|
|
|
Catalog: Song Information: Page 2 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. "A Ballad of the Good Lord Nelson"Song 5 (extractable) from set We Happy Few
This entry contributed by G&K around 1/11/99 Know this song? Add your review! Music Comments: The extremely naughty text is set in high spirits and with glee--Allegro moderato, "with the excessive high spirits of a sea chanty." Looks like lots of fun if you can get away with it. The low D is only touched upon at the very end of the song, by the way--until the low note is A3. Text Comments: The Good Lord Nelson had a swollen gland, Little of the scripture did he understand Till a woman led him to the promised land Aboard the Victory, Victory O. Adam and Evil and a bushel of figs Meant nothing to Nelson who was keeping pigs, Till a woman showed him the various rigs Aboard the Victory, Victory O. His heart was softer than a new-laid egg, Too poor for loving and ashamed to beg, Till Nelson was taken by the Dancing Leg Aboard the Victory, Victory O. Now he up and did up his little tin trunk And he took to the ocean on his English junk, Turning like the hourglass in his lonely bunk Aboard the Victory, Victory O. The Frenchman saw him a-coming there With the one-piece eye and the valentine hair, With the safety-pin sleeve and the occupied air Aboard the Victory, Victory O. Now you all remember the message he sent As an answer to Hamilton's discontent There were questions asked about in the parliament Aboard the Victory, Victory O. Now the blacker the berry, the thicker comes the juice. Think of Good Lord Nelson and avoid self-abuse, For the empty sleeve was no mere excuse Aboard the Victory, Victory O. "England Expects" was the motto he gave When he thought of little Emma out on Biscay's wave, and he remembered working on her like a galley slave aboard the Victory, Victory O. The first Great Lord in our English land to honour the Freudian command, For a cast in the bush is worth two in the hand Aboard the Victory, Victory O. Now the Frenchman shot him there as he stood In the rage of battle in a silk-lined hood And he heard the whistle of his own hot blood Aboard the Victory, Victory O. Now stiff on a pillar with a phallic air Nelson stylites in Trafalgar Square Reminds the British what once they were Aboard the Victory, Victory O. If they'd treat their women in the Nelson way There'd be fewer frigid husbands ev'ry day And many more heroes on the Bay of Biscay Aboard the Victory, Victory O. This entry contributed by G&K around 1/11/99. The contributor(s) looked over the song. "A che (1923)"Song 3 (extractable) from set Cinque sonetti di Michelangiolo Buonarroti
This entry contributed by Benjamin René around 2/20/99
Know this song? Add your review! Music Comments:
9 pages.
Recordings: Not recorded. See Sorabji: A Critical Celebration (Biographies) This entry contributed by Benjamin René around 2/20/99. The contributor(s) looked over the song. "A Child's Amaze"Song 2 (extractable) from set By the Roadside
This entry contributed by G&K around 4/10/99 Know this song? Add your review! Music Comments: a short, one page song, 3/4, quarter = 72. few dissonances, tonal and quasi tonal structure. Text Comments: Silent, amazed even when a little child, I remember I heard the preacher every Sunday put God in his statements as contending against some being or influence. This entry contributed by G&K around 4/10/99. The contributor(s) looked over the song. "A Downward Look"
This entry contributed by ECS Publishing around 12/29/98
Know this song? Add your review! Music Comments: "Weightless, floating" quarter = 54. Repeated rhythmic pattern in piano, and the vocal lines all begin with a four note pattern or a variation of it. A dreamlike or mystical effect thus created is very suitable for the text. Text Comments: Seen from above, the sky is deep. Clouds float down there, Foam on a long, luxurious bath. Their shadows over limbs submerged in "air," Over protuberances, faults, A delta thicket, glide. On high, the love That drew the bath and scattered it with salts Still radiates new projects old as day, And hardly registers the tug When, far beneath, a wrinkled, baby hand Happens upon the plug. See Songs by Daron Hagen (Recordings) This entry contributed by G&K around 12/29/98. The contributor(s) looked over the song. "A Dream Within a Dream"
