Ned Rorem As A Twentieth Century Song Composer (1965)

This dissertation has been
microfilmed exactly as received 6 6 -4 2 5 7
NORTH, W illiam S ills W right, 1926—

NED ROREM AS A TW ENTIETH C ENTU R Y SONG
COMPOSER.
U n iv e r sity o f I llin o is , D .M .A ., 1965

M usic
University M icrofilm s, Inc., A nn A rbor, M ichigan
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
N E D R O R E M AS A T W E N T IE T H C E N T U R Y
S O N G CO M PO SER
BY
W IL L IA M SILLS W R IG H T N O R T H
A.B., Columbia University, 1947
M .M us., University of Rochester, 1949
THESIS
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts
in the Graduate College of the
University of Illinois, 1965
Urbana, Illinois
---------------
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
THE GRADUATE COLLEGE
SEPTEMBER. 1965
I H E R E B Y R E C O M M E N D T H A T T H E T H E S IS PREPARED U N D E R M Y
S U P E R V IS IO N BY. WILLIAM SILLS WRIGHT NORTH
E N T IT L E D . NED ROREM AS A TWENTIETH CENTURY SONG COMPOSER
BE A C C EPTED IN P A R T IA L F U L F IL L M E N T O F T H E R E Q U IR E M E N T S FOR
DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS

T H E D E G R E E OF.
In Charge o f T hesis
H ea ff of Department
Recommendation concurred inf
Committee
on
Final Examinationf
t Required for doctor’s degree but not for master’s.
D517
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The interest, the time, and the patience devoted by
Professor Charles E. ilanim to assisting in the preparation
of this thesis is gratefully acknowledged.
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Introduction............................................... 1
Chapter I - Ralph Vaughan Williams........................ 6

Songs of Travel, Part 1 ............................... 6
Chapter II - Claude Debussy............................... 12

Trois Ballades de Francois Villon.................... 12
Le Promenoir des deux Amants......................... 18
Chapter III - Igor Stravinsky............................. 26

Quatre Chants Russes.................................. 27
Chapter IV - Francois Poulenc............................. 39

La Bestiaire.......................................... 40
Chansons Gaillardes....... *.......................... 45
Chapter V - Charles Ives................................... 53

The Greatest Man........................... 53
Charlie Rutlage....................................... 57
General William Booth Enters Into Heaven............. 59
Soliloquy............................................. 63
Chapter VI - Arnold Schoenberg................... 68
Chapter VII - Anton Webern................................ 78
Chapter VIII - Benjamin Britten......................... yi
Chapter IX - Paul Hindemith............................. 105

Das Marienleben........................ 105
Cnapter X - Aaron Copland........................... 124

Tv/elve Poems of Emily Dickinson...................... 124
Chapter XI - Luigi Dallapiccola........................... 1^1
Chapter XII - Samuel Barber................................ 15z

Dover Beach.................... 152
Hermit Songs.......................................... 160
Cnapter XIII - Nea Rorem................................... jl/i

H a s Career............. 171
His Songs............................................. 173
V
Page
Song for a Girl (John Dryden)................. 175

To the Willow Tree (Robert Herrick)........... 177
Echo's Song (Ben Jonson)...................... 178
Upon Julia's Clothes (Robert Herrick)......... 179
The Silver Swan (Orlando Gibbons)............. 180
Cycle of Holy Songs: Psalm 134............... 181
Psalm 142...................................... 182
Psalm 148....... 184
Psalm 150...................................... 186
The Lordly Hudson (Paul Goodman).............. 186
Snake (Theodore Roethke)...................... 188
Rain in Spring (Paul Goodman)................. 189
Root Cellar (Theodore Roethke)................ 190
Sally's Smile (Paul Goodman).................. 191
Such Beauty As Hurts to Behold (Paul Goodman).. 192
My Papa's Waltz (Theodore Roethke)............ 194
Early in the Morning (Robert Hillyer)......... 195
I am Rose (Gertrude Stein).................... 196
See How They Love Me (Howard Moss)............ 197
Visits to St. Elizabeth's: Bedlam............ 198
(Elizabeth Bishop)
A Christmas Carol (Anonymous - 15th Century)... 201
The Nightingale (Anonymous - 15th Century) 202
Spring and Fall (Gerald Manley Hopkins)....... 204
Spring (Gerald Manley Hopkins)................ 205
To You (Walt Whitman)......................... 207
Youth, Day, Old Age, and Night (Walt Whitman).. 208
0 You Whom I Often and Silently Come.......... 209
(Walt Whitman)
Pippa's Song (Robert Browning)................ 211
Lullaby of the Woman on the Mountain.......... 212
(Padriac Pearse)
What If Some Little Pain (Edmund Spenser) 213
In a Gondola (Robert Browning)............. 214
Requiem (R. L. Stevenson)..................... 216
«
Chapter XIV - Conclusions................................ 218
Appendix I - AN ALPHABETICAL LIST OF THE SONGS OF

NED ROREM INCLUDING DATE OF COMPOSITION, POET,
PUBLISHER, VOCAL RANGE, REMARKS.................... 233
Appendix II - SONG CYCLES.......................... ....... 236
vi
Page
Appendix III - SONG FOR VOICE AND STRINGQUARTET........ 237
Appendix IV - SONGS FOR VOICE AND ORCHESTRA............ 237
Appendix V - KEY TO PUBLISHERS.......................... 238
Bibliography.............................................. 240
Vita...................................................... 244
1
INTRODUCTION
The intent of this thesis is to evaluate the songs of Ned
Roretn by comparing them to songs of twelve acknowledged leaders
in the field of contemporary song, with especial emphasis on
relationships between poetry and music.
The composers to be discussed are Ralph Vaughan Williams,
Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, Francois Poulenc, Charles Ives,
Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Benjamin Britten, Paul Hindemith,
Aaron Copland, Luigi Dallapiccola, Samuel Barber, and Mr. Rorem.
The study could be profitably pursued from many points of
view: harmonic, formal, melodic, stylistic analysis— such would
be more fittingly undertaken, however, by people who have
specialized in these fields. The present writer has sought a
way in which he might make a unique contribution as one who has
been trained in the performing arts.
Pursuing this direction, the writer has considered discussing
how one might go about the interpretation of the songs in per
formance, but this seemed something which would be too much alike
for all the composers, something, moreover, which would not
sufficiently involve the songs as literature. Any singer, further
more, is expected to understand the poem he is singing so as to
be able to project it effectively, to be "musical" enough to
execute that side of a work with sensitivity.
What would be an added dimension, however, to the singer's
understanding of his art, would be an insight into the many subtle
relationships between the poem and the music. It is reasonable
to suppose that when there are such, when music and text reinforce
each other, there will be more impact of communication than when
music and text seem to be independent of each other, or even at
cross-purposes.
This, then, is the aspect of the songs which has been
selected for emphasis. Harmonic, formal, melodic, and stylistic
analysis will be drawn upon; yet many of the findings will be,
of necessity, subjective. To an artist-performer music is, above
all else, communication of feeling— not exclusive of all else,
rather embracing all else, but still above it.
Ho one denies that music arouses

emotions, nor do most people deny that the
values of music are connected with the emotions
it arouses, yet it is not easy to say just
what this connection is... Each musical
phrase is a gesture, and through the cumu
lative effect of such gestures we gain a
clear sense of a quality of feeling behind
them. ^
Communication enhanced by a relationship between text and
music will also be discussed as a contributing cause of what may
be termed "The Problem of the Art Song." In pursuing the topic
of text and music in contemporary song, it has not been possible
to avoid an increasing awareness that the art song, according to
many authorities, is in not a little danger of becoming extinct.
3
In an address to the National Convention of the National Asso
ciation of Teachers of Singing in 1958, Hans Heinsheimer of the
staff of G. Schirmer, Inc., said,
Among the more than 4000 songs which

we keep in print, not even a dozen of the
real active ones--the real sellers, if that
word is permitted— have been created during
the last generation. We publish ten songs
a year at the utmost; G. Schirmer used to
publish 40, 50 or more songs a year.2
The reasons for the decline of interest in contemporary
song suggested here are doubtless manifold, and not all musical.
One reason that this paper will suggest is that a relationship
between text and music may be more basic to the song than some
contemporary composers are willing to take cognizance of, or, at
least, that it is a function which the song can fulfill, which
some contemporary composers frustrate, to varying degrees and in
varying ways. Another reason to be considered is that at the
same time scientific technology has made other aspects of human
existence easier in the realms of both work and play, composers
have made what Byrd pleased to call the "pursuit of singing"
considerably more difficult.
The amateur drawing room singer is gradually

becoming extinct, and, whether it be cause
or effect, serious composers are more and
more assuming the advanced technique that
few amateurs can claim. 3
This trend does not affect the amateur alone.
The piano parts, of course, cause an added difficulty,
necessitating for the performance of songs either two highly
gifted performers, or a performer highly gifted in two arts of
which both are increasingly assuming the same high degree of
specialized training that most fields of human endeavor are.
Heinsheimer ventures an opinion as to what may be behind
some of this difficulty (the nature of which will be discussed
in the main body of the thesis).
The song just isn't the expression of

the composer today.
The composer of today, living in an age

of jet planes, moon rockets, of tremendous
philosophical revolutions, living in an age
where there is nothing left to hold on to,
uses the human voice less and less to express
himself
Only the relentless, nervous drive of a

large orchestra, the percussional power of a
jazzed up solo piano, a battery of drums, can
express its content. It is not an age for
human expressiveness. It is not an age for
the tender sounds of the human voice. The
composer of today finds the strongest expres
sion, the most effective use of the human
voice in the barbaric shouts of Orff's
Carmina Burana, in the ice-cold majesty of
Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex... He is inspired
most when he can express what really concerns
him, when he can sing, whisper, shout, speak
of his age— the Age of Anxiety.^
Many of the ways in which Stravinsky and others have chosen
to express this Age of Anxiety1^present serious difficulties, to
the listener and to the performer. Some of these are technical.
Some are aesthetic. The question is, are they defensible? Is
the result vocal music, or stylistic error? Do they bring welcome,
5
or at least justifiable, challenge, or insuperable frustration?
These are the questions to be emphasized in the following
discussion of songs of thirteen twentieth century composers. The
reader should have the scores of the songs at hand. Constant
references will be made to them, too many to allow the feasibility
of including examples, examples which would be unfortunate in any
event, as being out of context with the wholes of which they
would be but parts. It is a comparison of a considerable number
of whole songs which is the chief method, and end, of this thesis.
iRoger Sessions, The Musical Experience of Composer.

Performer, and Listener (New York: Atheum, 1962), p. 21.
2Hans Heinsheimer, "What Happens to the Voice in Contemporary

Music," Bulletin of the National Association of Teachers of
Singing, XV (February 15, 1959), p. 26.
^William S. Mann, "Song: 20th Century," Grove's Dictionary

of Music and Musicians, ed. Eric Blom, VII (5th ed; London:
Macmillan & co,m Ltd., 1954), p. 950.
^Heinsheimer, op. cit., p. 27.
5Ibid., p. 33.
^The Age of Anxiety is interpreted by the writer of this

thesis to include not only the age following World War II, or I,
but the age which produced these, as manifestations of a spirit
of the times, a Weltanshauung finding its origin in the Industrial
Revolution and the attendant social, political, and psychological
upheavals.
Chapter I
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams has written more adventurous songs
than the "Songs of Travel, Part I," (copyright 1905), yet they
will serve as representative of one twentieth century approach
to the song.
They are written in the old language of diatonic melody
supported by diatonic harmony. The music is of immediate appeal
because it is familiar, familiar because it is governed by famil
iar scales and modes, tied to primary chords, modulates to
related keys, has dominant seventh chords which resolve.
So far the style presents no problem to listener or per
formers. The highest note in the entire cycle is e ^ ; the piano
part is only of moderate difficulty. If song is ever to return
to the drawing room, there are lessons to be learned here. Yet
there are drawbacks to these particular songs which affect their
validity as art songs. Partly, these originate in the folk-song
style and form on which the songs are based. Partly, they stem
from what the composer has done with this style and form.
Songs of Travel, Part I
Since the words are provided in literary form on the last
page of the score, they need not be provided here. Consulting
Reproduced with permission o f the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
this page, then, for the first song, The Vagabond, there is a
first stanza which extols the wandering life, with but one jarring
note, the second line: "Let the lave go by me." The "lave," the
wanderer can do without. In the second stanza, lines 1 and 2
deal with things he can tolerate, lines 5 and 6 with things he
does not need; one-half the stanza is negative, in contrast to
the l/8th of Stanza I. And yet, turning tothe score, the music
for these two stanzas is exactly the same: no change in the
dynamics, even, nor of one note of the accompaniment. Turning
back to the text, it may be noted that of the third stanza, lines
1-4 and 7 and 8 deal with negative elements. In fact, Stanzas II
and III are quite parallel, also, in that both begin with "let it
happen" ideas; in short, these two stanzas have much in common.
Yet what does the score reveal? That it is Stanzas I and II which
have the identical music, and Stanza Ill's provides the contrast.
Now examining the stanzas for internal relationships, it is
noted that the second half of each is provided with more rapid
key changes than the first half, a feature which must have been
introduced for musical reasons for the text does not call for more
activity in the second quatrain. If anything, it calls for less,
in the final couplet.
The title, "The Vagabond" is well represented by the con
stantly marching bass whose quarter notes keep marching, in 4/4
time, right through
Bed in the bush with stars to see,
Bread I dip in the river.
not even taking time to eat or sleep.
The second song, Bright Is the Ring of Words fares better.
The change at the second half of Stanza I does not jar, although
it seems more appropriate in the second stanza, and were it not
in the first stanza, it could not have its effectively contrasting
new key in the second--effective not only because it is new to
Stanza II, but because it is different from its counterpart in
Stanza I. By a similar principle, the use of familiar music for
line 7 affords the opportunity to underline the word "dead" with

K1 -i
its expected eD unexpectedly lowered to c . On the other hand,
one wonders about the line, "Still they are carried and said -
On wings they are carried," the line which sinks to the lowest
note in the stanza, and about the rising arpeggios in the piano
at measures 18 and 19, a figure which is appropriate neither to
the line preceding it, "And the maker buried," nor to that
following, "Low as the singer lies." This usage cannot be
explained by requirements of folk melody or strophicism.
Stanza II is full of appropriate touches. Line 4 is varied
from its Stanza I counterpart: its rising line leads one to
expect great conviviality from the gathering of the swains. The
new key of lines 5 and 6 has already been mentioned. It, aided
by the placing of the voice around the fifth of the key, instead
of the 3rd as in Stanza I, lends a sense of distance to the sunset.
The falling melody of line 6, which seemed inappropriate in
Stanza I for "on wings they are carried" is obviously correct for
"sunset embers." The two suspensions which set "lover" and
"lingers" are most apt employments of that traditional musical
device to secure expressive ends. The first pictures, in the
relaxation of its resolution, the lover melting over his love, the
other, by means of the longer note value accorded the dissonance,
the reluctance of the lingerer to leave. In both cases these
pictorial relationships are reinforced by the expressive decla
mation achieved in the combining of the poignant harmonic stress
and resolution with the natural inflection of the emotionally
charged words. Finally, the ending on a tonic ^ chord with the
voice on the fifth gives just the right touch of non-ending which
the words, "And the maid remembers" require.
The song is certainly British, with its thick and solid bass,
moving in obdurate contrary motion to the not-to-be-distracted,
scale-wise sweep of the treble, with the powerful sonority of that
English invention, the parallel third, with the stately pomp and
ceremony of orderly progression from pillar chord to pillar chord.
"Bright jLs the ring of words..." and one is left with an insular
certainty that the "right man" who "rings them" is, by definition,
an Englishman.
The third song, "The Roadside Fire," is a little too stolid
in its harmony to capture the flitting imagery which Stevenson
10
captured in the dancing firelight. But it is at least somewhat
less so than its companion songs, and so may be imagined to sparkle
by grace of the law of relativity. It is, moreover, music which
is faithful in its form to the poem, to a degree which causes one
to wonder the more at the inconsistencies in "The Vagabond.11
The form of the poem is: two stanzas which are similar, a
third which is different. The difference is that the third stanza,
by returning from fanciful ideas such as brooches made of birdsong
and bathing in dewfall (already a progression to the possible) to
the familiar one of the intimate, serenade, achieves a climax of
personal, real communion. Hence the new music for the first line
is exceedingly appropriate, a newness emphasized by the parallel
minor key, and backed up by the arpeggiated accompaniment, a
device long associated with serenades.
The form of the stanza differs from the others: it is one
continuous thought, instead of two parallel ones. Accordingly,
the form of the music is abbc, instead of abac. And yet the
connection with the rest of the poem is preserved by the retention,
for the most part, of previously heard music, even though it has
been rearranged. The unusually obvious text-painting of the
roulade for the word "stretch" is justified by the stretching of
the road through the three Songs of Travel of which this is the
last line.
Concerning declamation, no special effort is made to accommodate
11
the words as words; in fact, some violence is done them. For
example, the word "fashion" in Song 2, measure 25, or the word
"forests" in Song 3, measure 16, are both accorded somewhat undue
prominence to their weak syllables. Such distractions from musico-
textual unity are minor; however, the songs are certainly melodious
and easy to listen to. There are many instances of close support
of the ideas of the text in the form, in features of the accom
paniment, and even, in these strophic songs, by changes in the
melody. There are, at the same time, glaring inconsistencies,
some of which seem to stem from a reluctance to interfere with
the strophic implications of the folk origin of the melodic style.
^Ralph Vaughan Williams, Songs of Travel, Part X (London:

Boosey & Co., 1905).
Chapter II
Claude Debussy
As did Vaughan Williams, Claude Debussy drew upon his native
heritage from the preceding century, a style which he had been
instrumental in creating: the creation of color and mood, from
motive, harmony and rhythm, from mode, scale and chord, from
homophony, faux-bourdon, and counterpoint, from form which
combined freedom of form— freedom to reflect the form of a poem--
with a classic balance of form.
For his last two song cycles, he chose poems of the seven
teenth and fifteenth centuries. These, the Trois Ballades de

1 9
Francois Villon and Le Promenoir des deux Amants^ of the seven
teenth century poet, Tristan L'Hermite, will serve for discussion.
Both were published in 1910.
Trois Ballades de Francois Villon
The texts of the first may be found in convenient form in
Phillip Miller's The Ring of Words^ on pp. 143-145. The reader
is referred to these sources, then, for examination of the first
song of the Villon cycle,"Ballade de Villon a s'amye" in which
Villon laments that his love has betrayed him. There are three
stanzas and an "envoi." In Stanza I he berates his love for her
falseness. Stanza II alludes to his plight from which she has
failed to save him, and Stanza III speaks of revenge. The envoi,
13
or message, addresses the King of Lovers, requesting him to,
"without making him worse, come to the aid of an unfortunate."
The envoi's last line serves as a refrain to each stanza.
Turning to the music, the song is found to be built on four
motives. First is that of the first measure, in the piano: a
tolling, repeated treble note, accompanied by a sigh-like n..,

