Art Songs

Two Bittersweet Ballads Teamed Up in a Melancholy Medley

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Source: Pixabay

As I write this post it’s only a little over a week until Labor Day, the official end of summer. Fall is my favorite time of year: I love the colors, the smells, and the crisp air. I remember so vividly how exciting it was for me as a kid to go shopping for school supplies with my mom. There was the pristine Big Chief tablet (a paper one with lines, not an iPad) and new pencils. Maybe even an unsmudged pink eraser. Everything seemed possible.

But for some autumn is a sad season, as it starts the inevitable slide toward winter with its darkness and cold. Two songs with lyrics by Johnny Mercer portray this viewpoint: “Autumn Leaves” and “When October Goes.” They’ve been put together in a lovely medley by the modern composer/arranger Paul Langford, a true powerhouse whose arrangements I’ve sung myself. Both of these songs have a fascinating backstory.

Let’s take a look first at “Autumn Leaves.” Its first iteration was as a French art song that appeared in a 1946 film. Originally titled Les Feuilles Mortes, which translates to “the dead leaves,” it caught the attention of Mercer’s co-worker at Capitol Records, Mickey Goldsen. He begged Mercer, who by this time had become an established lyricist, to put the rather nuanced and subtle French wording into English. Mercer eventually obliged, producing something much more simple and straightforward than the original and which sold very well. Mercer said later that he made more money from “Autumn Leaves” than from any other song he wrote—and that includes such mega-hits as “Moon River” and  “That Old Black Magic,” as well as many, many others. While Mercer was capable of composing melodies, he preferred writing lyrics—in particular, being given a tune and then working to find words to fit it. In “Leaves,” we’re told a very simple story in quite sparse words: there was a summer romance, but it ended with the beloved’s departure that took place (probably) in autumn, since the speaker’s sense of loss is especially strong when the leaves start falling. It doesn’t hurt that the melody is truly lovely, composed by the Hungarian-born Joseph Kosma for the original film music.

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“Swifter than Flame”–Elaine Hagenberg Hits Another One Out of the Park and Up into the Stars

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Image by carloyuen from Pixabay

This latest piece (as of June 2024) from Elaine Hagenberg perfectly embodies her style: the use of an unfamiliar and enigmatic text and dramatic, sweeping musical lines: “Swifter than Flame,” for SATB chorus with the text from a poet by Carl John Bostelmann, who wrote primarily in the 1920’s and 30’s. I don’t do musical analysis in these posts  and so will simply say that she manages harmonic sweetness that never topples over into syrupiness. There’s an edge there, a drive. My own choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale, has sung a number of her pieces and also participated in the commissioning consortium for her first major-length work, Illuminare, with Hagenberg herself participating in one of our rehearsals during concert week. Those of us who were privileged to be present that evening will never forget it.

I was very intrigued by the lyrics and wanted first of all to know more about the author, Carl John Bostelmann. He is perhaps best known as having written a behind-the-scenes look at John D. Rockefeller, Neighbor John, in cooperation with the photographer Curt E. Engelbrecht, who was allowed unusual access to the usually camera-shy Rockefeller. Bostelmann was also involved with various historical survey projects. For my purposes here, though, I’ve found that he published at least four volumes of poetry, a couple of which are available on Google Books, and that his work appeared during his lifetime in a number of poetry magazines. “Swifter than Flame,” however, doesn’t show up in any of these available sources.

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Which Came First, the Symphony or the Song? (Or Is It a Spiritual?)

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(Note: The Cherry Creek Chorale in the Denver area will be performing this lovely piece in its “American Songbook V” concerts on May 17 and 18, 2024. If you live in the area, make your plans to attend! Tickets may be purchased on this page or at the door.)

