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Catalog: Song Information: Page 18 of 83Please keep this site alive by contributing song listings and other information to the catalog. See the bottom of every catalog page for how. "Don't Let That Horse..."Song not from a cycle or set
This entry contributed by G&K around 12/9/98 Know this song? Add your review! Music Comments: For violin and medium voice. This will be annotated by the composer in early '99, but I wrote the following note before I knew that: A relatively short song. From what my poor piano playing can tell me, this is a really fun song, with "serious" 20th C techniques utilized in an aurally pleasing setting. Violin part requires some virtuosity, particularly with doublestops and some fast finger work, but does not go stratospherically up the fingerboard (only an E6). The vocal tessitura is such that, although the song is ideal for a middle voice, a lower voice with an easy high E and F could pull it off, I think. Text Comments: To be annotated by composer, but meanwhile--the poem requires the performers to have a rather sophisticated tongue in their cheek. It begins with the following: "Don't let that horse eat that violin cried Chagall's mother" and continues briefly to tell a (fictional, silly, or at least surreal) version of Chagall's success story. This entry contributed by G&K around 12/9/98. The contributor(s) looked over the song. "Dora Williams"
This entry contributed by Andy Vores around 11/21/98 Know this song? Add your review! Text Comments: When Reuben Pantier ran away and threw me I went to Springfield. There I met a lush, Whose father just deceased left him a fortune. He married me when drunk. My life was wretched. A year passed and one day they found him dead. That made me rich. I moved on to Chicago. After a time I met Tyler Rountree, villain. I moved on to New York. A gray-haired magnate Went mad about me so another fortune. He died one night right in my arms, you know. (I saw his purple face for years thereafter.) There was almost a scandal. I moved on, This time to Paris. I was now a woman, insidious, subtle, versed in the world and rich. My sweet apartment near the Champs Élysées Became a center for all sorts of people, musicians, poets, dandies, artists, nobles, Where we spoke French and German, Italian, English. I wed Count Navigato, native of Genoa. We went to Rome. He poisoned me, I think. Now in the Campo Santo overlooking The sea where young Columbus dreamed new worlds, See what they chiseled: "Contessa Navigato Implora eterna quiete." This entry contributed by Andy Vores around 11/21/98. The contributor(s) composed the song. "Doubt me! My Dim Companion!"Song 1 (extractable) from set At Last, To Be Identified!
This entry contributed by G&K around 10/25/98 Know this song? Add your review! Music Comments: Slow, hymn-like, with long phrases rising to a sense of ecstasy (2:58) Text Comments: Full text: "Doubt me! My Dim Companion! Why, God would be content With but a fraction of the Life Poured thee, without a stint The whole of me forever What more the Woman can, Say quick, that I may dower thee With last Delight I own! It cannot be my Spirit For that was thine before I ceded all of Dust I knew What opulence the more Had I a humble maiden whose farthest of Degree, was that she might some distant Heaven, Dwell timidly, with thee!" This entry contributed by Richard Pearson Thomas around 10/25/98. The contributor(s) composed the song. "Dove sta amore..."Song 5 (extractable) from set Dove Sta Amore
This entry contributed by G&K around 5/16/99
Know this song? Add your review! Music Comments: Alternates between "Tempo rubato (broadly)" and the significantly faster "Tempo giusto (lightly dancing)". Alternate notes bring the highest note of the piece down, and the top range of the song is then a half step lower. A longish song with a lot of vocalese passages. Virtuosic for vocalist. Text Comments: Dove sta amore Where lies love The ring dove love in lyrical delight Dove sta amore Hear love's hillsong Love's true willsong Love's low plain-song [ah] Love's low plain-song Too sweet pain-song In passages of night Dove sta-- The ring dove love In lyrical delight The ring dove love In passages of night Dove sta amore Dove sta-- Hear lies love love amore This entry contributed by G&K around 5/16/99. The contributor(s) looked over the song. "Down Low"Song 6 (extractable) from set Bird by Bird
