published on
Springs Songs (for Tenor and Chamber Ensemble)
Duration: ca. 20'
MOVEMENTS:
I. English Sparrows (Washington Square) (Edna St. Vincent Millay)
II. April 5, 1974 (Richard Wilbur)
III. Done With (Ann Stanford)
IV. The Widow’s Lament in Springtime (William Carlos Williams)
V. Spring Rain (Sara Teasdale)
Performers: American Modern Ensemble; Alok Kumar, Tenor
For More Information: https://robertpaterson.com/spring-songs
Publisher: Bill Holab Music: http://www.billholabmusic.com/composers/robert-paterson/
Purchase Sheet Music: http://billholabmusic.com/store/index.php?keyword=spring%20songs%20-&main_page=advanced_search_result&search_in_description=1
Also available as a version for tenor and piano: https://robertpaterson.com/spring-songs
PROGRAM NOTE
Spring Songs for tenor and chamber ensemble or piano is my third song cycle celebrating the seasons. As with the first two, Winter Songs for bass-baritone and Summer Songs for soprano, this cycle contains settings of poems by various American poets.
Whereas both Winter Songs and Summer Songs end with scenes in New York City, Spring Songs begins with New York: a setting of English Sparrows (Washington Square) by Edna St. Vincent Millay, a poem about a scene that takes place in the morning in Greenwich Village, a neighborhood in New York City where Millay lived in the early 1900s. The second movement is a setting of April 5, 1974 by Richard Wilbur, a poem Wilbur wrote in honor of Robert Frost’s one-hundredth birthday, and I interpret as being about overcoming self-doubt through wisdom, and about understanding the change of seasons, but also a change of mind. The third movement, Done With by Ann Stanford, I interpret to be about death and rebirth. Stanford symbolizes this by a house being torn down and the ground paved over, the now suffocated plant life yearning to break through. The Widow’s Lament in Springtime, the fourth movement, is a setting of a poem by William Carlos Williams. I interpret this poem as a modernist, pastoral elegy that uses images of nature to lament the death of a loved one. The final movement, a setting of the poem Spring Rain by Sara Teasdale, is about a happy memory of a lover brought about by an evening thunderstorm.
Spring Songs was commissioned by Rick Teller for the American Modern Ensemble.
AME ARTISTS
Robert Paterson, Conductor
Alok Kumar, tenor
Grace Law, flute
Nuno Antunes, clarinet
Samuel Z. Solomon, percussion
Geoffrey Burleson, piano
Victoria Paterson, violin
Peter Sachon, cello
- Genre
- Classical