It's crash, clash, cling, clang, bing, bang, bing?
And then to call it “Rite of Spring”,
The season when on joyous wing
the birds melodious carols sing
and harmony's in every thing!
He who could write the Rite of Spring
If I be right, by right should swing!
The Boston Herald, February 9, 1924
Collected by Nicolas Slonimsky
in the Lexicon of Musical Invective
They've just hung a black man
The desperate, the tired,
In the arms of your pity.
In the arms of your love—
Could be Hastings Street,
Might be that you'll come back.
Hastings Street is weary,
Without my watch and you.
The first raindrops away.
Once a boy went riding in glory
Out of the green she came,
My first day in Paris I walked
from Saint Germain to the Pont Mirabeau
in soft amber light and leaves
the Seine believed it to be true
that I was unloved and alone
how lonely is that bridge
the Avenue Mozart, the rue Pergolèse
the tobaccos and the nuns
all Paris is alone for this
the streets of our peculiar hearts
The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.
Tough-minded men get mushy in their sleep
And break the by-laws any fool can keep;
It is not the convention but the fear
That has a tendency to disappear.
The worried efforts of the busy heap,
The dirt, the imprecision, and the beer
Produce a few smart wisecracks every year;
Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap.
The clothes that are considered right to wear
Will not be either sensible or cheap,
So long as we consent to live like sheep
And never mention those who disappear.
Much can be said for social savoir-faire,
But to rejoice when no one else is there
Is even harder than it is to weep;
No one is watching, but you have to leap.
A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear:
Although I love you, you will have to leap;
Our dream of safety has to disappear.
Solitary hotel in mountain pass. Autumn. Twilight. Fire lit. In dark corner young man seated. Young woman enters. Restless. Solitary. She sits. She goes to window. She stands. She sits. Twilight. She thinks. On solitary hotel paper she writes. She thinks. She writes. She sighs. Wheels and hoofs. She hurries out. He comes from his dark corner. He seizes solitary paper. He holds it towards fire. Twilight. He reads. Solitary.
In sloping, upright and backhands: Queen's hotel, Queen's hotel Queen's Ho…
The Lament of Ian the Proud
What is this crying that I hear in the wind!
Is it the old sorrow and the old grief
Or is it a new thing coming,
About the gray hair of me who am weary and blind?
I know not what is, but on the moor above the shore
There is a stone which the purple nets of heather bind,
And thereone is writ: She will return no more,
O blown whirling leaf, and the old grief
And wind crying to me who am old and blind!
Fiona macLeod, pseud. (William Sharp)
My sad-bad rain that falls
In lisp and dibble-dabble
On the porch and under stairs
And puddles in the driveway brimmed
And dolloped by the slow loitering
Of the not-quite clapping hands
So slight they are on the primrose
Leaves and the periwinkle
And keeps such babble going through the day.
If all the birds weren't gone.
It's silk under the elm leaves
It's slip into the streams
That clasp the globe around,
It's in the stealth to steal
That does not strike but holds
The bird that I am going to write about is the owl.
The owl cannot see at all by day, and at night is as blind as a bat.
I do not know much about the owl,
so I will go on to the beast that I am going to choose.
It has six sides, right, left, an upper and below,
at the back it has a tail on which hangs a brush.
With this it sends the flies away, so they don't fall into the milk.
The head is for the purpose of growing horns, and so
that the mouth can be somewhere.
The horns are to butt with, and the mouth is to moo with.
Under the cow hangs the milk.
It is arranged for milking.
When people milk, the milk comes, there is never an end to the supply.
How the cow does it I have never realized, but it
And what it eats it eats twice, so that it gets enough.
The cow has a fine sense of smell.
You can smell it far away.
This is the reason for the fresh air in the country.
When it is hungry it moos.
And when it says nothing it is because its inside is all full up with grass.
Taken from Sir Ernest Gowers' “Plain Words.”
Off the ashcan, let's walk
Valence piccalilli and diamonds)
Than the pirate of lemons
Or a bookcase of orange groans
With those imaginary racetracks
The sky and the gimcracks
Who once loathed firecrackers
Diamonds but now you love them all
Remember with your shoes off
Coat maybe never never O blind
With this (love) let's walk
Rivers of morning as you are seen
To be bathed in a light white light
WILLIAM BILLINGS arr. ELIE SIEGMEISTER
David, the king, was grieved and moved,
He went to his chamber, his chamber and wept.
