Between The Bliss And Me … Songs
to poems of Emily Dickinson
Aaron COPLAND (1900-1990)
Nature, the gentlest mother [4.21]
When they come back [2.11]
Sleep is supposed to be [2.47]
Heart, we will forget him [2.15]
The world feels dusty [1.57]
I felt a funeral in my brain [2.18]
The chariot [3.19]
Why do they shut me out of heaven? [2.11]
Going to Heaven! [3.07] (all 1950)
Lee HOIBY (1926-2011)*
The shining place [1.37]
A letter [3.04]
How the waters closed [2.11]
Wild nights! [2.24]
There came a wind like a bugle [2.50] (all 1995)
John DUKE (1899-1984)
Bee! I’m expecting you! (1968) [1.06]
Arthur FARWELL (1872-1952)
The butterfly, Op.108/2 [1.43]
Aristocracy, Op.108/7 [0.38]
I’m nobody! Who are you?, Op.108/8 [1.14]
Wild nights!, Op.112/1 [0.44]
The sabbath, Op.105/3 [1.35]
Ernst BACON (1898-1990)
To make a prairie [1.10]
It’s all I have to bring [1.17]
And this of all my hopes [1.51] (all 1944)
Lori LAITMAN (b.1955)
I gained it so (1997) [1.42]
Richard PEARSON-THOMAS (b.1957)
I never saw a moor (1992) [2.26]
Scott GENDEL (b.1977)
Bring me the sunset [5.05]
Wild nights! [1.36] (both 2006)
Julia Faulkner (soprano), Martha Fischer (piano) except *Lee
Hoiby (piano)
rec. Mill’s Concert Hall, University of Wisonsin-Madison, 14-16
March 2012 and *30-31 May 2007
NAXOS AMERICAN CLASSICS 8.559731 [58.37]
It is not unusual for song recitals on CD to feature
the work of a single poet, but this is generally in the context of settings
by a single composer - as for example in Finzi’s settings of Hardy.
More unexpected is a disc containing settings of words by a single poet
but in songs by a number of different composers - one can only readily
think of one example, when Hyperion issued a recital some years ago
demonstrating the approach of many different English composers to the
words of Housman. Even so, the idea is a good one, revealing many facets
of the poet as well as affording the opportunity to display the work
of composers whose songs might not warrant a complete CD but throw a
valuable sidelight onto the approach of other composers to the same
or similar material. The poetry of Emily Dickinson (1830-86) has been
a major influence on many American composers over the years, in much
the same way as Housman inspired a whole generation of English composers
during the twentieth century. In fact there have been a couple of previous
anthologies of such settings issued in 2003 under the title of The
poetess sings (and another, entitled Make me a picture of the
sun, is due for release during 2013), but it is a testimony
to the number of Dickinson settings available from which a selection
can be made that there is very little duplication between the contents
of the discs.
This CD in fact focuses on the work of two major composers, including
a complete performance of Lee Hoiby’s cycle The shining place
which seems to have been recorded at the same time as an earlier Naxos
CD of Hoiby songs but for which room could not be found on the original
issue. Hoiby’s music deserves to be much better known - his operatic
setting of The Tempest is truer to Shakespeare than Thomas Adès’s
acclaimed treatment, with the text in the latter recast into rhyming
couplets. He was shamefully neglected during most of his lifetime, only
finally gaining a degree of recognition shortly before his death. Here
he is an excellent accompanist in his own music, inflecting the notes
with the understanding that only a composer can bring; and the music
itself is very beautiful indeed, with a marvellously stirring piano
peroration to the final song.
The other composer given the principal share of this disc is Aaron Copland,
and we have here nine of the twelve settings of Emily Dickinson which
he made in 1950. It is a pity perhaps that we could not have been given
the complete cycle - there would have been room on the CD. These settings
are all gems, written in Copland’s most carefully considered neo-classical
style, before he embraced twelve-tone writing, with a cool treatment
of the words. This is probably one of the greatest of all American song
cycles, worthy to be considered alongside the best of Britten. The setting
of Heart, we will forget him has an aching tenderness that bruises
gently but with passion.
Most of the other works on this disc have much more rarity value. Of
the composers featured, Arthur Farwell and Ernst Bacon made something
of a speciality of settings of Emily Dickinson (some forty and seventy
settings respectively). Farwell is the earliest composer represented
here, and his style is somewhat reminiscent of his contemporary Amy
Beach (1869-1944) with a slight flavouring of Charles Tomlinson Griffes
(1884-1920); but a setting like I’m nobody! Who are you?
has a more elliptical and modern approach to the words, and his treatment
of Wild nights! (one of three on this disc) is the shortest and
most direct of all. Bacon’s settings of Dickinson have featured
on a number of previous releases - including one with the composer himself
as pianist - but I can’t find that And this of all my hopes
has ever been recorded before, and it is a particularly lovely setting
with a lambent piano accompaniment.
John Duke is represented by a single setting, a lively but not conspicuously
memorable setting of a colloquy between a bee and a fly. We also have
a single song extracted from a cycle Between the bliss and me
by Lori Laitman, oddly enough the only female composer here, and one
by Richard Pearson-Thomas; both are beautifully poised little settings,
the Pearson-Thomas having a particularly romantic warmth. Scott Gendel
provides two songs from his cycle Forgotten light, commissioned
and first performed by Julia Faulkner in 2006, and these are the most
recent items here. The song Bring me the sunset is the longest
single item on the disc, and is a lovely piece with a discursive vocal
line and an accompaniment of jewelled Britten-like precision; his setting
of Wild nights!, on the other hand, is curiously uninvolved by
comparison with the treatment of the same words by Farwell and Hoiby.
We are not given texts, but then the poems of Emily Dickinson may be
readily found elsewhere and Julia Faulkner’s diction is usually
good enough to enable us to distinguish the words. Unfortunately we
are not given much information either on exactly when these songs were
written - I have provided such information as I could find above - which
would be helpful in providing historical context for some of the more
obscure composers included here. Julia Faulkner’s own note states
that she has “simply chosen songs that I love,” and that
is amply borne out by her involved and intense performances. Martha
Fischer copes admirably with the sometimes quite elaborately conceived
accompaniments, and is well placed in the recording.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
