MUSICA NOVA:
NEW COMPOSITIONS FOR VOICE
William James Lawson, piano
Margaret Reitz, piano
Coordinated by
Mary Burgess and Timothy LeFebvre
Sunday, February 21, 2010
3:00 p.m.
Anderson Center Chamber Hall
PROGRAM
On Music .............................................................................................. Ben Moore
(b. 1960)
Mary Burgess, soprano
William James Lawson, piano
Swimmers on the Shore .....................................................................Lori Laitman
A Wild Sostenuto
(b. 1955)
Timothy LeFebvre, baritone
Margaret Reitz, piano
Natural Selection ................................................................................ Jake Heggie
Creation
(b. 1961)
Animal Passion
Alas! Alack!
Indian Summer—Blue
Joy Alone
Julie Williams, soprano
William James Lawson, piano
Tell me, oh blue, blue sky (1927) ............................................... Vittorio Giannini
(1903-1966)
Victoria Cannizzo, soprano
Margaret Reitz, piano
Early in the Morning ............................................................................ Ned Rorem
O You Whom I Often and Silently Come
(b. 1923)
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
I am Rose
Go, Lovely Rose
Jennifer Groves, soprano
Margaret Reitz, piano
INTERMISSION
Poem ........................................................................................... Christopher Berg
Cabiria Jacobsen, mezzo-soprano
Margaret Reitz, piano
Have peace, Jo .................................................................................. Mark Adamo
from Little Women
(b. 1962)
Laura MacAvoy, soprano
William James Lawson, piano
Do You Know the Land .................................................................... Mark Adamo
from Little Women
(b. 1962)
Julian Whitley, baritone
William James Lawson, piano
Six Elizabethan Songs .............................................................. Dominick Argento
Spring
(b. 1927)
Sleep
Winter
Dirge
Diaphenia
Hymn
Amanda Chmela, soprano
Margaret Reitz, piano
This World ............................................................................... Leonard Bernstein
from Candide
(1918-1990)
Julian Whitley, baritone
William James Lawson, piano
Selected songs .................................................................................... Charles Ives
Slugging a Vampire
(1874-1954)
Canon I
Serenity
Two Little Flowers (and dedicated to them)
At Parting
They Are There (Fighting for the People's New Free World)
Briana Sakamoto, soprano
William James Lawson, piano
ABOUT THE PERFORMERS
WILLIAM JAMES LAWSON coaches and accompanies singers at Binghamton
University. As a coach, he specializes in English diction for the American and English
art song, sacred music, and classical theater repertoires. He studied at Binghamton
University (B.A. 1980), where his teachers included Seymour Fink and Patricia Hanson
in piano, M. Searle Wright in church music, and Stevenson Barrett in vocal coaching.
He holds an M.A. from New York University (1984) and was one of the first graduates of
New York University’s innovative Department of Performance Studies, an
interdisciplinary program in the performing arts.
PEJ REITZ, pianist, is a native of the Binghamton Area. She received her Bachelor and
Master of Music degrees in piano performance with accompanying emphasis. She
attended Boston University, New England Conservatory and Binghamton University.
She has studied piano with Jean Casadesus, Victor Rosenbaum, Seymour Fink and
Walter Ponce and accompanying with Allen Rogers. She has accompanied throughout
the United States, in England, South America, Spain and at the American Institute of
Musical Studies in Graz, Austria. She was a winner of the Artistic Ambassadors
Program by the United States Information Agency in partnership with the John F.
Kennedy Center for the performing arts.
