Resounding Verse

The Minotaur is a half man/half bull from Greek mythology that is often viewed as a monster. Cecilia Livingston and Duncan McFarlane's song cycle hyacinth reimagines the Minotaur as a lonely child, imprisoned because of the way he looks, remembering fragments of a life above ground and, above all, remembering his mother. The episode features a recording of the song by soprano Laura Strickling...

This episode explores the first song in a cycle I assembled from stand-alone songs by Pauline Decker—using curation as a form of advocacy.  It features a world-premiere recording of the song by tenor James Gilchrist and pianist Jocelyn Freeman . A recording of the entire song cycle, also featuring mezzo-soprano Katie Bray , can be found on my website Art Song Augmented . The score to the cycle is...

I head back to university teaching tomorrow—and I know many teachers and students who are already back at it. In honor of this back-to-school season, here's an episode on a wild and wonderful song by New-York-based composers Lainie Fefferman and Jascha Narveson . In addition to composing a wide variety of music as individual artists, they are part of a synth-pop duo called The Beverage Statio...

On September 27, 2024, Signum Records will release a recording of Rodrigo Ruiz's cycle of seventeen songs, Venus & Adonis , based on William Shakespeare's poem of the same name. In this episode, I dive into one of my favorite songs from the cycle, where Venus takes Adonis's hand and entreats him to open his heart to her. For more information about Rodrigo Ruiz, you can find him...

The Mass for the Endangered , by Nathaniel Bellows and Sarah Kirkland Snider , appeals not to God but to nature itself and (in Snider's words) takes the "musical modes of spiritual contemplation" associated with the Latin mass and applies them to "concern for non-human life—animals, plants, and the environment." The third movement of the Mass , "Alleluia," descri...

The title track from Rhiannon Giddens's recent album You're the One —which was just released by Nonesuch Records —is a love song, but not one about two adults; it's about a moment Giddens experienced with her newborn son, pressing her cheek against his and realizing that her world would never be the same again. In this episode I reference a book by Matt BaileyShea called Lines and L...

Have you ever felt as though a single moment—gazing into someone's eyes, listening to a passage of music, looking at a landscape—transports you to another realm? Maurice Bouchor's poem is about just this kind of experience, an experience that the French composer Mel Bonis transforms into a magical sound world that deftly blends Romanticism and Impressionism. The episode features a record...

Arthur Symons's poem captures a lazy June afternoon, with a fountain burbling and the moon hanging in the sky, waiting for the coming of night. Elizabeth Maconchy transforms the poem into a song of mesmerizing stillness and beauty. The episode features a world-premiere recording by soprano Joanna Songi and pianist Matthew Fletcher , based on an unpublished manuscript found in the Maconchy arc...

The Haitian-American composer Nathalie Joachim transforms a Haitian hymn, and in so doing creates a multi-layered tapestry of sound that evokes the many voices of Haiti—past, present, and future. "Resevwa Li" comes from Joachim's Grammy-nominated 2019 album Fanm d'Ayiti (New Amsterdam Records), featuring the Spektral Quartet . Resevwa Li Men n’ap proche devan ou Granmèt Avèk to...

Connie Converse was one of the first singer-songwriters, an uncommon talent who predated Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. But she was barely known in her day, and after making a handful of low-fi recordings in the 1950s, she disappeared in 1974. Her songs weren't widely known until some of those low-fi recordings were released on CD in 2009. This episode looks at one of her most affecting songs, whic...

We know very little about the German composer Marie von Kehler (1822–1882), who served as a "lady in waiting" to a princess and seems to have been acquainted with Johannes Brahms. But we do know that she wrote over eighty songs that were published over a decade after her death—none of which had ever been recorded until Stephan Loges and Jocelyn Freeman recorded four of them for my websit...

Carolyn Forché 's 46-page poem "On Earth" forms the basis for a song cycle called The Blue Hour , which was composed by five women—Caroline Shaw, Shara Nova, Rachel Grimes, Angelica Negrón, and Sarah Kirkland Snider—and just released on CD this month by Nonesuch and New Amsterdam Records . This episode looks at one of Caroline Shaw 's contributions to the cycle, a song that emb...