This entry contributed by G&K around 4/27/99 Know this song? Add your review! Music Comments: quarter = 72. fast moving flute over voice part. soprano makes some vocalese bird calls. Text Comments: Snow storms high-traveling, furry clouds blur over our zero air: wind steams (or smokes) fine snow off the eaves, settled ghosts trailing up and away, away: the pheasant, too cold to peck, stands on one foot like a stiff weed. This entry contributed by G&K around 4/27/99. The contributor(s) looked over the song. "Down the Road"Song 2 (not extractable) from set American Triptych
This entry contributed by G&K around 4/4/99
Know this song? Add your review! Music Comments: voice part hangs not quite as high as first song in cycle. [to be performed; Mark's style is very complimentary to the voice and incorporates many compositional techniques usually within either an expanded tonality or quasi-tonality.] Text Comments: Early summer. Sun low over the pond. Down the road the neighbor's children play baseball in the twilight. I see the ball leave the bat; a moment later the sound reaches me where I sit.// No deaths or separations, no disappointments in love. They are throwing and hitting the ball. Sometimes it arcs higher than the house, sometimes it tunnels into tall grass at the edge of the hayfield. [see poetry anthology below] See Otherwise: New and Selected Poems (Poetry) This entry contributed by G&K around 4/4/99. The contributor(s) looked over the song. "Duo"
This entry contributed by John Eaton around 3/20/99
Know this song? Add your review! Music Comments: A setting of assorted biblical texts in dramatic conflict for soprano (or mezzo) solo, mixed chorus and piano. The mixed chorus part is easy. There are also very brief solos from the chorus. Commissioned by and premiered at the Cork Choral Festival. Duo dramatically superimposes two eschatological visions, or ideas of the last days. Text Comments: The chorus, secure, even smug about their salvation, like many a church congregation, has as its text a portion of the 46th Psalm: "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will we not fear, though the earth be removed,... Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of Hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Se'-lah." But the soloists, racked by sorrow at mankind's alienation from God, see a quite different picture: [Sop.]"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remember thee, oh Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" (from Psalm 137) "O God, why hast thou cast us off forever? why doth thine anger smoke against the sheep of Thy pasture?" (from Psalm 74) (And then, from Genesis 13:) [Bass]"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, [Alto & Ten.] And the Lord said, [Bass] 'I shall destroy man, whom I have created, from the face of the earth;'" [Sop.]"Se'-lah." The last word, "Se'-lah", is often interpreted as "So be it!" However, its actual meaning is unknown; it may be simply an indication of a musical pause or rest. More provocative in the context of this piece is the instruction sometimes attributed to it: "Stop; and, begin again (or anew)!" This entry contributed by John Eaton around 3/20/99. The contributor(s) composed the song. "E.L. Brockway"Song 7 (not extractable) from set Songs of Madness and Sorrow
This entry contributed by G&K around 2/21/99
Know this song? Add your review! Music Comments: The sales call of "ANNOUNCEMENT! MAGNETIC HEALING!" is set with a call from D5 to G5 to G4 and fp chords from the ensemble. The sales pitch itself is set with piano and pizzicato string bass accompaniment to begin with. The setting of the doctor's qualifications ("Graduate of the School of Magnetic Healing") looks deliciously funny. Many meter changes. Much of the rest of the ensemble joins in then gradually fades out back to the string bass and piano. Looks like a rather jazzy texture, actually. Ends with block chords from piano and strings accompanying the voice singing the final reassurances. Text Comments: ANNOUNCEMENT! MAGNETIC HEALING! I take great, great pleasure in saying to the fine citizens of Black River Falls and adjacent towns and surrounding country that I have secured Dr. J.B. Worley, Graduate of the School of Magnetic Healing, and have opened a school and a sanatorium of magnetic healing at my residence, Lower Falls, town of Brockway, where the afflicted may exchange their aches and pains for ease and comfort.... We are living in an age of advancement and investigation where light is pouring in and he who shuts his eyes and scoffs and sneers is recreant to duty! he does society in general and mankind in particular an irreparable wrong.... Consultation free. Strictly private and confidential. I am most respectfully yours for humanity, E. L. Brockway, Black River Falls. This entry contributed by G&K around 2/21/99. The contributor(s) looked over the song. Please contribute to the catalog
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