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Songs of Leo Sowerby (1895-1968)
Robert Osborne: Bass-baritone
Malcolm Halliday: Pianist
Songs of Leo Sowerby (1895-1968)
Leo Sowerby, whose loving sobriquet is "the Handel of Lake Michigan," lived most of his life in Chicago. He composed 550 works in all forms save ballet and opera and was the recipient of both the Pulitzer Prize and the Prix de Rome. His works were premiered by such illustrious musicians and organizations as Serge Koussevitsky, E. Power Biggs, the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, and the Chicago and Boston Symphony Orchestras. His 122 songs, written between 1909 and 1966, straddle a critical transitional period in American art song history. The earliest songs reflect the parlor and sentimental styles which were prevalent in the first decades of this century. His compositional training and his beloved models were from the French school, rather than the more dominant German school that then held sway over American concert and music educational life. But by the early 1920s Sowerby's personal and American voice, founded on his prairie roots, was clear in his songs. His greatest are from the late 1920s until the late 1940s. This corresponds with the same period in American art song when a distinct national profile and an autonomous style independent of European models was establishing itself in the songs of such composers as Carpenter, Ives, Griffes, Dougherty, Duke, Copland, Rorem, Diamond, Thomson, and Barber.
As a student, Sowerby set many French poems. And like many other composers of his period, Sowerby abandoned this practice and turned to both British and American poets, setting them in nearly equal measure. Because of his northern English ancestry and his abiding love of all things British, Sowerby tended to set more British poets than did his contemporaries. Sowerby, an avid reader, was very up-to-the-minute with his choices of poetry even though the poets may seem somewhat old-fashioned to us now.
THREE SONGS ON POEMS OF JOHN MASEFIELD. John Masefield (1878-1967) was poet laureate of England from 1930 until his death. He trained for the merchant navy, but his youthful naval career was anything but auspicious at age fourteen he sailed for Chile and suffered both sea-sickness and a nervous breakdown. On his second Atlantic crossing, he deserted ship and became a vagrant in America. Upon returning to England, his literary career blossomed and he produced some fifty volumes of verse, over twenty novels and eight plays. Sowerby turned to Masefield's poetry at five different times in his career, once as the literary source for his 1915 orchestral tone poem, Symphonic Sketch: Sorrow of Mydath and four times for song texts. Masefield held a strong appeal to many British and American composers in the early decades of this century, and Sowerby was most probably acquainted with some of the settings predating his by John Ireland (Sea Fever, The Bells of San Marie and Vagabond); Charles Tomlinson Griffes (Sorrow of Mydath and An Old Song Resung); Sidney Homer (Down Bye Street); and Peter Warlock (Captain Stratton's Fancy). In fact, there is a studio recording from the 1940s in which Sowerby accompanies the baritone Charles Greene, a frequent collaborator, in Warlock's song. The strong, masculine images that are prevalent in Masefield's poetry, often set in a nautical milieu, are infused with his morbid fixation on death. Wanderer's Song was written in the great tradition of wanderlust songs such as those by Schubert, Mahler, Wolf and Vaughan-Williams. The poem is filled with nautical terminology, some specifically British. A ship's small boat is called either a "yawl" or a "ketch". A "capstan" is a machine for moving heavy weights. A "hooker" is a onemasted fishing boat found in England and Ireland. And finally, "warping out" refers to moving a ship by hauling on a line attached to a fixed object. One Sunny Time in May is Sowerby's second setting of Masefield's poem concerning the unexpected death of a girl and her poet-admirer's despair that his love was never expressed. This version, as opposed to the juvenile 1913 setting, is mature Sowerby, seamlessly weaving through numerous modulations to wildly distant keys. Prayer of the Seafarer offered Sowerby a text with which he could paint a grand-scale seascape. The piano introduction, the longest in any of his songs, thrusts the listener into a wild tempest at sea. This turbulence subsides into the actual prayer which is initially uttered over a static chordal texture. The song is epic in proportions. It comes as no surprise that this is one of only two songs which Sowerby orchestrated.