MARY BURGESS, soprano, a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, has been a
member of the Binghamton University voice faculty for over twenty years. Ms. Burgess
made her U. S. operatic debut with New York City Opera while still a student at the
Curtis Institute, and subsequently appeared with Santa Fe Opera, Washington Opera,
New Orleans Opera, Nevada Opera, and many other regional companies including TriCities Opera in Binghamton. Her European operatic debut was at the Holland Festival in
Amsterdam; she has also performed at the Spoleto Festival in Italy, at the Theatre
Royale de la Monnaie in Brussels, and with Dublin Grand Opera. Burgess has
appeared as soloist with more than two dozen U. S. orchestras, including the Boston
Symphony (with Seiji Ozawa), Cleveland Orchestra (with Lorin Maazel, Eduardo Mata),
Chicago Symphony (Sir Simon Rattle), and Cincinnati Symphony (Klaus Tennstedt,
James Conlon). She has been a frequent guest at such prestigious festivals as
Marlboro, Monadnock, Ravinia, Aspen, Blossom, Casals, Chautauqua, and the
Cincinnati May Festival. Her repertory of forty roles in five languages ranges from
Monteverdi and Cavalli to Britten and Virgil Thomson. Her performances of Britten’s Les
Illuminations and Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with the Omaha Symphony were filmed for
broadcast by Nebraska ETV. She has recorded for Columbia, Masterworks, CRI, Sony
Classical, and Telarc.
TIMOTHY LEFEBVRE, baritone, has appeared in concert with the Vermont Symphony,
Minnesota Symphony, Syracuse Symphony, American Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh
Symphony, Spokane Symphony, Binghamton Philharmonic, Rochester Bach Festival,
Berkshire Choral Festival, Williamsport Symphony, Syracuse Chamber Music Society,
the Skaneateles Festival and with the prestigious Marlboro Music Festival. He has also
appeared in concert at New York's Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall. Mr. LeFebvre is a
winner of the New York Liederkranz Vocal Competition. Other awards include the
Richard F. Gold Career Grant, an Opera Fellowship at Binghamton University and
Regional Finalist in several Metropolitan Opera Competitions. LeFebvre's operatic
experience includes leading roles with San Francisco Opera, Tri-Cities Opera, Sarasota
Opera, Chattanooga Symphony and Opera, Syracuse Opera, Indianapolis Opera, and
Opera Theater of Pittsburgh. LeFebvre is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University and
Binghamton University and is currently on the faculty at Binghamton University.
NOTES AND TEXTS
Ben Moore wrote both words and music for his song "On Music." He wrote: "'On Music'
is my response to requests for a piece that celebrates the value of music itself. I have
conceived of it particularly as a song to be placed at the end of a set or as an encore. It
should be performed simply and directly. It is meant as an affirmation especially to
those who dedicate themselves to a life in music." We use it here to introduce a program
of songs performed by young artists who have indeed dedicated themselves to such a
life.
Swimmers on the Shore
(David Mason)
Like half a filial circus act
splashing the Y pool shallow end,
I swam about my father, who could stand.
And when I climbed, an acrobat
diving from his muscled shoulders,
they seemed as solid as two boulders.
Now I can hold his shrunken frame
in my arm’s compass. We’re together
on a park bench in lingering summer weather
before I make the long drive home.
But halfway through some story, speech
lies suddenly beyond his reach.
I see him cast for words, and fail.
Though talking never came with ease,
it is as if my father’s memories
dissolve in a cedar-darkened pool,
while I no longer am aware
which of us goes fishing there.
Has he begun the long swim out
toward silence that we all half-dread?
I hug my father’s shoulders, lean my head
closer to his, yet I cannot,
from his unfinished sentences,
quite fathom where or who he is.
I want to stay. The day is warm,
the salt breeze blows across the Sound
long plaintive cries of seagulls sailing down
to hover over churning foam
there in the docking ferry’s wake.
I want to stay for my own sake,
holding the man who once held me
until I dove and splashed about.
He gives my hand a squeeze. There is no doubt,
despite his loss of memory,
and though the words could not be found,
it’s I who have begun to drown.
A Wild Sostenuto
(Richard Wilbur)
After the clash of elevator gates
And the long sinking, she emerges
where a slight thing in the morning’s crosstown glare.
She looks up toward the window where he waits
Then in a fleeting taxi joins the rest
Of the huge traffic bound forever west.
Of such grand scale do lovers say goodbye.
Even this other pair whose high romance
Had only the duration of a dance,
And who, now taking leave with stricken eye,
See each in each a whole new life forgone.
For them, above the darkling clubhouse lawn,
Bright Perseids flash and crumble; while for these
Who part now on the dock, weighed down by grief
And baggage, yet with something like relief.
It takes three thousand miles of knitting seas
To cancel out their crossing,
and unmake the am’rous rough and tumble of their wake.