Haven’t you vaguely always understood that the second movement of Dvořák’s “New World” symphony was based on an American folk tune? I sure have. Turns out that, like most vague understandings, it’s not true. Dvořák wrote the tune himself; he said to one inquiring conductor that ““I tried to write only in the spirit of those national American melodies.”1 You can assign some kind of folksy charm to the horn solo in Movement #2, but it’s not necessarily American charm:

It has been said that Dvořák’s themes in his symphony were inspired by American folk melodies, especially Afro-American. But his themes are just as similar to Czech or Bohemian folk music and probably came from his own country’s music tradition.2

So all of that is well and good, but my focus in this post is on the words to the song that were written using that horn solo theme in the “Largo” movement. Such a reputable outlet as National Public Radio says that the words were written by Harry Burleigh, a Black composer whom Dvořák befriended while in New York. But they were actually written by another American protégé of Dvořák, a student of his named William Arms Fisher, who was White but who chose to write the lyrics in what he perceived to be some sort of African-American dialect. (Note my somewhat skeptical tone here.) So it’s “jes” instead of “just” and “’spectin’” rather than “expectin’” or “expecting.” And “goin’” is written as “gwine.”

As the song became more popular and mainstream, the dialect was considerably softened or omitted. In fact, although I haven’t been able to find a reproduction of the full original sheet music, I did find an image of the first page, which says at the bottom: “When desired the text may be sung without dialect.”

Here’s what Fisher himself had to say about African-American spirituals in general, in an introduction to an anthology of spirituals that he produced:

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A Bouquet of Roses from Morten Lauridsen

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Image by Andreas Lischka from Pixabay

Lauridsen and His Love of Poetry

Choral composers are always on the hunt for suitable texts. Unless you’re writing something along the lines of the “Humming Chorus” from Madame Butterly or Rachmaninoff’s “Vocalise,” you have to find suitable words. As I’ve outlined in other material, choral texts can have many sources: You may be commissioned to write a piece with the proviso that you use a certain text, or you may love a certain poem and decide to set it to music, or you may have an idea for a melody and look for words that fit, or you may ask someone to write the text for you, or you may write it yourself.

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Two Hagenberg Hits

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Image by 12019 from Pixabay

My own choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale, has performed quite of few of Elaine Hagenberg’s choral compositions, and we were privileged to be part of the original commissioning consortium for her first extended work, Illuminare. She burst on the classical choral world in 2013 with “I Will Be a Child of Peace,” an arrangement of a Shaker hymn, and hasn’t looked back since. (When Ms. Hagenberg came to one of our final rehearsals for Illuminare she graciously submitted to some Q&A, and of course one question was “How did you get started composing?” She said she’d always had a lot of hobbies and decided to try composing. Well . . . I think her getting started as a composer was a little more challenging than, say, trying out that first crocheting pattern. But we were all charmed by her self-deprecation.)

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Gwyneth Walker as Poet and Composer in “Refuge”

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Image by Aline Berry from Pixabay

I am reminded of this quotation: “It is not enough to be right. You must prevail.” Let me rephrase that wording to fit here: “It is not enough to be creative. You must be heard.” Gwyneth Walker certainly fits into that principle, as she has become a successful composer first through talent (of course) but then through sheer hard work and business savvy. She has a very interesting website that includes some of the interviews and lectures she’s given over the years, and I was especially struck by her essay “Yes, This Is a Business!” The entire piece is well worth reading; here I’ll quote just one definitive statement: “I feel that a composer cannot live in his/her own world entirely. Music is a communicative and social language. It requires composers, performers and audiences. And all three need each other.”

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An Italian writes Spanish songs for guitar and chorus

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various images of the composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, accessed via the website https://mariocastelnuovotedesco.com/new-light-on-intellectuals-who-fled-fascist-italy/

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco Falls in Love with Spain and the Guitar

How likely is it that an 18-year-old Italian Jewish boy was given a trip to Spain as a graduation gift by his parents and fell in love with the country even though he never returned? That seems to have indeed happened to the young Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, so much so that “It was in Spain, as nowhere else that he felt at home…the experience left him with deep impressions that would one day be reflected in his music.”