THREE SONGS ON POEMS OF JOHN GALSWORTHY. The Englishman John Galsworthy (1867-1933) is known primarily as a novelist and dramatist. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932. His Forsyte Saga was read widely in the first decades of this century. Many of his poems were published in a 1926 collection with the title Verses New and Old. Sowerby's three settings, though not originally composed as a set, have been grouped together for this recording. The Moor Grave, set on the heaths of Scotland, presents a voice from the grave, the voice of one who has died for love. Sowerby's music captures the expanse and barrenness of this windswept landscape. The relative sparseness of this song distinguishes it from Sowerby's generally dense harmonic and textural language. A "curlew" is a brownish, longlegged shorebird with a slender, downwardcurving bill. The unusual word, "screed," refers to a long, monotonous harangue or piece of writing; whereas the moor grave is unmarked and plain. Serenity is a tender miniature which paints three consecutive landscapes seaside, night sky, and lovers' bower. The gentle arpeggios leading to unexpected harmonic blossomings all support the mood of peacefulness and thanksgiving. Highland Spring is also set in the Scottish landscape. Both the title and Galsworthy's use of the word "burns," Scottish dialect for a small stream or brook, confirm the locale. The song is noteworthy in its clever use of alternating meters, with much of the song in one of Sowerby's favorite meters, 5/4.
THREE AMERICAN FOLKSONG ARRANGEMENTS. In 1926, as part of his twenty-three contributions to Sandburg's The American Songbag, Sowerby arranged an obscure, Negro wood chopper's song, Go 'way from my window. Over twenty years later he returned to this text, this time using the more universally known melody and created the beautiful 1948 arrangement recorded here. Black is the color of my true love's hair is a southern Appalachian folksong of English origin. Sowerby's arrangement of He's gone away first appeared in The American Songbag. In the note to the published version of this song, we learn that it "... was heard by Charles Rockwood of Geneva, Illinois during a twoyear residence in a mountain valley of North Carolina... The song is of British origin, marked by mountaineer and southern Negro influences." The text makes several local references. "Yandro" refers to a tall mountain in the valleys of North Carolina. "Desrick," in the dialect of that region, refers to a shack or shanty. The song was performed frequently as an encore piece by the tenor Lawrence Tibbett, and in 1952 Sowerby transposed the song for baritone Mack Harrell's use as well.
THREE SONGS FOR DONNA HARRISON were dedicated to the pianist, vocal coach and accompanist, and colleague of Leo Sowerby's at the American Conservatory in Chicago. Harrison teased Sowerby about the inferior quality of the poetry he had set up to that point and challenged him to be more discerning in his choices. These three songs, and those which he wrote thereafter, are indeed all distinguished by poems of greater literary merit. The Harrison songs were intended as a set, even though they do not constitute a cycle in the traditional sense. Donna Harrison played the premiere at the American Conservatory, accompanying one of her students. The first song, Snow Toward Evening, is a setting of Melville Cane's most famous poem. Educated at Columbia University, Cane (1879-1980) was both a lawyer and a poet. He lived in New York and somewhat cautiously pursued his literary ambitions. Snow Toward Evening was accepted in 1925 by Marianne Moore for publication in The Dial, the literary journal of which she was the editor. Sowerby may have become acquainted with this poem as a result of a setting by Robert Stewart, one of his composition students at the American Conservatory of Music. Sowerby accompanied Charles Greene in a June 1946 concert which included Stewart's setting and subsequently tried his own hand at setting Cane's poem. Using stark octaves and swirling impressionistic figures in the piano part, Sowerby captures many facets of a sudden snowfall. The second and third songs are settings of poems by the famous Irish novelist, James Joyce (1882-1941). The love song Donnycarney is written in a simple folk idiom. This poem is number XXXI from Joyce's first published work, Chamber Music (1907). Donnycarney is an outlying district of Dublin, a place where, in Ulysses, lovers go to clandestinely make love. The text for On the Beach at Fontana is from Joyce's 1927 collection, Pomes Penyeach. Sowerby's setting is dark, brooding and on a grand scale. The story conveyed in On the Beach at Fontana, with its ambiguous yearnings, could be in the voice of a man or a woman but most probably the former with its attendant paternal or homoerotic connotations.