This entry contributed by ECS Publishing around 12/28/98 Know this song? Add your review! Music Comments: "Conversational, freely effusive" quarter = c. 69. Russell Platt, in the cd liner notes, says he hears a "touch of cocktail piano" along with a great deal of sophistication in this song. Although this is a cycle for high voice, and a soprano can certainly sing this song well, in seems a mezzo or baritone could perform this song too (although perhaps not with the timbre that the composer intended). I have marked this song as extractable, but this particular song segues to the next song in the cycle, "Echo's Song," making a pair. Text Comments: Take this kiss upon thy brow! And in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow--You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if Hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand--How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep--while I weep! O God! can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream? See Songs by Daron Hagen (Recordings) This entry contributed by G&K around 12/28/98. The contributor(s) looked over the song. "A Farm Picture"Song 1 (extractable) from set By the Roadside
This entry contributed by G&K around 4/10/99 Know this song? Add your review! Music Comments: quarter = 60, marked hymnlike. attractive. gradual ascent to an F5 climax, but jump from E4 to forte G5, leading to A5. Very lyrical. Text Comments: Through the ample open door of the peaceful country barn, A sunlit pasture field with cattle and horses feeding, And haze and vista, and the far horizon fading away. This entry contributed by G&K around 4/10/99. The contributor(s) looked over the song. "A Golden Bird"Song 11 (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 last longish song in the cycle, and apparently a musical climax. Marked "warmly flowing." full ensemble. Call me crazy for going on looks alone but the texture looks beautiful. High A5 is part of lyric ff line that approaches and departs smoothly. Text Comments: I made an image--a golden bird stoned by laughing boys and hit--hit and mortally hurt. But in the long arc of falling it sang--the more and more softly--in beauty, because that was the only way it knew how to communicate. My heart stopped in compassion. Now the image is mine, and no longer involves the bird person. It is set just behind my eyes. The person can die or go far away, or turn ugly and remote and none of it will matter. That moment is mine. And that is how we shape our sanity. This entry contributed by G&K around 2/21/99. The contributor(s) looked over the song. "A Greek Vision"
This entry contributed by John Eaton around 3/20/99 Know this song? Add your review! Music Comments: 14'. Commissioned and Premiered by Elsa Charlston and Carole Morgan 12/7/81 A tour de force for coloratura soprano and flute, with optional digital echo Text Comments:
The theme of all the poems is birth, and rebirth. The first poem, Sparta, carries this note: Cf. Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus, xv, 6-7: "After giving marriage such traits of reserve and decorum, he none the less freed men from the empty and womanish passion of jealous possession, by making it honorable for them, while keeping the marriage relation free from all wanton irregularities, to share with other worthy men in the begetting of children, laughing to scorn those who regard such uncommon privileges as intolerable and resort to murder and war rather than grant them. For example, an elderly man with a young wife, if he looked with favour and esteem on some fair and noble young man, might introduce him to her, and adopt her offspring by such a noble father as his own." The 'voice' in the song is that of the husband. I have tried to capture both the nobility of this complex emotional situation and the inevitable concomitant anguish it entails, as he encourages a young 'Adonis' to conceive a child with his wife. The second song, Return, is a kind of Grecian Book of the Dead. It describes the journey of a soul about to be reborn...into its native Greece. As Keeley so elegantly points out, "...there is an intimate and dynamic relationship between the poet and his 'local habitation,' in Sikelianos's case, the land and seas of Greece. Nature and natural forms are felt to share in the poet's own subjective experience." The last poem, Aphrodite Rising, is about the birth of beauty, the immense struggle against the force of nature, which keep pulling her back, from the ecstasy of being. In order to enhance the expression of generation and regeneration, all of the songs employ, optionally, a discrete use of electronic echo. Recordings: Indiana Univ. Press C.D., Music by John Eaton This entry contributed by John Eaton around 3/20/99. The contributor(s) composed the song. Please contribute to the catalog
|