Indeed, Castelnuovo-Tedesco is a completely fascinating character, who lived a remarkable life even as he dealt with the traumas of bad health, anti-Semitism, and a total uprooting of his life. There is no way I can deal with his biography in any thorough way at all, but I’d encourage you to at least read the Wikipedia article about him if he sounds interesting to you. (But I will include the tidbit here that his hyphenated last name came about because of an inheritance requirement put on his grandfather. You’ll see in the following material that sometimes I just use the initials of his last name.) It’s fascinating to note that a chance meeting with the Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia at a music festival in Venice sparked C-T’s eventual composition of over 100 works for the guitar, an instrument he knew nothing about and had never played before this point. But for some reason Segovia asked the composer to write a piece for him. C-T said yes at the time, but later had second thoughts:

Dear Segovia: It would be a great pleasure to write something for you, because I have had the occasion to admire you many times. However, I must confess that I do not know your instrument and I do not have the remotest idea on how to compose for it.

But the great guitarist persisted, encouraging the composer to study other works for the guitar, and eventually C-T sent along his “Variazioni attraverso I secoli” (“Variations Across the Centuries”). Segovia replied that: “It is the first time I have met a musician who understands immediately how to write for the guitar.”

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The story behind the Whitacre/Plitmann “Five Hebrew Love Songs”

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The German town of Speyer, where the Five Hebrew Love Songs was first performed. Image accessed via Pixabay.

Sometimes the genesis of a now-popular piece can be almost unbearably poignant in light of the present. Such is the case with the popular Five Hebrew Love Songs with music by Eric Whitacre and lyrics by Hila Plitmann. Both composer and lyricist have been extremely open about the meaning of the words. Here, for example, is a relevant paragraph from Whitacre’s website, describing how the songs came about in 1996 as the result of a request from the violinist Friedemann Eichhorn:

Because we were appearing as a band of traveling musicians, ‘Friedy’ asked me to write a set of troubadour songs for piano, violin and soprano. I asked [then-girlfriend] Hila (who was born and raised in Jerusalem) to write me a few ‘postcards’ in her native tongue, and a few days later she presented me with these exquisite and delicate Hebrew poems. I set them while we vacationed in a small skiing village in the Swiss Alps, and we performed them [Plitmann sang the soprano part] for the first time a week later in Speyer.

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William Butler Yeats’ Dreams of the Countess Kathleen and Her Blessed Spirit

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Dante Gabriel Rossetti The Blessed Damozel.jpg
“The Blessed Damozel” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti; image accessed via Wikipedia.

William Butler Yeats, the great Irish poet of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, was obsessed with Irish legends and the occult. The story behind his poem “A Dream of a Blessed Spirit” neatly encapsulates both ideas, since it concerns a mythic Irish character, the Countess Kathleen O’Shea, who sold all her goods and finally her soul to help her starving tenants. Because the Countess had given her soul for the good of others and not to enrich herself, God refused to let her be damned and instead brought her to heaven. Yeats also wrote a whole play about her, but it’s safe to say that it’s never performed these days. The poem, on the other hand, has provided the text for a lovely art song that is quite popular. My own group, the Cherry Creek Chorale in the Denver metro area, has programmed it several times. I found the words to be fascinating and puzzling:

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The True Story Behind the Text of “Even When He Is Silent”

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Image accessed via website humanistseminarian.com; no attribution given

Who wrote the text of “Even When He Is Silent” and under what circumstances? Do these questions matter?

I believe in the sun even when it’s not shining.
I believe in love when I feel it not
I believe in God even when he is silent.

Found written on a concentration camp wall after World War II

That’s the text used in the lovely piece that my own choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale, is performing/has performed in October 2022, a setting written in 2011 by the Norwegian composer Kim André Arnesen. Given my own fascination with history I was curious to find out a little bit more about these words: Which concentration camp? Who might have written them? My internet diving turned up some surprising facts about the lines, facts that only deepened and strengthened their power.

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