MUSIC REVIEW
A Score of Ways to Serenade a City
Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times
Five Borough Songbook From left, Harumi Rhodes, violinist; Martha Guth, soprano; David McFerrin, baritone; Alex Richardson, tenor; and Jamie Van Eyck, mezzo-soprano, at the Baruch Performing Arts Center.
By ALLAN KOZINN
Published: January 15, 2012
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The Five Boroughs Music Festival began in 2007 with the idea of presenting concerts all over New York. The festival has no preconceptions about genre: its offerings have included folk music, early music and art song. To celebrate its fifth anniversary the festival commissioned 20 composers to write songs about the city for one to four voices, using texts of their choice (several wrote their own). The resulting “Five Borough Songbook” had its premiere at Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn three months ago and made its way to Manhattan on Thursday, to the Baruch Performing Arts Center.
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With 20 composers involved you might expect every current style to be represented. Quite a few were, though one conspicuous absence was 12-tone or even sharp angularity. Unalloyed minimalism was missing, too, although Yotam Haber uses passing hints of it, along with light but insistent dissonances, in “On Leaving Brooklyn,” a haunting ensemble treatment of Julia Kasdorf’s updating of Psalm 137.
Mr. Haber’s work was the program’s most experimental piece, though inventive approaches to taking the city’s pulse were plentiful. For several composers, that pulse was best taken on the subway. In “F From Dumbo,” Glen Roven mimics a handful of train rhythms in his piano writing, and Gilda Lyons transforms acronyms, route numbers and letters and a listing of transit-authority service changes into a comic soprano and mezzo-soprano duet, “rapid transit.” Tom Cipullo marshals the four singers for a blunt comic piece about the depredations of one route in “G Is for Grimy: An Ode to the G Train.”
Lisa Bielawa uses snippets of overheard conversation in “Breakfast in New York,” a melodic vocal quartet with an inviting, detailed violin accompaniment. And Richard Pearson Thomas captures the dizzying bustle of the city in the vigorous, tongue-in-cheek patter of “Center of the Universe.”
Wry observation is a crucial undercurrent in this collection, but so is wistfulness. Gabriel Kahane’s energetic “Coney Island Avenue” and Renée Favand-See’s alluringly chromatic “Looking West on a Humid Summer Evening” treat motley sections of Brooklyn with a warmth that evokes Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915.” Matt Schickele is similarly nostalgic in “Days Afield on Staten Island,” a lively, counterpoint-rich setting of an 1892 poem by William Thompson Davis, and Christopher Tignor’s exquisitely harmonized evocation of longing, in “Secret Assignation,” is one of the set’s purely musical highlights.
Mohammed Fairouz’s “Refugee Blues” is an arresting, self-contained melting pot: it begins with Middle Eastern modal writing and moves decisively into Western melody, with driven rhythms that convey the shape (metrically and emotionally) of that dark Auden poem.
Jorge Martín’s “City of Orgies, Walks, and Joys!” matches Whitman’s paean to Manhattan with a bluesy, Gershwin-esque melody. Other pop styles make brief appearances. The barest flicker of jazz illuminates “The City of Love,” Martin Hennessy’s languid setting of Claude McKay’s poem, and Scott Wheeler borrows an old English ballad style for his take on another McKay poem, “At Home in Staten Island.” Folkish directness also drives Christina Courtin’s “Fresh Kills,” a pained look at a landfill.
Ricky Ian Gordon, whose “O City of Ships” (based on Whitman poem) opened the program, draws on a theatrical style. Others — Daron Aric Hagen, Russell Platt John Glover and Christopher Berg — take a more straightforward art-song approach.
The singers — Martha Guth, soprano; Jamie Van Eyck, mezzo-soprano; Alex Richardson, tenor; and David McFerrin, baritone — were strong individually and made a finely balanced ensemble. The violinist Harumi Rhodes and the pianists Jocelyn Dueck and Thomas Bagwell were solid, colorful accompanists.
Monday, January 23, 2012
FIVE BOROUGH REVIEW FROM OPERA TODAY
23 Jan 2012
Five Boroughs Songbook
What does it say about New York that, in the songs of the city commissioned by the Five Boroughs Music Festival and given performances in Brooklyn, Queens and, now, Manhattan, the poets (often the composers themselves) rarely refer to life in that central part of the city, Rodgers and Hart’s “isle of joy”?
Five Boroughs Songbook
“The Five Boroughs Songbook.” Martha Guth (soprano), Jamie Van Eyck (mezzo-soprano), Alex Richardson (tenor), David McFerrin (baritone), Harumi Rhodes (violin), Thomas Bagwell and Jocelyn Dueck (piano). Manhattan premiere; Baruch Performing Arts Center, January 12.
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These twenty songs by as many composers are largely concerned with the city as an abstraction, a beloved object, a universal core, or else they address the outer boroughs. Composers, poets, songwriters can no longer afford Manhattan perhaps. They live in Brooklyn’s lovely and not-so-lovely neighborhoods, or in the recuperating Bronx, or even Staten Island. They no longer even dream about Manhattan. Larry Hart wouldn’t recognize the place. Greenwich Village was not mentioned all evening—nor Chinatown, nor Harlem, nor even Inwood. Times Square, in Richard Pearson Thomas’s “The Center of the Universe,” was invoked to “remember the bad old days.” It is no use asking (though I do ask) how much longer New York will be “the center of the country, the world, the universe,” when none of the young, the adventurous, the energetic and creative immigrants can afford to live closer in than Bushwick or Newark.
This has an understandable effect on song output. In the gaudy days of Tin Pan Alley, songwriters stumped for inspiration could look out the window and come up with “Lullaby of Broadway” or “Way Out West on West End Avenue” or “When Love Beckoned on Fifty-Second Street.” But there is no Tin Pan Alley any more. Musically, there’s barely a Broadway. Few of the twenty composers on this program write that kind of theater (at least four of them have composed operas), but on this occasion they often seemed to channel the wisecracking New York wit and the nostalgic art largely missing from Broadway for the last generation. Requested by the Five Boroughs Music Festival to write about some aspect of New York, they have not been parochial in their choice of subject or text—some were old, some were modern, some were the composers themselves. Two of the songs were poems by the ever-exultant Walt Whitman, who retired in New Jersey but drew his universal point of view from his Brooklyn youth.
A lot of numbers in the Songbook boasted rumbling piano accompaniments to symbolize the constant basso continuo throb of the city. There were jazz inflections and dance rhythms, passing in and out of a song as if overheard while ambling by in the darkness. There were songs made up of fragments—fragments of overheard conversations, fragments of overheard melody (Harold Arlen, Giuseppe Verdi), fragments of dying or undying love affairs, fragmentary impressions of Brooklyn on a summer night or the odor of the garbage dumps on Staten Island, fragments of gnomic subway announcements.
Van Eyck, Guth, Richardson, McFerrin, Bagwell, Dueck and Rhodes
There seemed to be quite a lot of songs about the subway. Glen Roven’s “F from DUMBO” seemed to consist of glances at the crowds by a numbly daydreaming straphanger. Gilda Lyons’ “rapid transit” invoked and celebrated the whole crazy system, its changeable schedules and half-audible warnings. Tom Cipullo’s “G is for Grimy: An Ode to the G Train” celebrated (and trashed) the one line in the system that never enters Manhattan at all. John Glover’s “8:46 AM, Five Years Later” unsensationally presented memories of being caught on the N train beneath the city on the morning of 9/11. There had to be one such song, just one, and this was one’s felt unforced and meaningful.