We are denied, my love, their fine tristesse
And bittersweet regrets. And cannot share
The frequent vistas of their large despair.
Where love and all are swept to nothingness.
Still, there’s a certain scope in that long love
Which constant spirits are the keepers of,
And which, though taken to be tame and staid,
is a wild sostenuto of the heart,
A passion joined to courtesy and art
Which has the quality of something made,
Like a good fiddle, like the rose’s scent,
Like a rose window or the firmament.
Best known for his first opera, Dead Man Walking (2000), Jake Heggie has also
composed many song cycles, often encompassing the styles that influenced him
growing up: folk music, jazz, pop, opera, rock, and art song. Heggie’s song cycle
Natural Selection, was composed in 1996 for soprano Nicole Folland featuring poetry by
Gini Savage. “Animal Passion,” “Alas! Alack!,” and “Joy Alone (Connection)” were
recorded with Folland and Heggie as pianist and released on a compilation album of
selections from his song cycles, “The Faces of Love,” a project suggested by Frederica
von Stade. Both Heggie and poet Gini Savage are located in the San Francisco Bay
area. Savage has published four books: Natural Selection, Triad, Loud Nipples, and
Gripe Water.
Natural Selection
Creation
I give birth to myself
My own mother and father
For years I ran like a clockwork mouse
Mama says, Papa says / Mama says, Papa says,
When does Goldilocks say I am / I am
Driven I didn’t stop
Expected more from the umbilicus
Never once got off the hook line or sinker
Now before the world
I reach out.
Animal Passion
Fierce as a bobcat’s spring
With start-up speeds of sixty miles per hour
I want a lover to sweep me off my feet
And slide me into the gutter
Without the niceties of small-talk roses or champagne.
I mean business, I want whiskey
I want to be swallowed whole,
I want tiles to spring off of walls
When we enter hotel rooms or afternoon apartments
I won’t pussyfoot around responsibility
“Shoulds” and “oughts” are out for good.
And I don’t want to be a fat domestic cat
I want to be frantic,
Yowls and growls to sound like the lion house at feeding time
I don’t give a damn who hears,
I don’t give a damn!
No discreet eavesdroppers coughs can stop us in our frenzy.
Let the voyeurs voyent
And let the great cats come.
Alas! Alack!
Alas! Alack!
I have a knack for falling for the wrong man
Cavaradossi or Don Ottavio were just too tame
I never seem to want to stick to my own script
It’s the chain-smoking bad guy in leather
The one who’ll ruffle my feathers the most who gets me
I fear it’s a lack—Alas!
As Tosca I lost it over Scarpia
Not such a bad fella
He had the power and the steady job
The better tune
So when they asked me to pick up The knife and dispatch him I demurred
Perhaps it was his theme song I preferred
I know there’s a lack—Alas!
If I were Oberon,
I’d choose Puck,
For Pamina, it’s Papagena
If I’m Brünnhilde, it’s bound to be Wotan on whom I’m stuck
If Isolde were smitten by King Marke or Melot
Would it make her a zealot?
Damn!
I know there’s a lack—Alas!
Indian Summer — Blue
When I was sixteen I had a red hot Chevy
Bucket seats, white top,
The steering not too heavy
I loved that car
Like a child loves a pony
Shoe blacked its tires
My freedom to ride
Now I am Bluebeard’s wife
I’d rather be Sleeping Beauty
“Honey, don’t open that door,” he says
Though he gave me a master key
And I’ve peeked through the keyhole
Always a guard on duty
A red light and odor of rusty gardenia slips out from under the door
No bushes grow in the garden
A saint’s blood smells of roses
Blue
Blue was married before at least three times
No fam’ly portraits, and I don’t ask
It’s so hot
I get tired here in the east
I could doze away the days
Blue thinks I’m too fat,
Too this too that
Mama says Curiosity killed…
The Cat may well undo me.