descending stepwise in parallel thirds. Another is the vocal
part of ms. 1-3, of which the ascending leaps, particularly the
minor third, form an important structural element as well as an
effective expression of the lament of the poet. The third motive
is the dotted b-f^-b in the bass of measure 2. The final motive
is the descending fourth in the bass of in. 3. The recurrence of
these figures in various combinations and with various harmonies
lends a unity to the often free unfolding of the vocal melody.
Moreover, the figures are expressive, both in themselves and by
their very repetition, which lends a mournful tone to the piece.
The form of the poem has already been outlined. The first
two stanzas, although the first treats of the poet's love and
the second with himself, have in common the factor of complaint.
Stanza III, on the other hand, concerns itself with positive
action. Accordingly, it partakes the least of the motives of the
music. There are the minor thirds, but they do not dominate; the
music is quite different. Only at the end, when he entreats her
not to treat anyone else so badly as she has him, do the earlier
14
themes return. The envoi appropriately, since it draws the ideas
of the poem together, makes use of the earlier themes as well as
of the 32nd-note flurries of the revenge verse at measures 31, 32,
and 37.
The song as a whole having been looked at, it is now possible
to examine the individual stanzas. The eight lines of Stanza I
are divided in half, by the sense of the text, and in half again.
There is considerable musical cohesiveness within each of these
groups. For example, the stanza's second half starts at m. 9 with
the same tonality as did the first half, and with nearly the same
music. Focusing attention now on the first half of the stanza,
the first two lines are seen to have a similar function in the
text by virtue of their common epithetical function. Accordingly,
they have similar melody, though on different scale degrees. At
m. 6, line 3 starts the second quarter of the stanza. It is a
more complicated grammatical structure, although still an epithet.
Accordingly, it rises a fifth instead of a third and is in the
dominant key. Line 4 sums up all that has been said thus far;
this is said musically by a falling melodic line, which acts as
fulfillment of the predominantly ascending direction of everything
up to that point.
This modus operandi is borne out by the second half of the
stanza. Lines 5 and 6 of the text are parallel in function yet
progressing in intensity, so are found to be (ms. 9 and 10) similar
15
in musical line, yet mounting in pitch. Line 7 is the emotional
summary of the stanza: the voice declaims on one note; the
accompaniment's treble triads give way to harsh octaves in disso
nant cross-relation with the left hand. Line 8, which is the
abating refrain, is unaccompanied.
Stanza IX is similarly structured by close relationship to
the text. It will be remembered that this stanza treats of the
poet's plight, from which his love has failed to save him. The
music contains considerably more activity in pitch, range,
dynamics, rhythm, harmony, than does the first stanza which
concentrates on the false love. It is as if Villon is much more
concerned with his own fate than with the girl who caused it. He
probably was.
The third stanza expresses its revenge with a bass motive
(ms. 27 ff) which seems to "circle for the kill" with the insistent,
back-and-forth motion of its minor-keyed motive. Other touches
are the flurry of excitement (ms. 31-2) as he says he'll laugh,
and the two unaccompanied measures as he says that this would be
an empty gesture.
For his second Villon ballade Debussy turns from Villon's
mistress to his mother, and, at the same time, to his spiritual
mother, in the Ballade que Villon feit a la requeste de sa mfere
pour prier Nostre-Dame. The form is similar to that of the first
song in having the first two stanzas set apart from the last. In
16
this case, Stanza I is a prayer to the Virgin in her own right as
Queen of Heaven; Stanza II is a request to her to intercede with
her Son. Stanza III, however, concentrates on the petitioner
herself. The accompaniment figure used in augmentation is the
technique used to suggest this difference, in addition to a new
vocal line. The similarity between the first two stanza? is re
inforced by similar beginnings (ms. 4-9; 20-24).
Once again the introductory measures provide motivic material
for the entire song. They contain an aeolian melody consisting
of three distinct motives, one to each of the three introductory
measures. The second two motives employ two-voiced writing, each
voice doubled at the octave, thus alluding to old church style
and evoking the scenic background of the poem. This material is
repeated as accompaniment for the beginning vocal lines of Stanzas I
and II, which address the Virgin. The second half of each of the
stanzas, on the other hand, (ms. 10 & 25), in which la mere is
somewhat volubly "reasoning with" la Mere, breaks off into two-bar
cells of repeated material, each cell a raised sequence of the
preceding, as Madame Villon's enthusiasm increases. The break is
particularly effective in the second stanza, the succeeding
material being in every way more active than its first stanza
counterpart, as her "reasoning" becomes more like an argument,
while she compares her virtue with that poor sinner Theophilus.
In both stanzas, also, the last line and the refrain (ms. 17-19
17
and 30-33) show the old lady recovering herself, by an abrupt
shift from or d^ to the dominant chord of F.
It is quite a dramatic treatment, with contrast between the
mother's flattery of the Virgin (10-16) coming out loud and clear,
while her confession of her own worthlessness is pitched low
enough so that the Virgin hopefully may miss it (17), and with
the harp-like accompaniment of ms. 41-43 as she pleads for the
joys of Heaven as her eternal lot.
The aab form which has been noted for each song thus far is
reflected in the cycle as a vAiole: the third song is different
from the first two, in the first place because its form is not
aab. If the term "through-composed" can be applied to a poem,
it can be applied to this one. It is a catalogue. It gives, in
twenty lines, the five ways in which the women of Paris can out
talk the women of any other country in the world, and twenty-five
of the countries. Chiefly it is different in its nonsensical,
gay mood and its rapid tempo.
It is a musical composition of great interest. One source
of this interest is the reappearance, in many guises, of the
opening motive, particularly the first three pitches, in measures
20 ff, 86, 90, and 109. Another is the feeling for classic
balance which is shown in the way the fourth line (m. 16), set
with a descending scale, is answered by line 7. by Villon in
rhyme, by Debussy with an ascending scale. A similar occurrence
18
is in Stanza II between lines 1 and 2. Line 1 begins (ms. 38-9)
with a descending b minor triad; line 2 ends (m. 44) with an
ascending one.
This section is of interest for still other reasons. The
triplet figure of measures 43-46 is repeated immediately at ms.
47-54 but in duple rhythm. The voice joins in at ms. 53 and 54.
This is in answer to ms. 49 and 50, where the accompaniment, in
the left hand, has taken up a motive the voice has started at ms.
47-8. This is the climax of the piece, contrapuntally speaking.
It is important as well for the motives used later in the song:
the triplet figure is presented in varied form in the closing
section at m. 109, the bass of ms. 43-46, at m. 70 and at m. 82.
It is an interesting passage indeed, especially when note is taken
of the text it is setting: "The Neapolitans, 'tis said, give
lectures on good speaking."
Le Promenoir des deux Amants
For Le Promenoir des Deux Amants it will be necessary to
supply texts which will be given in translation. The first song
was previously published in 1904 in Trois Chansons de France,
entitled La Grotte.
La Grotte
Beside this dark cave

Where one breaths such sweet air
The wave struggles with the pebbles,
And the light with the shade.
These waves, tired from the work

Which they have done over the gravel,
Rest in this pool
Where, in another time, Narcissus died.
The shadow of this vermillion flower

And that of those hanging stems
Appear to be within
The dreams of the slumbering water.
The function of the poem within the cycle is that of setting
the scene and the initial mood. It is aided in this by the
cycle's title, which reveals the presence of the two lovers. The
poem then paints a highly poetic picture of lassitude. The last
stanza presents more of an impressionistic mood than a picture:
the dreams of water are rather difficult to picture.
Given these words, then, the vocal line is perfect. It has
no identity of its own, having no recurring accent, rhythmic
pattern, or pitch pattern, but freely unfolding at the bidding of
the text. At the same time the lines do unfold in the shape of
an arch— both a pitch arch and a rhythmic arch. But this, too,
is at the bidding of the text.
An arch, with its activity concentrated toward the middle,
can be a static structure. The accompaniment ensures that these
arches are such, again at the bidding of the text. It does it by
20
repeating its various figures as many as six times, figures
which, by eliminating harmonic motion in favor of harmonic
oscillation, or chord progression in favor of chord alternation,
achieve a feeling of rest, of gently waving to and fro.
Yet all is not stagnant in this pool. The figuration
changes at appropriate spots in the text, accomplishing on a
larger canvas what the shifts in the vocal line accomplish with
the individual words. Of particular interest here is the markedly
lower tessitura of the second stanza (m. 9), the restful stanza,
in comparison to that of the first stanza, the stanza of struggle.
Then, rest is forgotten, at the allusion to the ancient tale
of the death of Narcissus. Heightened activity is the technique
for this climactic line of the second stanza: the first block
chords, the fastest harmonic rhythm of the song thus far. After
this expression of the passion of death, death's stillness is
caught in the alteration of the primary accompanimental figure
which, in m. 14, now appears as a haIf-step, reduced from the
whole-step or minor third which it has been.
It has already been noted how the final stanza, especially,
epitomizes Impressionism in the present song. Looking at the music,
there is seen an abrupt change of material (m. 15) as a whole
tone scale arises in the accompaniment at the beginning of the
stanza. This is answered at m. 17 by descending thirds which are
imitated quite faithfully in the voice. These thirds in eighth-notes
21
are accompanied by parallel fourths in quarter-notes. The quarter-
notes, in turn, are answered at m. 21 by ascending fifths in
quarter-notes. The static harmony of the song, then, is retained
for this final verse, but it is set apart by the introduction of
contrapuntal interest, which is of an archaic flavor at that, in
keeping with the period of the poem.
In the second song, the boy begins to talk to the girl:
II
Heed my counsel, dear Climene;

To await the evening,
I pray you, let us sit
By the edge of this fountain.
Do you not hear Zephyr sighing

Struck with wonder and with love,
Seeing the roses on your cheek
Which he did hot put there?
His mouth, full of fragrance,

Has blown upon our path,
Mixing the spirit of jasmine
With the amber of your sweet breath.
Debussy captures this new element of direct communication
between the lovers with the employment of two measures of recita
tive, marked sans rigeur and accompanied by a simple chord, for
the firstline of the stanza, in which headdresses her by name.
This isfollowed by a fast, sprightly melody which, inits
contrast to the first song, captures the inner enthusiasm of young
lovers, ready to bubble up even in the most soothing surroundings
once, grown used to these, the lovers turn to contemplate each
22
other.
Now that he has his lady seated, the final two stanzas form
one large arch. Commencing also with a peroration (ms. 13-15),
he begins at m. 16 to tell her how the breeze is in love with her.
At measure 18 the duple and triple rhythms of the piece are
combined for the first time, and dotted rhythm is introduced. At
m. 22 climax is achieved as the triplet rhythm becomes a high
trill, which continues for the remainder of the song. The vocal
climax is delayed until the third stanza (m. 26), after which the
voice joins in the general abating which began in the accompaniment
at the beginning of the stanza. This is also the climax of the
cycle, from the point of view of pitch. The f ^ of "Pleine” is
the highest note of the cycle; the tessitura of the song is higher
than that of the others. There is little doubt that Zephyr is
not the only one mingling his breath with that of the beloved.
It is a most effective climax, with the rhythmic build-up just
mentioned, the augmentation of the main motive, in eighth-notes
in the voice and in quarter-notes in the lowest notes. It should
be noted that the harmonic rhythm has not entered into this climax.
If the analysis of the motivation behind the climax just
discussed is correct, then the third song follows quite naturally.
23
III
I tremble on seeing your features

Flutter in the presence of my desires.
How much I fear that my sighs
May cause them harm.
For fear of that happening,

Do not commit so freely
To that untrustworthy element
All the treasure of Nature.
Will you,through a sweet privilege

Put me above all humansV
Let me drink in the cup of your hands,
If the water will not melt the snow.
Or "if even this privilege will not be too enflaming."
Stanza I, with its pedal, is obviously a preparation for
the impassioned pleas of the second, in which the double-dotted
rhythms of the right hand against the steady eighth-notes of the
left, and the swinging back and forth of the harmony between Db ^
and portray the natural conflict of and between sharers of
pre-consumated love. The third stanza represents a slackening,
but the strong quarter-note chord progressions at m. 20 ff, which
replace the pedal of the first stanza, hint that it is pretty
warm water he is drinkingI
If the age of anxiety has arrived for Claude Debussy, he
has not decided to face it, but the choice of texts could well be
interpreted as a retreat— into "the grotto where Narcissus died."
The musical suspension of motion and time noted in this cycle
bears this interpretation out. There is anguish in the "Ballade
24
a s'amye" and in the "Ballade de sa mere," but it is the universal
anguish of the Age of Man, not the more special one of the Age of
Anxiety.
The songs are difficult. Speaking solely from the experience
of having sung them, the intonation problem of the half-steps of
m. 20 of the first song mentioned (linear half-steps are difficult
to sing in tune; they are especially difficult when one party to
the interval is a half-step away from a note in the accompaniment),
the vocal problem of the piano high e^ of the second song's m. 5,
a difficulty which is quite overshadowed by the f ^ of "Crois mon
conseil," m. 26, in the other cycle, the articulation problem of
the "Ballade des femmes de Paris," not to mention that of
memorizing the names of twenty-five cities, all signify that the
singers do not need to address themselves to Schoenberg for
challenge.
Commensurate with the difficulties in the songs is their
content. They have been shown to contain much of interest in the
use of motives, transformed, combined and recurring throughout a
song, expressing the text in themselves, reflecting the shape of
the poem in the manner of their recurrence--or nonrecurrence,
reflecting not only the form but the subtle gradations of the form,
the contradictions within the form.
Instances where the music reflects the mood, or even just
the intensity of the mood, are as much in evidence as those
25
where it seems to specifically paint components of the text.
Both are subtle and unobtrusive. Any device which can be called
text-painting can also be shown as contributing to the overall
shape of the music. The arches, marvellously plastic and respon
sive, are still arches.
At the same time there is a rhythmic flexibility of the
vocal line resulting from a desire to set the words with maximum
expressiveness of declamation. Debussy "expressed the 'poetic
supremacy act.'
^Claude Debussy, Trois Ballades de Francois Villon (Paris:

Durand, 1910).
^Debussy, Le Promenoir des deux Amants (Paris: Durand,

1910).
^Philip I. Miller, The Ring of Words (Garden City, N. Y.:

Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1963), pp. 143-5.
^William S. Mann, "Song: 20th Century," Grove's Dictionary

of Music and Musicians, ed. Eric Blom, VII (5th ed; London:
Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1954), p. 954.
26
Chapter III
Igor Stravinsky
The right kind of peasant music is most

perfect and varied in its forms. Its expres-
_ sive power is amazing, and at the same time
it is void of all sentimentality and super
fluous ornaments. It is simple, sometimes
primitive, but never silly. It is the ideal
starting point for a musical renaissance,
and a composer in search of new ways cannot
be led by a better master. - Bela Bartok.
Russian folk music was one of the sources of the style of
Igor Stravinsky. There can also be detected the influence of
the aesthetic of Satie. The result is a music based on diatonic,
modal motives of the utmost simplicity, presented in their prim
itive, rhythmic purity, repeated, varied, combined, the rhythmic
vitality of the motive applied to the music as a whole. Harmonic
rhythm, due in part to the pervasiveness of the ostinato technique,
is very slow. The harmony itself is often left to the incidental
vertical relationships caused in the movement of two or more
rhythmically independent figures, which are often in different
keys.
The emphasis is thrown upon the rhythm.- The rhythmic
vitality mentioned above is achieved in various ways. A motive
which by every Western tradition belongs in triple metre is forced
into duple; motives may be combined which are of conflicting
metres; a motive may be repeated so that each repetition bears
27
a different relation to the bar-line; or, these techniques may
be combined.
In this preoccupation with rhythm, Stravinsky has deliber
ately chosen to ignore declamation. He has chosen to enthrone
rhythm, banishing distractions of text rhythm and accent.
Banished also are distractions of melody and harmony, which might
undermine rhythm's hegemony. Even the contrapuntal episodes are
of interest largely because of the rhythmic complexities which
they engender.
The texts Stravinsky has chosen use fables and frivolity--
and religion— to cope with this disturbed world, but he has
subsequently dealt with the problem by writing primarily instru
mental music. His style of diatonic ostinato, dissonant and
rhythmically complex, has had considerable influence on contemporary
song, whether this influence has emanated from his songs or from
his vast instrumental output.
Quatre Chants Russes
n
The Quatre Chants Russes, composed in 1918 and 1919, will
be used for discussion. The first:
The Drake
Old drake, old drake,

Go, crested one, go see
Where is Madame, where the seven children.
Old drake, take her by the neck.
28
Go, Madame,
At the house you have three daughters and four sons
Not counting the master.
Go away, go plunge,
Go fishing in the wood, the ponds, the houses,
In the holes, at your home, at my home above all.
The spirit of the verse may be categorized as that of an
animal fable, preaching responsibility. It is possible to see
the function of the rapid music to which this text is set as the
imparting of fervency, perhaps of bluffness. The music is
recognized as Stravinsky's in the first measures, not that
Stravinsky invented ^ time, but, drawing upon traditional Russian
folk music, he made it, and irregular rhythm in general, an
integral part of his style.
To Western ears, accustomed to having their hymns and folk
music rhythmically bowdlerized, the rough edges rounded off, the
original style, as set forth by Bartok and Stravinsky, comes as
a shock. Far from sounding familar and comfortable, it comes as
a rhythmic dissonance, as "new" as the contemporaneous innovations
in the field of harmony.
This is the effect of the melodic figure which opens "The
Drake." Its metre may be properly understood in | to a Russian,
but to an ear brought up on rhythms typified by those of Vaughan

*2
Williams and Debussy, the second g . accented by the bar-line,
comes as a surprise, particularly as a simple | interpretation is
reinforced by the regular chords in the left hand.
29
Turning to the harmony, the melody, in B major, ending on a
chord in third inversion in the right hand, is accompanied in
the left by an ostinato which, rhythmically, is compatible and
reinforcing, but which, harmonically, is a bare ninth, c^- and
d , ending on a C chord (m. 3). The end of this little section
(m. 6) is marked by the statement of the melody in B^ minor, the

1 9
left hand ostinato continuing on c and d . In all of this section,
the melodic figures are constant, and there is but one harmonic
event; the thing which changes most frequently and which therefore
attracts the most attention is the rhythm.
At measure 9 a new section begins. The metre is given as

3 9
however, the new folk-type melody is again in £, and the
ostinato accompaniment is heard in The accents of voice and
accompaniment, moreover, never once coincide during the section.
The first large section ends at ms. 17 and 18 with the very
repetitious, chant-like vocal part from ms. 4 and 5 now appearing
in the accompaniment. The c-^-d^ bass ostinato is still present,
but the chant now centers on c^ instead of d^. This section
corresponds to the second and third lines of text, which instruct
the drake, after he has been addressed in the first line. The
climactic line, "Where are the seven children?" is recognized by
high notes in voice and r. h., both of which may "just happen" to
set this line with melodic figures containing seven notes!
The chant-like vocal line moves back to center on d^ (m. 19)
30
for the second main section, "Take her by the neck," and a 16th-
note figure is added to the right hand of the accompaniment. Now,
Madame is addressed for the first time (m. 22) to a very excited
development of the second folk melody, which includes a number of
high a^'s, and constantly shifts in accent. The c^-d^, left
hand ostinato is finally forsaken to signalize this development
in the text: it is supplanted by a figure which alternates major
sixths with minor sevenths in steady qxiarter notes which, in a 2

4
pattern, ignore the stated g metre. The right hand makes the best
sense as three respective groups of and ^ respectively. The
rhythms of the two hands combine in a basic rhythm of a chord on
every eighth-note, or twice as fast as the chords of the preceding
section. Another sixteenth-note figure ends this section.
The music now reaches a frenzied climax, as Madame is told

1 o
to go fishing. The cJ--d‘4, ostinato returns, but it is now in the
treble, and its rhythm is irregular. A triplet arpeggio in the
left hand becomes the principal ostinato, which, almost to the
end of the song, continues uninterrupted through now rapid changes
of metre. Sixteenth-note scale and arpeggio patterns, now the
norm instead of the exception, set off by shifting rhythms in the
vocal part, complete the texture of the climax.
The total effect is of a repetition of motives, which is in
keeping with the repetition in the text, changes of the pitches
of the motives and of the motives themselves, which correspond
31
with the major divisions of the poem, and a building up of activity
towards the final concentration of activity which is the climax,
which corresponds to the climax of the text, "at my house above
all." But the motives of the accompaniment and of the voice are
so simple as to be impersonal. The unceasing, little-varying
repetition adds to the impersonal profile of the song. Even the
variety of the rhythmic accent acquires a blur of sameness, and
one yearns for a real change of texture, a brief cessation of the
unremitting syncopation. A mood is created: it is a frantic
mood, but it seems more the freneticism of the factory than of
the heart, human or animal.
The second song is a drinking song, quaintly entitled,
Song for Counting.
One, to me who has it,

Two, to you who have it,
Three, to the new month.
In the church of God
One never makes a fire...
A little glass can do no harm,
A little glass for you who are leaving,
A little glass for you who are outside.
Quick, Marguerite, let's have a little fun. Hurry up!
The first three lines form a unit. The second two seem to be a
bit off of the main subject: the second two seem to be a likely
consequence of the first three. Three more lines give excuses for
three more glasses, which, in turn, seem sufficient cause for the
last, another consequence, which admirably caps the whole.
Ostinato throughout the whole song gives unity. Yet the
32
poem calls for a crescendo of interest, as the tippler's attention
gradually comes around to Marguerite. Accordingly the ostinato
of a steadily reiterated 16th-note d^, interrupted only by
chords and glissandos between the lines, is the accompaniment to
the first section. This grows to a reiterated chord with trill
in the tenor— this is not interrupted--in the second section
(lines 6-8). The climactic last line is accompanied by a glis-
sando which is longer than the others. This line is followed by
a third ostinato which gains its climactic effect not so much
from the solid repeated chords as from the rests between, and
the rhythmic cross-purposes at which it is working with the folk
like melody above, This, derived from the voice of the second
section, is twice repeated and then twice more in diminution. As
well as being the climax, it could serve as dance music to
accompany the "fun."
The voice part also shows this escalation principle. In
the first section it is a free-rhythmed modal, four-note scale
pattern in which, for the first and third phrase, the last notes
are chromatically altered. The second section employs a metric,
folk-like motive. This is repeated twice; on the last repetition
it is shifted so as to begin on the first beat of the 4/4 bar
instead of the second. The climax line sheds melody altogether
for a rhythmic shout.
The third song returns to animal fable for its subject:
33
The Sparrow
The sparrow is seated on someone else's hedge.