And as he went, he wept and said,
Would to God I had died, would to God I had died,
Would to God I had died for thee,
O Absalom, my son, my son.”
STEPHEN FOSTER arr. WARREN A. MICHEL SWENSON
No one to love in this beautiful world,
Full of warm hearts and bright beaming eyes?
Where is the lone heart that nothing can find
That is lovely beneath the blue skies?
No one to love! No one to love!
What have you done in this beautiful world
That you're sighing of no one to love?
Many a fair one that dwells on the earth
Who would greet you with kind words of cheer,
Many who gladly would join in your pleasures
Or share in your grief with a tear.
No one to love! No one to love!
Where have you roamed in this beautiful world
That you're sighing of no one to love?
The most wonderful tune in the world
(All other claims are false)
Is Simon Centipede's masterpiece,
On the night of the Butterfly Ball
We heard the music begin.
Bassoon, clarinet and violin.
How splendidly Simon plays!
As the way he strikes the keys
With ten or a dozen or more of his feet.
When the guests began to dance
Even those who had no wings
Flew around as in a dream,
On feet like enchanted things.
The dancers went out of their heads,
You've not heard such applause
As Simon bowed and bowed and bowed
To the storm of “Bravos!” and “Encores!”
And he then to the Butterfly spoke:
“I wrote it, Madam, for you!”
Two tears of joy shone in her eyes
Glist'ning like the morning dew.
The most wonderful tune in the world
(All other claims are false)
Is Simon Centipede's masterpiece
I Don't Wanna Rock and Roll
No no no no no no no no no!
I don't wanna rock and roll no more
that music does nothin' for me!
I can take about an hour before I go sour
But then I got to have my Debussy.
You know I go stark starin' crazy
Whenever I hear Pergolesi
And Monteverdi has so much soul
That I don't wanna rock and roll.
No no no no no no no no no!
I don't like the disco beat no more
That music doesn't take me home.
But Boccherini, Sammartini, Paganini and Rossini
Drive me higher than the Pini de Rome.
You know nothin' could be finah
Than a lyric by Goethe or Heine
So ironic and teutonicly droll
That I don't wanna rock and roll.
I'm gonna boycott all the radio stations
That won't play the Goldberg Variations.
Unless they been recorded by Deutsche Grammaphone
I got to have Bach if I wanna cut loose
Or also Sprach my man Zarathus
And I think Chopin was a helluva Pole
So I don't wanna rock and roll
I don't wanna rock and roll.
Paul Sperry is recognized as one of today's outstanding interpreters of American music. Although he is equally at home in a repertoire that extends from Monteverdi opera and the Bach Passions to Britten's “War Requiem” and hundreds of songs in more than a dozen languages, he brings to American music a conviction and an enthusiasm that has brought it to life for countless listeners.
Many of today's leading composers have written works specially for him; Sperry has world premieres of works by more than thirty Americans to his credit. He premiered Leonard Bernstein's “Dybbuk Suite” with the composer conducting the New York Philharmonic, Jacob Druckman's “Animus IV” for the opening of the Centre Georges Pompidou at Beauborg in Paris in 1977, and Bernard Rands' Pulitzer Prize winning “Canti del Sole” with the New York Philharmonic in 1983 under Zubin Mehta. Other composers whose works he has premiered include William Bolcom, Daniel Brewbaker, Nathan Currier, Richard Hundley, John Musto, Stephen Paulus, Larry Alan Smith, Louise Talma, Francis Thorne, Nicholas Thorne, Dan Welcher and Charles Wuorinen.
Singing songs has always been Sperry's principal passion. For the American Bicentennial in 1976, Sperry assembled a three-recital series, “Red, White and Blue—A Salute to American Song,” which explored the little known literature of the past hundred years. Subsequently he increased his repertoire and has now performed songs by over a hundred American composers.
Sperry is also a passionate advocate for American music. He has tried to insure that many of the wonderful works he has unearthed will be easily available to others. To that end, he has compiled and edited several volumes of American songs, both anthologies and single composer collections for G. Schirmer, Peer-Southern, Boosey & Hawkes and Dover Publications. In 1989 he became the first non-composer to be elected president of the American Music Center, a fifty year old national organization which houses a large circulating library of scores, recordings and tapes and provides information all over the world about American composers and their music.