Yotam Haber’s exquisite setting of “On Leaving Brooklyn” made the very syllables of Julia Kasdorf’s revision of Psalm 137 into musical tones, “borough” and “Babylon” and “Jerusalem” becoming harmonized values and nostalgic wisps of melody. Scott Wheeler’s “At Home in Staten Island,” from an old poem by Charles Mackay, became a parlor ballad concealing its ache in an old-fashioned tune. Mohammed Fairouz’s ambitious “Refugee Blues” (which describes a more general situation rather than one specific to New York), builds on W.H. Auden’s use of a repetitive, folk song-like refrain, to achieve a gathering power. Jorge Martin set Whitman’s “City of Orgies, Walks and Joys!” to an irresistible boogie-woogie rich with the delight of simply romping about the town, while a solo violin gave the fantasy a piquant turn by chiming in just “off” the harmonies we had been led to expect.
Harumi Rhodes was the violinist. The pianists, Thomas Bagwell and Jocelyn Dueck, were both fine, but Rhodes played with almost vocal inflections of intricate participation rather than accompaniment: the violin as lieder singer. This speaks well of the composers who provided for her as well as her own poetic technique.
The songs were arranged for four contrasting voices, and the program varied and balanced their duties. Soprano Martha Guth and mezzo Jamie Van Eyck partnered well in the deadpan wit of “rapid transit.” Guth, having plumbed near-alto depths earlier, suddenly became a high, keening opera soprano for the melancholy of “At Home In Staten Island,” mated here with Rhodes’s violin, and (on the other side of that large borough) deplored the air of Christina Courtin’s “Fresh Kills.” Van Eyck brought drama to the mourning, accusing “Refugee Blues” and wistfulness to Renée Favand-See’s “Looking West on a Humid Summer Evening,” and lightly aired the brittle wit of Gabriel Kahane’s “Coney Island Avenue.” Tenor Alex Richardson was the yearning, regretting lover of Russell Platt’s “The Avenue” and Christopher Berg’s “OuLiPo in the Bronx.” David McFerrin’s grainy baritone gave us Martin Hennessy’s love song to the mothering city itself, “The City’s Love,” partnered Guth in Ricky Ian Gordon’s setting of Whitman’s invocation, “City of Ships,” and quietly made the point of “8:46 AM.” Texts were provided but the diction of all four was impeccable in the intimate confines of the Baruch Performing Arts Center.
The Songbook was recorded at an earlier performance with different singers, and the two-CD set is available from GPR Records on the Five Boroughs Music Festival web site.
John Yohalem
Click here to purchase the CD.
Five Boroughs Songbook
What does it say about New York that, in the songs of the city commissioned by the Five Boroughs Music Festival and given performances in Brooklyn, Queens and, now, Manhattan, the poets (often the composers themselves) rarely refer to life in that central part of the city, Rodgers and Hart’s “isle of joy”?
Five Boroughs Songbook
“The Five Boroughs Songbook.” Martha Guth (soprano), Jamie Van Eyck (mezzo-soprano), Alex Richardson (tenor), David McFerrin (baritone), Harumi Rhodes (violin), Thomas Bagwell and Jocelyn Dueck (piano). Manhattan premiere; Baruch Performing Arts Center, January 12.
Printer Version
Send to a Friend
These twenty songs by as many composers are largely concerned with the city as an abstraction, a beloved object, a universal core, or else they address the outer boroughs. Composers, poets, songwriters can no longer afford Manhattan perhaps. They live in Brooklyn’s lovely and not-so-lovely neighborhoods, or in the recuperating Bronx, or even Staten Island. They no longer even dream about Manhattan. Larry Hart wouldn’t recognize the place. Greenwich Village was not mentioned all evening—nor Chinatown, nor Harlem, nor even Inwood. Times Square, in Richard Pearson Thomas’s “The Center of the Universe,” was invoked to “remember the bad old days.” It is no use asking (though I do ask) how much longer New York will be “the center of the country, the world, the universe,” when none of the young, the adventurous, the energetic and creative immigrants can afford to live closer in than Bushwick or Newark.
This has an understandable effect on song output. In the gaudy days of Tin Pan Alley, songwriters stumped for inspiration could look out the window and come up with “Lullaby of Broadway” or “Way Out West on West End Avenue” or “When Love Beckoned on Fifty-Second Street.” But there is no Tin Pan Alley any more. Musically, there’s barely a Broadway. Few of the twenty composers on this program write that kind of theater (at least four of them have composed operas), but on this occasion they often seemed to channel the wisecracking New York wit and the nostalgic art largely missing from Broadway for the last generation. Requested by the Five Boroughs Music Festival to write about some aspect of New York, they have not been parochial in their choice of subject or text—some were old, some were modern, some were the composers themselves. Two of the songs were poems by the ever-exultant Walt Whitman, who retired in New Jersey but drew his universal point of view from his Brooklyn youth.
A lot of numbers in the Songbook boasted rumbling piano accompaniments to symbolize the constant basso continuo throb of the city. There were jazz inflections and dance rhythms, passing in and out of a song as if overheard while ambling by in the darkness. There were songs made up of fragments—fragments of overheard conversations, fragments of overheard melody (Harold Arlen, Giuseppe Verdi), fragments of dying or undying love affairs, fragmentary impressions of Brooklyn on a summer night or the odor of the garbage dumps on Staten Island, fragments of gnomic subway announcements.
Van Eyck, Guth, Richardson, McFerrin, Bagwell, Dueck and Rhodes
There seemed to be quite a lot of songs about the subway. Glen Roven’s “F from DUMBO” seemed to consist of glances at the crowds by a numbly daydreaming straphanger. Gilda Lyons’ “rapid transit” invoked and celebrated the whole crazy system, its changeable schedules and half-audible warnings. Tom Cipullo’s “G is for Grimy: An Ode to the G Train” celebrated (and trashed) the one line in the system that never enters Manhattan at all. John Glover’s “8:46 AM, Five Years Later” unsensationally presented memories of being caught on the N train beneath the city on the morning of 9/11. There had to be one such song, just one, and this was one’s felt unforced and meaningful.
Yotam Haber’s exquisite setting of “On Leaving Brooklyn” made the very syllables of Julia Kasdorf’s revision of Psalm 137 into musical tones, “borough” and “Babylon” and “Jerusalem” becoming harmonized values and nostalgic wisps of melody. Scott Wheeler’s “At Home in Staten Island,” from an old poem by Charles Mackay, became a parlor ballad concealing its ache in an old-fashioned tune. Mohammed Fairouz’s ambitious “Refugee Blues” (which describes a more general situation rather than one specific to New York), builds on W.H. Auden’s use of a repetitive, folk song-like refrain, to achieve a gathering power. Jorge Martin set Whitman’s “City of Orgies, Walks and Joys!” to an irresistible boogie-woogie rich with the delight of simply romping about the town, while a solo violin gave the fantasy a piquant turn by chiming in just “off” the harmonies we had been led to expect.
Harumi Rhodes was the violinist. The pianists, Thomas Bagwell and Jocelyn Dueck, were both fine, but Rhodes played with almost vocal inflections of intricate participation rather than accompaniment: the violin as lieder singer. This speaks well of the composers who provided for her as well as her own poetic technique.
The songs were arranged for four contrasting voices, and the program varied and balanced their duties. Soprano Martha Guth and mezzo Jamie Van Eyck partnered well in the deadpan wit of “rapid transit.” Guth, having plumbed near-alto depths earlier, suddenly became a high, keening opera soprano for the melancholy of “At Home In Staten Island,” mated here with Rhodes’s violin, and (on the other side of that large borough) deplored the air of Christina Courtin’s “Fresh Kills.” Van Eyck brought drama to the mourning, accusing “Refugee Blues” and wistfulness to Renée Favand-See’s “Looking West on a Humid Summer Evening,” and lightly aired the brittle wit of Gabriel Kahane’s “Coney Island Avenue.” Tenor Alex Richardson was the yearning, regretting lover of Russell Platt’s “The Avenue” and Christopher Berg’s “OuLiPo in the Bronx.” David McFerrin’s grainy baritone gave us Martin Hennessy’s love song to the mothering city itself, “The City’s Love,” partnered Guth in Ricky Ian Gordon’s setting of Whitman’s invocation, “City of Ships,” and quietly made the point of “8:46 AM.” Texts were provided but the diction of all four was impeccable in the intimate confines of the Baruch Performing Arts Center.