O.K., O.K.
The sparrow looks where she is not at home,
O.K., O.K.
The chicken, in the court, scratches the gravel
O.K., O.K., O.K., O.K.
Has scratched at the lost ring.
O.K., O.K.
And I, beside, fidgeting with my five fingers
O.K., O.K.
And the wolf, lying on a pile of wood,
Who fidgets with his tail, who does not see me.
O.K., O.K., O.K., O.K., O.K.
The text is divided into six sections, each of which contains
a line of verse (two lines in the last instance) and the ca va
refrain. For convenience, the verses will be discussed, then
the refrains.
All the verses, without exception, share the same bass
ostinato, four eighth-notes, descending, d, c^, b, a. All
verses but the last have the same four notes (except the c is
natural) in the treble, but in a pattern of six sixteenth-notes,
ascending and descending the four-note scale. Constant shift in
the relation of bass to treble is the result, as the pattern in
the treble takes up only three-fourths of the time required by
the bass. The fifth verse is longer than the others by two
quarter-notes. The sixth verse replaces the treble scale of six
sixteenth-notes by a broken scale of five sixteenth-notes.
The voice line of the verses uses the five notes (d, c, c^,
b, and a) of the accompaniment, the c^ replacing c at the end of
34
each verse. Verses 1 and 2 are an excellent example of
Stravinsky's disregard for declamation. He wanted to use the
same melody, despite the fact that by so doing he made the same
high note which serves for the accented, second syllable of assis
in Verse 1 set also the mute, final syllable of regarde in
Verse 2. Verse 6, which has the heightened accompaniment, trans
poses the voice up a fourth.
The refrains are more varied than the verses. Like the
verses, the first five use the same notes and figures in the
accompaniment, a 2/4 figure in the bass against a 3/4 treble
figure (irrespective of stated metre). All use the same two notes
in the voice, e^ and d^, but in varying rhythmic relationship to
the accompaniment. Refrain 2, for example, drops the last dotted
quarter from the voice, but drops a half-note from the piano, by
starting an eighth note after the voice (and later than in
Refrain 1). Refrain 3, adding f^ and g^, is lengthened. The
third V£ of this refrain is a diminution of the refrain's first
measure. The last half of this refrain serves as the whole of
the next, although in different relationship between piano and
voice. This one and the next, or fifth, are identical. The sixth
introduces f^ in the vocal line for the first time and new chords
in the accompaniment.
Once again the music seconds the text in working up to a
climax. The principal observation to be made about this song is
35
of the complexity of structure which is built out of the
repetition of simple, diatonic motives.
The last song, Chant dissident, exhibits a new feature,
or, rather, a new extension of an old one. Heretofore, although
the words have not been set to characteristic music, the major
divisions of the poem have been acknowledged by changes in the
accompaniment. In this last song, even this degree of accommo
dation is forgone.
Chant Dissident
Wind, snow, blackness,

Every road or path closed,
How now, how to go.
(And by vehicle no more than by foot,)
To Him, from whom I was born

To Him who gave me the day.
To Him from whom I was born

For me, for me,
And for my sisters,
My brothers in love
Brothers in love, brothers in spirit,
By Him nonetheless chosen.
But glory to Him,

And glory to Jesus Christ,
And glory to the Father.
Glory to the Son,
Glory and honor to you,
King of heaven, for evermore, amen.
The first section, as the poem is divided above, is an
exception to what has just been stated. It has its own, unique
bass ostinato which appears, almost undisturbed, throughout
(ms. 1-12). The voice line is a very free-rhythmed chant, yet
36
one which subtly changes along with the text lines. It is
characterised by repeated three-step figures, through whose
repetitions can be heard an overall pitch progression, in measures
1-6, of b-bk-ak-gk(f^). -jhe overall progress of lines 3 and 4,
above, is the same: b^ to b. They are the reverse of the first
line. These same lines, 3 & 4, are also accompanied by a piano
figure, above the ostinato, which reflects the same progression.
This figure sets off the emptiness of the accompaniment of the
"black" first line.
It is now (lines 5 & 6) that the disagreement begins between
text and music. As seen above, the text gives two statements,
parallel in meaning. The music treats them with the same ostinato
in the piano, similar to that of Section I, but transposed and
shortened, and with similar descending sequences in the voice,
the second line being lower than the first. The last word of the
second line, however, uses the ostinato of the next section,
derived in turn from the treble immediately proceding. Measures
18 through 24, in fact, which bridge the last line of Section 2
and the first of Section 3, are repeated in toto at measures 26-
32, for lines 2-4 of Section 2.
Now, at m. 34, as freres en amour is repeated, the composer
starts to repeat the material of m . 29, but quickly drops the
ostinato in favor of imitative treatment of the first five notes
of the b minor theme of this section, with the bass doubled at
37
the fifth. This could be text painting, but if it is, it is a
rare instance.
At measure 41 the "gloria" starts as the voice takes up its
A Major theme, a variant, enriched by sixteenth-notes, of the
preceding. But the 64th-note figure in the treble of the piano,
which goes with the first two lines of the gloria, has started
four measures earlier, at m. 37. The first two lines of the
gloria are also accompanied by a slower variant of the theme in
parallel fifths in b and f^ minor. The last four lines (m. 46)
show a change in all voices. The figures which result continue,
in ostinato fashion, in three different "keys," and in three
different rhythms, unencumbered by bar lines, to the end. The
resulting busyness, the intensive ostinato, the fact that the
bass is moving in large leaps for the first time, make an effec
tive climax. The three-voiced writing could, again, standing for
the Trinity, be text-painting.
To conclude: concerning subject matter, two of the songs,
although they are ostensibly animal stories, nonetheless describe
human situations. "The Old Drake" counsels concern for the family,
and, by extension, concern for the race. "The Sparrow" describes
a dangerous predicament, the extension of which is obviously the
same as that of "The Old Drake." "Song for Counting" is pure
escapism. "Chant Dissident" counsels forbearance and trust in God.
Concerning difficulty, the songs are diatonic and repetitious;
I
38
pitch and intonation are therefore not a problem. The rhythm is
not difficult to execute, but the varied repetition of both
rhythm and motive cause considerable difficulty in memorization.
The principal difficulty is a certain monotony arising not
only out of the technique of repetition, but out of the lack of
close rapport between the shape of the motive and the specific
content of the text. The texts contain opportunities for warmth,
but, speaking subjectively, the music is cold. As such, it
expresses one aspect of the age of anxiety.
1
Bela Bartok, quoted in Ralph Hawkins and others, Bela
Bartok: A Memorial Review (London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1950),
p. 71.
Îgor Stravinsky, Quatre Chants Russes (London: J. and W.

Chester, Ltd., 1920).
39
Chapter IV
Francois Poulenc
The two cycles of Francois Poulenc which will be discussed
are Le Bestiaire ou Cortege d'Orphee,^ published in 1920, and
Chansons Gaillardes,^ published in 1926. In these songs Poulenc's
reactions to the age of anxiety are the same as Stravinsky's: the
animal fable in the one, escape into frivolity in the other. The
fables chosen by Poulenc have, however, a satiric tinge, and to
this tinge Poulenc's style is well suited.
This style is similar to Stravinsky's in its simplicity and
its use of repetition; the melodies are brief, diatonic and clear.
But the simplicity is carried still farther in that the form is
obvious: the phrase lengths are regular and unobscured by inter
locking counterpoint. Instead of Stravinsky's intricacy of
phrasing, there is extensive use of striking contrast. The
harmony is simple and familiar in its triadic basis. The result
of the foregoing is that variations of melodic shape, phrase
length, or harmonization stand out and can be used for expressive
purposes. Stravinsky's style, being dependent upon the contrast
between regular motives and irregular rhythms, is not so pliable
towards this end.
There is, furthermore, a warmth in Poulenc's music, resulting
from the triad-based harmony, the longer notes, the variety with
in the lines and from line to line, which provides a necessary
40
garment for the cold rapier of satire to pierce.
The songs are eminently singable in their diatonicism.
Extreme high notes are used with discrete frequency. The tessitura
1_ *1
is quite manageable: Le Bestiaire has a range of B-e , the

1 h
tessitura from c to c . The Chansons Gaillardes range from B
1 1
to g with the tessitura d to e . The main difficulty standing
in the way of performance is the thinly-disguised vulgarity of the
second cycle.
_ Le Bestiaire
There is no suggestion in the title of the first cycle,
Le Bestiaire ou Cortege D'Orphee, or in that of its first song,
Le Dromadaire. that the songs are anything but a serious use of
a Classic theme, the death of Orpheus, in a Classic form, the
moralizing fable. Doubt begins to unfold, however, with the ten-
measure introduction. The slow, funereal rhythm, the mournful
minor figures appear as seemly musical representation of the
expectations aroused by the titles, but at this point seemliness
is exhausted. The first chord is simultaneously E minor and
E major, the second is A minor and major. The "plop” of the
dromedary's foot is just a bit too realistically caught by the
figure which is the bass ostinato. The sudden consonance of
ms. 4-7 jars in a way which is not expected of consonance. The
indecision between E major and E minor at ms. 15-22 supplies still
another jolt.
The text compounds the mystery:
Le Dromadaire
With his four dromedaries

Don Pedro d'Alfaroubeira
Travelled the world and admired it.
He did what I would do

If I had four dromedaries.
Who is Don Pedro d'Alfaroubeira, and where is Orpheus? But the
coda, in double time, sans nuances, sans ralentir, furnishes the
solution. There is no mystery. There is humor afoot, and, more
than humor, satire. The musical representation of it is in
simplicity— of melody, harmony, and form— but simplicity with a
twist. An idea of the harmonic twists has already been given.
Twist of form is exemplified by the introduction, whose crystal-
clear, ABA form is left awry by the setting of four bars of B
against three of A. Lest this be missed, the texture itself is
made easy to assimilate by the repetition. Out of four measures
of music, 1, 4, 15 and 42, Poulenc has constructed a forty-four
bar composition.
The song of social satire is followed by a love song which
is equally satirical:
The Goat
The fleece of that goat, and even

Those golden ones for which Jason took so much
Trouble, are worth nothing compared to the price
Of the hair by which I am so much taken.
42
The simple, simply harmonized g-dorian melody of the first
three and last three measures expresses a tender affection--which
is not a little disturbed by the caricature of falling tresses
which is measures 4 and 5. Or is this the goat, bounding down
the hillside? Or, perhaps, it is hair after all, not exactly
cascading to her waist, but falling out and bouncing as it hits
the ground. The simile of hair of the beloved and fleece of the
goat seems farfetched.
Another rather individual image is contained in the next
song:
The Grasshopper
See the little grasshopper,

The nourishment of St. John.
Would that my verses could likewise be
The fare of gentlemen of quality.
Brevity is the first feature to be noticed, but there is not
so much of this feature as to preclude the presence of others.
The vocal line is expressive, and the expression is wistful, as
reflected in the descending half-steps of measure 1, the minor
thirds of m. 2, the high, pianissimo, plaintive singsong of the
final lines, which make the point of the song, and which involve
the poet himself. The declamation--the final, weak syllable of
etre, and the weak syllables de and des fall on strong beats— adds
to the quaint effect of the imagery. The harmony is of„a nature
which could not interfere with the direct appeal of the voice:
43
a succession of dominant seventh relationships, lightly salted
with dissonance. (The final chord is a g minor triad with an a
added.) The form of the accompaniment is AA, where each A is of
two measures. The whole could scarcely be simpler, or shorter,
or more fitting, both to the picture of St. John in the desert,
or to the pathetic comparison to the verse-writer, in his desert.
The fourth song, in its combining of fast tempo, strong,
syncopated rhythm, and angular melody which is strong in its
fourths, insistent in the repetition of the fourths, is a high-
point in the cycle from the standpoint of aggressiveness. The
melodic interval of a fourth was used in the first song, but not
in combination with the other factors just mentioned, or with the
strong contrasts of the text:
The Dolphin
Dolphins, you play in the sea,

But the wave is always bitter.
Sometimes my joy is bursting,
But life again is cruel.
But the contrast in the text is no more brought out in the
music than it is developed in the brief poem. The result is a
feeling that the joy, the bitterness do not really matter, a
feeling of cynicism . Again there is great simplicity of melody,
harmony, and form, and again there is the setting of prepositions
and "mute" syllables on strong beats, this last adding to the
feeling of indifference.
44
Cynicism continues to mount in the next song:
The Crab
Uncertainty, 0! my delights,
You and I walk together,
Like the crabs, _
Backwards.
The song is similar to the first one in its use of scale-
wise figuration and in its tonal vacillation, in the present case
in the cross-relation between the d^b in the left hand and the d^
of the right hand of measure 1. This vacillation expresses the
"uncertainty" of the text; "backwards" is found in the inversion
of the treble of m. 1 which takes place at m. 9. The two together
add up to the blind procession which is life.
The final song represents the end also of the trend of
sadness which has been rising throughout the cycle:
The Carp
In your ponds, in your pools,

Carp, how long your lives!
Is it that death forgets you,
Fish of melancholy?
Repetition is an integral part of Poulenc1s-style. Ostinato,
one of the varieties of repetition, is another. Pedal point, at
least where the note is repeatedly struck, is a special form of
ostinato. All three devices are apt for the expression of sadness
or eternity. They have been used throughout the cycle to express
the former. There is but one way to ensure that in this song
they are completely understood to express the latter: to do the
45
thing that has not yet been done. Accordingly, there is strict
repetition, in the accompaniment, throughout the song, and pedal
point, in the top voice of the accompaniment, throughout the song.
This principle is reflected, moreover, in the voice part, which,
for the first time in the cycle, employs declamation on one note.
Chansons Gaillardes
That the bent for irony and humor was not merely a charac
teristic expression of youth is proven by later works. The
Chansons Gaillardes of 1926 will serve to show what changes may
have resulted from maturity.
The Chansons Gaillardes, or Wanton Songs, are considerably
more explicit than the Chansons de Bilitis set by Debussy,
treating not only love--physical love, naturally— but some of the
aberrations, and, indeed, of the organs, both primary and secondary,
of love.
The first song is entitled
The Fickle Mistress
My mistress is fickle,
My rival is happy:
If he has her virtue,
She must have had two.
So row the boat
As much as she can row
La la la la la.
The song shares the elements of ostinato and repetition, the
simplicity of melody, harmony and form which were observed in the
46
songs of Le Bestiaire. The chief difference is in the extra
length. To allow this, the words are repeated, and some of the
simplicity is sacrificed as the motives, as they come around a
second and third time, are varied.
To become specific, measures 1-3 use the ostinato which has
come to be expected. The little chromatic scale, a - a ^ - g , of
m. 1 is subjected in ms. 5 and 7 to considerably more subtle
transformation than was common in Le Bestiaire. Measure 7, in
turn, appears in m. 11 but with its haIf-steps expanded to whole
steps. It turns up again at m. 21 and again at m. 34 with its
shape altered in addition. The bass of m. 13 is related to that
of m. 1, but the interval of a 9th has become a 4th; at m. 16 it
becomes a 6th in the voice part and a 3rd in the bass.
Of particular interest is the Pagliacciesque laughter with
which the singer compliments his mistress' popularity. The
specific instructions to the singer regarding articulation, and
the resulting variety in its detail are part of the reason for the
effectiveness of this laughter. The staccatos, the accents, the
legatos, the great amount of dynamic variety were not a part of
the earlier cycle. The tears behind the laughter are heard in
the parallel seconds at tant qu'elle pourra voguer (m. 22).
A wonderful idea is expressed in the next song:
47
Song to Drinking
The kings of Egypt and of Syria

Used to have their bodies embalmed
That they might last a longer time in death.
Let us rather drink a great deal
(For a great deal is needed):
Let us drink throughout our lives
And embalm ourselves before death,
For that balm is sweet.
All the pomp of ancient dynasty is expressed in the massive
parallel lines of the introduction, and all the grandiose swagger
of the alcoholic, who poises confidently on the first chord of
measure 4, only to plummet a minor 7th--in all six voices--as
the one foot ignominiously misses the curb.
The music is based on the three ideas of ms. 1, 4, and 7.
The form is ABA. The A section ends on the dominant at m. 16.
The B section is in the relative major, the better to express the
world-shaking wonder owing to an invention of embalming fluid for
live bodies. The music of the B section is amusing in the contrast
between the genteel melody, progressing by steps, nodding to
convention in its polite sequences and aba'b1 form, and the text,
slyly building up to the outrageous "punch line" (line 7). The
recapitulation at m. 28 adds to the humor, particularly as it
gives an opportunity to hear again the minor 9ths of m. 7, now
compressed into wonderful minor seconds (ms. 34-35), repeated five
times, to set the word "dead."
Ill - Madrigal
You are pretty as an angel,

Sweet as a small sheep,
There is nary a heart, little Jeanne
Which does not lie at your feet;
But, a girl without breasts
Is like a partridge without an orange.
This seems like a grotesque thing to say to a girl. Apart
from the cruelty of complimenting her only to taunt her, there is,
in support of that statement, the use of t£ton and mouton, instead
of the more refined sein and agneau. The reason for these choices
is partly the wish to rhyme, but the decision's result is none
the less crude. The dichotomy between compliment and taunt is
caught by Poulenc with a harmless, little scale melody (ms. 2-5),
salted with grotesqueries such as the melodic V-I of the sudden
dominant key at ms. 8-9, the obvious chromatic distortion of the
material of ms. 2-5 which occurs at ms. 10 and 14, the bizarre
chromatic ornamentation of the II-V-I at ms. 16 and 17. The
sincerity of the first line is brought into question by the strong
dissonance which harmonizes "belle." In the same way, the straight
forward, diatonic B section (ms. 26-33) merely serves as a foil
for the fun of lines 5 and 6 at m. 34, with the sudden flatting (!)
of "fille sans t§ton," and the ascending triplets of ms. 38-40,
which somehow strike one as amusing, as an inversion of the
descending triplets eight measures earlier.
49
IV - Invocation aux Parques
I swear so long as I shall live

To love you, Sylvia.
Fates, who hold in your hands
The thread of our life, lengthen
As much as you can
Mine, I pray.
If the context in which the poem is found does not give it
away, then the adulteration of this broad and sustained hymn, its
awesome use of a whole chord as a pedal point, by late Romantic
diminished seventh chords (ms. 9 and 15), "barbershop" neighboring
chords (17-19) and modern added dissonance (ms. 7, 20, 22, and
23), certainly suggest the strong possibility of a double-enten -
dre.
V - Couplets Bachiques
I am, so long as the day lasts,

Both grave and roguish, each in their turn.
When I see an empty wine flagon,
I am grave, I am grave;
But, be it full, I am roguish.
I am, so long as the day lasts,

Both grave and roguish, each in their turn
When my wife pulls me to bed,
I am like a wise man, all the night.
If it be a strumpet,
Then I am roguish.
Ah, fair hostess, pour me some wine!
Except for some spice such as the added 2nd of ms. 2 and 3,
or the a, thrown into the midst of the a*3 chord at m. 8, the
diatonic melody, the parallel thirds, the tonal harmony, the
regular-lengthed phrases in crystalline form, are as cool and
50
proper as early Haydn; but this is only to express grave and
sage. The expression of catin is a different story (ms. 36-55).
Four measures of C minor abruptly shift to E major, still more
abruptly to F^ minor, which rapidly alternates with F^ major, the
last two keys decorated with rapid chromatic scales in the top
voice of the accompaniment. Four measures of G major follow,
with all chords augmented, and a coda in features similar
chromatic scales in two rhythms. The catin obviously brings out
more of the badin in this man than the vin ever did.
Thirty measures of da capo give opportunity for remarking
the contrast between the complaining, descending sequence as
ma femme me tient au lit, (ms. 78-85) and the sprightly rise of
motives, tonalities and rhythm as the catin au lit me tient
(36-51). Judging by the context, this juxtaposition may also be
read on more than one level of meaning.
The most shocking song, from the point of view of mingling
the sacred and the profane, is Number VI, "L'Offrande." Modal
lines, Gounodesque harmony, churchly cadences, and a broad melody
centering on the ethereal fifth of G minor create an atmosphere
of devotion which is only subtly destroyed by the speech made by
le dieu d 1amour on the what is in this context obscene 7th of
C major. A magnificent touch is the writing of this speech, with
its high gl, in such a way that to sing it tres doux, as the
rubrics demand, the baritone (the song is inconceivable for a
woman) must sing the phrase in falsetto. The text is:
VI - L'Offrande
To the God of Love a virgin

Offered one day a candle
To obtain a lover.
The God smiled at her prayer,

And said to her,
Fair one, while waiting,
Make good use of your offering.
This is the first song in the cycle to be extensively marked
legato!
The seventh song will be omitted from this discussion. The
substance of the text, that it is not necessary to marry— there
are other ways to "get along," makes a contribution to the cycl^
but there is nothing new in the music. The final song, Serenade,
however, is quite spectacular in both text and music.
VIII - Serenade
With such a beautiful hand

Which serves so many charms
How necessary it is that of the mischievous God
You manage well the weapon!
And when that infant is fretful
Dry well his tears.
The slow dance rhythm in | time with occasional dotted
rhythms, the sequences, the formal harmonic progressions abounding
in chords of the first inversion, the suspensions, the correct
modulations to related keys are all reminiscent of the wigged and
powdered court of Louis XIV. This, however, is only a foil, to
render the added dissonances, such as in ms. 14, 18, 21, and 34,
52
the more vulgar. But this is not all. Just as in Le Bestiaire
the last song was a climax of a mounting usage of ostinato and
pedal point, so the glissandos in this song are a climax of the
use of legato, in the rising (what else?), repeated glissandos,
marked crescendo, of measures 40-42.
The declamation in this cycle, while still contained within
the confines of simple, recurrent rhythmic patterns, rather than
utilizing the rhythmic flexibility of Debussy, is much freer of
flaws of accentuation than it was in the earlier cycle. This
growing concern for declamation is reflected in the generous
amount of articulation marks.
Simplicity, but warmth, repetition, but to contribute to
the effect, not to be the effect, a close relationship between
the details of the text and those of the music, to the point of
dictating not only the shape of the melody but its manner of
articulation--all in the service of a gentle moral, or a not so
gentle, but healing laugh--these are the contributions of Poulenc.
^Francis Poulenc, Le Bestiaire: ou Cortege d'Orphee (Paris:

