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Decades ago, in an essay introducing an album of songs by American composers, I slant-quoted Otto Luening: “In a country where composers have written too many symphonies, their songs have been too little sung." “That’s because,” he would have added, “they don’t write enough of them.”
Otto’s aphorisms have stuck in the memories of his hundreds of students and uncounted friends and colleagues; they are still often heard, usually without attribution. Luening practiced what he preached: of his nearly 400 compositions, nearly 80 are songs, mostly with piano accompaniment, some with flute (which he played admirably) or chamber ensemble. There is but one symphony.
The thirty songs recorded here are representative of those Luening composed between 1917 and 1993. (Although their order is not chronological, their dates of composition are provided.) It was characteristically accommodating of Otto to have arranged for his birth in 1900, thereby simplifying the task of writers, readers, and listeners who might wish to compare his compositions with the course of musical developments in the 20th century. Because Luening was a contrarian, what he was doing stylistically was usually what most other composers were not doing at the time.
He was born into a family of musicians. His mother, a singer, claimed that her son had a repertory of fifty songs in English and German at the age of three and a half; his father — conductor, vocal coach, educator —had sung under Wagner’s direction in the Beethoven Ninth Symphony performance that celebrated the laying of the Bayreuth cornerstone in 1872! Other family members also sang. It is therefore not surprising that Otto Luening wrote songs earlier than the 1917 songs included here. The Hesse setting, included here in German and English versions, reflects the fact that the Luening family settled in Munich, Germany, in 1912; when the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, Otto escaped to Zürich, Switzerland. There he studied composition with Busoni and Jarnach and played flute in orchestras under Strauss and Nikisch.
One finds a large number of songs written between 1928 and 1942 in both the complete works and in those recorded here. This outpouring reflects in part his activities at the time as a vocal coach and opera conductor of the Eastman School Opera Company, and its successor the American Opera Company (a touring outfit dedicated to opera in English). More importantly, he married one of the singers in those companies, Ethel Codd, a spinto-coloratura, in 1927 and wrote for her voice, which he accompanied as pianist and flutist in recitals here and abroad. With their separation in 1944, Luening turned his attention primarily to instrumental and choral works. His one opera, Evangeline, with Teresa Stich-Randall in the title role, was premiered in 1948 at Columbia University. His completion of that work and the preparation and conducting of it and many other premieres of American opera in the Forties (including Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Medium and Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein’s The Mother of Us All) — not to speak of his Columbia teaching duties and his selfless service to organizations promoting American composers — encroached on his composing time.
In the Fifties Luening’s pioneering compositions in electronic music (tape-music) startled listeners accustomed to his relatively conservative style and unacquainted with his early quasi twelve-tone works and his inquiring musical intelligence. His easy oscillation between the seemingly simple and the “avant-garde” resembled the work of his contemporaries Henry Cowell and Percy Grainger.
The songs from first to last are “seemingly simple,” generally consonant, some of the common chords distantly related and voiced uncommonly, according to his notions of “acoustic harmony.” The vocal lines and their accompaniments pay their respects to the masters of German Lieder, Robert Franz in particular. Most are short, on the average hardly two minutes.
The Joyce Cycle from 1993 is an appropriate cyclic close, for Luening and James Joyce had been friends in Zürich 75 years earlier. While writing Ulysses, Joyce directed the English Players, for which he hired the teen-age Luening as stage manager and actor in juvenile roles. He often read passages of his novel to Luening for his comments on his musical allusions.
Another Luening aphorism is that all composers could be put into two categories: those who are lyric and those who are not. Although Otto was to compose well into his 97th year, he wrote no more songs. But perhaps vocal music was never far from his mind. One of his last pieces, a duet for violin and cello, dated January 1, 1996 and dedicated to me, is titled appropriately A Box at the Opera.
— Jack Beeson
Soprano JUDITH BETTINA, hailed for her proficiency in a wide range of musical styles, has appeared as guest soloist with such orchestras as the Houston Symphony, San Francisco Symphony and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. She has appeared with chamber groups throughout the United States and Europe, including guest appearances with the Bach Chamber Soloists, Continuum, New York Philomusica, The New Music Consort, The Geneva Music Festival, The Sequoia String Quartet, Speculum Musicae, Chamber Music West, San Francisco Contemporary Chamber Players, the Monadnock Music Festival, and invitational concerts at the Library of Congress. Highly acclaimed for her performances of contemporary music, Bettina has had works written for her by Mel Powell, Tobias Picker, Chester Biscardi, David Rakowski, Richard Karpen, and David Olan. She has premiered works by Charles Wuorinen, Milton Babbitt, Lori Dobbins, Richard Danielpour, George Tsontakis, and Vivian Fine. Her recent performances have included Song Offerings by Jonathan Harvey with Ensemble 21, The Rain in the Trees by Tobias Picker with the Chautauqua Symphony, Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and works by Stravinsky with conductor Robert Craft, Das Buch der hängenden Gärten by Schoenberg at The Bard Festival, and La vie en rouge by Edison Denisov with Boston Musica Viva. Bettina’s other CRI recordings include After Great Pain by David Olan (CD 565),The Gift of Life by Chester Biscardi (CD 686) and David Rakowski’s Three Songs on Poems of Louise Bogan (CD 820). Judith Bettina graduated from the Manhattan School of Music. She has been on the faculty of Stanford University and the MacPhail Center for the Arts.
Pianist JAMES GOLDSWORTHY has performed throughout Europe, Israel, Japan, Canada, and the United States, including broadcasts on Austrian National Television, the California cable television show Grand Piano, BBC radio, and Minnesota Public Radio. While a Fulbright scholar in Vienna, Goldsworthy performed in one of the Musikverein 175th anniversary celebration concerts given in the Brahms Saal, and concertized in Vienna, Baden, and Spital am Semmering, Austria. More recently, he performed in recitals given at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, and in Le Sax concert hall in Achère, France. He has accompanied the singers Judith Bettina, Benjamin Luxon, Marion Kilcher, Véronique Dubois, and Edith Zitelli in recital, and concertized with violinist Lilo Kantorowicz-Glick, and violist Jacob Glick. He has premiered works by Milton Babbitt, Chester Biscardi, David Olan, Tobias Picker, Mel Powell, David Rakowski, Cheng Yong Wang, and Amnon Wolman. He has taught at Goshen College, Stanford University, and the University of St. Thomas. He is presently an Associate Dean at Westminster Choir College of Rider University. His recordings with Judith Bettina of Chester Biscardi’s The Gift of Life and David Rakowski’s Three Songs on Poems of Louise Bogan appear on CRI.
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