Richard HUNDLEY
(b.1931)
Will There Really Be A Morning? *
Leo SMIT
(1921-1999)
Papa above! #
They shut me up in Prose#
Jake HEGGIE
(b.1961)
The Road To Bethlehem*
I would not paint a picture*
Lori LAITMAN
(b.1955)
They Might Not Need Me*
If I*
Ernst BACON
(1898-1990)
It’s all I have to bring#
Savior#
James MACDERMID
If I can stop one heart from breaking#
Simon SARGON
(b.1938)
I Died For Beauty*
Aaron COPLAND
(1900-1990)
Why do they shut me out of Heaven? #
Celius DOUGHERTY
(1902-1986)
New England Pastoral#
Libby LARSEN
(b.1950)
In this short life*
Lee HOIBY
(b.1926)
Wild Nights*
Russell SCHUTZ-WIDMAR
(b.1944)
The Journey*
Etta PARKER
Have you got a Brook in Your Little
Heart?#
Richard Pearson
THOMAS (b.1957)
I never saw a Moor#
Peter ASKIM
(b.1971)
To Make A Prairie*
John DUKE
(1899-1984)
New feet within my garden go*
Dan WELCHER
(b.1948)
Go Slow, My Soul*
Martha SULLIVAN
(b.1964)
Good Morning – Midnight*
William JORDAN
(b.1954)
The Bustle in a House+
Dear Cousins (letter) +
Gerald GINSBURG
(b.1932)
Ample Make This Bed#
Virginia Dupuy has
compiled this intriguing collection
of settings of Emily Dickinson’s poetry
in a recital that spans a century and
embraces both the parlour and boogie-woogie.
If you think Dickinson’s poetry hardly
the medium for such outlandish musical
transformation, maybe you should lend
a jaundiced ear to this disc and prepare
to have prejudices challenged. As the
examination and reclamation of Dickinson’s
status in American letters has grown
so have settings of her poetry; a barely
credible thousand musical settings have
been written since 1992 – this in addition
to the 1,600 odd that had been previously
catalogued. The first such documented
song was Etta Parker’s 1896 Have
you got a Brook in Your Little Heart?
So there was certainly interest
pre-Copland even if his have remained
the pre-eminent settings.
For all the strangeness,
the otherworldly detached quality, many
composers find the romantic trajectory
of Dickinson’s poems the most susceptible
lure. Richard Hundley certainly did
in the first of the settings. But we
also find the strange, elusive quality
explored by so astute a musician as
Copland’s friend Leo Smit whose They
shut me up in Prose is precisely
calibrated to explore the unsettling
juxtapositions inherent in the poem.
Of course someone like Lori Laitman
feels no constraints of formal style;
a tangy, tango vamp is the order of
They Might Not Need Me – with
an injection of lyricism as well. Ernest
Bacon lays stark chords in Savior,
the questioning of the poem taking
on imploring insistence. Simon Sargon
opens I Died for Beauty with
a dramatic flourish but he carves out
the sensitive heart with understanding.
I took to Libby Larsen’s
scampering and athletic In this short
life in a big way and also to the
powerful evocation of terror in Russell
Schutz-Widmar’s The Journey (naughtily
programmed slap bang next to that parlour
setting by Etta Parker). As I listened
to Richard Pearson Thomas’ I never
saw a Moor – a lyrical and beautiful
setting with a splendid melismatic ending
– it struck me as a perfect piece for
the American counter tenor David Daniels,
one of whose recital programmes it would
worthily grace. Superb song. By far
the longest setting is that by Peter
Askim; To Make a Prairie is exploratory
yet concise, not such a paradox as it
seems. It’s Martha Sullivan who digs
out the boogie for Good Morning –
Midnight (good fun – I doubt if
Yeats could take it, much less Housman;
Auden, maybe). Gerald Ginsburg explores
another aspect in his hymnal setting
of Ample Make This Bed and William
Jordan daringly sets one of Dickinson’s
letters in Dear Cousins, which
works.
This disc thrives on
the contrasts that Dickinson’s poetry
provokes and the evocations of time
and place. Stylistically these composers
cleave, generally, to the mainstream-lyric,
some Copland inspired certainly, others
utilising other forms of musical Americana
to make their point. The three pianists
(including composer Jordan) are fine
ambassadors. Dupuy herself has programmed
the songs with obvious understanding.
The acoustic is rather swimmy and unfocused
and it hinders Dupuy’s diction, which
is not especially good. I confess I
find her voice somewhat hard-edged and
strained at the top but she sings musically.
Jonathan Woolf
Virginia Dupuy (mezzo soprano) 