Joy Alone (Connection)
The stunning silence of myself
From the hearts of forests
Middle of mountains
A late low sun rests her friendly hand
On the crowns of uncompromised trees
A fox streaks across the sand and scented sagebrush
A chatter of chipmunks scatters
Squirrels who stuff their briefcases for the winter
Blue-collar workers
Long term plans
The resiny crunch of orange pine needles warm under foot
A windfall of sweet cones
Joy alone
A startle of saplings
The power of trees
Unrav’ling of rivers
Joy alone
Joy
Tell Me, Oh Blue, Blue Sky (Karl Flaster)
Summer has flown, the leaves are falling,
I hear a voice, Your voice, calling,
I see a face, Your face, pleading,
I feel a heart, Your heart, bleeding.
Tell me, Oh blue, blue sky,
Why did we part?
Tell me, Oh whispering wind, breathe on my heart.
Breathe on my lonely heart, that too has bled.
Tell me, Tell me, Tell me, Oh blue, blue sky,
Tell me, Oh blue, blue sky!
Ned Rorem Songs
Early in the morning
Of a lovely summer day,
As they lowered the bright awning
At the outdoor café,
I was breakfasting on croissants
And café au lait
Under greenery like scenery,
Rue Francois Premier.
They were hosing the hot pavement
With a splash of flashing spray
And a smell of summer showers
When the dust is drenched away.
Under greenery like scenery,
Rue Francois Premier,
I was twenty and a lover and in paradise to stay,
Very early in the morning
Of a lovely summer day.
-Robert Hillyer
O you whom I often and silently come where you are that I may be with you,
As I walk by your side or sit near, or remain in the same room with you,
Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is playing within me.
- Walt Whitman
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
-Robert Frost
I am Rose my eyes are blue, I am Rose and who are you
I am Rose and when I sing, I am Rose like anything.
-Gertrude Stein
Go, lovely rose!
Tell her that wastes her time and me
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.
Tell her that's young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That hadst thou sprung
In deserts, where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.
Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired;
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired.
Then die! that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee;
How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!
-Edmund Waller
Poem
Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along, and suddenly
It started raining, and snowing,
And you said it was hailing,
But hailing hits you on the head,
Hard.
So it was really snowing and raining.
But I was in such a hurry to meet you
And the traffic was acting exactly like the sky
And suddenly I see a headline:
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
There is no snow in Hollywood,
There is no rain in California.
I have been to lots of parties,
And acted perfectly disgraceful,
But I have never actually collapsed.
Oh Lana Turner, we love you.
Get up. (Frank O’Hara)
Commissioned by Houston Grand Opera, Little Women is based on the beloved novel
by Louisa May Alcott. Mark Adamo wrote both the music and the libretto, and the opera
premiered on March 13, 1998 at the Houston Grand Opera Studio. The novel and the
opera follow the lives of the four March sisters: Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy. In this scene, a
gravely ill Beth speaks her final words to her favorite sister, Jo.
Have peace, Jo
It's best, Jo
Release, soon, then rest.
We'll not weep. We'll not fight.
Just sleep, soon, and then only light.
Only light.
Be reconciled, reconciled to my lot.
You are tomorrow's child. I am not.
Of course, I
I never had a future plannedWe'd thought that odd, remember?
Now we understandWe understand!
It was the hand of God, gentle and true,
Guiding me to the blessed, blessed meadow...
Things change, Jo.
Cherish and promise and dream as we may;
They change.
Tell the tide not to turn, tell the sun not the rise, try, forbid the snow from falling from the
skies?
No.
Mother and Father-you're all they've got now.
Promise me you'll take care of them.
I love you, Jo, so much.
How poorly I slept last night!
Just let me close my eyes a minute.
After a night at the opera, Jo March and Friedrich Bhaer begin discussing the merits of
opera and what should be considered ‘proper art.’ While Jo loves the dramatics and
spectacle of opera, Bhaer will have nothing of it. When asked to describe then what true
art is, Bhaer recites Goethe’s famous German poem “Kennst du das Land.” Jo implies
that it was beautifully read but doesn’t understand the words. When Bhaer offers a
translation, it becomes a vehicle towards his true feelings for her:
“Do you know the land where the lemon trees bloom,
and oranges like gold amid the leafy gloom?
A gentle wind from bluest heaven blows.
The myrtle green, and high the laurel grows.
Do you know that Land?
‘Tis there, Ah! ‘tis there!
Oh, my beloved, Ah, ‘tis there.
I dream we would go
We would go.”