TWO BRITISH FOLKSONG ARRANGEMENTS. One morning in May is an obscure British folksong of unknown origin. It is not clear how Sowerby
happened upon this charming dialogue of seduction between maiden and soldier. Loch Lomond was originally the song of a Scottish agitator and resistance fighter who was arrested and taken on the "low-road" to England to be hanged. His spirit returns to Loch Lomond, the largest lake in east-central Scotland, in hopes of reuniting with his beloved. Over time, this song has lost its political associations and has become one of the most popular of Scottish folksongs. Many words of this song are in dialect, "yon" means those; "bonnie" means either pretty or fine; a "brae" is a hillside or slope; "kens" means knows; "waefu'" means woeful; "frae" means from; and "greetin'" means either weeping or crying. Ben Lomond is a mountain on the eastern shore of the lake and "gloamin'" is Middle English for twilight or dusk. Sowerby's arrangement was written for John Macdonald, bass soloist with the St. James Choir in Chicago, where Sowerby was organist and choirmaster. Its existence came to light only this year when a manuscript was discovered by Macdonald's heirs.
TWO SONGS ON POEMS OF JEANNE DELAMARTER. Jeanne DeLamarter (1907-1983) was the daughter of Eric DeLamarter, assistant conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, organist, composer, and mentor to Sowerby. Her poems often appeared in the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Evening Post. Her works include the collections Colored Sails (1930), Seven Stars (1939), and Chess Game (1952). From Seven Stars Sowerby chose the poem Lines for Late Autumn and set it as For Late Autumn. Sowerby may have shown his song, or the poem itself, to Edwin Fissinger, one of his composition students at the American Conservatory, for in June 1946, Sowerby accompanied Charles Greene in a concert which included Fissinger's own setting of this poem. Sowerby's setting is distinguished by its brooding quality and its use of bitonality in its opening. The pencil manuscript of Early Spring Song was initially thought to be intended for performance as an instrumental solo accompanied by piano. But when an unpublished poem by Jeanne DeLamarter was found among Sowerby's papers and applied to what was thought to be the instrumental melody, it fit precisely. Sowerby must never have found the time to copy the lyric into his pencil manuscript. The subsequent discovery of a complete inked score confirmed that it was indeed a song. As such, it is one further example of Sowerby's many ecstatic songs to spring.
TWO LATE SONGS. In my craft or sullen art sets one of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas' most famous lyrics. At the peak of Thomas' popularity as an entertainer on British radio, he undertook the first of four lecture tours of the United States, reading during March 1950 at the University of Chicago. On his second tour in 1952, he gave three Chicago-area readings between April 23-25 at Northwestern University, Marquette University, and in an event sponsored by Poetry Magazine. Poetry Magazine, which was published in Chicago, was the most important poetry journal published in English in the first half of this century. It had begun publishing Thomas' poetry in the 1940s and, in 1945, awarded him the Levinson Poetry Prize, sparking America's awareness of his work. Thomas (1914-1953) often read In my craft or sullen art at his lectures. It is possible that Sowerby heard Thomas read in the Chicago area, read his work in Poetry magazine, or heard about him in local coverage of his appearances in either 1950 or 1952. That he would be drawn to this particular poem is revealing. It concerns an artist's awareness that his work will never receive acclaim, recognition or fortune and that not even those for whom it is written those lost in the arms of love - will heed its message. I Have Known Two Worlds was found among Sowerby's manuscripts in pencil sketch. Sowerby never completed a fair copy, but his intentions were relatively clear, with two ambiguities being the intended accompaniment piano, organ or instruments and the identity of the poet. Recently I discovered the text of this poem in Sowerby's copy of a 1951 edition of the Oxford Book of Christian Verse, revealing the poet to be T.S. Eliot. Eliot (1888-1965), the St. Louis-born poet, critic and playwright, became a British subject and member of the Anglican Church in 1927. In 1948 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. I Have Known Two Worlds constitutes the first section of a larger pageant play which is called From 'The Rock' (not included in the much more extended version entitled Choruses from 'The Rock'). It is possible that this song was part of a projected work for chorus, soloists and orchestra which Sowerby was beginning to sketch as fulfillment of a Koussevitsky commission.