The Songbook was recorded at an earlier performance with different singers, and the two-CD set is available from GPR Records on the Five Boroughs Music Festival web site.
John Yohalem
Click here to purchase the CD.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Nice barihunk piece about 5 Borough Songbook
New Yorkers, Don't Miss This: Five Borough Songbook Concert and CD Release on Thursday
Don't miss the Five Borough Songbook concert and CD release party
We've been covering the Five Boroughs Music Festival as it has moved around New York, but the January 12th concert in Manhattan promises to be extra special. In addition to the concert they wil be releasing their first recording that day, a stunning 2-disc set of the Songbook. We've had the privilege of previewing the recording and it is a must for any lover of art songs or opera.
We can't think of a better evening out than hearing a concert and then heading home with a CD of the all the great music that you just heard. The Songbook is a collection of newly commissioned vocal works by many of the leading composers working today. It celebrates New York City through its history, poetry, and geography. Some of the titles will certainly evoke distinct images or memories to New Yorkers past and present. They include "F From Dumbo," "G Is For Grimy: An Ode To The G Train," and "Coney Island Avenue."
Barihunk David McFerrin will sing Martin Hennessy's "The City's Love"
Did you ever wish that you could have spoken to Bach, Schubert, Verdi or Puccini? Unless you're Shirley MacLaine, you missed your chance. But you'll have a chance to talk to many of the composers on the program on Thursday night, as quite a few of them have agreed to appear for a "Composer Chat" beginning an hour before the 7:30 PM concert.
The concert will be at Engleman Recital Hall at the Baruch Performing Arts Center 55 Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. Click HERE for tickets or HERE to purchase a CD.
Don't miss the Five Borough Songbook concert and CD release party
We've been covering the Five Boroughs Music Festival as it has moved around New York, but the January 12th concert in Manhattan promises to be extra special. In addition to the concert they wil be releasing their first recording that day, a stunning 2-disc set of the Songbook. We've had the privilege of previewing the recording and it is a must for any lover of art songs or opera.
We can't think of a better evening out than hearing a concert and then heading home with a CD of the all the great music that you just heard. The Songbook is a collection of newly commissioned vocal works by many of the leading composers working today. It celebrates New York City through its history, poetry, and geography. Some of the titles will certainly evoke distinct images or memories to New Yorkers past and present. They include "F From Dumbo," "G Is For Grimy: An Ode To The G Train," and "Coney Island Avenue."
Barihunk David McFerrin will sing Martin Hennessy's "The City's Love"
Did you ever wish that you could have spoken to Bach, Schubert, Verdi or Puccini? Unless you're Shirley MacLaine, you missed your chance. But you'll have a chance to talk to many of the composers on the program on Thursday night, as quite a few of them have agreed to appear for a "Composer Chat" beginning an hour before the 7:30 PM concert.
The concert will be at Engleman Recital Hall at the Baruch Performing Arts Center 55 Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. Click HERE for tickets or HERE to purchase a CD.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Sequenza 12 Review of Daniel Okulitch: Nice
Daniel Okulitch: The New American Art Song
Posted by Garrett Schumann in Uncategorized
Daniel Okulitch, baritone
The New American Art Song
Songs by Ricky Ian Gordon, Jake Heggie, Lowell Liebermann and Glen Roven, accompanied by the composers
GPR Records
The first solo record by Canadian baritone Daniel Okulitch is an impeccable portrait of his voice’s warm and earthy elegance. Through sets of songs by Ricky Ian Gordon, Jake Heggie, Glen Roven and Lowell Liebermann, Mr. Okulitch’s voice comes across as richly dark, sensitive and – above all – clear. The songs themselves are very good and lovely as well, but do not necessarily display a wide swath of the landscape of contemporary American song. With this fact stated, I want to stress that each cycle has beautiful, poignant moments and are scrupulously written…they are just cut from a similar cloth in terms of their musical materials. Because the composers actually accompany Mr. Okulitch on the recording, I was particularly attentive to the interplay between the piano and vocal parts. The role of the two musical characters varied greatly between and within each group of songs, providing – along with the transient moods of the texts – the listener with welcome volatility and contrast against the stylistic consistently of the works and Mr. Okulitch’s undeviatingly sterling performance.
Dominating the CD is Glen Roven’s from the Underground, a set of fifteen songs each with an isolated personality and texture, yet united by Mr. Roven’s mostly triadic and diatonic musical fabric. The piano imitates the vocal line in many of the songs, strengthening the reflection of, “[Mr. Roven’s] personal feelings about each poem”, which he describes is his goal when writing art songs. Repetitive rhythms in the piano accompaniments, combined with humorous texts gave some songs, like “This is Just to Say”, the flavor of musical theater music (an affect that reappears in other cycles on this disc). Though I enjoyed the whole set, I felt the song “Come to the Edge” was the most beautiful – perhaps perfectly constructed – thanks to the absolutely engrossing way the vocal line pairs with the piano. Mr. Okulitch’s part begins quietly, accompanied by timorous pandiatonic clusters in the piano, the two musical bodies simultaneous build momentum, energy and scope until the vocal line climaxes and the piano part spills into a valley of lush extended triads, marking the most important moment in the poem.
The musical hints at musical theater I noted in from the Underground are also apparent in the album’s first cycle – Ricky Ian Gordon’s Quiet Lives. To me, all songs are theatrical and narrative, so I am not surprised – in a contemporary music world typified by the fusion of popular and traditional motifs – that the clear phrasing and persistent rhythms of musical theater songs have bled into the already closely related genre of ‘art song’. Like all the composers on the album, Mr. Gordon has written some stunningly beautiful songs fueled by very interesting texts with the exact personality of each song remaining pretty variable. Contrastinglt to from the Underground, the piano is limited to a strictly accompanimental presence and does not often double or imitate the vocal line. Conveniently, the cycle’s extremes in mood appear adjacent to each other. “As Planned” features a sarcastic text discussing the unpredictable consequences of drinking too much vodka, with the air of mischief shared in the piano’s tongue-in-cheek, cabaret-style waltz. The following song, “Kid in the Park” is the cycle’s most reflective, with a piano part that hints, with the most extraordinary subtleness, to slow, R&B ballads (I could very well be imagining such a connection exists). The tempo and chordal accompaniment leave Mr. Okulitch plenty of room to draw the listener into the text’s account of the challenges facing urban youths.
The two remaining cycles both stood out to me with their more coherent character/mood (thanks, no doubt, to their relative brevity in comparison to the aforementioned works), and subtly cultivated drama. Lowell Liebermann’s Night Songs, probably the most traditional sounding of the disc, paints a delicate and convincing portrait of the introspection that so often accompanies the setting of the sun. This is particularly apparent in the set’s first two songs – “Good Night” and “She Tells Her Love Half Asleep” – whose repetitive accompaniments and melodies firmly establish a musical world haunted by the stillness of moonlight and stars. Jake Heggie’s Of Gods and Cats had, by far, the most memorable texts of the whole album. The first, “In the Beginning”, retells the biblical creation through the perspective of a cat engaging with quotidian experiences such as drinking milk and falling asleep in a paper bag. Closing out the pair is “Once upon a Universe”, which describes what God was like as a child, destroying his toys much to the chagrin of his mother. Of course, the text is not so engrossing on its own accord: Mr. Heggie sets it both impishly and austerely, with the piano part adding masterfully timed moments of levity to an otherwise reverent portrayal of poet Gavin Geoffrey Dillard’s comical musings.