Max Eschig, 1920).
^Poulenc, Chansons Gaillardes (Paris: Hegel, 1926).
53
Chapter V
Charles Ives
The music of Charles Ives is based on tradition, but what
is of compelling interest in his music is the extent to which he
was tradition's master, able to summon it in any of its many
manifestations he wished to employ, if, indeed, he wished to
employ any; for he was equally capable of inventing his own.
An enthusiastic insurance man— he enjoyed a successful,
satisfying, creative career in which he exerted a wide influence
upon his profession--he had no need, emotionally or financially,
to please, through his composing, anyone other than himself.
The Greatest Man
The American schoolboy is the subject of a song composed in
1921 by Charles E. Ives. Entitled "The Greatest Man,"'1- it is to
a text by Anne Collins which appeared in the New York Evening Sun
the same year. The poem is a classic example of a youthful
attempt at the essay form. For example, the boy allows, near the
beginning (m. 8), that his "pa...ain't a hero 'r anything," but,
by the time the end is reached, he is asserting that "Dad's got
Washington and Lee all beat holler!" Obviously, this is a first
draft. Another instance of child-like logic and technique of
organization is in the line, "but pshaw! Say!" (m. 9). Under the
circumstances, this is a perfectly logical transition from a
54
section disclaiming heroship for the boy's father, and a section
enumerating his many talents. The two asides, "We ketched five
new lights, me and him!" (m. 14), and "Dad won't kill a lark or
thrush," lend a spontaneous air to the essay, and the way the
latter leads into the father's kindness when the boy was sick is
priceless naivete.
The music, fitting the text like a stocking, also unfolds in
a spontaneous manner. It begins with an introductory measure of
two chords which are hesitant and tentative both in rhythm and
tonality, as if the boy were now reluctantly sitting down to
work. The song's vocal line is predominantly constructed of an
informal, child-like, fast-talking dotted figure, simply alter
nating between adjacent notes or moving, scale-wise, up and down. .
In this introductory section (ms. 1-8) the object words, words
denoting the father and other important men, are set by notes
which alternate between two pitches. The predicate words move in
pitch. The chromatic, barbershop harmony adds to the homespun
atmosphere. A particularly felicitious progression is that in
measure four, from the second to the third beats.
At m. 9 the boy is thoroughly warmed up to his task. Dis
cretion is cast aside; desultoriness is a thing of the past: "But
pshaw! Say!" Four stentorian chords, the first two with out-of-
key added tones, the last two dominant seventh chords, lead to
C major. As the boy is finally telling about his hero, the voice
55
is pitched high, the accompaniment is more sonorous, the dynamic
level is louder, the tempo is faster; there is no doubt of his
excitement. Best of all, however, is the falling line, which
matches the boy's cardinal error, from the point of view of the
Rules of Composition, of enumerating his points in descending
order of importance. The falling line also creates an impression
that the boy is not taking time to breathe.
The aside of ms. 14-16 is also, besides being an aside, an
injection of a first-personal reference, and a proud one. Accord
ingly it has its own marcato quarter-note rhythm, its own tonality
and dissonant harmony, and a rest, emphasizing the words "me 'n
him!" which underline the boy's pride.
Now the boy remembers another of Father's major talents:
"Dad's some hunter too--Oh, my!" A two-beat drum-roll in the bass
prepares, as the boy is recalling, the sudden introduction of a
horn in the voice, a trumpet in the right hand, a descending
incongruous trombone in the bass, all of which, for just one
measure, signify hunting.
The flight of Miss Molly Cottontail is caught by parallel
chromatic thirds, the characteristic irregularity of her gait by
the triplets inserted in the midst of the dotted rhythms. An
abrupt appearance of music which might have been borrowed from a
Classical symphony accompanies the pursuing hunter. This is as
abruptly interrupted by two tender measures for the second aside,
56
"Dad won't kill a lark or thrush."
At measure 24 the dotted notes remain on the same pitch--
for three beats. This, along with a succession of low and dis
sonant chords, sets "When I was sick." Father's comforting words,
"That's the stuff J85 serve as the end of the sickroom scene: the
music is a parody of Classical coda with its I-V-I-V-I (m. 26)
chords. This becomes, at m. 27, a poignant V-I in g, to intro
duce "He never cried but once, 'n that was when my mother died."
High, sustained, pianissimo chords in the right hand are intro
duced here, perhaps representing Heaven.
There is nothing to add--except an essay is supposed to
conclude with a summary. He recollects he is writing about "some
great man," and with the recollection the beginning music returns
(m. 30). Maybe he should have written about "George Washington
'r Lee," but he'll stick by his choice: his "Dad's got 'em all
beat holler." The three strong chords underline the vehemence of
his conviction, just as the timid "seems to me!" highlights it by
contrast. Schoolboys are apt to get whipped when they don't mind
the teacher. The harmonization of this line (it, and the song,
fL
end on a VIip reinforces this interpretation, as well as framing
the song by causing it to trail off in the same shy manner in
which it began.
The contribution of this song to this paper may be summarized
by the statement of Henry Cowell that
57
It is a music not of exclusion but of

inclusion, and it is the most universal in
its use of different materials and shades
of feeling of any music which I have ever
heard. Ives is a wizard at taking seeming
ly irreconcilable elements and weaving them
together into a unity of purpose and flow...^
Charlie Rutlage
The American cowboy provides the theme for "Charlie Rutlage,"^
composed in 1914 or 1915.^ That text-painting is to be the keynote
is apparent from the first measures, which present a cowboy-type
melody for the voice and an oom-pah ostinato for the accompaniment.
This last can be most aptly described as the efforts of an inept
guitar player. He does not bother to harmonize the g in his bass;
unaccountably, at measure 5, the bass and treble suddenly agree.
The poem's second couplet (m. 8) adds mournful chromatic notes—
the flat 9th of the A major chord and the flat 5th of m. 10 in
the bass. Measure 12 marks a digression in the text: "The first
that died was Kid White." The voice drops its eighth-notes in
favor of quarters, the accompaniment its oom-pah in favor of a
chordal, hymn-like texture. For "a man both tough and brave"
there is a more rapid harmonic rhythm with altered tones and
modulations. At measure 15 the poem turns back to Charlie,
mentions his death to the accompaniment of a chromatically de
scending bass and an increasing dissonance as bass and treble
cease to agree at m. 20.
58
The introduction is now over and the narration of the fatal
accident begins with a stroke which, if it is not original, is at
least most unusual: the singer, after one measure of "half spoken"
singing on one note, recites in rhythm for the seventeen measures.
The musical interest is now completely in the piano. This, until
bar 31, is, among other things, a series of 2% beat ostinato
figures in the bass--the voice is in 4/4 time. These figures
change in pitch at each couplet of the text (ms. 25, 29). The
right hand changes with the left. At first (m. 21) it is a fan
fare of minor chords punctuated by occasional tone clusters. This
agrees rhythmically with the bass, not the voice. At measure 25,
as he "went forward, one morning," the cowboy song, "Whoopee ti
yi yo, git along little dogies," appears in the right hand (m. 25)
in chords of varying degrees of dissonance and complexity. In the
middle of the song's 6th couplet (m. 31), both ostinato and cow
boy song are interrupted for the climax line, "Nothing came back
from him; his time on earth was spent.” They are replaced by
another descending scale in the bass, first in whole tones, then
in half.
This line was evidently premature, for at m. 33 the narrative
is taken up again. The ostinato from the beginning of the song
returns. The treble is figurated tritone. The pitch rises, the
tempo and loudness also - ff - fff - ffff. The last is for the
actual fall of the horse, and is accompanied by a new stroke of
59
unorthodoxy, fist chords, concerning which the composer directs
in a foot-note, "In these measures the notes are indicated only
approximately; the time, of course, is the main point."
This is not all. "Beneath, poor Charlie died," purified by
the composer, who uses white notes for the only time in the whole
song (with minor exceptions), the treble rising through the span
of an octave.
The story has been told; the eulogising tone of the text of
the beginning is resumed, as is the opening melody, but in minor,
and the inept guitar. The "preacher" pictures Charlie at the
"shining throne of grace," and there is a plagal cadence supplying
the "Amen" which is implied by the poet.
Once again, there has been illustrated a variety of styles
and devices in a single composition: bad guitar playing, folk
melody, melodrama, Stravinskian ostinato, polychords, whole tone
scale, fist chords, "eye music." The single, overall trait might
be said to be realism.
General William Booth Enters Into Heaven
In "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven,"'* Ives set out
in 1914 to capture the sublime faith and fanatic frenzy of Vachel
Lindsay's poetic interpretation of the Salvation Army, in
particular of the undoubtable climax of its founder's career, The
familiar sound of the bass drum is heard first, portrayed by a
60
b ninth chord with a conflicting seventh in the bass. After four
measures of this, the Gospel Hymn makes its appearance: "Are you
washed in the blood of the lamb?"--in G major. The tune is bent
a little at "Saints smiled gravely" by the introduction of a
tritone. This interval becomes the motive of the fanfare figure
which punctuates the phrase (19 and 20) and then accompanies the
next, "Walking lepers..." Its use here seems quite apt. Apt
also are the ascending clusters after "Lurching bravoes from the
ditches dank," the tritone, again, for "drug fiends," the chromatic
scale for "Vermin-eaten saints" and "Unwashed legions," in short
the tortured, irregular ugliness of the line in general, though
held somewhat together by the presence of bass pedals on g (m. 26)
and c (28). The term presence of is more accurate than relation
ship to. On the contrary, the overall vocal line is not related
to the bass; it is often not related to any recognized scale. It
is, in fact, something of a classic in its organization of
disparate elements. In these terms, it is a fitting representation
of the particular procession of humanity described in the text,
both en masse and as individuals. The many half-step clashes in
the right hand add to the effect. The intervallic augmentation
and the syncopation of "Are you washed..," the sonority of the
accompanying chords provide a fitting climax (m. 34).
A new stanza begins at m. 40; both text and music draw back
to regroup their forces for another charge. Economy of means is
61
the technique. Legierro (sic) is the rubric; right and left hand
are limited to simple triads, but D in the one and F in the other;
the dynamic marking of the voice is merely forte. The sublime
portion has not arrived as yet, however, as attested by the repe
titious whole-tone scale pattern of irregular length which serves
as the voice part, and as attested by the five-beat ostinato in
4/4 measures in the accompaniment. At m. 47 the piano takes up
the scale idea--in eighth-notes and in parallel sevenths. At m. 52,
the "Big-voiced lassies" with their banjos are a banal barn-dance,
fortissimo in the piano. There is nothing banal about the rhythm,
however, which drops a half beat at m. 53 as the phrase is
repeated, puts it back in measure 57, marked 4%/4. The wordshere,
"Tranced, fanatical, they shrieked and sang," indicate that
another climax has arrived, an impression which is reinforced by

jt2
the indication fff andthe accented g1f , approached and left by a
glissando, for "shrieked." Momentary relief is provided by a
return of the refrain "Are you washed..." before a shouted
"Hallalujah!" The shout is answered by the piano in its own
terms by broken chords, thick and full and dissonant. The mood
thus created is sustained by the trumpet figure of ms. 70-73.

K h
This, with its simultaneous ostinatos in B , A and C, is the
perfect setting for the text, "Loons with trumpets blowed a
blare," which is but an exaggerated description of some Salvation
Army bands, in whose performance spirit is more in evidence than
62
training. Another example of realism, is perhaps the best
evaluation of this passage.
A codetta ensues by way of the Gospel hymn accompanied by
sixteenth-note ostinato. Its last three measures are in complex
counter-rhythms which somewhat superfluously provide contrast for
the mood-shift to the sublime at m. 82. Here, as "Jesus came from
the court-house door," appears pure triadic harmony for the first
time. "Booth saw not, but led his queer ones round and round,...
Yet, in an instant..." and the opening harmonies return, recalling,
for the purpose of contrast, the condition of this army in the
first part of the song. The voice recites on one note, for the
first time, declaiming this text announcing the miraculous reha
bilitation of humanity's dregs, "Spotless, in raiment new." The
declamation is succeeded by a triumphant Army bugle figure, which
in turn succeeded by a full chorus of a Gospel tune. The Army is
always on the job, and the song ends with a final appeal to the
listener--Has all this reached you?--with a final return of the
refrain, "Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?"
According to Henry Cowell, Ives felt that form should be
something to chew on, that the intellect should have a part, not
just the emotions.
He feels that music, like other truths,

should never be immediately understood; there
must always remain some further element yet
to be disclosed.^
The song, "Soliloquy"? illustrates this.
63
Soliloquy
When a man is sitting

before the fire on the hearth,
he says, "Nature is a simple affair."
Then he looks out the window
and sees a hail storm,
and he begins to think that
"Nature can't be so easily disposed of.1"
The textual division after the third line is obvious. The accom
paniment of the first part is three repeated chord progressions,
each one from a D*3 major triad through an a^ with diminished third,
to a polychord, a D major 9th in the left hand, a g haIf-dimin
ished 7th in the right. Thus, the progression, at the same time
it is expressing simplicity, the theme of the section (the pro
gression jLs simple compared to what is ahead), is expressing
"simplicity which is really complexity," the theme of the song.
Over this piano figure the voice declaims on one note (with two
small exceptions).
In the second part, complexity is rendered.by complexity,
but an ordered one. First, a rhythmic circle-form is expressed
in the time signatures:
5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 5 - 5 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5 , all over 16.
The chords are constructed according to a sorting of inter
vals which follows the same circle-form. The two 5/16 bars at
the center of the structure contain a coming-together of chords,
and a fanning-out. That is, the first chord built on minor
sevenths is followed by one of perfect fifths, one of perfect
64
fourths, one of alternating major and minor thirds, one of major
seconds, one of major and minor seconds, and then back out. This
is quite interesting to look at. The chords of seconds are
played twice as fast as the others, thus rhythmically accentuating
their centrality.
As for the outer measures, those before the central two
exhibit ascending arpeggios; those after exhibit descending ones.
The 5 and 7/16 measures (using the signatures from the voice part)
are constructed of augmented octaves; the 4 and 8/16 measures are
of diminished octaves. Furthermore, in the 6 and 7/16 measures
preceding the center, one of the octaves is, rather, its comple
mentary second, so that the final chord is not so wide as its
corresponding number after the center.
The vocal part contributes to the goal of complexity. It
starts out with three notes against the piano's five, and one of
these a triplet. This rhythm becomes no easier, and the intervals
have no discernible organization to guide the singer. There are
all varieties of sevenths and ninths, and most of the pitches are
in conflict with the accompaniment. The only principle at work
seems to be that both before and after the center, the high note
of each measure is higher than that of the measure before, and
the high notes are on important syllables.
This song exemplifies an attitude of Ives toward the problem
of the art song, which he stated himself in his first published
65
collection:
Some might be given to students as examples

of what not to sing - some cannot be sung.
* * * Concerning the rights of a song: must
it always be a ribbon to match the voice?
Should it not be free at times from the
dominion of the thorax, the diaphragm, the
ear, and other points of interest? ...In
short, must a song always be a song?^
The Ives' subject matter reflects frank enjoyment of whole
some, everyday, domestic, American living. The schoolboy essay
about his dad, the American cowboy, the Salvation Army, the arm
chair philosopher are in everybody's morning paper, or coffee-
break, hence, for Ives, are fair game for a work of art.
It has been seen, and it will be seen, that every composer
has at his command varying textures by which his songs, and
sections of the same song, are differentiated from one another,
and that these differences may be used (or may be imagined to be
used) to underline differences between poems, and ideas within
the same poem. Each composer has his own ways and degrees of
differentiation, which it is the purpose here to compare.
The textural repertoire of Ives is as varied and as unin
hibited as is his subject matter. The nearest to him in this
respect to have been discussed thus far is Debussy. But even the
three contrasting songs of the Villon Ballades, with their contrast
ing tempi and textures, all have a sameness--the stamp of late
Debussy--compared to the variety of the Ives songs. Ives, rather
66
than manipulating Ives, borrows Haydn or Stravinsky, Gospel
hymns, etc. Then, when he cannot find the idiom he wants to
express what he thinks the poet is saying, he invents one. If
he cannot think of one which the fingers can play, he is inspired
to write for the fist. Similarly, when there is no melody with
just the right expression, it occurs to him to use the pitches
which may be inspired in the performer, by the poem and by the
music he has written for the piano. This approach certainly
makes for interesting songs, and songs which acknowledge the
rights of the text.
There is, finally, large disparity in the Ives songs between
degrees of performance difficulty, ranging from the simple to the
impossible, or, at least "Soliloquy" approaches this extreme.
Many of the songs, however, are far easier than "Charlie Rutlage"
or "The Greatest Man."
^Charles E. Ives, "The Greatest Man," Thirty-Four Songs by

Charles E. Ives: New Music Quarterly, 3rd ed., Vol. VII (New York:
New Music Edition Corp., 1933), p. 13.
% e n r y Cowell, "Charles E. Ives," American Composers on

American Music, ed.Cowell(Stanford University Press, Calif., 1933),
p. 132.
Îves, "Charlie Rutlage," Charles Ives: Seven Songs (Cos

Cobb Press, Inc., 1932; Reissued New York: Arrow Music Press,
Inc.), p. 5.
âs remembered by Mrs. Ives, John Kirkpatrick, The Music

Manuscripts of Charles Edward Ives (New Haven: by the author,
1960), item 6B51a, p. 199.
67
Ives, ''General William Booth Enters Heaven," Nineteen Songs

by Charles E. Ives: New Music Quarterly, IX (New York: New Music
Edition Corp., 1935), p. 2.
fi
Henry and Sidney Cowell, Charles Ives and His Music (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1955), p. 142.
Îves, "Soliloquy," Thirty-Four Songs, p. 50.

O
Ives, 114 Songs (Redding, Conn: By the composer, 1932).
Chapter VI
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg is the first composer to be discussed in
this paper of whose music it may be said that its difficulty is
its most striking quality. For many consumers, this one quality
is so striking as to be fatal, smothering all other qualities;
for there are other qualities to be found and appreciated, if the
first one can be overcome.
The reader is referred to Three Songs: Sommermued, Tod und
Maedchenlied, for low voice.^ Although numbered Opus 48 by the
composer, they were composed in 1933, after Opus 35 and before
Opus 36.2 p0ems are by Jacob Haringer. The first,
Summer Sadness
Just when you believed

It was eternal night,
Suddenly one evening brought you
Kisses and stars again.
Then, when you think

Everything is over;
Instantly, it is again
Christmas eve, and lovely May.
Therefore thank God and be silent

Since you still live and kiss:
Too many had, without a star,
To die.
The subject is morbid: there is cause for rejoicing, amid
life's pain, for others are worse off than we. This morbidity is
shared by the other songs in the cycle. In Schoenberg's case, if
69
not in the case of other composers of his "school," the morbidity
and the dissonance which is his most prominent stylistic trait
are most compatible, and their marriage is his chief technique
for textual expression.
Looking at the individual stanzas it is seen that each
neatly divides, at its first comma (or at the colon, in the case
of stanza 3), into two halves which oppose each other in mood:
the first two stanzas are case of gloom giving way to joy; in the
third stanza this shift is reversed. It is seen also that this
shift of direction in the third stanza results in a division of
the poem, between its first stanzas and its third.
This form is reflected in the music as follows. Each stanza
begins on a c ^ which then progresses to either c^- and d-*-, or

1 1
d and c . The division between the halves of each stanza is
accomplished in the case of the first and third by change of
direction in the voice line, which shows a general rise in the
first half, a fall in the last. The second stanza accomplishes
the contrast by the use of slower notes for the first half.
Finally, the third stanza is distinguished from the first two by
its use of long notes and prevailing step-wise motion in the
accompaniment.
The rhythm is varied and makes for natural and convincing
delivery of the text. In addition, many key words, such as
glaubst, Nacht, and Kuesse, are brought forward in the first
70
stanza by means of larger melodic intervals than those of their
neighbors, in this case a tritone. In stanza 2 the words alles,
Christnacht, and lieblicher are set by a 10th, a major 7th, and
a tritone in that order. The word alles is thus given appropriate
importance. Moreover, this sequence of intervals forms an
"intervallic arch" of the first two stanzas, thus setting them
apart in still another way from the third stanza. In addition to
this intervallic arch, a quickening of the rhythm, specifically
a greater predominance of 16th-note figures is evidenced throughout
these first two stanzas.
The progression from gloom to joy in each of these stanzas
may be regarded as motivation for the thirds which can be heard
in the second half of each. The linking of the last lines of
stanzas 2 and 3 by the same vocal line may be regarded as reverse
text-painting--underlining the loss of Christmas and of May, which
is death.
A knowledge of the row does not always seem helpful in
hearing a song which employs it. In the second song of this
cycle, however, the row is used in a very direct manner to under
pin the form of the poem.
Death
Is all one
That lies thereon!
He has his happiness,
He his madness.
That lies thereon!
Is all one,
He found his happiness,
And I found none.
Lines 3 and 4 of each stanza are opposites to each other,
and together they complete the thought of lines 1 and 2. The
reversal of lines 1 and 2 in stanza 2 from their position in
stanza 1 is a gratuitous detail. Line 4 of stanza 2 is given a
close relationship to line 4 of stanza 1 by virtue of its being
the only line in stanza 2 which is substantially different from
stanza 1, which gives rise to the conclusion that its difference
is only superficial. Probably "nothing" is "madness." What is
important is the change in stanza 2, line 4, to the first person.
Turning to the row,
d- e ° - a - c ^ b^-e-g^-g c-b-f-f^
A B C
the division into three groups of four notes each is suggested in
the music of stanza 1. Group A is used for line 1, B for 2, pro
viding for the two lines an unbroken segment of the tone row.
This is in keeping with the compatibility of the two lines within
the unity of the grammatical phrase which they constitute. The
second couplet, however, contains conflict between its two lines-
its two phrases (the verb of the second phrase being understood
to be "has."). In keeping with this, line 3 is set by Group C;
its opposite, line 4, is set by C Retrograde!
But it has been told (line 1) that ist alles eins. There
72
would seem to be conflict between the poet and the composer. Not
at all, for CR turns out to be C transposed a diminished 4th, and
so these two opposites are united by the device of sequence, and
alles ist eins.
One's expectations for stanza 2 of having this intellectual
relationship between row and idea born out, are surpassed. The
row segments not only switch positions along with their textual
counterparts from lines 1 and 2 of stanza 1, but they appear in
retrograde. They also appear in such a way that the leaps are
larger (a device already noted in the first song of this cycle),
and the notes are higher. This is by way of preparation for the
important shift in line 4 to the first person. The preparation
is consumated by arranging the same groups, C and CR, which were
used for the same lines of stanza 1, but transposing some of
their notes in such a way that the section starts on the lowest
notes of the song (m. 11), ends with the largest leap, a minor
9th. Lengthened notes reinforce the accomplishment of this
purpose.
The row enters into the form and expression of the poem in
yet another way. As the song progresses towards its final,
climactic couplet, the three groups of the row become increasingly
difficult to hear in their deployment in the accompaniment. In
the introduction and in the first lines of stanza 1, C is in one
hand, and A and B alternate in the other. In lines 3 and 4, A is
73
in one hand, B in the other. In the early lines of stanza 2, all
three groups appear in both hands simultaneously, but C is kept
moving in two widely separated lines, while A and B are reserved
to slower moving, held chords. For the final couplet itself,
there is still differentiation between moving line and static
chord, but the two segments are intertwined in these in ways which
defy prose description. Complex texture, augmented by intricate
manipulation of the row so that it is "lost from view," does not
seem too inappropriate a means of setting Und ich fand keins.
The third of this group of morbid songs is the shocking one.
Maiden Song
The sunshine is so beautiful

And I must go to the office;
And I am always so sad,
It is a long time since I have been happy.
I do not know what I can say,

Why it is always so difficult for me;
All the other girls
Go about laughing and happy.
Perhaps I will jump in the water!