Dominick Argento earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at Peabody
Conservatory and went on to fulfill a Ph.D. from the Eastman School of Music. In 1957,
Nicholas DiVirgilio, a friend and fellow student of Argento’s from Eastman, wrote Argento
asking him to compose some songs for his graduation recital. “I went to the
bookstore…and from the limited number of volumes of English poetry they had,
I…chose a group of six poems of the Elizabethan era to set. The Elizabethan Songs –
the very first work I composed upon finishing graduate school – has turned out to be my
most performed piece. At present there are at least seven recordings (four American,
one English, one German, and one Australian), several of them done with the baroque
ensemble arrangement (which I prefer) instead of the original piano accompaniment.”
I. Spring
Thomas Nash (1567-1601)
Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year’s pleasant king;
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring.
Cold, doth not sting, the pretty birds to sing,
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, to-witta-woo!
The palm and may make country houses gay,
Lambs frisk and play, the shepherd pipes all day,
And we hear ay birds tune this merry lay,
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, to-witta-woo!
The fields breath sweet, the daisies kiss our feet
Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit,
In every street these tunes our ears do greet
Cuckoo, ju-jug, pu-wee, To-witta-woo!
Spring! the sweet Spring!
II. Sleep
Samuel Daniel (1562-1691)
from Delia (Sonnet XLV)
Care-charmer sleep, son of the sable Night,
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born,
Relieve my anguish and restore thy light;
With dark forgetting of my care return.
And let the day be time enough to morn,
The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth:
Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn,
Without the torment of the night’s untruth.
Cease, dreams, the images of day-desires,
To model forth the passions of the morrow:
Never let rising Sun approve you liars,
To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow:
Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain;
And never wake to feel the day’s disdain.
III. Winter
William Shakespeare (1568-1616)
From "Love's Labour's Lost"
When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail;
When blood is nipt and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the starring owl,
Tuwhit! Tuwhoo! A merry note!
While greasy Joan Doth keel the pot.
When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian’s nose looks red and raw;
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the starring owl,
Tuwhit! Tuwhoo! A merry note!
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
IV. Dirge
William Shakespeare (1568-1616)
Come away, come away, Death
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, Fly away, breath
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white stuck all with yew,
O prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it.
Not a flower, not a flower sweet
On my black coffin let there be strown;
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse where by bones shall be thrown
A thousand, thousand sighs to save,
Lay me, o where
Sad true lovers never find my grave
To weep there!
V. Diaphenia
Henry Constable (1555?-1610?)
Diaphenia, like the daffadown dilly,
White as the sun, fair as the lily,
Heigh ho, how do I love thee!
I do love thee as my lambs
Are beloved of their damns!
How blest were I if thou would’st prove me!
Diaphenia like the spreading roses,
That in thy sweets all sweets encloses,
Fair sweet, how I do love thee!
I do love thee as each flower
loves the sun’s live-giving power;
For dead, thy breath to life might move me.
Diaphenia like to all things blessed
When all thy praises are expressed
Dear joy, how I do love thee!
As the birds do love the spring,
Or the bees their careful king:
Then in requite, sweet virgin, love me!
VI. Hymn
Ben Johnson (1572-1637)
Queen and huntress, chaste and fair,
Now the sun is laid to sleep,
Seated in thy silver chair,
State in wonted manner keep:
Hesperus entreats thy light,
Goddess excellently bright.
Earth, let not thy envious shade
Dare itself to interpose;
Cynthia’s shining orb was made
Heaven to clear when day did close:
Bless us then with wished sight,
Goddess excellently bright.
Lay thy bow of pearl apart,
And thy crystal-shining quiver;
Give unto the flying hart
Space to breathe, how short so ever;
Thou that mak’st a day of night,
Goddess excellently bright.
Based on the controversial but darkly humorous French novella by Voltaire, “Candide”
tells the story of a simple, determined young man trying to rescue the only women he
has ever loved, and who fights through the world’s ugliest trials and tribulations to
achieve his goal. After being beaten down by the Bulgarian army and flogged by the
Spanish Inquisition during the “Auto da fe” (act of faith), he cries out for his love,
Cunegonde, curses his naïve optimism of human nature, and wishes to be in a happier
place through death with her.
