My first substantial
encounter with the music of Judith Lang
Zaimont came with the CD devoted to
her in Naxos’s series from the Milken
Archive of Jewish Music (see review).
I particularly enjoyed some of the writing
for solo voice on that CD, so I was
pleased to find myself listening to
this collection, carrying the title
‘The Vocal-Chamber Art’ and made up
of five groups of songs. All were written
between 1974 and 1980, and all appear
to have been previously issued on LP:
Chansons Nobles et Sentimentales,
Two Songs for Soprano and Harp
and The Magic World all appeared
on the Leonarda label, Greyed Sonnets
and Songs of Innocence on the
Golden Crest label.
The earliest cycles
here are Chansons Nobles et Sentimentales
and Songs of Innocence. Chansons
sets five French texts, one each by
Baudelaire and Rimbaud framing three
by Verlaine. Some of Zaimont’s accompaniments
are busy, as in ‘Claire de Lune’ (Verlaine),
the central song of the cycle; others
are sparse, as in ‘Chanson d’Automne’
(Verlaine), the second song. In ‘Claire
de Lune’ there is, fittingly enough,
a glance at Debussy. The fourth song,
a setting of Verlaine’s ‘Dans l’interminable
ennui de la pleine’ makes intriguing
and effective use of the plucking of
the piano strings and in the final song,
Rimbaud’s ‘Départ’, an insistent
two-note descending pattern on the piano
complements a bleak vocal line.
‘Songs of Innocence’
sets four poems by Blake – ‘Introduction’
(to the ‘Songs of Innocence’), ‘The
Garden of Love’ (from ‘Songs of Experience’),
‘I asked a thief to steal me a peach’
and ‘How sweet I roam’d’. The two outer
songs are duets for soprano and tenor
(with some effective imitative writing,
especially in ‘Introduction’) accompanied
by flute, harp and cello. The second
song is given to soprano and the same
instrumental forces; the third is for
tenor and harp alone. In the last, marked
by some lovely interplay between the
two voices, a surprise is sprung when
the setting closes, with a sudden increase
in tempo, by returning – musically and
verbally – to the last two lines of
‘Introduction’. The cycle is knitted
together and an astute point is made
about the ambiguity even of that first
poem. Even that first song involves
a movement (a degradation?) from wordless
music, to music with words and, finally
to the written word (without music).
It is not by accident that the child
speaker of that poem declares (my italics)
"I stain’d the water clear".
Greyed Sonnets
sets five poems by women poets - not
all of them sonnets in the modern sense
of the word. Three are by Edna St. Vincent
Millay and one each by Sara Teasdale
and Christina Rossetti. All are love
poems – poems, though, of love in the
shadow of pain and death, of unhappy
memories and of the desire to forget.
The central song of the five is Millay’s
sonnet ‘A Season’s Song’, in which Zaimont
uses some quite complex cross-rhythms.
It is framed, at beginning and end of
the cycle by songs expressive of the
feelings of women whose loves have died.
The interaction of seasonal cycles and
the non-renewing pattern of individual
human life and death on earth govern
this subtle cycle, a cycle which once
again confirms the astuteness of Zaimont’s
eye for suitable poetic texts.
In her Two Songs
for soprano and harp Zaimont sets
texts by Adrienne Rich (‘At Dusk in
Summer’) and Thomas Hardy (‘The Ruined
Maid’). The harp is no mere accompanist,
in any limiting sense, here. There are
extended solo passages for the instrument,
some of them rhapsodic, some of them
fierce and clipped. The writing for
the voice is demanding - and is well
handled here by Beatrice Bramson though
her Wessex accents may, inevitably,
be a little less than wholly convincing
to English ears! The setting of Hardy’s
poem is particularly effective, especially
in the way it distinguishes the two
voices of Hardy’s dialogue, the "raw"
country girl visiting town and her old
friend from the country, now dressed
in all the finery of the town, the ‘reward’
of being "ruin’d". This is
an attractive piece, on a par with more
familiar settings of Hardy by English
composers.
The works discussed
so far are, musically speaking, very
much outgrowths of the European tradition.
With The Magic World Zaimont
enters a more distinctively ‘American’
world. The texts – there are six songs
- are all taken from American Indian
sources. Though there are only a few
musical borrowings from Amerindian sources
- the vocal phrasing largely remains
‘western’ - Zaimont creates an overall
idiom quite different from that in the
earlier pieces on this CD. This is partly
due to the battery of percussion instruments,
which are wielded by the singer as well
as by the percussionist; the piano strings
are also struck with mallets at one
point. The results are powerful and
striking - no pun intended. It would
be wrong to talk, in The Magic World,
of singer and accompanists – the voice
is one of several ‘voices’ in a complex
musical texture, rich in evocative sounds.
The third of the six songs is a ‘Storm
Song’ – "The whirlwind! The whirlwind!
/ Cover the earth with great rains,
/ Cover the earth with lightnings, /
Let thunder drum over all the earth,
/ Let thunder drum over all the six
directions of the earth". Zaimont’s
music does it musical justice. An interesting
and distinctive song-cycle.
Some performances –
inevitably – are better than others.
I was particularly taken by the soprano
of Berenice Bramson and the baritone
of David Arnold. But none of the performances
are less than adequate. The sound quality
is a little dated, but is never a serious
liability. Full texts and, where necessary,
translations are provided.
Enjoyable, intelligent
music; word-setting which demonstrates
a consistent perceptiveness as regards
the meaning and shape of the words,
without ever forfeiting the proper liberties
of the composer. If you like modern
song, this is a CD well worth hearing.
Glyn Pursglove
1
Elena Tyminski (soprano); Judith Lang Zaimont
(piano) 
for
details
