Resounding Verse – Details, episodes & analysis

This episode explores the first song in a cycle I assembled from stand-alone songs by Pauline Decker—using curation as a form of advocacy. 

It features a world-premiere recording of the song by tenor James Gilchrist and pianist Jocelyn Freeman. A recording of the entire song cycle, also featuring mezzo-soprano Katie Bray, can be found on my website Art Song Augmented. The score to the cycle is available via ClarNan Editions, a division of Classical Vocal Reprints.

For an account of the creation of this cycle, see my essay "Love Letters" from the Women's Song Forum.

Das Blatt im Buche

Anastasius Grün

*Ich seh’ eine alte Dame,

Die ein altes Büchlein hat,

Es liegt in dem alten Buche

Ein altes, dürres Blatt.

So dürr sind wohl auch die Hände,

Die’s einst im Lenz ihr gepflückt.

Was mag wohl die Alte haben,

Sie weint, wenn sie’s erblickt?

The Leaf in the Book

*I see an old woman

Who has a small, old book,

In the old book lies

An old, dried leaf.

The hands that once picked it for her in springtime

Are likely just as dry.

Whatever could be amiss with the old woman,

She weeps whenever she sees it?

(translation by Sharon Krebs)

* The original first line of Grün's poem is "Ich hab' eine alte Muhme" (I have an old aunt). I changed it to "Ich seh' eine alte Dame" (I see an old woman).

I head back to university teaching tomorrow—and I know many teachers and students who are already back at it. In honor of this back-to-school season, here's an episode on a wild and wonderful song by New-York-based composers Lainie Fefferman and Jascha Narveson. In addition to composing a wide variety of music as individual artists, they are part of a synth-pop duo called The Beverage Station. The duo will release a full album, including this song, on May 30, 2025, from Gold Bolus Recordings. 


Labor Day
Lainie Fefferman

Brand-new faces
Familiar halls
Tracking paces
Feel it in my throat

Bones break
Back aches
I could punch through walls

And then there's you

Heart explosions
Arms aglow
Big emotions
Pack up its time to go

Hours come
Seconds go
Cut to my fun walk home

Where there is you

Familiar faces
Brand-new halls
Making spaces
Sharing all I love

Calm comes
Back stroke
Keeping tallies of smiles and cheers

I know I've lost what I'm doing here

Carolyn Forché's 46-page poem "On Earth" forms the basis for a song cycle called The Blue Hour, which was composed by five women—Caroline Shaw, Shara Nova, Rachel Grimes, Angelica Negrón, and Sarah Kirkland Snider—and just released on CD this month by Nonesuch and New Amsterdam Records.

This episode looks at one of Caroline Shaw's contributions to the cycle, a song that embraces Bach and plainchant and, in just over three minutes, captures the immensity of time and the cosmos.

The episode features a recording of the song by the chamber ensemble A Far Cry, with Shara Nova.

You can find the score to The Blue Hour here.

Please also check out my episode on Caroline Shaw's "A Gradual Dazzle."

Firmament
an excerpt from Carolyn Forché's "On Earth"

firmament, fissure, flare stars, frottage

fragments from the Second Brandenburg
fresh wind of the linens
from a gloved hand a flaming bottle
from chance to chance, event to event
from earth to satellite, event to event
from our last train ride through the ricefields
from the cathedral comes Kyrie

Francis Jammes's poem depicts two lovers who sit on a bench, alone together under the shade of overhanging branches. But it's not clear if the scene is real or imaginary. In her setting of the text, Lili Boulanger heightens the poem's sense of mystery—and also the poetic speaker's anxiety that the blissful moment may only be a figment of his imagination.

You can find the score to Boulanger's song here.

The episode features the a recording of the song by tenor Nicholas Phan and pianist Myra Huang, from their CD Clairières: Songs by Lili and Nadia Boulanger.

Learn more about Boulanger's songs, access her scores, and hear another performance by Phan and Huang on my website Art Song Augmented, an online forum devoted to songs by underrepresented composers.

Nous nous aimerons tant
by Francis Jammes

Nous nous aimerons tant que nous tairons nos mots,
en nous tendant la main, quand nous nous reverrons.
Vous serez ombragée par d'anciens rameaux
sur le banc que je sais où nous nous assoirons.
Donc nous nous assoirons sur ce banc, tous deux seuls.
D'un long moment, ô mon amie, vous n'oserez...
Que vous me serrez douce et que je tremblerai...

We will love each other so much that we won't speak 
but just stretch out our hands to each other when we see each other again. 
You will be in the shadow of ancient branches, 
on the bench where I know we will sit. 
So we'll sit on that bench, alone together.
For a long moment, o my sweetheart, you won't dare... 
How sweet you will be to me, and how I will tremble...

Thomas Walsh's poem and Mary Turner Salter's setting of it capture the moment between day and night—and the desire to linger in that moment as long as possible.