Posted by Garrett Schumann in Uncategorized
Daniel Okulitch, baritone
The New American Art Song
Songs by Ricky Ian Gordon, Jake Heggie, Lowell Liebermann and Glen Roven, accompanied by the composers
GPR Records
The first solo record by Canadian baritone Daniel Okulitch is an impeccable portrait of his voice’s warm and earthy elegance. Through sets of songs by Ricky Ian Gordon, Jake Heggie, Glen Roven and Lowell Liebermann, Mr. Okulitch’s voice comes across as richly dark, sensitive and – above all – clear. The songs themselves are very good and lovely as well, but do not necessarily display a wide swath of the landscape of contemporary American song. With this fact stated, I want to stress that each cycle has beautiful, poignant moments and are scrupulously written…they are just cut from a similar cloth in terms of their musical materials. Because the composers actually accompany Mr. Okulitch on the recording, I was particularly attentive to the interplay between the piano and vocal parts. The role of the two musical characters varied greatly between and within each group of songs, providing – along with the transient moods of the texts – the listener with welcome volatility and contrast against the stylistic consistently of the works and Mr. Okulitch’s undeviatingly sterling performance.
Dominating the CD is Glen Roven’s from the Underground, a set of fifteen songs each with an isolated personality and texture, yet united by Mr. Roven’s mostly triadic and diatonic musical fabric. The piano imitates the vocal line in many of the songs, strengthening the reflection of, “[Mr. Roven’s] personal feelings about each poem”, which he describes is his goal when writing art songs. Repetitive rhythms in the piano accompaniments, combined with humorous texts gave some songs, like “This is Just to Say”, the flavor of musical theater music (an affect that reappears in other cycles on this disc). Though I enjoyed the whole set, I felt the song “Come to the Edge” was the most beautiful – perhaps perfectly constructed – thanks to the absolutely engrossing way the vocal line pairs with the piano. Mr. Okulitch’s part begins quietly, accompanied by timorous pandiatonic clusters in the piano, the two musical bodies simultaneous build momentum, energy and scope until the vocal line climaxes and the piano part spills into a valley of lush extended triads, marking the most important moment in the poem.
The musical hints at musical theater I noted in from the Underground are also apparent in the album’s first cycle – Ricky Ian Gordon’s Quiet Lives. To me, all songs are theatrical and narrative, so I am not surprised – in a contemporary music world typified by the fusion of popular and traditional motifs – that the clear phrasing and persistent rhythms of musical theater songs have bled into the already closely related genre of ‘art song’. Like all the composers on the album, Mr. Gordon has written some stunningly beautiful songs fueled by very interesting texts with the exact personality of each song remaining pretty variable. Contrastinglt to from the Underground, the piano is limited to a strictly accompanimental presence and does not often double or imitate the vocal line. Conveniently, the cycle’s extremes in mood appear adjacent to each other. “As Planned” features a sarcastic text discussing the unpredictable consequences of drinking too much vodka, with the air of mischief shared in the piano’s tongue-in-cheek, cabaret-style waltz. The following song, “Kid in the Park” is the cycle’s most reflective, with a piano part that hints, with the most extraordinary subtleness, to slow, R&B ballads (I could very well be imagining such a connection exists). The tempo and chordal accompaniment leave Mr. Okulitch plenty of room to draw the listener into the text’s account of the challenges facing urban youths.
The two remaining cycles both stood out to me with their more coherent character/mood (thanks, no doubt, to their relative brevity in comparison to the aforementioned works), and subtly cultivated drama. Lowell Liebermann’s Night Songs, probably the most traditional sounding of the disc, paints a delicate and convincing portrait of the introspection that so often accompanies the setting of the sun. This is particularly apparent in the set’s first two songs – “Good Night” and “She Tells Her Love Half Asleep” – whose repetitive accompaniments and melodies firmly establish a musical world haunted by the stillness of moonlight and stars. Jake Heggie’s Of Gods and Cats had, by far, the most memorable texts of the whole album. The first, “In the Beginning”, retells the biblical creation through the perspective of a cat engaging with quotidian experiences such as drinking milk and falling asleep in a paper bag. Closing out the pair is “Once upon a Universe”, which describes what God was like as a child, destroying his toys much to the chagrin of his mother. Of course, the text is not so engrossing on its own accord: Mr. Heggie sets it both impishly and austerely, with the piano part adding masterfully timed moments of levity to an otherwise reverent portrayal of poet Gavin Geoffrey Dillard’s comical musings.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Great Piece on GPRrecords by William Madison
Stringing the Pearls
The Five Borough Songbook, presented by the Five Boroughs Music Festival at the Galapagos Art Space, lured me out to Brooklyn on 6 October with the prospect of songs by nearly 20 composers, performed by four able singers. Getting to Galapagos — which used to be conveniently located in Williamsburg, across the street from my friend Eric’s apartment, but is now Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass (a.k.a. DUMBO) — got me lost in the dark in an unfamiliar neighborhood. I felt like a tourist, and I missed the first several songs.
But I arrived in time for two that I’d anticipated most gladly: those by Jorge Martín (“City of Orgies, Walks, and Joys!” to a text by Whitman) and Glen Roven (“F from DUMBO,” to a text by Michael Tyrell*). And I enjoyed the performances of the four singers: baritone David Adam Moore (no stranger to readers of this blog), soprano Martha Guth, tenor Alex Richardson, and the real discovery of the night, mezzo Blythe Gaissert.
Now, thanks to Roven’s ingenuity — and the fact that he’s the “G” in GPR Records — I’ll be able to listen to the Five Borough Songbook again and again, as often as I please, without getting lost in Brooklyn. Last week, I sat in on a recording session, and the experience proved fascinating indeed.
Glen Roven
GPR aims to step into the void left by the major labels, all of which have been hammered by economic and technological challenges, and some of which have neglected classical music for years. Working with Peter Fitzgerald (the “P”) and Richard Cohen (the “R”), Roven can avail himself of new technologies and unbeatable access: Fitzgerald, for example, is president and co-owner of Sound Associates, and he’s been sound designer for countless concerts and Broadway shows, including Rags. When the sound equipment is already in place, Roven says, and with studio facilities readily available in New York, it’s easy enough to record a piece; since brick-and-mortar stores are a thing of the past, it’s actually become easier to distribute albums.
Sitting in the control room with Roven, Cohen, and studio engineer Megan Henninger, I listened as David Adam Moore and pianist Thomas Bagwell put the finishing touches on Roven’s “F from Dumbo”; then Blythe Gaissert and composer Mohammed Fairouz came in to record his “Refugee Song” (to a text by Auden).
My experience in radio studios is pretty vast, but my experience in music-recording studios is quite limited — and all of it predates the digital revolution. Henninger can achieve with a few keystrokes what used to require razor blades and Scotch tape on the old reel-to-reel machines. (I still bear the scars.)
You’d wind up with a crazy-quilt of patches, and in some cases, you really did go crazy. That’s one reason that artists like Teresa Stratas tried so hard to get it right on the first take (as she did with The Unknown Kurt Weill), and the resulting record would be in that sense very much like a live performance: played straight through.
David Adam Moore
Now, however, the singers, pianist, and composers could go over individual bars again and again until they were satisfied, and the editing process was largely complete, almost instantly. The process struck me as less like a live performance and more like a rehearsal or coaching session, in which the musicians repeat fragments of the score and may never perform the song complete. (In this case, as with Stratas’ first Weill album, which grew out of a recital at the Whitney Museum, it surely helped that the Songbook musicians had performed the cycle complete before an audience only a few days earlier.)
In many ways, the process reminded me of filmmaking, and I remembered an interview with the actor John Malkovich, who said that his theatrical training proved useless or even harmful when it came time to make movies: he had to think in a different way, just as Moore may do before the microphone. Now the image that presented itself was that of a mosaic, piecing together a larger picture — or perhaps (because music is in its way linear) the stringing together of scattered pearls.