The song cycle, FROM THE HILLCREST, sets three landscapes of the changing seasons by Jeanne DeLamarter. The Hillcrest refers to a summer cottage, and the surrounding land, at the compound on Lake Michigan where both Sowerby and the DeLamarter family summered. The poems which Sowerby set in From the Hillcrest were later published in the collection Chess Game. The cycle is dedicated to the baritone, Charles Greene, a frequent guest at both the bridge games and the legendary cocktail parties at the Hillcrest. Lyric of Spring, entitled Madrigal for Spring in the collection, alternates undulating and hesitating musical gestures to capture the cautious expectancy of the first signs of spring. Pastorale for an August Night is the most impressionistic of the set. It slowly unfolds as it depicts a dramatic moonrise and the awe of those who behold it. Paean to Autumn, entitled Autumn Crescendo in the collection, begins with a turbulent thunderstorm. Suddenly the clouds break and brilliant rays of sunlight bring the formerly shrouded landscape into full autumnal glory.
THREE SONGS ON POEMS OF JOHN MASEFIELD
A wind's in the heart of me, a fire's in my heels,
I am tired of brick and stone and rumbling wagonwheels;
I hunger for the sea's edge, the limits of the land,
Where the wild old Atlantic is shouting on the sand.
Oh I'll be going, leaving the noises of the street,
To where a lifting foresailfoot is yanking at the sheet;
To a windy, tossing anchorage where yawls and ketches ride,
Oh I'll be going, going, until I meet the tide.
And first I'll hear the seawind, the mewing of the gulls,
The clucking, sucking of the sea about the rusty hulls,
The songs at the capstan in the hooker warping out,
And then the heart of me'll know I'm there or thereabout.
Oh I am tired of brick and stone, the heart of me is sick,
For windy green, unquiet sea, the realm of Moby Dick;
And I'll be going, going, from the roaring of the wheels,
For a wind's in the heart of me, a fire's in my heels.
When the last sea is sailed, when the last shallow's charted,
When the last field is reaped, and the last harvest stored,
When the last fire is out and the last guest departed,
Grant the last prayer that I shall pray, Be good to me, O Lord!
And let me pass in a night at sea, a night of storm and thunder,
In the loud crying of the wind through sail and rope and spar.
Send me a ninth great peaceful wave to drown and roll me under
To the cold tunnyfishes' home where the drowned galleons are.
And in the dim green quiet place far out of sight and hearing,
Grant [that] I may hear at whiles the wash and thresh of the seafoam
About the fine keen bows of the stately clippers steering
Towards the lone northern star and the fair ports of home.
When lambs were sporting,
Were bright with blossom.
And then I met her friend,
Who cried “She's met her end,
That voice of hers is stilled,
She was too sweet, too dear,
O Death, why leave me here
Her voice went to the bone,
THREE JOHN GALSWORTHY SONGS
I lie out here under a heather sod,
A moorstone at my head; the moor winds play above.
I lie out here.... The graveyard of their God
Was not for desperate me who died for love!
I lie out here under the sun and moon;
Across me ponies stride, the curlews cry.
I have no tombstone screed no: "Soon
To glory shall she rise!" But peace have I!
There's mating madness in the air,
Passionate, grave! The blossoms burst;
The burns run quick to lips a-thirst;
And solemn gaze young maids, heart-free.
The white clouds race, the sun rays flare
And turn to gold the pallid mist;
With greedy mouth the Spring has kissed
The wind that links the sky with sea.
The blue and lonely mountains stare,
And long to draw the blue above.
The hour is come! O Flower of Love!
I can no longer keep from thee!
THREE AMERICAN FOLKSONG ARRANGEMENTS
Go 'way, 'way, 'way from my bedside,
I'll give you back your letters,
I'll give you back your ring,
But I'll never forget my own true love
As long as songbirds sing.
I'll go tell all my brothers,
That the reason why my heart is broke
Remember, dear, that you're the one
Black is the color of my true love's hair
Black is the color of my true love's hair
Her lips are something rosy fair,
The prettiest face and the daintiest hands,
I love the grass whereon she stands.
I love my love, and well she knows
I love the grass whereon she stands.
And should her no more I see,
My life will quickly leave me.