The episode features the first-ever recording of Mary Turner Salter's "Afterglow," performed by soprano Camille Ortiz and pianist Gustavo Castro and engineered by Joseph Wenda. I commissioned the recording for Art Song Augmented, my website devoted to art songs by underrepresented composers. Learn more about Salter's songs, access her song scores, and hear three other performances by Ortiz and Castro on her Art Song Augmented page.

You can find the score to Salter's song here and a video recording here.

Afterglow
by Thomas Walsh

Over the orchard one great star;
The mellow moon—; and the harvest done;
And the cheek of the river crimsoned far
From the kiss of the vanished sun.

Nathaniel Bellows’ poem and Sarah Kirkland Snider's haunting setting of it—from her song cycle Unremembered—revisit the site of a childhood trauma and meditate on innocence and the mechanisms of memory.  

The performance of the song features vocalists Padma Newsome, DM Stith, and Shara Worden, and the Unremembered Orchestra (members of ACME, Alarm Will Sound, ICE, The Knights, and Sō Percussion), conducted by Edwin Outwater.

In the episode I discuss Nathaniel Bellows' illustration that accompanies his poem; you can find this illustration, as well as the others associated with the song cycle, on the Unremembered website.

The River
by Nathaniel Bellows

On the banks
The wash so brown
The shadows blue
They’re black

I saw the form
Astride the loam
Splayed out upon
Its back

A bear, a dog
A bed, a log
A child’s eyes
Are pure

Until the hands
Of the missing man
Were clear against
The dew

The river’s flow
A blackened bow
That tied around
Our town

Had sapped his life
Like a lantern’s light
Buried
Underground

Anne Carson's poem and Caroline Shaw's mesmerizing setting of it meditate on the feeling of being in and out of time.

The recording of the song, which appears on the album Let The Soil Play Its Simple Part (Nonesuch, 2021), features Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion (Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting).

The 21st-century Mexican composer Rodrigo Ruiz sets a text by the 19th-century German writer Heinrich Heine. In so doing, Ruiz channels 19th-century musical style and offers a deeply moving interpretation of a poem about the loss of love and the death of an artistic tradition that Heine once held dear.

The performance of the song features soprano Grace Davidson and pianist Christopher Glynn.

The song appears on the CD An Everlasting Dawn.  Check out Ruiz's recent CD of chamber works, Behold the Stars, on the Signum Classics label, and be on the lookout for Signum's release of his song cycle Venus & Adonis.

Sag, wo ist dein schönes Liebchen
by Heinrich Heine

Sag, wo ist dein schönes Liebchen,
Das du einst so schön besungen,
Als die zaubermächtgen Flammen
Wunderbar dein Herz durchdrungen?

Jene Flammen sind erloschen,
Und mein Herz ist kalt und trübe,
Und dies Büchlein ist die Urne
Mit der Asche meiner Liebe.

———

Tell me, where is your beautiful sweetheart
That you once sang of so beautifully 
When the magical flames of love
Wonderfully pierced your heart?

Each flame is burnt out,
And my heart is cold and grey,
And this little book is the urn
With the ashes of my love.

Kendra Preston Leonard's poem and Lisa Neher's song—about a man who sells fresh fruit on a summer day—celebrate something sumptuous where we would least expect it.

The performance of the song is by Arwen Myers, who is also featured in a previous episode about a song by Florence Price.

Be sure to check out other collaborations by Kendra Preston Leonard and Lisa Neher,  especially the works in their micro-opera festival. 

Strawberry Man
by Kendra Preston Leonard

The Strawberry Man
and his little pinto pony
Sweetness, slaked
in the city street

Poem reproduced with permission from the author

Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is one of the most famous poems in the English language, and it has been set to music by many composers. This episode explores an extraordinarily inventive setting by the Black American composer Margaret Bonds (1913–1972), recently recorded by bass-baritone Justin Hopkins and pianist Jeanne-Minette Cilliers.

This recording comes from a playlist created by Hopkins and Cilliers, which includes performances of music by Florence Price and Margaret Bonds.

To access a published score to the song, see Louise Toppin's anthology Rediscovering Margaret Bonds: Art Songs, Spirituals, Musical Theater and Popular Songs. Toppin, a professor of voice at University of Michigan who has been a longtime advocate for Bonds's music and the music of other African American composers, has also done a wonderful video recording of the song. See also the list of Bonds works published by Hildegard Publishing Company.

Learn more about Bonds's songs, access her song scores, and hear another performance by Hopkins and Ciliers on Art Song Augmented, my website devoted to art songs by underrepresented composers.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.   
His house is in the village though;   
He will not see me stopping here   
To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   
To stop without a farmhouse near   
Between the woods and frozen lake   
The darkest evening of the year.  

He gives his harness bells a shake   
To ask if there is some mistake.   
The only other sound’s the sweep   
Of easy wind and downy flake.  

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   
But I have promises to keep,   
And miles to go before I sleep,   
And miles to go before I sleep.