Irene Girton

1
American art song in the new millennium

• Irene Girton
• International CMS Conference, July 9, 2001

2
Maury Yeston (b. 1945)

• December Songs, 1991, for Andrea Marcovicci and
  commissioned for the Carnegie Hall centennial
  year
• Neo-Romantic
• Explicitly linked to the German Lieder tradition
• Relationships with Schuberts Winterreise and
  Die schöne Müllerin, and less directly with
  Lieder by Robert Schumann
• Gradual unfolding and illumination of
  experience (Charles Rosen, The Romantic
  Generation)
• Referential and semiotic use of Romantic harmony
  and motivic gesture

3
December Songs and Winterreise
Ex 1. December Snow and Gute Nacht
4
December Songs and Winterreise
Ex 2. December Snow and Gute Nacht thematic
correspondence
5
December Songs and Schumann
Ex 3. December Snow and Schumanns Liederkreis,
op. 39/1
6
December Songs and Schumann
Ex 4. December Snow and Schumanns In der
Fremde, op. 39/1
7
December Songs and Winterreise
Ex 5. Bookseller and Leiermann
Performed in g minor
Performed in e minor
8
December Songs and Winterreise
Ex 6. I Had a Dream About You and Die
Nebensonnen
9
December Songs and Winterreise
Ex 7. I Had a Dream About You and Die
Nebensonnen thematic correspondence
10
December Songs and Die schöne Müllerin
Ex 8. By the River and Des Baches Wiegenlied
11
Emma Lou Diemer (b. 1927)

• Four Chinese Love Poems, 1965
• the romantic ideal, believing it is the most
  personal, all my composing life. A love of
  poetry creates song composers out of many of us.
  
• By the Willows, text from the Book of Songs,
  800-600 BCE.

12
Jake Heggie (b. 1961)

• Eve-Song, 1996, for Kristin Clayton (San
  Francisco Opera)
• Post-modern
• Like many contemporary American composers,
  Heggie can slip easily in and out of various
  styles (The Guardian, October 10, 2000)
• I suddenly felt the impact of all the jazz I
  grew up with despite my left-over academic
  conscience
• Listen and Snake own the greatest jazz
  element of the cycle a symbol of liberation,
  freedom, sexuality

13
Listen

• Limited means
• F Dorian mode
• Secundal harmony
• Parallel 4ths
• organum-esque recitative

14
Snake, Leopard Ivess The Cage
Heggie, Listen, 1996
Note Heggies secundal harmony is simply a
revoicing of Ivess quartal chords.
Ives, The Cage, 1904
15
Snake, beginning
16
Libby Larsen (b. 1950)

• Sonnets from the Portuguese, 1989
• Collaborative, with American soprano Arleen
  Augér
• Themes of mature love and willingness to
  accept risk, or un-resolvedness

17
If I leave all for thee, song 4

• Enveloping motive representative of EBB and
  RB coming together but not quite converging

If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchangeAnd
be all to me?  Shall I never missHome-talk and
blessing and the common kissThat comes to each
in turn, nor count it strange,When I look up, to
drop on a new rangeOf walls and floors, another
home than this?Nay, wilt thou fill that place by
me which isFilled by dead eyes too tender to
know changeThat's hardest.  If to conquer love,
has tried,To conquer grief, tries more, as all
things prove,For grief indeed is love and grief
beside.Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to
love.Yet love me--wilt thou?  Open thy heart
wide,And fold within, the wet wings of thy dove.
18
New models for art song

• Janika Vandervelde Positive Women Susan
• Eve Beglarian Landscaping for Privacy
• New media, new models, new texts
• Spoken poetry with music
• Non-acoustic accompaniment
• Themes beyond the nature / love / God troika
• Childbirth Susan Frykberg (NZ) and the Audio
  Birth Project
• AIDS
• Urban issues
• War Katharine Norman, In her own time