Art Song

Ravel’s Vocalise-Étude en forme de Habanera: A “Haunting Andalusian Cantilena”

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Maurice Ravel’s Vocalise-étude en forme de Habanera is a magically evocative technical study for mezzo-soprano voice. The dreamy, ephemeral song without words has been described as a “nostalgic and haunting Andalusian cantilena.” (Vladimir Jankélévitch) Ravel composed this music in March of 1907 during the time he was working on Rapsodie espagnole. It was commissioned by Amédée-Louis Hettich, a voice professor at the Paris Conservatory who approached numerous prominent composers, asking each to …

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Ives’ “Elegie”: A Yankee Take on the French Chanson

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Charles Ives’ 1901 song, Elegie is haunting and hypnotic. Its gloomy and forlorn text, a setting of a poem by Louis Gallet, expresses the heartache of a narrator whose beloved is forever gone. The blue skies and birdsongs of springtime are replaced with late autumnal chill. The vocal line rises over an unrelenting rhythmic ostinato which begins to render time infinite and unmeasurable. French composer Jules Massenet wrote a song using the …

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Remembering Steve Davislim

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Steve Davislim, the renowned operatic tenor, passed away “after a prolonged illness” last Sunday, August 11. He was 57. Born in Malaysia to a Chinese father and Irish mother, Davislim moved with his family to Australia shortly after birth. In later years, he settled in Vienna, Austria. In a statement, Davislim’s manager wrote, Steve was a man of great humanity and keen intellect who possessed a voice of rare beauty and facility. …

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“Songs My Mother Taught Me”: From Dvořák to Ives

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Songs My Mother Taught Me is the fourth and most famous of Antonín Dvořák’s seven-song cycle, Gypsy Songs, Op. 55. Composed in 1880 at the request of the Viennese tenor, Gustav Walter, the texts are from a collection of poems by Adolf Heyduk. Songs My Mother Taught Me highlights the timelessness of music, and enduring truths, passed lovingly through generations: Songs my mother taught me in the days long vanished, Seldom from her eyelids were …

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Remembering Jodie Devos

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Jodie Devos, the celebrated Belgian soprano, passed away last Sunday, June 16, as a result of rapidly-progressing breast cancer. She was 35. At the time of her death in Paris, she was surrounded by family. In a social media post, soprano Barbara Hannigan remembered Devos as “a beautiful artist, vibrant and radiant of sound and presence.” In a statement to Belgian news channel VRT, conductor Dirk Brossé said, “We have lost one …

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Finzi’s “Farewell to Arms”: An Ode to the Aging Warrior

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English composer Gerald Finzi (1901–1956) was too young to fight in the First World War, but he experienced personally the results of the carnage. Within a span of two weeks in 1918, combat claimed the life of his only remaining brother, as well as his teacher, the composer and pianist Ernest Farrar. Finzi’s Farewell to Arms, Op. 9, a song in two parts for tenor and small orchestra, evokes melancholy remembrances of these …

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The Words of King, and a Spiritual Performed by Marian Anderson

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…I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be engulfed, every hill shall be exalted and every mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go …

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