“Cunegonde, Cunegonde, Cunegonde!
Is this all then, this the world?
Death and envy, Greed and blindness?
What is kindness but a lie?
What to live for but to die?
I would never miss the world,
Never this one, Which is hateful.
Let me die then only grateful,
Cunegonde, dying sooner, was spared this world.
What is kindness but a lie?
And what to live for but to die?
Charles E. Ives grew up in a middle class Connecticut town. His father, George Ives,
was Charles’ first music teacher and mentor in composition, encouraging and inspiring
Ives remarkably modern ear and sonic experimentalism, though he discouraged his son
from attempting to support himself solely with a career in music. Though he produced
revolutionary and now much beloved music, he became well known as a composer only
after his death. Charles Ives grew up loving the sounds of music made by ordinary
people in church or in town bands, "They didn't always play right and together and it was
as good either way." His music is sometimes deliberately unpolished. For a short time,
Ives took singing lessons with a teacher who had him practice speaking the lyrics of
songs, and then sing them according to spoken inflection. This greatly informed Ives’
vocal writing, illuminating the ties between speech and melody. Ives’ songs incorporate
modernism with the influence of traditional American music, like the songs of Stephen
Foster. They merge the fiercely intellectual with the spontaneous and visceral, the
sublime with the every day.
Slugging a vampire is an abstruse jab at yellow journalism, a great example of Ives’
intensity and sense of humor. Its odd intervals and rhythms capture the raucous fistfight
it describes. Ives wrote that it should be performed, “as fast and hard as possible.”
Canon I is, indeed, a canon between voice and piano, with the melody starting in the
voice, and echoed in the piano. The sprightly three, the animated melody and sharp
contrasts of legato and staccato articulation show the speaker’s effusive, effulgent
admiration for his beloved. The “unison chant,” Serenity, harkens back to some of Ives’
earliest compositional experiments, church music with untraditional accompaniments
and voice leadings. Switching between meters and divisions of the beat into twos and
threes, the voice seems to float freely over the steady piano part. The accompaniment
rocks back and forth between two mysteriously serene tall tertian chords, and on the
final phrases of the chant’s two sections becomes suddenly traditional, quoting a
Samuel Sebastian Wesley hymn setting, until the last word of each section, where it
returns to the two-chord alternation. The vocal part of Two little flowers seems to float
in a similar way. The text is set in four while the phrases of the piano drift in and out of
the bar lines, achieving a dreamy interplay between singer and accompanist. The “two
little flowers” that surpass all the others are Ives’ daughter, Edith, and her friend
Susanna. The poem is by Ives himself and his wife, Harmony, who wrote many song
texts for her husband. At Parting begins and ends with a folksy verse, framing a more
urgent, operatic middle section. In valediction, the speaker confides that the rose she
gives to her beloved represents all her love, that the rose is not just a rose, but her very
heart. They Are There is a prime example of Ives’ rough, text driven style. It is a wild
patchwork quilt of quotations from Civil War songs such as “Tenting Tonight” and “The
Battle Cry of Freedom,” that parodies patriotism while espousing a radically patriotic
ideal of freedom. Ives said, it “is not a song for pretty voices—if the words are yelled
out, regardless—so much the better.”
He recorded himself singing the song,
accompanying himself on piano, indeed, yelling out the words, disregarding many notes
and rhythms he so specifically notated, interjecting extemporaneous exclamations.
1. Slugging a Vampire
Text: Charles Ives
I closed and drew but not a gun,
the refuge of the weak,
I swung on the left and I swung on the right
then I landed on his beak;
He started to pull the same old stuff, But I closed in hard and called his bluff,
Yet his face is still a stickin’ in the yellow sheet, And on the billboard down the street.
2. Canon
Text: Unknown author
Not only in my lady’s eyes
Do I her beauty find,
All the lore that poets prize
Is garnered in her mind.
She is the soul of all I sing,
For though to me belong
The pipe, the shell, the string,
And she herself is the song.
There is no wisdom in my word,
No music in my lay,
Save what I’ve sweetly heard
My lady sing or say.
3. Serenity
Text: John Greenleaf Whittier
O, Sabbath rest of Galilee!