I go, to trouble some, to mourn, to weep,
But satisfied I ne'er could sleep.
I'll write her a note in a few little lines,
I'll suffer there ten thousand times.
I'm goin' away for to stay a little while
But I'm comin' back if I go ten thousand miles.
Oh, who will tie your shoes?
And who will glove your hands?
And who will kiss your ruby lips when I am gone?
Oh, it's pappy'll tie my shoes,
And mammy'll glove my hands,
And you will kiss my ruby lips when you come back!
Oh, he's gone, he's gone away,
For to stay a little while;
But he's comin' back if he goes ten thousand miles.
Look away, look away, look away over Yandro,
On Yandro's high hill where them white doves are flyin'
From bough to bough and amatin' with their mates,
For he's gone, oh he's gone away
For to stay a little while,
But he's comin' back if he goes ten thousand miles.
I'll go build me a desrick on Yandro's high hill,
Where the wild beasts won't bother me nor hear my sad cry;
For he's gone, he's gone away for to stay a little while,
But he's comin' back if he goes ten thousand miles.
THREE SONGS FOR DONNA HARRISON
Snow Toward Evening (Melville Cane)
Suddenly the sky turned gray,
Which had been bitter and chill,
From some invisible blossoming tree
Millions of petals, cool and white,
Fell with the falling night.
© 1958, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Used by permission.
Donnycarney (James Joyce)
O, it was out by Donnycarney
When the bat flew from tree to tree
My love and I did walk together;
And sweet were the words she said to me.
Along with us the summer wind
Went murmuring - O, happily! -
But softer than the breath of summer
Was the kiss she gave to me.
On the Beach at Fontana (James Joyce)
Wind whines and whines the shingle,
The crazy pierstakes groan;
A senile sea numbers each single
From whining wind and colder
And touch his trembling fineboned shoulder,
Around us fear, descending,
And in my heart how deep unending
TWO BRITISH FOLKSONG ARRANGEMENTS
One morning, one morning, one morning in May,
I saw a fair couple amaking there way,
One was a maiden so slim and so fair,
The other a soldier, a brave volunteer.
"Good morning, good morning, good morning to thee,
O, where be thou going, my pretty lady?"
"I'm agoing awalking because it is spring,
To see waters glide and hear nightingales sing."
They hadn't been standing a moment or two
When out of his knapsack a fiddle he drew,
And the tune that he played made the valleys all ring,
'Twas fairer than music when nightingales sing.
“Pretty lady, pretty lady, 'tis time to give o'er.”
“O no, pretty soldier, pray just one tune more.
I would rather listen to the touch of your string
Than see waters glide and hear nightingales sing.
Pretty soldier, pretty soldier, would you marry me?”
“O no, pretty lady, that never could be!
A wife in old London and babies twice three,
Two wives in the army is too many for me!
I'll go back to London and stay there a year
And often I'll think of you, my dear,
And if e'er I return it will be in the spring
To see waters glide and hear nightingales sing.”
By yon bonnie banks and by yon bonnie braes,
Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomon',
Where me and my true love were ever wont to gae,
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomon',
Oh! ye'll tak' the highroad an' I'll tak' the lowroad,
An' I'll be in Scotland afore ye,
But me an' my true love will never meet again
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.
'Twas there that we parted in yon shady glen,
On the steep, steep side o' Ben Lomon',
Where in purple hue the Hieland hills we view,
And the moon comin' out in the gloamin'.
The wee birdies sing and the wild flowers spring,
And in sunshine the waters are sleepin',
But the broken heart it kens nae second Spring again,
Tho' the waefu' may cease frae their greetin'.
TWO SONGS ON POEMS OF JEANNE DE LAMARTER
And so the vivid wing is once more folded
to lie vermilion on the deep blue sky
no more this year. Instead the scarlet leaf
hangs for a moment bright against the heaven.
But not for long, O autumn, not for long -
nor less nor more of time than takes the heart
to brand with flame an unsuspecting breast
leaving a crimson scar that fades with time
but dies not completely. Fold, red wing,
and curl, red leaf, before the winter's blessing.