Oh! It is all the same to me!
If only a pimp would come along
And it were summer again!
I might enter a cloister, and pray

For others, that it go better for them
Than it has for my poor heart;
Which no star helps, nor prayer.
The song exhibits all of the characteristics thus far dis
cussed, plus new ones. Most of these are in the third stanza.
An important element of shock is surprise. Stanza 2 therefore
74
sets the listener up for a surprise by supplying the gayest music
of the cycle. The vocal line uses fast 16th-notes, exploits the
major third in a near sequence involving the upward progression
of this third. The descending minor 7th at immer so schwer only
serves to render these thirds more effective by power of contrast.
The accompaniment is also more easy to grasp than usual, with more
repetition of the chords than has been the norm, and with many
major thirds, reflecting those in the voice.
After all of this, even the little bit of foreboding of the
cantilena accompaniment figure which closes the stanza does not
prepare us for the twice-stated tritone and the ascending dimin
ished 10th (the largest interval in the song) which sets Vielleicht
spring ich doch ins Wasserl assisted by the alternating high and
low hammer strokes in the piano, which build in density as the
line progresses.
But the crowning touch is reserved for the third and fourth
lines, which are set by music which must be described as sweet.
The voice line is quite diatonic, having but one tritone, and that
at the very beginning. The accompaniment expresses considerable
tenderness by means of a series of audible dominant seventh chords,
unresolved though they are.
Coming after her expressed wish to sell herself, the Maedchen*s
fourth stanza desire to become a nun almost hits harder. Again
the music abets, as Schoenberg falls back on the pan-epochal
75
device of using counterpoint to refer to the Church. In Schoen
berg's case this must be qualified as obvious counterpoint. Here,
it is primarily whole-tone scales running simultaneously up and
down and in contrasting rhythms. There is also imitation between
measures 23 and 25.
Schoenberg, in these songs, more than any other composer,
is the composer of the misery in the world. For Schoenberg, un
like Debussy, time does not stand still. He is also, it is
commonly admitted, the apostle of real difficulties, both for
singer and listener. Wide intervals, unusual intervals--in them
selves and in their relationship to the other parts--and avoidance
of repetition are each difficult to deal with. When they occur
in combination the sum is insignificant beside the difficulties
set by most other composers. Indeed, the difficulty is scarcely
distinguishable from impossibility, with the possible exception
of those singers and listeners with a very strong sense of absolute
pitch.
It is more than likely that these two traits— penchants for
misery in the text and difficulty in the music--are interconnected.
For a people which is conditioned to think of the triad as
beautiful, the style of Schoenberg is ideally suited to the
expression of ugliness. That he did not use the triad to express
the lines of his texts which are pleasant does not defeat this
thesis. He did use less jarring textures for these lines, as this
76
paper has attempted to show. The overall intent of the poems he
set, however, is to portray unpleasant facts of existence; with
this aim the overall style of Schoenberg is in keeping.
Because the harmony, the melody, the rhythmic patterns are
new and difficult, so is the technique of relating text to music
new and difficult. Many of the old cliches, such as the use of
the minor key for sad moods, stereotyped melodic patterns, et al,
not being a part of the style, may not be used for this purpose.
But the texture can still change, and it does, corresponding to
the form of the text, reflecting the text's modulating intensity.
And there is a new technique, the mirroring of the ideas
and form of the text in the ordering and re-ordering of the tones
of the row. The appreciation of this last, of course, is re
stricted to those with perfect pitch.
Having "defended" Schoenberg, one cannot refrain from
voicing the subjective feeling that this difficult, dissonant
style is too powerful to be used like salt. It should rather be
locked in the cupboard with the more expensive seasonings, brought
out for special occasions. Variety is spice, and, in this respect,
the dissonances of Charles Ives, as in "Charlie Rutlage,"
"General William Booth Enters Heaven," and "Paracelsus" seem the
more effective, for being used in so many degrees and varieties,
and sometimes not at all.
77
Ârnold Schoenberg, Three Songs: Sommermued - Tot -

Maedchenlied (Hillsdale, N. Y.: Bomart Music Publications, Inc.,
1952).
^Richard S. Hill, "Arnold Schoenberg: Three Songs," Music

Library Association Notes, Series IX (June, 1952), pp. 503-4.
78
Chapter VII
Anton Webern
Anton Webern is the second of the three composers treated
in this paper, the others being Schoenberg and Dallapiccola, in
whose music the element of difficulty is so conspicuous as to be
elevated from the status of a consideration to that of an inte
gral feature of the style. And yet there are important differ
ences between the songs of Schoenberg and Webern. For the purpose
of discussing these, Webern's Opus 23^ has been chosen, entitled
Drei. Gesaenge Aus "Viae Inviae," by Hildegarde Jone, songs which
are well into Webern's twelve-tone period. The texts follow.
The dark heart that listens within itself

Beholds the Spring not only in breeze and scent
Which blooms in beams of light;
It feels it in the dark root kingdom
Which rests upon the dead.
What becomes depends, with tender roots,

On waiting in Darkness,
Drinks power and stillness out of the night,
Before it presents itself to the day,
Before, like a vessel of love, it blows scent toward
Heaven,
And before it, from one to another,
Sends a golden stream of life.
I am not mine.
The springs of my soul
Bubble in the meadows of one
Who loves me,
And make his flowers bloom, and are his..
You are not yours.
The feet of your soul,
You man, by me beloved,
Run in mine, lest it wither.
79
II
There falls from above a freshness,

Which makes us alive.
The heart's blood is the dampness lent us,
The tear is the coolness given:
It flows miraculously back up the stream of Grace.
Ah, I dare be
Where the very sun is!
It loves me without ground,
As I love it without end.
When we some evening

Glance our farewell,
The heaven and the Soul
Is flooded over with fire.
III
Lord Jesus mine,

You walk every morning in the house
Where the hearts are beating,
And lay your healing hand on every pain.
Spring tells me, with all the birds,

How much it gives to joy.
It is so much, it is all,
Nor any walls between us and God.
He touches us with every wind and branch,

And nods softly with the meadow-flower
That as we walk is felt about the knee.
And in the morning, for the breathing,

There is again the Sun,
And, for the eternally sleeping,
You, also, wait the Day.
The first difference is apparent already. That is the over
whelming one between the sublime beauty of these songs— the second
treating of the glorious sun and the third of the glorious Son--
even the first, which treats of darkness, but as the necessary
source of beauty--and the morbidity of Schoenberg's songs. The
80
marriage of this beauty of nature and of the human spirit with
dissonance and difficulty would seem to be inconsistent with the
position taken in the preceding chapter that dissonance in
Schoenberg was his way of responding musically to the despair in
the poems. But, as has been sai4 there are differences.
They begin with the row itself, which is used, with its
three transformations, retrograde, inversion, and retrograde
inversion, and with but one transposition (to the tritone), through
out the songs of the cycle. This is a feature which is not true
of the Schoenberg cycle. The resulting many repetitions of the
few manifestations of the row are an aid in grasping the "melody,"
in becoming familiar with it, and, consequently, in appreciating
it, and the songs. One likes things to be different, but one
likes the differences to be based, even if only remotely, on the
familiar.
Considerations of treatment aside, the row itself is not hard
to grasp. The tones appear in this order:
f-g-e-ek-b-d-bk-gb-c-a-c^-g^.
The row is distinguished by having eight of its possible intervals
thirds--four of which are major, four minor. In addition, it has
a major second, a minor second, a perfect fourth, and one tritone.
Given Webern’s method of deploying these intervals— he almost al
ways uses the row forms intact in the voice--the vocal line cannot
help but have a lyric flavor, most appropriate to these poems of
81
Miss Jone. The piano part, also, while thorougly dissonant, is,
at the same time, frequently warmed by these thirds, which are
assured of audibility by the same device of using the row intact--
and sparingly. This is the famed Webernian transparency mentioned
by Craft as a fundamental characteristic.2
These thirds are heard just as often as sixths and tenths.
Add this to the sparseness mentioned above, and one is struck by
the great amount of keyboard, or vertical, space between the notes.
A corollary to this is horizontal space: space between notes and
chords, and between groups of notes and chords. All music breathes,
even the Naehenmaschinemusik of the baroque, when properly played.
One is grateful indeed that in music in which the shape of the
line, the predictability of the rhythm, the harmonic progression
are of so little help in comprehending the intended phrasing, the
luftpause should be inserted in such proportions as to compensate.
Lines and harmonies of such difficulty, leaps of such magnitude,
simply require more time to catch the breath--vocally, aurally,
mentally. The aesthetic result of these vertical and horizontal
spaces, of course, is to enhance the sounds, to provide a distance
from which to regard them--to provide a frame to set them off--
advantages which constitute yet another difference between Webern
and Schoenberg.
Webern's fondness for the soprano voice ("A Webern song for
any kind of male voice is almost a stylistic contradiction"^) is
82
a factor which is related to this need for space. So is the
extreme lack of low notes in the piano part: the bass clef is
employed rarely enough--a note below the bass staff is almost
unheard. Having achieved vertical space, and horizontal space,
the composer does not wish to destroy it by filling it in with
the greater number of effective overtones which emanate from low
notes.
Finally, it is sounds which are of concern here. It is
sounds for the enhancement of which the space is required, and
the ways of procuring space have been employed. The difficulty—
one might say the lack— of line and of harmony has the result that
the ear which is accustomed to hearing "melody" eventually gives
up and begins to hear something else: sounds. "Melody, but not
lyric expression, thus slowly recedes, or, rather, is transcended."^
In the piano part, the staccato note, often with a grace note, but
unaccompanied by a chord either with it or near it, produces a
novel sound, independent of any historically acquired association
with melodic progression, triad, or key feeling. The leaps to
other such notes, or dissonant chords, in infinitely varied
rhythmic combinations^ and metric transformations add up to a
complex of sounds which, while not melody, is yet a sound-structure,
hence a music, a beauty of new order. In this music, as has been
mentioned, thirds may be heard. Even they take on a new function,
as but one of a battery of sound materials.
83
So music of the "Difficult School" has become available to
singers who wish to sing lyric poetry; wide intervals, dissonance
and non-repetition remain, although perhaps somewhat softened;
but, to counteract this softening, there is discrimination against
male voices, or even against female voices, for that matter,
unless they sing high b's. It should also be mentioned that the
rhythm has become very complex indeed. "It is of all Webernian
innovations the most difficult element for both performer and

fi
listener." A glance at any page will bear this out: it is not
necessary to burden this page with prose description.
In looking in some greater detail into the nature of the

i
relationship of music to text, the point to bear -in mind is that
there is very little text-painting. But, although the music does
not paint the text, it does frame it.
On the large scale, referring the reader back to the text on
page 78- of this paper, it will be noted that the first song has
three large sections, dividing before lines 6 and 13, or at
measures 12 and 25, at which junctures particularly noticeable

i
changes take place in the music. Thus, the large members of the
frame are well in position.
The first phrase, Das dunkle Herz das in sich lauscht, is
divided into two parts at the comma. The unity of these two
halves is reflected musically in their similar phrase shape and
in the similar rhythmic disposition of their accompaniments. And
84
yet the second half of the text is more than related to the first;
it is an amplification. This distinction, too, can be heard in
the music: although its shape is similar to its antecedent, its
intervals are wider and its pitch is higher.
This expansion of interval continues through the predicate
phrase (line 2) and the accompaniment continues to expand. The
key words nicht and Hauch are pointed up by their relatively
extreme pitches, Duft by its wide leap. But these musical features
bear no relationship to the meaning of the words. They do act as
a support to the declamation. They do reflect the emotional
intensity of the text: not the quality but the degree.
An arpeggiated figure in the piano (m. 7) now serves to
punctuate the phrase. There was a similar one following line 1
at m. 4: a frame not only supports, it divides.
Per durch das Leuchten blueht finishes the first subdivision:
the width of the line reconverges and the rhythm regularizes in
both voice and accompaniment.
Es fuehlt ihm an den dunklen Wurzelreich das an die Toten
ruehrt is the final and climactic line of the first section. It
has sixteenth-notes for the first time actually accompanying the
voice (not merely as a punctuating interlude), providing an
accumulation of interest. The line ends with a plummeting line
to a low b whose finality is reinforced by the repetition of this
low note. Here is text-painting. The low b^'s are rendered more
/
85
o
effective by the high f at the beginning of the line of text
(m. 9).
The rare example of text-painting is not the main point,
however. The main point is the way in which the shifting facets
of the text seem to activate corresponding changes in the texture
of the music; how the rising and falling temperature of the poem
is mirrored in the intervallic tension of the vocal line. This
is what is meant by framing.
The declamation sounds quite natural and expressive, rhythmi
cally speaking. As far as pitch is concerned, the declamation is
stylized, but effective. Unimportant syllables are as likely as
not to receive the high notes approached by large leaps. But, on
the larger, important scale, the key words of a sentence are
given the conspicuous pitches.
In the second large section of the present poem, for example,
the word, Wurzeln is set by an ascending minor sixth. This is
faulty declamation, but Wurzeln is only a supporting word. The
widening of the vocal line, the activity in the accompaniment at
and surrounding the word Kraft leaves no doubt about which is the
key word of this section. Moreover, the means employed to convey
this certainty are quite individual. It is not a passionate
increase of harmonic tension, loudness, or more notes that achieves
this climax; it is just rhythm and a wider line. Loudness has its
function only as musical contrast. The symbol £ for forte appears
86
too often to function as climax.
Further evidence of sensitive rapport betweenmusician and
poet is still to come. At m. 18, after another sixteenth-note
arpeggio, the second half of this section begins, and builds to
a climax at ihm zu ihm. The range of the line here is smaller,
yet the high note is one-half step higher than the climax back at
Kraft. The composer has not committed himself as to which is the
principal climax, and with reason: both are important. Kraft is
the important thing in the present section; yet ihm zu ihm fore
shadows the all-important section to follow.
Now comes the last of those junctures in the text where
particularly noticeable changes in the music are to be expected.
Accordingly, the arpeggio figure which has come to stand for
punctuation takes on a new form (m. 24) of full 7th chords
ascending by thirds. This, moreover, is only to herald an actual
change--the most drastic so far, as the metre changes from duple
to triple, and quarter-notes replace 8th-notes as the predominating
note value in both voice and piano. The division in the text
justifies this, for in this section all the ideas of the first two
sections are translated into personal terms, and, even more, into
interpersonal terms. This is why ihm zu ihm was important.
This section is divided at measures 37 and 44: the beginning
of each of these subsections is audible as being derived from
measures 25 and 26, the beginning of the section proper. And yet
87
the variety of rhythmic and metrical transformations of this ^
pattern, the welling and receding of rhythmic activity and inter
vallic tension and the interplay between them--they do not coincide
this time: the interplay between souls is more complex than that
between plants--is fascinating to follow. It is as if, forbidden
to hear the triad and the harmonic progression of dominant 7ths,
one is forced to listen to what music is really about: shapes
and textures.
II
The remaining two songs will serve to bear out the findings
which have been made concerning the first. The first song having
concerned itself with the earthly source of human happiness, the
second song considers the celestial source, the blazing sun. It
appropriately starts with a fanfare of solid, rhythmic chords.
There is much parallel motion between their outer voices, giving
the feeling of a countermelody to the voice.
The introductory vocal figure serves for the introductory
two lines of each of the first two large sections of the poem, at
ms. 1 and 15. The remainder of each section, being a tender, lyric,
warm development of the terse first lines, is set in contrasting
metre (4 as opposed to 2 ) > an<l an arpeggiated accompaniment which
exposes many thirds between voices in the piano or between piano
and voice.
The first section is concluded in a bit of text-painting
88
similar to that which concluded the first section of Song I, by

b2 Jk1
a descending figure from b to on the words Wunderbar zurueck.
The function of the third section being a climactic fulfill
ment of the other two, it uses throughout an alternation of the
two figures associated respectively with them, the fanfare and
the arpeggio.
Ill
The third song is concerned with what might be called the
supra-celestial source of our happiness. The melodic potential
ities of the row are brought out to lend a tender quality to the
first four lines. The second four lines are unified by their
subject: spring as a manifestation of God. This is acknowledged
by the greater continuity of accompaniment as compared to the
cellular structure of the preceding. There is a hint of text-
painting at alien Voegeln in the four minor-6 th chords in the
left hand, each with a little appogiatura in the right. Another
hint is at zum Freuen gibt where the continuity of accompaniment
gives way to a more irregular, hence perhaps more joyful, figure.
At Gott occurs the first low bass note since the end of the
first stanza under Leid. There is real legato at er ruehrt uns
an— building to forcefulness at das zwingt uns in die Knie. And
at the end peace returns, under the auspices of Sonne, which has
its own figure of independent eighth-notes.
In sum, Webern is able, by special ways of constructing and
%
89
employing the row and by judicious use of space, to build sounds
and rhythms into structures--structures of a beauty which over
throws the aesthetic that calls consonance beautiful and dissonance
ugly.
Even for those who still hold to this aesthetic, Webern's
music is a valid expression of 20th Century Weltanschaung: there
is beauty; it exists in a setting of ugliness, benefits from it,
depends upon it. There is beauty in Webern, of sound and structure;
it exists in a setting of dissonance, benefits from it, depends
upon it.
The dark heart...beholds the Spring not only in

breeze and scent; It feels it in the dark root
kingdom which rests upon the dead.
What becomes, depends, with tender roots,

On waiting in darkness,
Drinks power and stillness out of the night,
Before it presents itself to the day.
Taken together, text and music, the cycle is a manifesto of the
aesthetic here presented.
The relationship between text and music also exists very
much on the level of form and intensity. There is, however, very
little connection between the specific meaning of the words and
the contours of the musical figures. With poems and music of the
beauty of those discussed here, this connection does not seem to
be missed. The lack of such connection, along with the extreme
difficulty of hearing or singing the songs, is a part of the style.
90
Anyone who can overcome the difficulty can learn to get along
with the abstract approach to text setting.
1
Anton Webern, Drei Gesaenge Aus "Viae Inviae," Opus 23
(Wien: Universal Edition, 1936).
^Robert Craft, "Anton Webern," The Score and I. M. A.