Familiar as I am with Moore’s voice, the acoustic of a studio is different from what I’ve heard before, yet of course I recognized the clarity and the open, conversational tone I admire in his singing. Given that he’s such a physical vocalist, it shouldn’t be surprising that he listens with his whole body during playback, too.
Blythe Gaissert
I had a moment to chat with Gaissert before the session began. She’d given a thrilling performance in Brooklyn, not only in Fairouz’ song but in all her offerings; perhaps most surprising was the advanced stage of her pregnancy, at which few in the Galapagos audience might have guessed. Naturally, it turns out that she’s from Beaumont, Texas (birthplace of Joyce Castle), and she and David Adam Moore have known each other since they were in their teens.
“Refugee Song” requires that Gaissert traverse a wide range of strong emotions, and she delivers the music with guts and fire, always demanding more from herself. Another surprise: you know how we non-singers hate to listen to the recorded sound of our own voices? Well, singers feel the same way — but both Gaissert and Moore put up with the process gallantly. (Bagwell was unflappable all the while.)
Fairouz seemed on edge throughout the session, and afterward I asked whether he found the process stressful. Not at all, he said; in fact, recording isn’t difficult, but “Refugee Song” itself is so intense that he responds to the song this way. (I daresay he’s not alone in that response.)
Mohammed Fairouz
Through it all, Roven seemed playful, almost ebullient as he pushed the buttons and encouraged the musicians: producing a record is creativity expressed, and he really enjoying this work. If his ambitions drive him to record more and more music, I suspect that it’s due not only to his dedication to art but also to his desire to have fun.
And in due course, the Five Borough Songbook will reach an audience far beyond DUMBO. The cycle is necessarily a mixed bag, with work of varying quality (and surprisingly few lyrics worth setting**); I’m frankly not terribly enthusiastic about some of the songs, and I doubt I’ll play them often. But at least I’ll have the opportunity.
If I’d known how hard it was to find a good picture of Thomas Bagwell, I’d have brought my camera to the studio. I’ve heard him perform several times, not only as accompanist but also as conductor.
*NOTE: Roven’s was but one of several subway-themed songs, and the rare of these numbers that didn’t rely on comical complaints for (admittedly crowd-pleasing) effect.
**Indeed, the concert served as a useful reminder that, for all their lyrical gifts, composers aren’t always the best judges of what constitutes good poetry.
The Five Borough Songbook, presented by the Five Boroughs Music Festival at the Galapagos Art Space, lured me out to Brooklyn on 6 October with the prospect of songs by nearly 20 composers, performed by four able singers. Getting to Galapagos — which used to be conveniently located in Williamsburg, across the street from my friend Eric’s apartment, but is now Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass (a.k.a. DUMBO) — got me lost in the dark in an unfamiliar neighborhood. I felt like a tourist, and I missed the first several songs.
But I arrived in time for two that I’d anticipated most gladly: those by Jorge Martín (“City of Orgies, Walks, and Joys!” to a text by Whitman) and Glen Roven (“F from DUMBO,” to a text by Michael Tyrell*). And I enjoyed the performances of the four singers: baritone David Adam Moore (no stranger to readers of this blog), soprano Martha Guth, tenor Alex Richardson, and the real discovery of the night, mezzo Blythe Gaissert.
Now, thanks to Roven’s ingenuity — and the fact that he’s the “G” in GPR Records — I’ll be able to listen to the Five Borough Songbook again and again, as often as I please, without getting lost in Brooklyn. Last week, I sat in on a recording session, and the experience proved fascinating indeed.
Glen Roven
GPR aims to step into the void left by the major labels, all of which have been hammered by economic and technological challenges, and some of which have neglected classical music for years. Working with Peter Fitzgerald (the “P”) and Richard Cohen (the “R”), Roven can avail himself of new technologies and unbeatable access: Fitzgerald, for example, is president and co-owner of Sound Associates, and he’s been sound designer for countless concerts and Broadway shows, including Rags. When the sound equipment is already in place, Roven says, and with studio facilities readily available in New York, it’s easy enough to record a piece; since brick-and-mortar stores are a thing of the past, it’s actually become easier to distribute albums.
Sitting in the control room with Roven, Cohen, and studio engineer Megan Henninger, I listened as David Adam Moore and pianist Thomas Bagwell put the finishing touches on Roven’s “F from Dumbo”; then Blythe Gaissert and composer Mohammed Fairouz came in to record his “Refugee Song” (to a text by Auden).
My experience in radio studios is pretty vast, but my experience in music-recording studios is quite limited — and all of it predates the digital revolution. Henninger can achieve with a few keystrokes what used to require razor blades and Scotch tape on the old reel-to-reel machines. (I still bear the scars.)
You’d wind up with a crazy-quilt of patches, and in some cases, you really did go crazy. That’s one reason that artists like Teresa Stratas tried so hard to get it right on the first take (as she did with The Unknown Kurt Weill), and the resulting record would be in that sense very much like a live performance: played straight through.
David Adam Moore
Now, however, the singers, pianist, and composers could go over individual bars again and again until they were satisfied, and the editing process was largely complete, almost instantly. The process struck me as less like a live performance and more like a rehearsal or coaching session, in which the musicians repeat fragments of the score and may never perform the song complete. (In this case, as with Stratas’ first Weill album, which grew out of a recital at the Whitney Museum, it surely helped that the Songbook musicians had performed the cycle complete before an audience only a few days earlier.)
In many ways, the process reminded me of filmmaking, and I remembered an interview with the actor John Malkovich, who said that his theatrical training proved useless or even harmful when it came time to make movies: he had to think in a different way, just as Moore may do before the microphone. Now the image that presented itself was that of a mosaic, piecing together a larger picture — or perhaps (because music is in its way linear) the stringing together of scattered pearls.
Familiar as I am with Moore’s voice, the acoustic of a studio is different from what I’ve heard before, yet of course I recognized the clarity and the open, conversational tone I admire in his singing. Given that he’s such a physical vocalist, it shouldn’t be surprising that he listens with his whole body during playback, too.
Blythe Gaissert
I had a moment to chat with Gaissert before the session began. She’d given a thrilling performance in Brooklyn, not only in Fairouz’ song but in all her offerings; perhaps most surprising was the advanced stage of her pregnancy, at which few in the Galapagos audience might have guessed. Naturally, it turns out that she’s from Beaumont, Texas (birthplace of Joyce Castle), and she and David Adam Moore have known each other since they were in their teens.
“Refugee Song” requires that Gaissert traverse a wide range of strong emotions, and she delivers the music with guts and fire, always demanding more from herself. Another surprise: you know how we non-singers hate to listen to the recorded sound of our own voices? Well, singers feel the same way — but both Gaissert and Moore put up with the process gallantly. (Bagwell was unflappable all the while.)
Fairouz seemed on edge throughout the session, and afterward I asked whether he found the process stressful. Not at all, he said; in fact, recording isn’t difficult, but “Refugee Song” itself is so intense that he responds to the song this way. (I daresay he’s not alone in that response.)
Mohammed Fairouz
Through it all, Roven seemed playful, almost ebullient as he pushed the buttons and encouraged the musicians: producing a record is creativity expressed, and he really enjoying this work. If his ambitions drive him to record more and more music, I suspect that it’s due not only to his dedication to art but also to his desire to have fun.
And in due course, the Five Borough Songbook will reach an audience far beyond DUMBO. The cycle is necessarily a mixed bag, with work of varying quality (and surprisingly few lyrics worth setting**); I’m frankly not terribly enthusiastic about some of the songs, and I doubt I’ll play them often. But at least I’ll have the opportunity.
If I’d known how hard it was to find a good picture of Thomas Bagwell, I’d have brought my camera to the studio. I’ve heard him perform several times, not only as accompanist but also as conductor.
*NOTE: Roven’s was but one of several subway-themed songs, and the rare of these numbers that didn’t rely on comical complaints for (admittedly crowd-pleasing) effect.