This is a day for walking out,
this is a day for a song and shout,
this is a day for a round-about,
This is a wind that tears the sky,
this is a wind that races by,
this is a wind to send the heart high,
Spring isn't here but it will be soon,
tonight there'll be only a piece of a moon,
but the sun is round and the whistle's at noon,
In my craft or sullen art (Dylan Thomas)
In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
Of their most secret heart.
Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.
© 1957 J.M. Dent & Sons, Ltd. Used by permission.
I Have Known Two Worlds (T. S. Eliot)
(unable to receive permission to reprint poem)
FROM THE HILLCREST (Jeanne De Lamarter)
What is this promise filling all the air,
what is the rhythm in the morning wind?
Where is the timid cloud that for a moment
drifted along the blue of a shining heaven?
There is a secret hiding in the river,
there is a message in the golden sun,
even within the earth where winter lately
spread his heavy chains of ice and snow.
There is a song in sound of passing footsteps,
there is portent in cry of winged gull,
a whispering on branches swelled with bud
of coming green, of blossom and bird-song.
Ah, the message and the subtle secret,
the whispering, the promise, the portent
all sing in unison a muted fanfare
to tell the coming of enchanting spring.
Pastorale for an August Night
the great moon rises slowly
brushing the trees with saffron
and the moon turns whiter,
riding at last into the vaulted heaven.
We walk slowly forward in the night,
Red lightning in a turquoise sky;
Autumn rain with silver fingers writes
cold signatures upon the windowpane
and the wind sends my thoughts
Harvest time lies waiting,
comes forth to touch the harvest
and all the gypsy scarlet and the gold,
the purple grape, the saffron
lie spread upon the fields,
O tree, bend down the bough,
and bright against the azure of the sky,
ROBERT OSBORNE has sung extensively throughout the United States, Europe, Russia, and Asia under such distinguished conductors as Leonard Bernstein, Michael Tilson Thomas, John Williams, Seiji Ozawa, and Dennis Russell Davies. His television appearances have been on the BBC Omnibus Series, Soviet Arts Television, and on the PBS Great Performances broadcast of the Bernstein at 70! Gala from Tanglewood. He has recorded Meredith Monk's opera Atlas on ECM, Elias Tanenbaum's Last Letters from Stalingrad on New Albion, Victor Ullmann's opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis on Arabesque, Richard Cameron-Wolfe's opera Through a Glass Darkly on Opus One, Stewart Wallace's opera Kaballah on Koch International as well as a critically acclaimed collection of choral music of Leo Sowerby on Gothic.
His operatic repertoire includes over thirty leading roles in operas by Bernstein, Blitzstein, Cimarosa, Copland, Donizetti, Mozart, Puccini, Rameau, Rossini, and Weill. He has sung in Berlin, Paris, Houston, Pittsburgh, Santa Fe and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in operatic premieres by Harry Partch, Meredith Monk, Stewart Wallace, George Rochberg, Victoria Bond and Hans Werner Henze. Mr. Osborne's extensive concert repertoire has taken him to Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Royal Albert Hall, Tchaikovsky Hall, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art appearing with the Boston, New World, Singapore, Tanglewood, Schleswig-Holstein, and Racine Symphony Orchestras. As a recitalist and chamber musician he has performed Schoenberg's Ode to Napoleon and Serenade, the American premieres of numerous Shostakovich song cycles, and Schubert's song cycles Winterreise and Schwanengesang under the auspices of the American Schubert Institute. Mr. Osborne has appeared with the Tanglewood, SchleswigHolstein, Nakamichi, USArts/Berlin, Cape May, Redwoods, Aspen and Marlboro Festivals. He holds a Docorate of Musical Arts from Yale University.