Magazine, No. 13, (September, 1955), p. 13.
Êdward Arthur Lippman, "Webern; The Complete Music,"

Musical Quarterly, XLIV, (July, 1958), p. 419.
Îbid., p. 417.
-Xraft, op. cit., p. 15.
Îbid., p . 16.
Chapter VIII
Beniamin Britten
Let it be granted that modern song should say something of
relevance to modern men, granted that it should cause them to
face all the horror of times as they are, as Schoenberg did;
granted that it should philosophize about the good that can only
come from evil, as did Webern; granted that it should occasionally
ignore the evil, as did Debussy in his way, and Vaughan Williams
in his; granted that it should give men the opportunity to laugh--
satirically, as in Poulenc's Le Bestiaire, or much more fundamental
ly, as in his Chansons GaiUardes. Be all this granted, it should
also be a function of music to remind men that their race has,
after all, been through terrible times before, and survived, to
experience, in new epochs, the deep and beautiful truths of nature
and the human spirit, including its manifestations which are
called religion. It seems to this writer that among the contri
butions which Benjamin Britten has made to the field of this study
is the willingness to reach back to some of these earlier periods
(as well as to later ones) and their sublime poetry of humanistic,
religious, even patriotic inspiration, such as the Michelangelo
Sonnets, or the Holy Sonnets of John Donne., or On This Island of
Guden.
Appropriately, although his style owes much to the ostinato
technique of Stravinsky, his manner of employing it, similar to
his choice of texts, is as different as is a clerk from a computer,
for humanity exudes from every song. The secret of this, musically
speaking, is that he enthrones nothing, makes expressive use of
everything. His ostinato figures themselves have an expressive
function, as well as the structural one. They are used in a way,
moreover, which permits due attention to their characteristic pro
files, rather than permitting these to be obscured by continually
shifting accent or submerged in complex contrapuntal combinations.
He is even further from Vaughan Williams than he is from Stravinsky,
yet mixed in with his Brittenized Stravinskian ostinatos, as the
text may inspire it, is considerable Brittenized, triadic British
sonority. The vocal line, again depending on the text, avails
itself in turn of the smoothness of line which has been associated
with British music since the Summer Canon and Dunstable, of a
melody highly though discreetly similar to the high-tension line
of Schoenberg, or of a line closely moulded to the text after the
spirit of Debussy, but, rather than in the French delicate manner,
in the proud, stolid one which was given such an eloquent model
by Handel and particularly by Purcell.
To document these remarks, Britten's Op. 35, The Holy Sonnets
of John Donne^ will be examined.
93
I
1. Oh my blacke Soule! now thou art summoned

2. By sickness, death's herald and champion;
3. Thou art like a pilgrim, which abroad hath done
4. Treason and durst not turne to whence hee is fled.
5. Or like a thief, which till death's doom be read
6. Wisheth himselfe be deliver'd from prison;
7. But damn'd and hal'd to execution,
8. Wisheth that still he might be imprison'd.
9. Yet grace, if thou repent, thou canst not lacke;
10. But who shall give thee that grace to begin?
11. 0 make thyself with holy mourning blacke,
12. And red with blushing as thou art with sinne;
13. Or wash thee in Christ's blood, which hath this might
14. That being red, it dies red soules to white.
This is a picture of black despair--and healing hope. The
bleak accompaniment figure of the first page, with its rhythmically
repeated f^, says Stravinsky; the four-fold doubling, with which
the first and last notes of the voice join in, says English
sonority; the flexible rhythm, moulded to the text, says Purcell,
and the line of "Oh, my blacke Soul," f^-d^-b^-e^ , complete with
tritone, says Vienna. But the combination, and, perhaps, the
rising line for the end of the section at "death's herald and
champion," say Britten. The positioning of the final syllable of
"champion" on a strong beat and at the climax of a crescendo at
that, is not a mistake of declamation; it is rather a stroke of
genius, in capturing the declamation not of English, but of anguish.
The descending line of "0, my blacke Soule" is used through
out the composition. Although the intervals within it vary, it
always expresses the motivating suffering, and acts in a structural
94
fashion as well. Appearing in augmentation, it sets line 11,
which, in the poem, gives the solution to the problem posed by
the text at its first appearance at the beginning of the poem.
It is alluded to set "Treason,” and "execution." In inverted
form, it sets lines 3 and 5, which are lines of parallel function
in the text.
The structural members of the poem are closely underpinned
by the piano ostinato. The first two lines of the poem (ms. 1-8)
are introductory; the piano part consists of unalloyed f^. The
next six lines present in two images, that of the pilgrim (m. 9)
and that of the thief (m. 14), the anguish. The ostinato figure
gradually mounts, by half-steps, to the word "imprisoned" (m. 23),
the last word of the section. It is at measure 17 that the Britten
humanity comes to the fore, as, for the second image, a much more
poignant one in the poem for its greater detail, a tender, major,
sequential, arched melody comes into the bass. It makes thirds
or sixths with the voice at crucial points, such as "prison"
"execution" and "Wisheth" underpinning the structure and serving
an expressive function as well.
The turning point of the poem comes when salvation is
mentioned, at "yet grace...." Accordingly, although the ostinato
stays on the apex of its recent climb, a second voice answers this
climb by falling back down by half-steps, into security, as it
were, to a major third relationship at the close of the introductory
95
two lines to this section, at in. 29. Now, the miraculous efficacy
of repentance which is expressed by the last four lines is
expressed also by the full chords which have become the ostinato
accompaniment, chosen more for their ethereal dissonant sound
than for any harmonic function, reminding us in yet another way
of Debussy.
There are some fine details in the voice part, such as the
hysterical effect of the setting of "champion," resolving chro
matically upward, fortissimo, repeated at the end of the song, but
transformed into divine peace by the pianissimo diminuendo, or the
loneliness of "and durst not turne to whence hee is fled" expressed
in the chromatically descending cantilena of ms. 12 and 13,
rendered the more effective by the contrast to the surrounding
large leaps, the brutal blows of the accented ascending octaves
of "But damn'd and hal'd to execution" (ms. 16 and 17), or the
unassuming, Christlike meekness of the b^'s which set "Or wash
thee in Christ's blood..." at ms. 36 and 37.
There is strong contrast in this cycle, and one of the
strongest is between the first and second songs, between the
repeated note, or chord, of the first, which has contrast in itself
with its double-dotted quarters and its thirty-second notes, and
the second with its marcato, staccato, three descending scale-tones,
accompanied by a repeated note a half-step above the first scale-
step, repeating over and over sometimes on the same degrees,
96
sometimes jumping by octaves, sometimes moving scalewise.
II
There is strong contrast within the poems also. The theme
of sin and forgiveness, of damnation and salvation of the first
song illustrates this, and Donne knows how to exploit it. The
second song, too, is an excellent example of his imagery:
1. Batter my heart, three person'd God; for you

2. As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
3. That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me and bend
4. Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.
5. I, like an usurpt towne, to another due,
6. Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end.
7. Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend
8. But is captiv'd and proves weake or untrue.
9. Yet dearely I love you and would be loved faine
10. But am betroth'd unto your enemie:
11. Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
12. Take mee to you, imprison me,
13. For I, except you enthrall me, never shall be free
14. Nor even chaste, except you ravish me.
"Batter my heart for I..shall never be chaste, except you
ravish mee."
The appropriateness of the ostinato figure to the poem is
simple genius and ingenious in its simplicity. Its excited,
octave perigrinations are perfect for the first four lines, after
which it settles in the bass for the low-keyed image of the second,
which Donne doubtless, as well as Britten, intends as a calm before
the storm of the last six. After all, political boundaries and
civic affairs are not quite the same in effect as betrothal, and
ravishing. And so these lines serve as a springboard for the
turning point at measure 23. Octave doubling is introduced into
the accompaniment figure for the first time, and for just a
measure, before it abruptly halts, to be replaced by widely
separated, many-noted hammer-strokes, while the voice, using a
four-note variant of the ostinato, made more telling by its three
fold statement, cries, "Yet dearely I love you, and would be loved
faine." The ostinato returns to descend five octaves, and then
while the hammer-strokes are repeated with their highest note also
lower by five octaves, the voice whispers, "But I am betroth'd
unto your enemie," to an inversion of what it just sang.
For the last six lines, which are the most psychologically
powerful imagery of the two images, the bass, while the treble
continues with what it has had since the beginning, acquires a
new figure, derived by intervallic augmentation from the treble.
It is an ingeniously constructed arpeggio figure in which, as it
arches up and down, the intervals become progressively smaller
toward the top of the arch, widen again as the arch redescends.
This is employed as a pedal-ostinato until the postlude, where
just once, the accompaniment uses the four-note variant of the
motive, and, in addition, employs just one dotted rhythm.
As in the first song, the voice line has its contribution
to make. The special treatment for the "lists": "knocke, breathe,
shine, and seeke..." and "breake, burn, blowe, and make..." are
right out of the Playford collections in the manner of their being
98
singled out for special rhythmic treatment. But this song has
more than declamation. The parallel function of the first and
second couplets finds its counterpart in the ascending tritone
with which the first one ends (m. 5), answered by the descending
ninth of the second (m. 11). The parallel function of lines 5
and 6 finds its counterpart in the short roulades, also in
contrary motion with each other (ms. 13 and 16), in slow eighth-
notes. Lines 7 and 8 are bound together by the rising sequence
which is used by both. A special treatment, however, is reserved
for the final couplet, in the unique (in the song) wide intervals
for "never shall be free," reflecting those in the bass, and in
the three-fold sequence used for the final line--very like that
used for the turning-point line discussed above, but higher, and
employing augmentation in the final sequence.
Ill
The third song is concerned with the sin of grief, whose
punishment is still more grief. This pervading theme of grief
begetting grief is caught in the very first measure, where the
rise of anguish in the left hand gives rise to the sigh of remorse
in the right, the time-hallowed text-painting device of the
repeated, descending second. The step-wise descending bass fits
right in, as does the sixteenth-note pattern which comes in to
accompany the "show'rs" of tears. Contrast is afforded by the
tremolo accompanying the somewhat mystified resentment as the
99
poet contemplates the seemingly happier lot of the sinner, who
at least has past pleasure to thank for his agonies of remorse.
IV
In the fourth song, contrast, which has been an important
element thus far, becomes the important element, is exploited
per se, in music, text and title.
1. Oh, to vex me, contraryes meet in one:

2. Inconstancy, unnaturally hath begott
3. A constant habit: that when I would not
4. I change in vowes, and in devotione.
5. As humorous is my contritioneas my profane
6 . Love, and as soonforgott:
7. As riddlingly distemper'd, cold and hott,
8 . As praying, as mute; as infinite, as none.
9. I durst not view Heav'n yesterday; and today
10. In prayers and flatt'ring speaches I court God:
11. Tomorrow I quake with true feare of his rod.
12. So my devout fitts come and go away,
13. Like a fantastique Ague: save that here
14. Those are my best dayes, when I shake with feare.
No lines could be more paradoxical than these, culminating in the
last. The second theme of the poem is, of course, "feare."
"Contraryes" are built into the ostinato from the first
measures: measure 4 is the inversion of measure 1, and, the
introductory line now over, the first five notes of m. 6 are
essentially inverted in its last four, plus one of the next
measure. This idea appears throughout the song, sometimes in the
voice, as at ms. 23-4, where it is also in the bass. Toclimax
the first half of the poem, it forms a larger arch (ms. 26-27, and
28-9) which is repeated in higher sequences at ms. 30 and 32.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout permission.
100
Line 9, measure 34, begins the second half. Lines 9-11 form
a section, by virtue of the period at the end of line 11. Britten
waits until the more powerful second line of the section to un
leash in the bass the ostinato of the first line. This then pro
ceeds to contradict itself, changing its direction both within and
between each beat, while its every move, in whichever direction,
is being countermanded by systematic contrary motion in the right
hand. The third line introduces the idea of fear into the text;
it is accorded musical emphasis by a strong melodic line which is
derived from measure 1 , transformed into triple rhythm, and doubly
augmented. The trill which expresses fear at m. 48ff, introduces
a recapitulation at m. 52. This is appropriate, because these
last two lines of text sum up both of the poem’s main ideas--
contraryes and feaie^ and so the song is gathered together musically
as well as textually. The trill which introduced the recapitulation
is supplanted by another kind of ostinato (m. 64), as the three
voices move in sequences, most spectacular of which is the
Purcellian roulade of the singer on the word "shake." This whole
exposition of the themes of "contraryes" and "feare" comes to a
close as the voice's roulade slips into a chromatic scale, as do
the two voices of the piano, the latter two in contrary motion.
There are many beauties left in the cycle; one cannot leave
it without mentioning at least some of the highlights. One is a
101
a chromatic line in parallel sixths which accompanies "Beauty"
in the last section of the fifth song (ms. 26-8, 35-9), as opposed
to the very jagged line--both rhythmically and intervallically--
which is allowed to show through for "foulness."
VI
The sixth song, "Since she whom I loved," is significant for
its vocal centilena, ingratiating sequences, and for the accom
paniment, which frequently resolves into sonorous triads. This
song, too, has its contrasts.
VII
Nothing could be more British than the seventh song, At the
Round Earth's Imagined Corners, even though the title is not
intended to refer to the Empire.
1. At the round earth's imagined corners, blow

2. Your trumpets, Angels, and arise, arise
3. From death, you numberless infinities
4. Of soules, and to your scatter'd bodies goe,
5. All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
6. All whom warre, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
7. Despaire, law, chance hath slaine, and you whose eyes
8. Shall behold God and never taste death's woe.
9. But let them sleepe, Lord, and mee mourne aspace,
10. For, if above all these, ray sinnes abound
11. 'Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace _
12. When we are there; here on this lowly ground,
13. Teach me how to repent; for that's as good
14. As if thou hadst seal'd my pardon with thy blood.
It is unlikely that any British composer ever saw the word
"trumpets" in a poem without taking full advantage of the oppor-
102
tunity to compose some British pageantry into his musical setting,
and Britten is no exception, but his personal stamp is on the
trumpet calls. There are two: the familiar horn theme of the
piano part, Brittenized by its g^ and by the dissonant double
pedal of the right hand, and the vocal figure, with its quintuplet
roulades.
Still manipulating tradition with individuality, the song's
second quatrain (m. 7) goes into the dominant key, but the
chromatic rise as the list of mortal ills is read--mortal in both
senses of the term--is Britten's.
A final piece of tradition is in the minor key for the final
portion of the setting (m. 19), which counsels patience and
caution, that the soul be truly ready before the judgment day,
for it is too late after it.
VIII
Contrast is built into the accompaniment figure of the
eighth song, and into the way it is laid out as well. The figure
involves the contrast of octave leaps; the laying-out involves
contrast between ascending sequences and descending ones. The
chromatic, tortuous shape may be inspired by "Despaire behind and
death before doth cast Such terror." The laying out finds just
reason in "I run to death and death meets me as fast." The
accompaniment at this spot reminds one of the man in Dante's
Purgatory who kept reaching for the drink of water, only to slip
103
back as it barely eluded his grasp. The declamation on e^* which
stands for the Godhead at the beginning and end gives effective
contrast within the song, and is, as well, unique in the cycle.
IX
1. Death, be not proud though some have called thee

2. Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,
3. For, those, whom thou thinkst, thou dost overthrow,
4. Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee.
5. From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
6. Much pleasure, then frOm thee, much more must flow,
7. And soonest our best men with thee do goe
8. Rest of their bones, andsouls deliverie.
9. Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings and desparate men,
10. And dost with poison, warre and sickness dwell
11. And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well
12. And better than thy stroake, why swell1st thou then?
13. One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally
14. And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.
i
For this last song of the cycle, Britten has determined upon
an ultimate use of his ostinato technique, a ground bass, a
technique which is congenial to the theme of death and eternity.
Although this is the one song of the cycle primarily concerned
with death, it, too, is a song of contrast: contrast between the
fearful and the soothing qualities of death, and between its
pretensions to mastery and its actual servitude and inferiority
toother forces. The soothing, the servility are reflectedin the
diatonic flow of the ostinato, which at the same timereflects the
conflict. This is done rhythmically, by means of the 3/4 cells
abounding within the 4/4 metre, another Stravinskianism employed
for expressive purposes.
The second quatrain (m. 21) concentrates on death the comforter
the accompaniment moves into the treble, the voice line takes on
soothing eighth-notes, gently swinging back and forth in melodic
seconds and thirds. The third quatrain deals with the bad company
death keeps: employs bitonality between voice and piano, and a
dotted martial figure for the voice. The section ends at m. 48
with a derisive flatting of the final note of the descending 6 th
which closes the thematic material then in use.
The subjective evaluation of the present writer is that
these songs are a significant contribution to the field of the art
song, due to the high human significance of the poems, and their
close matching by music which reflects the spiritual content of
the poems, and, at the same time, the turmoil of the times.
■^Benjamin Britten, The Holy Sonnets of John Donne, Op. 35

(Boosey and Hawkes, Ltd.: London, 1946).
105
Chapter IX
Paul Hindemith
Das Marienleben
Table I: Deployment of Metres and Climaxes
Song Topic Style Metre Dynamic Climax of Climax by

Climax Expression Difficulty
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF MARY

1. Mary1s Lyric Triple Metre-
birth Pastoral
11
2. Presen Epic Climax of
tation Group
in
Temple
U
3. Annunci Lyric Group Group
ation Climax Climax
U
4. Visita Lyric
tion
CONSIDERABLE NUMBER OF PERSONS, ACTIONS, SCENES, AND CIRCUMSTANCES

i
5. Joseph1s Drama Basic duple

doubt tic metre prevails
m
6. Annunci Drama Sub-climax
ation tic of cycle
tl
7. Nativity Idyl Group
lic Climax
11
8. Flight Drama
to Egypt tic
106
II
9. Wedding Drama Climax of Group
tic Cycle Climax
Table I: Deployment of Metres and Climaxes (Continued)
Dynamic Climax of Climax by

Song Topic Metre
Climax Expression Difficulty
MARY AS SUFFEREII: GREATEST IN TENSITY OF EXPR]SSSION, AWAKENING
o f s u b l :LMEST MOODS IN LISTENER ARE CA!..LED FOR
10. Before the Passion Metre loses Group

almost all Climax
its import
ance.
11. Pieta Climax

of Cycle
12. Christ appears Metre some

to Mary what more
important
POINT OF HIGHEST ABSTRACTION: ALMOST EXCLUSIVISLY IT IS MUSICAL

IDEAS AND F0R>IS WHICH SPEAK AN EPILOGUE IN WHICH PERSONS
Al D ACTIONS NO L ONGER PLAY A R01-.E.
13. Of the death Complete Group
of Mary freedom Climax
reigns.
it Duple and Group
14.
triple oc Climax
cur in free
15. sequence Sub- Cycle
Climax Climax
107
108
Table II: Leitmotifs Table III: Structural Relationships
Song Number and Topic
Passacaglia
in the Temple
Annunciation tc -Recitative
Mary (Purity and Devotion)
Shepherds
Birth of Christ
Ostinato
to Egypt (Tree-Death)
'9. Wedding at Cana Diminuendo and Allar-

gando (Growing
realization)
10.
>11 .
12.
-Ostinato (Death)
14. •Recitative (Purity

and Devotion)
15. Wariations
The lines show songs which are related to each other by the
use in them of some identical thematic material, or of a similar
compositional technique or form.
109
Table IV: Leittonalities:
Key of: Signifies:
E Christ. (The tonic. The Songs are about

Mary, but Mary's importance depends upon
Christ 1s .)
B Mary. (The dominant of E, and dependent

upon it.)
A The Divine, the Angelic. (On the other side

of the tonic from B: As B, Mary, signifies
Christ's human side, A signifies his other
side.)
C The Infinite and Eternal.
C# (D^) The Inevitable, the Fixed, the Unalterable.
D Trust and Confidence.
E^ Purity leading to Death.
F Regret for Shortsightedness. (The tritone

of B)
F^ Humility.
G Idyllic.
A^ (G^) Limitation of our Conception.
B^ Incredulity in the Face of Miracles.
110
The foregoing four tables are reductions of some of the
contents of the "Introductory Remarks" written by Paul Hindemith
and published in eight closely printed pages which head his song
cycle, Das Marienleben, version of 1948.^ The "Remarks" are also
published separately in English, accompanied by a translation of
the poems of Rainer Maria Rilke which are their texts.^
The tables are presented here because it has been found
necessary by the present writer to have the material contained
therein thus assembled, condensed and organized, in order to
minimize the considerable difficulty of comprehending the aims of
the composer, and thereby to more fully appreciate the cycle.
There is no need to explain these tables, as they are
condensed forms of detailed explanations already provided by
Hindemith. They are given here as reference tools handy to have
available for use in studying the songs. They are given here
particularly because they indicate a rather individual way of
working. Many of its features will be unappreciated by all
except the highly savant. They would surely be lost upon most of
these were it not for the published tutelage of their creator.
To cite what is probably the most outstanding example, the use
of specific tonalities for certain personages or ideas of the
poem, to refer to them, to relate different passages concerning
them, after the leitmotif of Wagner, only employing a leittonality
principle as well, will be of no help except to music theorists.
Ill
Even they will be fortunate if they have perfect pitch.
On the other hand, there is intellectual content of some
sort and to some degree in every great work of art, and, also,
hopefully, something for the less expert. This is true in the
case of Das Marienleben. There is beautiful poetry, set by an
enormous variety of music ranging from the sweet and simple, such
as in Number 12 - Auferstanden, through the Wolf-like Number 10 -
Vor dem Passion, to the difficult Number 2 - Die Darstellung.
There is also the use of devices more comprehensible on first
hearing, more familiar ones, used to arrange music which reflects
the text. The first four songs will serve to illustrate many of
the devices already touched upon, as well as the more familiar,
such as fastness and slowness, loudness and softness, staccato
and legato, etc.
The composer's "Remarks" point out that the beginning and
the end of the first song, Geburt Mariae, are dominated by B major,
Mary's leittonality, that the tone A signifies, in the first
sixteen measures and the end, the angels, conceived as invisible
as in the old pictures, populating Heaven, that the "idyllic"
key of G dominates the portion of the song concerned with Joachim's
household, and that A*5, the "Limited Power of Conception" key is
employed for the "reine Verdichtung," the news too good to be
true, at measure 50. The "Remarks" also point out the "pastoral"
112
metre of 3/4, and the lyric character of the song, both of which
are born out by examination. The predominantly soft dynamics,
triadic harmony and scale-wise motion, and the high incidence of
repetition of motives all contribute to the subjective impression
of lyricism. Even the theme of Joachim's household (m. 36), with
its leaps of a fourth, employs step-wise motion between its
sequentiated motives.
The composer's handbook is not needed to appreciate the last
points made above. It is not needed to guarantee the appreciation
of any of the following. The leap of a fifth to a high a (m. 13)
text-paints the words aufzusingen ploetzlich, and serves as the
climax of the first half-stanza of text. The effort of the
angels to restrain their desire to sing out is reflected in the
4/4 measure (m. 9), in its laboured interruption of the easy flow
of the prevailing triple rhythm.
At m. 21 the secret which is so exciting the angels is
divulged by the poet. A change of texture is appropriate: the
high figuration in the piano, or "halo," is precisely the change
of texture demanded by this particular text. "The One" is
accorded His rightful position on high g (ms. 28-30), a note
which is properly higher and longer than the f^ allotted to His
Mother, four bars earlier. A more subtle touch is the upward
shift of a half-step for the word "appear," the B-natural where