Born in Chicago, Mr. Sperry graduated from Harvard College and continued his studies at the Sorbonne in Paris. He worked extensively with such masters of art-song interpretation as Jennie Tourel, Paul Ulanowsky and Pierre Bernac. Today Mr. Sperry is widely appreciated for his own master classes at the Eastman School of Music, the Peabody Institute, Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, the Cleveland Institute of Music, the University of Southern California, the Manhattan School of Music, Harvard and Yale to name a few. Since 1984 he has taught 19th- and 20th-century song repertory and performance at the Juilliard School, and he has created there what may be the country's only full-year course in American song. He has been a faculty member of the Aspen Music Festival since 1978 and director of the Vocal Program at the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan since 1991. He lives in New York City with his wife and their three children.
Pianist Irma Vallecillo has been internationally acclaimed as a bravura soloist and chamber musician. A student of Adele Marcus, Angelica von Sauer and Joanna Graudan, she is in constant demand as partner for some of the world's most celebrated soloists. Ms. Vallecillo has performed in concerts at the Sitka Music Festival and Winter Classics, Ravinia Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, Aspen Music Festival, Schleswig Holstein Festival, Library of Congress, Carnegie Hall, and the Kennedy Center. Recently she appeared on the television gala celebrating Wolf Trap National Park with Richard Stoltzman.
Ms. Vallecillo has been associated with the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico since 1974, appearing both in chamber music and solo repertoire. She has recorded extensively on the RCA, Louisville Symphony, Desmar, Orion, Laurel, and Avanti, and Albany Records labels. Ms. Vallecillo has taught at UCLA, The Aspen Music Festival, and is currently director of the Department of Keyboard Studies at the Hartt School of Music and director of the Piano Program at the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan.
Other Releases by Paul Sperry on Albany Records
Paul Sperry, tenor; Irma Vallecillo, piano - Songs by Ayres, Beach, Bond, Buck, Cadman, Carpenter, Chadwick, Clough-Leighter, Foote, Gilbert, Griffes, Ives, Loomis, MacDowell, Nevin, Paine (TROY034)
PAUL SPERRY SINGS ROMANTIC AMERICAN SONGS
Works by Bowles, Chanler, Farwell, Hundley and Thomson - Irma Vallecillo, piano (TROY043)
PAUL SPERRY SINGS AMERICAN CYCLES & SETS
(Robert Beaser: The Seven Deadly Sins; Christopher Berg: Six Poems of Frank O'Hara; Louis Gruenberg: Animals &Insects; Larry Alan Smith: Songs of the Silence; Louise Talma: Terre de France; Richard Wilson:Three Painters) Irma Vallecillo, piano (TROY058)
Louise Talma: Pied Beauty (1:06)
William Schuman: Orpheus with His Lute (1:57)
Hugo Weisgall: My Sweet Old Etcetera (2:03)
Morten Lauridsen: When Frost Moves Fast (1:03)
Kurt Weill: Dirge for Two Veterans (4:51)
Celius Dougherty: Love in the Dictionary (2:05)
Ben Weber: Mourn, Mourn (3:19)
William Bolcom: George (3:31)
John Duke: Bells in the Rain (2:12)
William Flanagan: Horror Movie (3:59)
Elliott Carter: The Rose Family (:55)
Morten Lauridsen: And What of Love (2:38)
Henry Cowell: Who Wrote This Fiendish Rite of Spring (:55)
William Bolcom: Waitin' (2:07)
John Musto: Shadow of the Blues (8:24)
Robert Beaser: Quicksilver (2:20)
Ned Rorem: For Poulenc (2:56)
Louise Talma: Leap Before You Look (3:05)
Samuel Barber: Solitary Hotel (2:23)
Charles Griffes: The Lament of Ian the Proud (3:19)
Louise Talma: Rain Song (1:55)
Celius Dougherty: The Bird and the Beast (3:34)
William Billings arr. Elie Siegmeister: David's Lamentation (1:35)
Elliott Carter: Dust of Snow (1:03)
Stephen Foster arr. Warren Swenson: No One to Love (2:11)
Warren Swenson: The Lepidoptera Waltz (2:18)
Maury Yeston: I Don't Wanna Rock and Roll (1:53)
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