**Indeed, the concert served as a useful reminder that, for all their lyrical gifts, composers aren’t always the best judges of what constitutes good poetry.
Monday, May 9, 2011
My Dinner with Arthur
MY DINNER WITH ARTHUR
By Glen Roven
With his passing, I remember an amazing dinner I had with Arthur Laurents that changed the way he lived his life. Arthur, as everyone who knew him knew, didn’t change anything easily.
I was collaborating on a musical with Armistead Maupin, a musical that made it as far as the Cleveland Playhouse. But before its untimely demise, the show was “heading for Broadway.” Maupin had just published the first collected edition of eight groundbreaking novels under the title Tales of the City. As for Arthur, I had worked with him and considered him a professional collaborator while not a personal friend. He called, told me how much he liked Maupin’s books and said that he would love to meet him. Maupin happened to be in town. He was just as eager, so we set up a dinner.
Maupin can be extremely charming. When I introduced him to the great legend, the man who wrote West Side Story, Gypsy, The Way We Were, The Turning Point, he adopted his innocent, country-boy (he’s from North Carolina) hick demeanor. For a gay man from a small town in North Carolina, it doesn’t get better than going out with the writer who had Gypsy say, “I’m a pretty girl, Mama,” or Barbra beg Redford, “Stay till the baby is born, Hubbell.”
We went to a little restaurant down the street from Arthur’s house; the mood was congenial and festive. “I love your books.” “I love your movies.” “You really are terrific.” “You really are amazing.” The honeymoon.
Then, it got juicy. This was 1988 -- way before gays were allowed in the military, even before Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Gay marriage didn’t seem a remote possibility, wasn’t even a pipe dream. Still, 1988 certainly better than the 50’s, but we had a long, long way to go.
Arthur talked about the most consequential time in his life, the McCarthy trials of the fifties. Armistead talked about the most important time of his life, when he came out.
Arthur said, quite proudly, with that Laurentian air of superiority, he has always been out. Even in Hollywood in the ‘50s, where he could easily have been blacklisted, he never hid his love life. Never. (Dramatic pause) “Except in print.” Putting it in print was off limits, a Rubicon. That’s where he drew the line, the line not to be crossed. He would never talk about it to a reporter. Period.
Armistead instantly dropped the North Carolina hick routine and turned into the political animal he had become. He looked directly at Laurents and said, forcefully, directly and loudly, “THEN YOU’RE NOT OUT!”
Arthur blanched! I’m not sure Arthur ever “blanched” in his life. He quickly started to defend his position.
I wish the iPhone had been invented for this conversation so I could have recorded it. Two brilliant minds but two completely different generations of homosexual men, one man who came of age in the 50’s, the other, the 70’s, rumbling like Tony and Bernardo, battling like Mary Ann and her Beau. Arthur valiantly defended his position about never talking to reporters, and Armistead, the younger generation, shot down every argument. Arthur wouldn’t give in. Armistead wouldn’t give up.
I couldn’t possibly recreate that conversation. But this was real theater. Real political theater. Arthur tried to conjure up the McCarthy era and the nightmarish time it was, using it as a shield against having to go into battle again; Armistead told him times had changed and he had to grow and update his politics and positions. That might have been the worst blow to Arthur’s might ego, to hear that his political ideas were out of date. And to hear it from one of the most important political writers in the country.
The conversation finished, the tempers cooled. Dessert was served. We got back on to safer topics: PBS was about to shoot Tales of the City. Bette was thinking about doing Gypsy.
But of course, an awkwardness hung over the apple crumble.
We walked Arthur back home, said our good-byes.
A few days later, in an interview given to a paper, I read Arthur Laurents, the man who vehemently said he would never talk about his homosexuality in print, quoted by the reporter, saying, “As a gay man….”
And I was there.
By Glen Roven
With his passing, I remember an amazing dinner I had with Arthur Laurents that changed the way he lived his life. Arthur, as everyone who knew him knew, didn’t change anything easily.
I was collaborating on a musical with Armistead Maupin, a musical that made it as far as the Cleveland Playhouse. But before its untimely demise, the show was “heading for Broadway.” Maupin had just published the first collected edition of eight groundbreaking novels under the title Tales of the City. As for Arthur, I had worked with him and considered him a professional collaborator while not a personal friend. He called, told me how much he liked Maupin’s books and said that he would love to meet him. Maupin happened to be in town. He was just as eager, so we set up a dinner.
Maupin can be extremely charming. When I introduced him to the great legend, the man who wrote West Side Story, Gypsy, The Way We Were, The Turning Point, he adopted his innocent, country-boy (he’s from North Carolina) hick demeanor. For a gay man from a small town in North Carolina, it doesn’t get better than going out with the writer who had Gypsy say, “I’m a pretty girl, Mama,” or Barbra beg Redford, “Stay till the baby is born, Hubbell.”
We went to a little restaurant down the street from Arthur’s house; the mood was congenial and festive. “I love your books.” “I love your movies.” “You really are terrific.” “You really are amazing.” The honeymoon.
Then, it got juicy. This was 1988 -- way before gays were allowed in the military, even before Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Gay marriage didn’t seem a remote possibility, wasn’t even a pipe dream. Still, 1988 certainly better than the 50’s, but we had a long, long way to go.
Arthur talked about the most consequential time in his life, the McCarthy trials of the fifties. Armistead talked about the most important time of his life, when he came out.
Arthur said, quite proudly, with that Laurentian air of superiority, he has always been out. Even in Hollywood in the ‘50s, where he could easily have been blacklisted, he never hid his love life. Never. (Dramatic pause) “Except in print.” Putting it in print was off limits, a Rubicon. That’s where he drew the line, the line not to be crossed. He would never talk about it to a reporter. Period.
Armistead instantly dropped the North Carolina hick routine and turned into the political animal he had become. He looked directly at Laurents and said, forcefully, directly and loudly, “THEN YOU’RE NOT OUT!”
Arthur blanched! I’m not sure Arthur ever “blanched” in his life. He quickly started to defend his position.
I wish the iPhone had been invented for this conversation so I could have recorded it. Two brilliant minds but two completely different generations of homosexual men, one man who came of age in the 50’s, the other, the 70’s, rumbling like Tony and Bernardo, battling like Mary Ann and her Beau. Arthur valiantly defended his position about never talking to reporters, and Armistead, the younger generation, shot down every argument. Arthur wouldn’t give in. Armistead wouldn’t give up.
I couldn’t possibly recreate that conversation. But this was real theater. Real political theater. Arthur tried to conjure up the McCarthy era and the nightmarish time it was, using it as a shield against having to go into battle again; Armistead told him times had changed and he had to grow and update his politics and positions. That might have been the worst blow to Arthur’s might ego, to hear that his political ideas were out of date. And to hear it from one of the most important political writers in the country.
The conversation finished, the tempers cooled. Dessert was served. We got back on to safer topics: PBS was about to shoot Tales of the City. Bette was thinking about doing Gypsy.
But of course, an awkwardness hung over the apple crumble.
We walked Arthur back home, said our good-byes.
A few days later, in an interview given to a paper, I read Arthur Laurents, the man who vehemently said he would never talk about his homosexuality in print, quoted by the reporter, saying, “As a gay man….”
And I was there.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
A Tribute to Jerry BOck
A TRIBUTE TO JERRY BOCK
When I heard the brilliant composer Jerry Bock had died last week, I made my own private listening memorial: I programmed a play list of his songs on my iPod -- “I Love A Cop,” “Politics and Poker,” “What Makes Me Love Him?” “Will He Like Me?” “Vanilla Ice Cream” and course the entire score to Fiddler. What joy he gave me, and I know he will continue to give me long into the future.