O, calm of hills above,
Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee,
the silence of eternity
Interpreted by love.
Drop thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease:
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
and let our ordered lives confess,
The beauty of thy peace.
4. Two Little Flowers (and dedicated to them)
Text: Charles Ives, Harmony Twitchell
On sunny days in our backyard,
Two little flowers are seen,
One dressed, at times, in brightest pink
and one in green.
The marigold is radiant,
the rose passing fair;
The violet is ever dear,
the orchid ever rare;
There’s loveliness in wild flow’rs
of field or wide savannah,
But fairest, rarest of them all
are Edith and Susanna.
5. At Parting
Text: Frederic Peterson
The sweetest flow’r that blows,
I give you as we part,
For you it is a rose,
for me it is my heart,
To you it is a rose,
to me it is my heart.
The fragrance it exhales, Ah!
If you but only knew,
where but in dying fails
it is my love for you.
The sweetest flow’r that blows,
I give you as we part,
You think it but a rose,
Ah! me it is my heart,
You think it but a rose,
Ah! me it is my heart.
6. They Are There (Fighting for the People’s New Free World)
Text: Charles E. Ives
There’s a time in many a life,
When it’s do though facing death and our soldier boys
will do their part that people can live
In a world where all will have a say,
They’re conscious always of their country’s aim
which is liberty for all.
Hip hip hooray you’ll hear them say
as they go to the fighting front.
Brave boys are now in action
They are there, they will help to free the world
They are fighting for the right
But when it comes to might,
They are there, they are there, they are there,
As the Allies beat up all the war hogs,
The boys’ll be there fighting hard and then
the world will shout the battle cry of Freedom.
Tenting on a new camp ground.
When we’re through this cursed war,
All started by a sneaking gouger,
Making slaves of men,
Then let all the people rise and stand together
in brave, Kind Humanity
Most wars are made by small stupid selfish bossing groups
while the people have no say
But there’ll come a day Hip hip Hooray
when they’ll smash all dictators to the wall.
Then it’s build a people’s world nation, Hooray
Ev’ry honest country free to live it’s own native life.
They will stand for the right, but if it comes to might,
They are there, they are there, they are there,
Then the people, not just politicians,
will rule their own lands and lives,
Then you’ll hear the whole universe
shouting the battle cry of Freedom,
Tenting on a new camp ground. Tenting tonight,
tenting on a new camp ground.
For it’s rally round the flag of the people’s new free world
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom.
Binghamton University Music Department’s
UPCOMING EVENTS

Saturday, February 27th Master’s Recital: Daniel Ibeling, tenor,
8:00 PM, Casadesus Recital Hall, FREE
Thursday, March 4th Mid-Day Concert, 1:20 PM – FREE
Casadesus Recital Hall
Thursday, March 4th Friedheim Memorial Lecture/Recital Series: Schumann
(Mobius), 8:00 PM, Casadesus Recital Hall, $$
(FREE for students, 100 maximum tickets)
Saturday, March 6th University Symphony Orchestra: Concerto & Aria
Concert, 8:00 PM, Osterhout Concert Theater, $$ (FREE for students)
Sunday, March 7th Wind Symphony, 3:00 PM – FREE
Anderson Center Chamber Hall
Thursday, March 11th Mid-Day Concert, 1:20 PM – FREE
Casadesus Recital Hall
Sunday, March 14th Ewa Mackiewicz-Wolfe: 1810 – 2010, A Chopin
Celebration, 3:00 PM, Anderson Center Chamber Hall, $$
Thursday, March 18th Mid-Day Concert, 1:20 PM – FREE
Casadesus Recital Hall
Thursday, March 18th Harpur Chorale and Women’s Chorus,
8:00 PM, Anderson Center Chamber Hall, FREE
Saturday, March 20th Senior Honors Recital: Briana Sakamoto, soprano,
8:00 PM, Casadesus Recital Hall, FREE
Sunday, March 21st Senior Honors Recital: Marc Silvagni, percussion,
3:00 PM, Casadesus Recital Hall, FREE
For ticket information, please call the
Anderson Center Box Office at 777-ARTS
To see all events, please visit music.binghamton.edu
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Binghamton University Music Department