Art Song

Aulis Sallinen’s “Winter Was Hard”: Ode to a Bleak Finnish Landscape

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Humor, stoicism, and Scandinavian winter gloom emerge in the brief song, Winter Was Hard, Op. 20 (Vintern var Hård) by Finnish composer Aulis Sallinen (b. 1935). Composed in 1969, the song became the title track of a 1988 album by the Kronos Quartet. Their version, featuring the San Francisco Girls Chorus, includes a pump organ: Here is another version featuring the Tapiola Choir: A translation of the text: There wasn’t much for the ducks. …

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Remembering Jubilant Sykes

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American baritone Jubilant Sykes passed away on December 8 at the age of 71. He was the victim of an apparent domestic homicide. A classically trained, Grammy-nominated vocalist, Sykes drew on gospel, jazz and folk influences. He collaborated with a wide array of artists including: Julie Andrews, Renée Fleming, Josh Groban, and Brian Wilson, and appeared on “such diverse stages as the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Arena …

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Schubert’s “Schwanengesang,” “Kriegers Ahnung”: Warrior’s Foreboding

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Franz Schubert composed Schwanengesang (“Swan Song”), D. 957, a cycle of 14 posthumously published songs, in October of 1828, a month before his death. The haunting second song, Kriegers Ahnung (“Warriors Foreboding”), foreshadows Mahler’s Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. The text by Ludwig Rellstab is the ghostly soliloquy of a soldier who fears imminent death on the battlefield, and who longs to return to his beloved. The piano’s desolate …

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Mahler’s “Des Knaben Wunderhorn,” “Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen”: A Ghostly Nocturnal Vision

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Songs gave rise to symphonies during Gustav Mahler’s “Wunderhorn years.” This was the period from 1887 to 1904 when Mahler composed his first four symphonies, all of which are rooted in nature and song. In some cases, songs provided the seeds for symphonic movements. The texts for Mahler’s twelve-song cycle, Des Knaben Wunderhorn (“The Boy’s Magic Horn”) were based on a collection of anonymous German folk poems of the same title, compiled and …

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Ives’ “The Pond”: A Dreamy Elegy

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Composed by Charles Ives in 1906, The Pond is a shimmering, atmospheric fragment, or, in the words of the composer, “a song without voice.” Evocative of a rippling pond on a lazy afternoon, the work is so brief that it unfolds as a fleeting dream. The Pond was the composer’s nostalgic elegy for his father, George Ives (1845–1894), a cornet player and bandmaster in the Union Army during the Civil War. In Ives’ musical fragment, …

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Ives’ “Tom Sails Away”: Childhood Memories from Wartime

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In 1917, Charles Ives composed a series of songs in response to the entrance of the United States, that year, into the First World War. The final song, Tom Sails Away, involves a dreamy childhood memory, experienced as a vivid hallucination. The text, written by Ives, begins with images of a springtime sunset over a New England mill town. The hustle and bustle of the day has faded. The final haunting moments …

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Schubert’s “Die Götter Griechenlands” (“The Gods of Greece”): A Song of Alienation

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Friedrich Schiller’s 1788 poem, Die Götter Griechenlands (“The Gods of Greece”), is filled with nostalgia and longing for the long-vanished world of Greek antiquity. Rebelling against mechanical philosophy, it idealizes man’s harmonious interaction with the Greek gods and nature. Schubert’s 1819 song, Die Götter Griechenlands, D. 677 sets only a fragment of the lengthy poem. It begins with a faltering three note motif (E-D-E), repeated by the piano, followed by the despairing opening …

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