Fiddler was the first complete Vocal Score my parents bought me; I must have been about eight years old. I was so excited to have the entire score and not just the pathetic-published-for-the-non-professional-vocal-selections, I couldn’t possibly go to school the day the score arrived. I didn’t even have to fake my temperature by sticking the thermometer in the lamp. I was so emotionally overwrought, I ran a fever. I needed to play through the entire show, including I Just Heard, not learn long division.
With no personal stories to tell about Bock, I choose here instead to concentrate on his music; and not just on any song, but one of the great theater songs of all time, “If I Were a Rich Man.” Some may argue that a poor dairyman would never use the subjunctive tense, and it should be, wrong according to grammarians, but correct according to character: “If I Was A Rich Man,” like “If Mamma Was Married.” But I think it’s perfect the way it is, and I know the brilliant lyricist Sheldon Harnick could easily explain his choice.
On to the music, and what glorious music it is:
The melody, on the words “If I were a rich man,” outlines a falling fifth: the “if” down to a “man.” A fifth is the distance of five steps from a C to a G going up; to hear it your head, think of the opening statement of the Star Wars theme. That fifth goes up, but this fifth goes down. Instead of hurling towards outer space, this falling fifth bears the weight of the world, the falling world, the tired world of a dairyman as he sings.
Then comes the quasi-Hasidic Jewish riff, the Daidle-deedle section. Zero Mostel, and most subsequent Teveys, have had great fun playing around with this section, but what I find wonderful is that after the tired, world-weary falling fifth, the music starts to climb upwards. Slowly, cautiously, but ever upward to heaven. Yet, the journey is not a pleasant one. Just before the melody would reach its destination, it falls into a bluesy note called a seventh. That gives the whole melodic line its color, and because it’s only a seventh and not the eighth, which would be an octave and feel resolved, the listeners feels the yearning. Bernstein used that interval of a seventh to great success (as did Beethoven!) in the song “Somewhere.” That “a” in the lyric “There’s a place for us” is set on the seventh, the note of the blues, the note of pain.
A note about the accompaniment, or the harmony: the song starts out in a lilting Broadway “four” feel, everything major, sunny, just a poor dairyman dreaming his little dream. But then five bars in, instead of coming back to the jaunty major, Bock slips into a minor mode (“All day long I’d biddy-biddy-bum”). Everything about the harmony suggests we should simply return to the major mode, but no, this is where the master composer shines: he surprises us. It is, as Bernstein used to say, completely surprising and yet, completely inevitable.
But quick as you can say, “Sounds crazy, no?” we’re back to major, the second “A” section, the repeat of the tune with the lyric, “Wouldn’t have to work hard.” All sunny again. As if nothing just happened. But of course, at the end of the phrase, Bock slips back to the minor; but then the music instanteously “rights” itself and goes back to the major. Major, minor, major, minor. Unsettling to say the least. How strange the change from major to minor, indeed.
Now we arrive at the bridge, or the release; the part of the song that’s a contrasting part to the first statement of the song. Lo and behold, the minor mode wasn’t a little hiccup at all. This release section is about as minor as it gets. What I like even more about the harmony here is the melody. Tevye wants his dream so badly and sees it so clearly, there is virtually no movement in the melody at all! It’s as if he has parked himself firmly in the future and not even a Pogrom can pry him from his place. “Big tall house with rooms by the dozen” and “Right in the middle of the town,” are virtually only two pitches with some embellishments. That’s a far cry (and a sublime aural relief) from the falling fifth and the outlined seventh of the opening.
So, here we have this minor-sounding section and then he repeats it, three times. But the third time -- wait for it -- miracle of miracles, it’s in major! “I’d fill my yard with ducks and turkeys and geese, etc., is the same minor release turned on its head by being major. Is it because Tevye is taking his fantasy even further, this dream of wealth becoming more and more a reality in his mind and thus more and more major?
But no. At “squawking just as noisily as they can,” the song returns to minor and the first complete section of the song finishes in a minor mode.
Now two questions arise: can the lay audience hear this the first time, or even the 100th time they hear the song? Of course not. But it’s all there in the music and adds to the depth, the breadth and the genius of the piece, a reason why Bock’s music appeals to both the lay audience and the sophisticated listener. Question two: did Bock put all this in, or was it an unconscious accident? Answer: it doesn’t matter. It’s there, and as Freud said, “There are no accidents.” Although he probably wasn’t talking about Musical Theater.
The next part of the song proceeds as one might expect, a direct repeat of the two “A” sections and the release, but of course, with additional verses of brilliant Harnick lyrics. A bit of an aside about Broadway lyricists and style: I would say that in 90% of the operas written between 1600 and 1800, when the “song” style operas were in fashion, if there was a musical repeat of whole sections, and there often were, the lyric would also repeat. The melody would be ornamented but the same words would be sung, which led to a stagnant dramatic line, no matter how gorgeous the tune. It’s a particular Broadway invention to change the lyric the second time, thankfully, and move the plot forward to keep the audience interested even as the music repeats. (Another aside: I’ve worked with a few play directors who are attempting their first musicals. Every one of them insists upon trying to cut out second “A” sections of songs, even WITH a new lyric. It’s epidemic. Play directors can’t understand the value of the repeated chorus. As Yenta would say, “Oy!”)
On to my favorite part of the song:
We’ve heard two very complete sections. The song could end here. It would be fine as is, or maybe Bock could have added a coda. But nothing in the previous sections prepares the audience for what happens now.
Suddenly, the entire rhythm of the song breaks down. No more jaunty, Broadway lilting four, no more subtle playing with major, minor, or falling fifths. There’s a completely new section. It’s almost as if the music (and Tevye) is falling prostrate on the floor, begging God to listen.
This is an out-and-out operatic recitative in the middle of a Broadway “want” song. Only Tevye, with his relationship to God, could command this kind of music. And only a great composer like Bock could write it. First we get two measures of stentorian eight notes with a little trill added at the end, Tevye walking into the center of town holding court. Now, listen to the bass line after “fawn on me.” With every chord the bass line plummets another step, like Tevye’s power is filtering through every corner of his little shtetl. Another little Kelzmeric cadenza tops off this section. This writing is truly amazing, a combination of Mozart recitative and Richard Strauss harmonies.
Just when we’re exhausted from the ingenuity, and we figure we’re about to return to the beginning sections, there is another surprise. With “And it won’t make one bit of difference” we are not at the expected first bit of the song but smack-dab back in the release, the third section of the release at that, the major section. Surprising but inevitable. As Tevye sings about his great wish to sit in the “synagogue and pray,” the music is the gorgeous section of the release in the major mode.
What is next? Well, finally, we are back to home base, back to where we’ve started. The music returns to the opening statement, falling fifth and cantorial chant. In four minutes or so we’ve explored every aspect of Tevye’s character. And all through music. No wonder this song is such a joy for performer and audience alike.
Of course, given Bock’s brilliance, he has one more trick up his sleeve. Instead of ending the song, he takes the penultimate phrase of the song, “Lord, who made the lion and the lamb,” and repeats it. Three times. A final prayer, perhaps? A final nod to the minor mode? But this time, the minor is really hitting home because it’s so aggressively repetitive. The rhythm stops, the chords sustain, Tevye insists, cajoles, pleads. What’s next?
Why, a jaunty, Broadway refrain in major for the final note and ride-out. The major mode has triumphed, Tevye has had his apotheosis and we’re right back to where we started. But upon what a journey Mr. Bock and Mr. Harnick have taken us. Gratias.
Glen Roven, four-time Emmy Winner, recently had his show Pandora’s Box produced at NYMF. He will make his third appearance at Carnegie Hall this Spring accompanying Bass-Baritone Daniel Okulitch who is singing Roven’s classical music.
When I heard the brilliant composer Jerry Bock had died last week, I made my own private listening memorial: I programmed a play list of his songs on my iPod -- “I Love A Cop,” “Politics and Poker,” “What Makes Me Love Him?” “Will He Like Me?” “Vanilla Ice Cream” and course the entire score to Fiddler. What joy he gave me, and I know he will continue to give me long into the future.