Francis Jammes's poem depicts two lovers who sit on a bench, alone together under the shade of overhanging branches. But it's not clear if the scene is real or imaginary. In her setting of the text, Lili Boulanger heightens the poem's sense of mystery—and also the poetic speaker's anxiety that the blissful moment may only be a figment of his imagination. You can find the score...

Thomas Walsh's poem and Mary Turner Salter's setting of it capture the moment between day and night—and the desire to linger in that moment as long as possible. The episode features the first-ever recording of Mary Turner Salter's "Afterglow," performed by soprano Camille Ortiz and pianist Gustavo Castro and engineered by Joseph Wenda . I commissioned the recording for Art...

Nathaniel Bellows ’ poem and Sarah Kirkland Snider's haunting setting of it—from her song cycle Unremembered —revisit the site of a childhood trauma and meditate on innocence and the mechanisms of memory.   The performance of the song features vocalists Padma Newsome, DM Stith, and Shara Worden, and the Unremembered Orchestra (members of ACME, Alarm Will Sound, ICE, The Knights, and Sō Percus...

Anne Carson 's poem and Caroline Shaw 's mesmerizing setting of it meditate on the feeling of being in and out of time. The recording of the song, which appears on the album Let The Soil Play Its Simple Part (Nonesuch, 2021), features Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion (Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting).

The 21st-century Mexican composer Rodrigo Ruiz sets a text by the 19th-century German writer Heinrich Heine. In so doing, Ruiz channels 19th-century musical style and offers a deeply moving interpretation of a poem about the loss of love and the death of an artistic tradition that Heine once held dear. The performance of the song features soprano Grace Davidson and pianist Christopher Glynn . The...

Kendra Preston Leonard 's poem and Lisa Neher 's song—about a man who sells fresh fruit on a summer day—celebrate something sumptuous where we would least expect it. The performance of the song is by Arwen Myers , who is also featured in a previous episode about a song by Florence Price. Be sure to check out other collaborations by Kendra Preston Leonard and Lisa Neher,  especially the w...

Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is one of the most famous poems in the English language, and it has been set to music by many composers. This episode explores an extraordinarily inventive setting by the Black American composer Margaret Bonds (1913–1972), recently recorded by bass-baritone Justin Hopkins and pianist Jeanne-Minette Cilliers . This recording comes from a playlis...

In Julia Johnson Davis's poem "To My Little Son," a mother imagines what her baby boy will look like when he's twenty-one years old, and wonders whether, when he's grown up, she'll see glimmers of the boy in the man. Thinking of her own son, Florence Price turned to Davis's poem and created a song that is nuanced, affecting, and deeply personal. The recording of...

Maya Angelou's poem "Phenomenal Woman" tells women that they don't have to conform to conventional ideas of femininity. Farayi Malek uses her voice to amplify Angelou's, and to lift up the voices of other women who at times struggle to feel comfortable in their own skin—and who deserve to feel phenomenal just as they are. The recording of "Phenomenal Woman" featu...

In Nikolaus Lenau's poem "Scheideblick" (Parting Glance) a man leaves his beloved and, as he departs, imagines sinking his happiness into the ocean. Josephine's Lang's setting of the poem evokes the ebb and flow of the sea, and also the ebb and flow of the emotions associated with it. For more on Josephine Lang, see Harald and Sharon Krebs's book Josephine Lang: Her L...

The protagonist in Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem looks upon a tree that has died and wonders what caused it to wither. She stands apart from the scene, awed and perplexed, but at a crucial moment enters the scene and takes a decisive action. In H. Leslie Adams's song, that action seems even more decisive—and even more brutal. The recording of "Branch by Branch" is by Darryl Ta...

Announcing a new podcast about poetry and song. Join music theorist Stephen Rodgers as he explores how composers transform words into songs. Each episode discusses one poem and one musical setting of it. The music is diverse—covering a variety of styles and time periods, and focusing on composers from underrepresented groups—and the tone is accessible and personal. If you love poetry and song, no...