■L
a B is expected. This momentary gain is immediately lost, as
113
attention is shifted back from "The One" to the angels, who
return on a B^. Nor, moreover, does any pitch as high as the

r\
g of "The One" recur: the remainder of the song deals with no
one more important than the father, whose first mention occurs on
eb (m. 47). Of interest is the promotion of Joachim to the A--
Divine key, as he actively concerns himself with assisting at the
birth--by quieting the cow (m. 78). His identification with the
Divine is reinforced by the structure: he ends the song as the
angels began it, and with the same theme.
II
Song 2, Die Darstellung Mariae im Tempel, is sub-titled by
Hindemith Passacaglia. This form, he says,
seems the best way of reproducing for the

ear what is suggested as visual in the text:
the sweeping path of the eye as the beholder
moves quietly forward, forever affording new
vistas of a gigantic architecture that is
felt, despite its variety, as one whole.^
Regarding the tonality, he says,
The tonality of C...completely dominates

the second song, and thus reveals to us that
the spaces, vistas, and vaulted arches de
scribed are more than parts of earthly palaces;
that it is the architecture of the universe
that is being shown us.
C, it will be remembered is the leittonality of "The Infinite
and Eternal."
Many things are left, however, for the listener to discover
114
for himself. First of these is the gradual adding of voices to
the counterpoint as "you" enter the temple, as the poet says
"you" must, if you are to "see her as she was then." In the first
seven measures you are alone, alone, that is, with the bass. Then
"pillars make their influence felt in thee;" then "thou may'st
have a sense of steps;" finally, "perilous arches appall thee,"
and these are all the new architectural features to be introduced
for the time being: as each one is mentioned a new voice enters.
Furthermore, "pillars" is set by an ascending octave in the voice,
"steps" by an ascending diatonic scale, "a? v es" by a symmetrical
arch, "chasm" by a high g, held three and one-half beats and then
plunging down a minor ninth, "stay" by four c$'s.
At figure 3 the text takes up the idea that you can no longer
forget this vision, unless you rip yourself asunder. The word
rissest has the first forte, the first accents in the song, a
characteristic vocal line better seen than described (ms. 25-27).
The accompaniment illustrates futile attempts to rid yourself of
this vision by the four, halting, short motives.
With the words, "Art thou thus far," at figure 4, the poem
starts once more pointing out the structural constituents of the
temple. The line "is all within you stone" is set in a vocal
register purposefully lower than its surrounding phrases. The
sense of a list being counted off is provided by the triplet
figures which pass back and forth between the treble and bass of
115
the accompaniment. When "you" come to the great veil, the
importance of this and of this moment is reflected in a change
of texture including a bass figure which rises in triplets, then
falls abruptly, as if the veil were being allowed to fall.
The veil does indeed fall, and the brilliance thus exposed
results in brilliant octave figures in the piano, and a heighten
ing of excitement, despite some lulls, to the triple forte at
figure 11. One of these lulls is at figure 8, when everything
you see makes you feel faint, but this weakness is overcome by
the "Beams" (figure 10) emanating from the approaching "Vestments"
(figure 11).
Then comes the marvellous moment when all the pomp and
glitter fall away, of no importance now that Mary has entered.
Once again there are short motives, as the parents and the priests
seek to understand what is taking place. The telling line,
so completely was what men build

outweighed already by the praise
within her heart.
is emphasized not only by accents over the notes of the voice
part, but by octave doubling of it in the bass (figure 14). At
m. 108, as "Her parents, they thought, did present her," the
passacaglia theme moves into the soprano, leaving the music, as
well as the parents' grasp of the situation, without any firm
basis. Finally, in a parting contrast to the magnificence of
the temple and the priestly vestments, there is the line
116
small she was...

and in her a fate which, higher than the porch
was already fulfilled, and weightier than the temple.
with its voice on one note (m. 131), and its quiet accompaniment
resolving in a C major triad.
The vocal melody is not lyric in this piece. It is more
neutral, more declamatory, focusing the attention on the piano
and on the words.
Ill
Concerning the third song, Mariae Verkuendigen, the composer
remarks that "harmonic and tonal repose conveys the homely scene
of the Annunciation," that the long-breathed melodic lines of
the voice, with the "gentle insistence" of repeated motives in
the accompaniment, give a feeling of repose. He points out the
beginning and ending tonality of A (Divine leittonality), C5^
(The Fixed, the Unalterable) which portrays the youthful deter
mination of the Angel, Eb (Purity leading to Death) foreshadowing
the eventual outcome of this birth, Ab (Limited Power of Conception)
for the incredulity with which the angel is received (m. 37).
Finally, he mentions the closed musical form for the "moment of
understanding," from nicht dass er eintrat, to und sie erschraken
beide, corresponding to its intellectual, poetic, and structural
importance,
117
a form which, through the metric impulse

springing up in it, should be capable of
arousing in the listener an analogous
pulsation of his own heart.
The first forty-seven measures deal with the first textual
idea: what did not frighten Mary. The climax of this section
is at m. 34-39,
so little did she view with dudgeon

the shape in which an angel came.
Clearly there must be something really momentous coming, if it
is more momentous than this. But to make sure the listener is
sufficiently impressed before going on, the texture abruptly
changes in both voice and piano to a long, leisurely melodic arch,
ending with declamation on one note, unaccompanied. The contrast
is the important thing.
Now there is a digression, which the poet has enclosed in
parentheses. The composer does the same, giving it a new motive
(ms. 48, 51), and a quitesupernatural effect due to the many
and long pauses while the accompaniment holds a chord or rests,
the effect contributed to by the parallel fifths.
But all of the foregoing has had its purpose merely to
provide a springboard for the real purpose of the song, what
really did frighten Mary, the awesome glance by which the angel
conveyed to her the News: "And affrighted werethey both!" The
music is new in tonality, theme, rhythm, tempo, texture; it is
breathtaking in its relentless drive. An effective climax at
118
so zusammenschlugen (m. 79) is outshone by another at m. 89:
what Mary and the angel did, prepared by what ’'millions" did at
m. 83, and by the five-times stated ascending bass ostinato of
measures 85-88. The ensuing sixteen measures of lyric, pastoral,
angel's Melodie is the perfect setting to complete the poem; for
the poem has not stated the content of the gaze.
IV
Hindemith says about the final song to be examined that
Mary's tonality of B, and the "Purity leading to Death" tonality
of E^, play important roles. Entitled Mariae Heimsuchung, the
song's subject is the visit of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth,
during which the unborn babe of Elizabeth salutes his Lord.
The poem is divided into two halves of two stanzas each; the
first half is concerned with the journey, the second with the
actual visit. During the first half, however, as during the
journey, the greatness within the traveller, greatness even as
contrasted to the Judaean mountain range up one of whose members
she is toiling, gradually assumes prime importance. This inter
play, this shifting of emphasis in the poem finds its counterpart
in the music. The unifying idea of the first half, the journey,
finds its expression in the similarity of the accompaniments of
its two stanzas, which can be compared at their beginnings, at
measures 2 and 12. The figure at m. 12 is a tone higher than its
partner at m. 2: Mary has come a way on her journey, and, besides,
119
has gained the top of the mountain. The textual theme of growing
importance is reflected in the accompaniment figure of ms. 5-7
and 17-19, a thrice-stated motive which stops the otherwise
forward movement of the accompaniment. Stated first mezzo-piano,
it is imitated in the left hand, pressed upon the consciousness
by the increased loudness of each repetition. This episode occurs
in both of the first two stanzas, as the text mentions the
grandeur within Mary's body. A similar device, only using a
different motive, accompanies the text as Mary surveys the
grandeur without, the high Judaean hills (ms. 9-11), thus invit
ing, musically, the comparison between the two splendors about to
be made by the text. The effect of Mary's pausing here is
enhanced by the quiet rhythm and harmony of the accompaniment,
the hovering of the voice around b^-, the considerable use of
rests.
The arrival at Elizabeth's is impressive by its suddenness
in the poem, and Hindemith has not disturbed this. Accordingly,
at m. 20, the voice takes up the narrative an octave lower than
the pitch it has just left (the lowest note thus far in the
piece), and, with no interlude, a new, staccato, gossipy ostinato
motive commences in the piano.
The fourth stanza is the climactic one, telling of the
salutation of the one babe by the other. The first two lines
remind the listener of the hidden presence of the babes, by
120
employing the music from the first stanzas to which the presence
of the one was first established. The last two lines relate the
salutation, using the music to which the two mothers greeted each
other. The vast difference between the two greetings is acknowl
edged by the halo achieved by placing the right hand piano
figuration up an octave, and by the new vocal part with its
grand sweep from c-*- to g^} extending through the four measures
commencing at m. 36. The salutation proper, drawn by the poet
in the word "Huepfen," is tastefully colored in by the composer
by the simple descending perfect fifth in the voice, in con
trasting duple rhythm, in staccato quarter notes. The piano
postlude contains new material in the right hand; this serves
to indicate that the miraculous salutation is not conclusive in
itself, but is important for its portent of things to come.
There is no quarrel here with the choice of religion as
subject matter for a song of the 20th century. These poems treat
the mythological aspects of the Christian religion, which are
still useful as points of departure for beautiful works of art.
The relation of such art to contemporary issues and conditions
is by grace of the principle, "Man cannot live by bread alone."
It is not art's sole function to remind man of his misery; he may
also be legitimately reminded of life's compensations.
For music that is as avowedly tonal,
121
(...anyone who has ever experienced the inter

vals in singing, especially with others, as
manifestations of bodily tensions, of the con
quest of space, and of the consumption of
energy, anyone who has ever tasted the delights
of pure intonation by the continual displace
ment of the comma in string quartet playing,
must come to the conclusion that there is no
such thing as atonal music. -*),
triadic,
(...to the trained and the untrained listener

alike one of the most impressive phenomena of
nature, simple and elemental as rain, snow
and wind, Music, as long as its exists, will always
take its departure from the major triad, and
return to it. ),
and practical
(There was also the very "modern" con

viction that with enough effort any singer
could overcome any difficulty.
(Today we know how mistaken that

attitude was.
***
(Our ears have accustomed themselves to
many things in the course of time, but our
vocal cords will no more allow themselves to
behave unnaturally than a trombone will lend
itself to being mastered with the technique
of a flute.
The composer must also ask himself
whether his work is really worth all these
fruitless exertions.?),
as Hindemith professes his to be, it has plenty of problems of
complexity and tessitura. Both of these problems are compounded
by another one, its length of seventy-two pages. Some of the
isolated songs are accessible, but some are not, and the cycle
as a whole, because of the latter, and because of the cycle's
122
length, is not apt to be heard overly often.
The chief drawback of Das Marienleben, however, to this
writer, is the frustrating awareness of the content which is
inaccessible even after the most exhaustive and exhausting study
both of the songs and of the composer's exegesis. The study of
the tables, if such demands can justifiably be made of one who
wishes to understand a song cycle, are certainly a help, but no
amount of effort conquers an impossibility, and the recognition
of the various tonalities as they turn up in the course of this
work must be so classified for a large majority of musicians.
There are beauties and musico-textual relationships of every
kind and on every level, to be sure. One does wonder, however,
what the effectiveness of the more accessible of these might have
been if Hindemith had put his whole heart into them, and his
whole reliance for effective communication on them. It seems
possible that this would have been precisely the attitude which
would have completely released the warmth and drama which often
break out, even as the cycle stands, through a composition that
seems, on the whole, somewhat more reasoned than felt, more prose
than poetry, more philosophy than drama.
■h?aul Hindemith, Das Marienleben (Mainz: B. Schott's

Soehne, 1948).
^Hindemith, Das Marienleben: Introductory Remarks and

English Translation of the Poems (New York: Associated Music
Publishers, Inc., 1948).
123
3lbid., p. 7.
4Ibid., p. 12.
^Hindemith, The Craft of Musical Composition: Book I ,

Theoretical Part, Fourth Edition (New York: Associated Music
Publishers, Inc., 1945), p. 155.
6Ibid., p. 22.
^Hindemith, Introductory Remarks, p. 4.
124
Chapter X
Aaron Copland
Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson
Aaron Copland, from the standpoint of the problem of the art
song, has been motivated by an ambivalent attitude towards music:
while perhaps at his happiest writing in an earnest, uncompromising
style,^ he has realized that, in the American democracy, the
people have their suffrage at the concert hall as well as in the
voting booth. His songs partake of both of these attitudes. In
his Old American Songs, he has leaned more towards indulging the
common taste, but these arrangements are fine art. His Emily
Dickinson songs stress the more uncompromising side of his art,
yet are not devoid of its more approachable aspect, in particular

o
a melodic element for which he draws upon American hyranody.
To oversimplify, but to organize the discussion, it is help
ful to consider Copland as the "American Britten." As has Britten,
he has arranged native folk songs in modern idiom. As has Britten,
he has also sought inspiration in the more profound poets of his
nation. Like Britten, he has found much of his musical material
in the "principle (originally stemming from Stravinsky) of
repeating identical or similar phrases with shifting accentuation."3
Like Britten, he has bent his borrowings to create a personal
style, one which goes still farther from Stravinsky than did
Britten. In what way? Perhaps reflecting the less form-bound
quality of Emily Dickinson's poems when compared to John Donne's
125
sonnets, perhaps reflecting the American quality leading to and
from the American Revolution, Copland's music seems freer, much
more varied. This judgment will be documented in detail, but,
for now, it can be seen just in turning the pages of Twelve Poems
of Emily Dickinson^ that Copland, for all his ostinato technique,
shows considerably more variety, from page to page and within
the page— a variety which Britten shows from song to song and
within the song.
Copland's style is further defined, particularly with
regard to his relationship to the Schoenberg School, in the
following paragraph.
The only new direction is not atonality:

but infinite new combinations are available
through...new doublings within traditional
harmonies, and through wide vertical spacing,
often from omission of "essential" chord tones.
Other composers who must produce a big sound
at almost every minute...cannot avail them-
selves of the refined and varied beauty that
results from an extraordinary gift, such as
Copland's, for sparing tones.
His style is not, however, so consistently economic or transparent
as Britten's. As a result of the quality of freedom, there is a
complexity, a lack of a clear profile. Unlike Stravinsky's,
Copland's is not mere rhythmic complexity, although there is
plenty of that.
There is the complication of the rhythm by declamation, but
Britten has that. There are the "wide, jagged s k i p s , b u t
Britten has those. But there is considerably more counterpoint,
126
and more complex counterpoint, than Stravinsky or Britten,
blurring the impact of the characteristic motives. The Stravinsky
Britten ostinato technique is obfuscated by admixture of
methods of motivic transformation which

Copland shares with Schoenberg...chief
among which is variation of a fixed set of
notes by transposing one or more of them an
octave.'
and
The method of constructing longer melodic

lines out of short nuclear elements by interpo
lation, or extension, (which) has remained
Copland's characteristic way.
The Copland freedom results, compared to Britten, in "an idiom
which does not give up its secrets too freely.
Part of his importance to our discussion is perhaps one
proof of the thesis that atonality was but one way of extending
music, its aesthetics, its forms, its materials and sounds.
He makes free use of the triad, both melodical-

ly and vertically, and in parallel motion and
a whole step apart.^
(This has been written about Debussy.) To this technique
Interpolated tones give triadic harmonic

complexity and dissonance.^
and
infinite new combinations are available through

the free association of the seven tones of any
mode; through superpositions of tones borrowed
from another key on a basically diatonic chord . ^
(There was plenty of this in Poulenc.)
How Copland makes songs out of the techniques discussed
127
above and out of "nature, death, life, eternity"^ as seen by
Emily Dickinson will now be the subject of the discussion.
Nature, the gentlest mother

Impatient of no child -
The feeblest or the waywardest -
Her admonition mild
In forest and the hill
By the traveller is heard
Restraining rampant squirrel
Or too impetuous bird.
How fair her conversation

A sximmer afternoon -
Her household, her assembly -
And when the sun goes down
Her voice among the isles
Incites the timid prayer
Of the minutest cricket
The most unworthy flower.
When all the children sleep,

She turns as long away,
As will suffice to light her lamps...
Then, bending from the sky,
With infinite affection
And infiniter care
Her golden finger on her lip
Wills silence everywhere,
"Nature, the gentlest mother" sets the homey tone of this
intimate conception of nature's force, which is supported even
by such small details as the use of "infiniter" in place of the
more "correct" "infinite." Poetry such as this calls for music
of a certain informality. The God of John Donne has walked out
of his high-walled City: the music must do as much. And so, in
the nine-measure introduction, as well as in the measures
128
following, there is a wealth of ideas--intervallic, rhythmic,
and motivic, gathered together in easy converse with each other.
Starting on the restful dominant, the sleepy scene is set
with long notes, punctuated by quiet ripples and a bird call,
with what is perhaps the tuneful whistle of the traveller. The
descending third, a Copland finger-print, as well as the all-
important triad are very much present. The whole first line of
text--the first two notes sounded by the voice--is a descending
third. At the second line of text, the voice takes up a theme,
and an important one--more important than all but one of the
motives in the introduction, and yet it has not appeared until
measure 12. It, too, is constructed of descending thirds, and,
once it appears, it becomes one of the ostinatos.
At "Her admonition mild...restraining rampant squirrel"
its thirds are exchanged for fourths, fifths, and octaves, and
dotted rhythms take the place of the previously flowing eighth-
notes. These text-reflecting changes are as well a part of a
structural arch which reaches its peak as the second stanza
commences. A new motive is introduced in the piano (m. 28),
accompanied by one being heard for the first time since the fifth
measure of the introduction. This is taken over by the voice at
m. 31 while the vocal melody of stanza 1 reappears in the piano,
its original eighth-notes now sixteenths. This alternates with
the "ripple" from the introduction, and the two are brought into
relief by rests, as well as varied by substitution of larger
intervals.
"And when the sun goes down" is the signal for a gradual
descent of keys--A^ to to d^, and of rhythmic pace--the last
vocal melody in this stanza is the ripple figure, which has been
getting slower with each appearance. After a momentary but
unique bit of text-painting for "the minutest cricket" whose
between-the-lines importance is given by Copland, ignoring the
word "minutest" in a trill ff < sff, this descent continues.
The final stanza begins (m. 45) with a variant of the motive
which began stanza 2, augmented from eighths to quarter-notes.
It has the static dominant tonality and slow tonic triads of
stanza 1 for its accompaniment, but makes its own mark, as does
the stanza, by broad continuous vocal melody instead of the many
rests in stanza 1, terminating in the very long notes and very
large intervals, the very thin texture, and the low b*3 and ppp
of "infinite... silence everywhere." The difference between
Copland and Britten, the more blurred- profile of the latter, is
summed up in the metric signatures of the last line: 444422*
Another apt illustration is afforded by the second song. It
will be remembered that when Britten encountered a trumpet, he
immediately provided not; one, but two trumpet calls, and found
himself unable to lay down either one for the duration of the song
130
II
There came a wind like a bugle,

It quivered through the grass,
And a green chill upon the heat so ominous did pass.
We barred the windows and the doors
As from an emerald ghost.
The doom's electric moccasin that very instant passed.
On a strange mob of panting trees and fences fled away.
And rivers where the houses ran the living looked
that day,
The bell within the steeple wild the flying tidings
whirled
How much can come and much can go
And yet abide the world.
But Britten was not provided with such a tempting array of
subsidiary images as "green chill," or "electric moccasin," to
name but two; nor was he presented with such informality of
syntax as is contained by lines 7 and 8. Such writing calls for
striking and varied treatment!
At the outset, accordingly, three strongly expressive figures
present themselves: the ascending scales in parallel seconds,
impersonating the killer wind, the bugle in the vocal entrance,
and the bitonal ostinato for "it quivered through the wind." The
last develops into something appropriately "green" almost immedi
ately (m. 10), the right hand expressing G, the left G#, the
right disguising a scale-wise motive, the left a descending
arpeggio. This duality is a logical continuation of that expressed
by the first measure.
The bugle returns briefly, in two parts this time, but far
removed in harmony and counterpoint even from Britten's advanced
131
idiom. Near-unaccompanied declamation serves for lines 4ff. A
bass trill and stark treble chords are effective for the light
ening. The music of the "green chill" is appropriately brought
back for the fleeing fences; its repetition heightens the effect
of the new, more steady ostinato for the "rivers," inexorably
flowing in several varieties of trill in 6/8 time, where houses
had once stood in 2/4. As the alarmed steeple bells are
mentioned the first and fourth beats are accented by octave
transposition. Unity is retained by a subtle recapitulation for
the final couplet. The long notes at the end of each line of
text begin to strike this listener as a feature of questionable
value: as more of a mannerism, perhaps carried over unconsciously
from reading the poems aloud, than as a technique of expression.
The habitual dwelling on the last word of each line of poetry is
perhaps one of the least expressive habits one could acquire,
either as a reader or as a composer.
Ill
"Nature the gentlest Mother" (Song I), followed by nature
on rampage in the form of a killer wind (Song II), is now
succeeded by a bit of pure whimsy with an American slant, "Why
do they shut me out of Heaven...Did I sing too loud?" Here is a
political cartoon on the cosmic level. These Americans will
lampoon anything. Copland's version of sequence is interesting
to compare with more traditional usage--there are two examples,
at the words "Don't shut the door, don't shut the door," and
"Could I forbid, could I forbid, could I forbid." Both examples
keep the shape of the phrase but vary the size of the individual
intervals. Both examples use rhythmic augmentation on the last
sequence. The obvious unrepentance of this deportee is delight
ful, as, repeating the title line as a closing line, he takes a