Fiddler was the first complete Vocal Score my parents bought me; I must have been about eight years old. I was so excited to have the entire score and not just the pathetic-published-for-the-non-professional-vocal-selections, I couldn’t possibly go to school the day the score arrived. I didn’t even have to fake my temperature by sticking the thermometer in the lamp. I was so emotionally overwrought, I ran a fever. I needed to play through the entire show, including I Just Heard, not learn long division.
With no personal stories to tell about Bock, I choose here instead to concentrate on his music; and not just on any song, but one of the great theater songs of all time, “If I Were a Rich Man.” Some may argue that a poor dairyman would never use the subjunctive tense, and it should be, wrong according to grammarians, but correct according to character: “If I Was A Rich Man,” like “If Mamma Was Married.” But I think it’s perfect the way it is, and I know the brilliant lyricist Sheldon Harnick could easily explain his choice.
On to the music, and what glorious music it is:
The melody, on the words “If I were a rich man,” outlines a falling fifth: the “if” down to a “man.” A fifth is the distance of five steps from a C to a G going up; to hear it your head, think of the opening statement of the Star Wars theme. That fifth goes up, but this fifth goes down. Instead of hurling towards outer space, this falling fifth bears the weight of the world, the falling world, the tired world of a dairyman as he sings.
Then comes the quasi-Hasidic Jewish riff, the Daidle-deedle section. Zero Mostel, and most subsequent Teveys, have had great fun playing around with this section, but what I find wonderful is that after the tired, world-weary falling fifth, the music starts to climb upwards. Slowly, cautiously, but ever upward to heaven. Yet, the journey is not a pleasant one. Just before the melody would reach its destination, it falls into a bluesy note called a seventh. That gives the whole melodic line its color, and because it’s only a seventh and not the eighth, which would be an octave and feel resolved, the listeners feels the yearning. Bernstein used that interval of a seventh to great success (as did Beethoven!) in the song “Somewhere.” That “a” in the lyric “There’s a place for us” is set on the seventh, the note of the blues, the note of pain.
A note about the accompaniment, or the harmony: the song starts out in a lilting Broadway “four” feel, everything major, sunny, just a poor dairyman dreaming his little dream. But then five bars in, instead of coming back to the jaunty major, Bock slips into a minor mode (“All day long I’d biddy-biddy-bum”). Everything about the harmony suggests we should simply return to the major mode, but no, this is where the master composer shines: he surprises us. It is, as Bernstein used to say, completely surprising and yet, completely inevitable.
But quick as you can say, “Sounds crazy, no?” we’re back to major, the second “A” section, the repeat of the tune with the lyric, “Wouldn’t have to work hard.” All sunny again. As if nothing just happened. But of course, at the end of the phrase, Bock slips back to the minor; but then the music instanteously “rights” itself and goes back to the major. Major, minor, major, minor. Unsettling to say the least. How strange the change from major to minor, indeed.
Now we arrive at the bridge, or the release; the part of the song that’s a contrasting part to the first statement of the song. Lo and behold, the minor mode wasn’t a little hiccup at all. This release section is about as minor as it gets. What I like even more about the harmony here is the melody. Tevye wants his dream so badly and sees it so clearly, there is virtually no movement in the melody at all! It’s as if he has parked himself firmly in the future and not even a Pogrom can pry him from his place. “Big tall house with rooms by the dozen” and “Right in the middle of the town,” are virtually only two pitches with some embellishments. That’s a far cry (and a sublime aural relief) from the falling fifth and the outlined seventh of the opening.
So, here we have this minor-sounding section and then he repeats it, three times. But the third time -- wait for it -- miracle of miracles, it’s in major! “I’d fill my yard with ducks and turkeys and geese, etc., is the same minor release turned on its head by being major. Is it because Tevye is taking his fantasy even further, this dream of wealth becoming more and more a reality in his mind and thus more and more major?
But no. At “squawking just as noisily as they can,” the song returns to minor and the first complete section of the song finishes in a minor mode.
Now two questions arise: can the lay audience hear this the first time, or even the 100th time they hear the song? Of course not. But it’s all there in the music and adds to the depth, the breadth and the genius of the piece, a reason why Bock’s music appeals to both the lay audience and the sophisticated listener. Question two: did Bock put all this in, or was it an unconscious accident? Answer: it doesn’t matter. It’s there, and as Freud said, “There are no accidents.” Although he probably wasn’t talking about Musical Theater.
The next part of the song proceeds as one might expect, a direct repeat of the two “A” sections and the release, but of course, with additional verses of brilliant Harnick lyrics. A bit of an aside about Broadway lyricists and style: I would say that in 90% of the operas written between 1600 and 1800, when the “song” style operas were in fashion, if there was a musical repeat of whole sections, and there often were, the lyric would also repeat. The melody would be ornamented but the same words would be sung, which led to a stagnant dramatic line, no matter how gorgeous the tune. It’s a particular Broadway invention to change the lyric the second time, thankfully, and move the plot forward to keep the audience interested even as the music repeats. (Another aside: I’ve worked with a few play directors who are attempting their first musicals. Every one of them insists upon trying to cut out second “A” sections of songs, even WITH a new lyric. It’s epidemic. Play directors can’t understand the value of the repeated chorus. As Yenta would say, “Oy!”)
On to my favorite part of the song:
We’ve heard two very complete sections. The song could end here. It would be fine as is, or maybe Bock could have added a coda. But nothing in the previous sections prepares the audience for what happens now.
Suddenly, the entire rhythm of the song breaks down. No more jaunty, Broadway lilting four, no more subtle playing with major, minor, or falling fifths. There’s a completely new section. It’s almost as if the music (and Tevye) is falling prostrate on the floor, begging God to listen.
This is an out-and-out operatic recitative in the middle of a Broadway “want” song. Only Tevye, with his relationship to God, could command this kind of music. And only a great composer like Bock could write it. First we get two measures of stentorian eight notes with a little trill added at the end, Tevye walking into the center of town holding court. Now, listen to the bass line after “fawn on me.” With every chord the bass line plummets another step, like Tevye’s power is filtering through every corner of his little shtetl. Another little Kelzmeric cadenza tops off this section. This writing is truly amazing, a combination of Mozart recitative and Richard Strauss harmonies.
Just when we’re exhausted from the ingenuity, and we figure we’re about to return to the beginning sections, there is another surprise. With “And it won’t make one bit of difference” we are not at the expected first bit of the song but smack-dab back in the release, the third section of the release at that, the major section. Surprising but inevitable. As Tevye sings about his great wish to sit in the “synagogue and pray,” the music is the gorgeous section of the release in the major mode.
What is next? Well, finally, we are back to home base, back to where we’ve started. The music returns to the opening statement, falling fifth and cantorial chant. In four minutes or so we’ve explored every aspect of Tevye’s character. And all through music. No wonder this song is such a joy for performer and audience alike.
Of course, given Bock’s brilliance, he has one more trick up his sleeve. Instead of ending the song, he takes the penultimate phrase of the song, “Lord, who made the lion and the lamb,” and repeats it. Three times. A final prayer, perhaps? A final nod to the minor mode? But this time, the minor is really hitting home because it’s so aggressively repetitive. The rhythm stops, the chords sustain, Tevye insists, cajoles, pleads. What’s next?
Why, a jaunty, Broadway refrain in major for the final note and ride-out. The major mode has triumphed, Tevye has had his apotheosis and we’re right back to where we started. But upon what a journey Mr. Bock and Mr. Harnick have taken us. Gratias.
Glen Roven, four-time Emmy Winner, recently had his show Pandora’s Box produced at NYMF. He will make his third appearance at Carnegie Hall this Spring accompanying Bass-Baritone Daniel Okulitch who is singing Roven’s classical music.
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