MALCOLM HALLIDAY has performed in the United States and Europe, both as a solo pianist and in collaboration with singers, instrumentalists and orchestra. He is recognized for his masterful technique, warmth and beauty of tone, and stylistic interpretations of music from many periods. As a recitalist, he has appeared at the Tanglewood and Blossom Music Festivals and has played many of the major Lieder cycles under the auspices of the American Schubert Institute. His expertise as an accompanist in art song and opera has led to engagements with the Handel and Haydn Society, the Opera Company of Boston, and the American Schubert Institute for which he is resident pianist. He has accompanied art song master classes given by Elly Ameling and Roberta Peters. Hailed by the Boston Globe as an "Eminent Artist" and "specialist on period instruments," he frequently performs with nineteenth-century pianos from museum and private collections. In 1989 he presented a recital of nineteenth-century piano music playing a 1881 Viennese Streicher at Jordan Hall in Boston. Since then he has presented numerous programs using historic instruments at such venues as Mechanics Hall and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Mr. Halliday has performed much of Leo Sowerby's piano music. He revived Sowerby's Florida Suite in 1995, giving its first complete performance in many years. This suite, as well as the suite, From the Northland, will be featured on his recording of Sowerby piano works to be released on Albany Records. Mr. Halliday holds a B.A. from Oberlin Conservatory and an M.M. from Boston University. He has studied with Paul Badura-Skoda at the Hochschüle für Musik in Germany and with Dutch pianist and musicologist Henrica Bordwin. He currently serves as Minister of Music at the historic First Congregational Church in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.
We would like to acknowledge the support and assistance of the following individuals and organizations in making this recording possible: Barbara Mallinckrodt Osborne, Ron Stalford, John Zamoida, John Yaffé, Francis Crociata, Joe Patrych, Stephen Anderson, the late Ronald Huntington, John Delorey, Donna Harrison, Patricia Hellweg Stafford, Marion Schroeder Weber, Jennifer Brown, William Trafka, George Hubbard, the Leo Sowerby Foundation, the Outreach Ministry of Pakachoag Church, Fordham University Library, St. Bartholomew's Church, the Louisville Chapter of the American Guild of Organists and the Princeton University Chapel Recital Series.
THREE SONGS ON POEMS OF JOHN MASEFIELD
Wanderer's Song, H. 296 (1948) (2:28)
One Sunny Time in May, H. 215 (1933) (3:47)
Prayer of the Seafarer, H. 209, no. 2 (1932) (5:11)
THREE SONGS ON POEMS OF JOHN GALSWORTHY
The Moor Grave, H. 190, no. 1 (1928) (3:49)
Serenity, H. 198 (1929) (2:35)
Highland Spring, H. 190, no. 2 (1928) (2:33)
THREE AMERICAN FOLKSONG ARRANGEMENTS
Go `way from my window, H. 295, no. 1 (1948) (2:56)
Black is the color of my true love's hair, H. 295, no. 2 (1948) (3:01)
He's gone away, H. 181/311 (1926/1952) (3:40)
THREE SONGS FOR DONNA HARRISON, H. 290 (1947)
Snow Toward Evening (Melville Cane) (3:04)
Donnycarney (James Joyce) (1:52)
On the Beach at Fontana (James Joyce) (2:49)
TWO BRITISH FOLKSONG ARRANGEMENTS
One morning in May, H. 295, no. 3 (1948) (1:44)
Loch Lomond, H. 210 (1932) (2:45)
TWO SONGS ON POEMS OF JEANNE DELAMARTER
For Late Autumn, H. 257 (1941) (3:55)
Early Spring Song, H. 266 (1942) (2:06)
In my craft or sullen art, H. 366 (Dylan Thomas) (1959) (6:02)
I Have Known Two Worlds, H. 450 (T.S. Eliot) (1966) (4:37)
FROM THE HILLCREST, H. 282 (Jeanne DeLamarter) (1944-46)
Pastorale for an August Night (4:36)
Songs of Leo Sowerby (1895-1968)
Robert Osborne: Bass-baritone
Malcolm Halliday: Pianist
Engineered and Edited by Joseph Patrych
Executive Production by Francis Crociata
Piano: Hamburg Steinway D, serial #386270
Recorded March 13, 14, 19, 20 and 21, 1995
at Patrych Sound Studios, New York
Mr. Osborne was recorded by two Neumann KM84 microphones channeled through a Hardy M1 microphone pre-amp into an Apogee AD500 A-to-D converter. Mr. Halliday was recorded by two Neumann KM140 microphones, sent to a Soundcraft Delta mixer, then into a Lexicon 300 A-to-D converter, where it was digitally mixed with the signal from the Apogee converter.
© 1996 Robert Osborne, Malcolm Halliday
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