,2 9
high aD for the last note instead of the previous g^, triple
forte with an accent.
IV
Still bent on sharp contrast between the songs, Copland's
next choice is far from whimsical,
The world feels dusty when we stop to die -

We want the dew then, Honors taste dry.
Flags vex a dying face, But the least fan

Stirred by a friend's hand cools like the rain.
Mine be the ministry when thy thirst comes -

Dews of thyself to fetch and holy balms.
The function of the harmony is far overshadowed by the appropriate
ness of the sound to the subject matter. The dissonances of the
first stanza are truly dusty, the consonances of the second stanza
first line, are ironically sweet, so the return of mild dissonance
for the second line seems indeed like the hand of a friend.
Intervals are also important as an expressive-constructive
device. Built on the material of the first two measures, notably
the ascending second and the descending third and fifth, plus the
with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
folk-like melody, based on an arching arpeggio, at ms. 6 and 7 ,
all of this material is inverted at m. 11 for the second stanza,
first line. The recapitulation at m. 17, besides being relatively,
and appropriately, consonant (compared to stanza 1), employs a
descending minor third, which, as the inversion of an ascending
major sixth, has the effect of a major interval. The last line
of the stanza is virtually the same as that of the first stanza,
giving added effect to the sudden falling of the tonality at
"balms." Comforting a dying loved one is not an easy experience.
After the song of death comes one of deep love and tender
memories--this in spite of the title, "Heart, we will forget
him." The music is reminiscent of Romanticism, with its diatonic,
scale-wise motives, its Mahleresque, wide leaps for contrast, the
sonorous triads and seventh chords, the functional tonality, the
acceleration of key changes for the middle stanza, the steady
rhythm. It is Romantic, and yet unpredictable in its melodic and
harmonic direction.
VI
Boistrousness now takes over, and March "comes in" in its
usual fashion. There is no cantilena here, for the rhythm is too
varied and there is too liberal a supply of modulations, resulting
in such loss of tonal feeling that the vocal leaps are made to
134
sound unmelodic by the accompaniment. But the music catches the
gusts of wind which are March, and the breezy conversational
style of the poem as well.
Rather than melody, the song is held together by the inter
vals of the ninth and the tenth, and their reductions, the second
and the third, which first appear in the treble of the introduction.
The punctuating, out-of-key chord of m. 4, the descending scale
of ms. 14-16 are other unifying devices. The prevailing rises at
the ends of the vocal phrases serve the same function, as well as
supporting the gaiety of the text.
The music responds to the pouting and foot-stamping of "Who
knocks? That April? Lock the door..." but the emphasis is on
the delivery of the text rather than on the content. In this
song the point is, more than the changes of season from February
to March to April, the reaction to these changes, the excitement
engendered by them, in the beholder. In this case, the emphasis
on the delivery of the text, the exaggerated leaps for important
words and the holding out of words because they are important, or
even because they are at the ends of lines--is expressive and
justified. Often, however, one has the feeling that too expressive
declamation gets in the way of communication of the poetic content,
as happens, for example, when one is so distracted by a preacher's
diction, his artificially grand vocal tone, or his stilted
inflection that one is prevented from praying with him.
135
VII
The seventh song is another resounding trumpet call, even
though the trumpet is not mentioned in the poem. What is given
in the poem, strong, triumphant faith in the hereafter, certainly
cries out for the blare of fourths and fifths in ascending
arpeggios--fourths and fifths both linearly and vertically, the
commanding double-dotted rhythms, and the wide-intervalled
assurance of the voice.
After this militant tribute to eternal continuity, the next
song, with its naive wonderment at the merely temporal continuity
of the returning seasons— the humorous, half-serious doubt which
is really just a good humored expression of faith, seems not only
contrasting but incongruous.
Just a small serving of imitation in the introductory
measures is all that Copland allows himself of text-painting for
this poetic theme, and, in particular, for the line, "When they
come back..." But the theme is expressed in the greater than
ordinary persistence of the accompaniment figure. The interrup
tions are fewer, and the variation between stanzas is less marked,
as is true of the poem. Only stanza 4 is singled out for special
treatment, the one of the four which refers to the speaker (m. 53).
The busy accompaniment gets out of the way for a few moments, the
arpeggiated climax line "But if I am there" (m. 65) has been
heralded by the arpeggio of the measures which introduce the
136
stanza, and close it (ms. 51 and 72).
The song affords a good example of Copland's variation
technique by following the descending scale through the four
verses, (ms. 7-8, 24-5, 40-1, 60-1). The three short scales of
stanza 1 are combined into two longer ones for 2. The figure of
stanza 3 has a change of direction at the end of the third scale.
Stanza 4's returns to its first condition.
The song owes much of its effect to Copland's responsive
ness to the hesitant beginning of Miss Dickinson's stanzas, with
their interrupting "if" phrase, after which both poet and composer
rush headlong to make up the time they have lost, if possible
getting the rest of the stanza out in one breath.
VIII
But no one really knows about the hereafter, and so the other
side of the question must be explored, too. "I felt a funeral in
my brain" is assigned this task. Both music and poem are organized
on the basis of the increasingly significant rhythms alluded to
in the poem--the "mourners treading," the "service like a drum,"
the "boots of lead again," and, finally, the "space, as if all the
heavens were a bell." The music starts with an ostinato blurred
by the chromatic sixteenth-notes in a low register, progresses to
the high, double-dotted rhythms of m. 20ff, subsides to half-note
chords and augmentation of the beginning treble for the defeated
"silence" of the closing lines.
137
Music supplies the poetic imagery also for "I've heard an
organ talk sometimes." The agnosticism of this song bears a
happier issue, in the "more Bernardine girl," "risen up and gone
away," than that of the preceding. The completely triadic
construction, the constant modulation to related keys, the obvious
form, the stately rhythm are what one would be likely to hear in
a church, and yet the fresh choice of triads within the related
keys, the free declamation of the voice, the free intermixture of
major and minor triads are Copland's. The last feature named is
used in this song only at ms. 13, 16 and 17, where the text is
"and understood no word it said." The three-note descending scale
of ms. 1 and 2 is interesting to trace through the song for its
characteristic (of Copland) interpolations, alterations and
extensions. — The figure is first stated with an interpolation, at
ms. 1-2, which is removed for the statements at ms. 3-4 and 5-6,
where it is also accompanied in contrary motion in the bass. At
ms. 11-2 a third replaces one of the seconds; at ms. 15-16 both
seconds are thus replaced. At ms. 14-15 rhythmic displacement is
introduced. The original form recurs at m. 22. At m. 24 the first
interval becomes a fourth. Now the figure of ms. 6-7, a descending
fourth followed by an ascending sixth, becomes at ms. 31-32 a
fifth and a seventh, at ms. 31-32 a fifth and a tenth.
IX
The thoughtful introspection of the organ now gives way to
138
the exuberance of the revivalist phraseology of "Going to Heaven,"
with its gospel hymn motive. This is another interesting example
of motivic development: rhythmic displacement at ms. 5 and 6,
imitation at m. 9, inversion at m. 13, plus intervallic expansion,
in the bass, into a descending arpeggio. At ms. 35-36 only half
the motive is inverted, while the expanded version is inverted
in the bass. This combination is the important predominating
sound. There is interpolation at m. 39, and the expanded version
undergoes rhythmic augmentation at m. 46.
The rising beginning is ideal for "Going to Heaven!" It is
even better for setting up the contrast: the descending voice,
the arrested piano (m. 14), for "I don't know when." The repeated
triplets at m. 55ff indicate the horse race to heaven. The cute,
sing-song effect for "The smallest robe will fit me" sets up the
uncompromising leaps of the climax-line "I'm glad they did believe
it."
Treating now of a warm appreciation of nature--now of a
healthy fear of her, now of cosmic whimsy--now of the comfort at
the time of death of a friend's hand, now of faith in eternity--
now of doubt, these poems are the personal responses to these
subjects of an American poetess who is very much an individual,
who expresses her nationality through this fact, and through her
unabashed "originality and aptness of thought."
All of these topics and traits find expression in the music
139
of Copland. Copland takes traits from his country, his colleagues
of past and present, but he is thoroughly their master in their
deployment in a composition. Applying them to the diverse scenes
and situations of Miss Dickinson, the result is a variety of
musical gestures, all within a tonal, triadic, metrical framework
which, while "it does not yield its secrets too easily," does,
nevertheless, yield them.
Of a manageable length, that the cycle is meant to be sung
is evidenced also by the fact that there is but one b^ in the
cycle, and that an optional one.
^■Arthur Berger, Aaron Copland (New York: Oxford University

Press, 1953), p. 96.
2Ibid., p. 93.
2Hans Nathan, "The Modern Period: The United States,"

A History of Song, ed. Denis Stevens (New York: W. W. Norton,
1961), p. 447.
Âaron Copland, Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson (London:

Boosey and Hawkes, Ltd., 1951).
^Berger, op. cit., p. 70.
6Ibid., p. 83.
7Ibid., p. 39.
8Ibid., p. 47.
9Ibid., p. 83.
10Ibid., p. 66.
n Ibid., p. 67.
12Ibid., p. 12.
■Âaron Copland, op. cit., p. 2.
Chapter XI
Luigi Dallapiccola
Some of the difficulties of atonal music for singing and
listening would appear to have been smoothed away by Luigi
Dallapiccola, third and last member of the "Difficult School" of
Schoenberg, Webern, and Dallapiccola. He is of the 12-tone school,
and employs wide intervals, dissonant and complex harmonies.
Since tonality is not a part of the style, scale degrees are not
available to aid the singer in finding his pitches. In addition,
he shares Webern's predilection for rhythmic complexity.^ As an
example of this the Goethe-Lieder,2 Song 3, measure 8 (counting
the measures in the clarinet part, as the bar-lines differ in
the different parts) is cited. The singer that can handle this
music is not to be found easily. Still rarer is the one who can,
in addition to coping with the above, sound equally well on
pitches from low a to high b^, particularly when the two pitches
adjoin, and when the latter is on such a vocally unrewarding
sound as sie, wer, or zu. All of the above--dissonance, rhythmic
complexity, high notes on unrewarding vowels--make for difficult
listening as well as singing; the last makes for impossible
listening, as these vowels are acoustically impossible to distin
guish on any pitch above g^.^
But Dallapiccola helps the singer over the first hurdle
mentioned in many subtle ways. The first of these is the obvious
142
device of putting the row in the voice part “and keeping it there.
This means that the singer has to learn but one set of intervals.
Indeed, he has to learn also to sing it upside down and backwards,
but this is still more practical than having to find his way
through a random scattering of the notes of the row between voice
and accompaniment.
Second, still discussing the row, is the treatment of the
tritone, an interval which can be difficult for the singer to
hear, hence to sing. The tone row of the Goethe-Lieder,
f-b-c-a-d-d^-e^-b^-e-f^-g^-g
has but two direct tritones. Both are near "helpful" tones—
i.e. tones which may be easier to tune the leaped-to note of the
tritone to, than may be the leaped-from note. The first four
notes, f-b-c-a, may be taken as an example. F-b is a tritone.
B is easily heard as a dependent of c, because it in turn is
heard as the fifth of the f major triad expressed by tones 1, 3,
and 4. Likewise, in the group of notes 7-10, e^-b^-e-f^, numbers
1, 2, and 4 form an e^ minor triad. The e-natural may be heard
in relation to either the e^ or the gb as an alternate to its
tritone relation to the b^.
As well as by the dissonance of leaps, a singer's hearing
may be hampered by the largeness of leaps. Dallapiccola employs
large leaps, but moderated by a goodly supply of smaller intervals.
Where several large intervals occur in succession, the shape of
143
the line may permit the singer to hear an internal line. For
example, in Song 2, large measure 7, to the words, andern Grund,
the t>b may be heard as a major second from the more easily
than as a major sixth from the g . There are other aids in the
accompaniment: the a ^ and the d ^ immediately before the b^,
and the doubled c ^ sounding with it.
Yet another way in which Dallapiccola adapts early 12-tone
technique is in the great number of triads and seventh chords
which go quickly by, often salted with other tones, but discernible,
due to voice distribution and spacing: chords such as in Song 5,
measure 11: c^-f^-a^, resolving to b-d^-c in m. 12--there but
for a second, having no tonal function, but lending a character
istic quality to the music.^ Such sounds abound in Dallapiccola 1s
music in both vertical and linear context.
Such features as the parallel seventh chords of 1-2 and 3,
the repetition and sequence of the clarinet piccola at 1-5 and 6--
wrhich material is then imitated and augmented in the other voices
at ms. 7 and 8 and again at ms. 9 and 10, or the sequence and
repetition in the voice itself at ms. 11 and 12 (dich bedekken)
and 17 and 18 ("Dallapiccola manages the row so that it corresponds
to the laws of familiar music.M5): all these devices render the
music more vocal, since the voice behaves best when the brain
understands what is being sung. They also help to make an order
which is meaningful to the consumer, who, more than likely, is
144
not able to appreciate the row per se, and who is not sufficiently
satisfied by difficulty and dissonance.
The next item for discussion is the text.
"Summarising we can say that Dallapiccola

here - in referring to the text, in great
measure builds in speculative elements. The
musical predisposition is actually a mirrored
picture of the text's meaning. At the same
time he intends it to have a tight and direct
expressive musical value. Characteristically,
the serial arrangements, in their simplicity,
are arranged to appear audibly."6
This is the blueprint. How is it executed?
There are seven songs. (Since the texts are provided in
convenient form along with the score, they will not be supplied
here.) The row is arranged as follows:
f-b-c a-d-db eb-b^-e f^-g^-g
The three-note row segments represent (except for the third) two
notes "zeroing in," by progressively smaller intervals, on a third
note. In the first segment the intervals are an augmented fourth
and a semi-tone, in the second a perfect fourth and a semi-tone,
in the fourth a whole tone and a semi-tone. The converging within
the segments is thus a part of a converging in the row as a whole:
as nice an expression of love as one could hope for from a tone
row! One segment is an exception, the third, a fact which has
its counterpart in the arrangement of songs within the cycle. Not
only does the fifth song mark an exception by being a disagreement
between the lovers, but the sixth song does not use the row,
145
except in a very special way. "Speculative elements" are off to
a good start. The fourth, climactic segment of the row should be
kept in mind during the following discussion.
The first song announces, "Though you may hide in a thousand
forms, beloved, I will find you."

# #
F -g -g, the fourth segment
and "leitmotif," sets "I m i l find you." Its retrograde sets
"hides.1" The complete row hides in still other ways. In the
voice part it turns over on its back at measure 6, tries to back
away, still on its back, at m. 11, flips over but still keeps its
back to us at m. 14. The accompaniment participates in these
maneuverings; the first three measures come back in disguise at
m. 7, bodily inverted: each of the three lines is inverted, and
the bass has switched places with the soprano..
Most striking is the middle of the song (ms. 10-13), at the
words, "You may cover yourself with magic." A new row appears in
the accompaniment, constructed of the last three notes of the row
proper, plus three transpositions. This is the "special way"
mentioned above in which the row is used for the entire sixth song.
II
Moving on to the second song, the listener is told that "the
moon clasps the sun," asked, "Who could unite such a pair? Who
can solve the puzzle? How?" The mischievous leitmotif sets the
146
words, "clasps," "unite," and "how." The union is also celebrated
by the form of the piece. The two heavenly bodies meet directly
n
overhead on a high b (m. 9), which is where the retrograde of
what has happened thus far begins on the same note as its ante
cedent ends. Or, to bring the accompaniment into the game of tag,
if the sun is the original form of the row and the moon the inver
sion, since these are the row forms which accompany the text-lines
assigned to these objects: at measure 9, just as the moon goes
into retrograde as described above, it has caught the sun in the
clarinet section.
Ill
In the third song, row-segment 4 opens up, rather than
closing in. What can there be in the text to motivate this? "Let
your sweet ruby mouth not condemn me. Where else can Love's
longing seek healing?"
IV
In the fourth song the motif undergoes considerable trans-
formation--in the direction of increased intensity. In the first
two introductory measures it appears both opening and closing in
all three voices, and with its impact augmented by octave trans
position so that the linear seconds become sevenths. At measures
3 and 5, the intervallic augmentation is supplemented by rhythmic
augmentation. One may then expect both the ambivalence of
147
direction and the heightened motion to be motivated by the text.
They are--
Might the waters - springing, welling, tell you,

From Suleika to Suleika is my coming and my going.
Moreover, the introductory two measures appear in the middle (m. 9)
and atthe end (m. 19) of the song, thus painting the orbiting
implication of the text.
In the fifth song the motif closes for Per Spiegel... as
if to illustrate narrowness, selfishness. It opens at the line,
In mir liebt ihn, ihn referring to God.
VI
The sixth song, as has been mentioned, exploits the motif
to the point that it becomes, with three transpositions, the row
for the song. Moreover, the classic 12-tone principle of non
repetition of tones or material is rather conspicuously abandoned,
until both voice line and bass clarinet fairly writhe. What
manner of text calls for this treatment?
Scarcely do I possess you again,

Lavish kisses and songs upon you,
Than you are dumb and withdrawn;
What is pressing, twisting, gnawing?
VII
The final song exploits the figure in all voices, seeming,
in its many appearances in opening position, to be asking the
148
question, "Is it possible, Love, that I caress you?" The final
appearance in closing form in the soprano clarinet might be taken
to mean "yes."
So much for the speculative employment of the tone row for
textual exegesis. What can be found of Wildberger's "tight and
direct expressive musical value?"
I and II
The text of the first song is too intellectual to lend
itself to anything more than the speculative employment already
described, but a striking example occurs in the second song, when

n
Die sonne kommt hurtling up a minor thirteenth from a to with
over the latter, in contrast to the considerably less flamboyant
line of the moon, which glides, diminuendo, to high b, marked
^ . Dallapiccola's dynamic markings, like Webern's, could make
a thesis topic in themselves. For example: ^ in Song 1,

pochissimo ° 5
m. 2, or in measure 8 of the same song (where the exclamation
point is the composer's).
Ill and IV
The third song offers an example of the use of the roulade
to heighten emotion-laden words, eg. suess at m. 3, or zudring-
lichkeiten at m. 7. Song 4 uses contrast between large intervals
and small to reflect the meaning of the text. The waters "spring"
at m. 7 to an ascending eleventh. Von Suleika is set at m. 12 by
149
an augmented fourth opening out to a perfect fifth; zu Suleika
is set at ms. 14-15 by an eleventh narrowing down to an augmented
fourth.
In Song 5, the "non-love" song, the disagreeing Ihr at
m. 7 speaks in disputatious syllabic melody, which is opposed
to the melismatic setting of schoen at m. 4. Then the reference
to God at m. 10 is dramatically set in the singer's speaking
range, with all voices at their lowest point in the song, this
feature being completed by a weighty augmentation in the bass.
VI and VII
Song 6 contrasts the writing already mentioned with the
excitement of possession of the first half of the poem reflected
in one-note declamation on a sensuous low a for the voice, accom
panied by a nervous flutter in the bass clarinet. A trill-like
figure at m. 14 of the final song gives a good imitation of the
song of the "inexplicable" nightingale.
The subject matter of these poems of Goethe is not really
at issue. If one tries, one can discern subjects. That of the
first is a strong attraction, or love— whether divine or human is
not revealed— which cannot be frustrated no matter how cleverly
its object is hidden. The second song asks, who could have
created the marvellous universe? Song 3 deals with the healing
150
power of love, Song 4 again with the power of love to overcome
separation. The fifth extols the healing power of love, the
sixth points out its rough paths, the seventh the unattainability
of the poet's beloved.
The poems, however, are scarcely long enough to announce
their topics (although they do succeed in doing this much very
beautifully), let alone develop them. Then, the topics change so
rapidly from song to song, from human love to divine, from
satisfaction to frustration, that one is really required to shift
his mood faster than is comfortable or possible.
Finally, the music, related though it is to the text through
dramatic devices which have been pointed out, still creates a
strong aura of sophistication, as if the poems are a pretext for
composing clever music, for artful manipulation of the row into
a sophisticated, intellectual relationship with the text. That
the music, the row in particular, is left to be the unifyingfactor
of the cycle, more than the poems, contributes to this senseof
artificiality.
At the same time it must be granted that, of the three
dodecaphonists treated in this paper, Dallapiccola speaks most
directly to the emotions, communicating the poetic content most
easily in terms of familiar devices, and that he is the most
practical from the singer's point of view, providing the singer

O
possesses a high b .
*1
Hans Nathan, "The Twelve-Tone Compositions of Dallapiccola,
The Musical Quarterly, XLIV (July, 1958), p. 297.
O
Luigi Dallapiccola, Goethe-Lieder (Milano: Suivini
Zerboni, 1953).
3
William Vennard, Singing: The Mechanism and the Technique
(Los Angeles: By the author, 1962), paragraph 385.
^"Jacques Wildberger, "Dallapiccola: Cinque Canti," Melos:

Zeitschrift fuer Neue Musik, Heftl/26 Jahr, (January, 1959),
p. 10.
5Ibid.
6Ibid.
152
Chapter XII
Samuel Barber
Dover Beach
In Matthew Arnold's poem, Dover Beach,^ Samuel Barber has
found a poem which combines lyric images of what the world might
be,
The sea is calm tonight,

The tide is full, the moon lies fair....
with a devastating picture of what it too often is,
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.
The poem is given on the first page of the G. Schirmer
editions, both the piano-vocal score and the full score for
medium voice and string quartet. It is divided into four stanzas,
which begin at measures 1, 54, 64, and 78, respectively. The
first stanza sets the scene and establishes the characters: the
shore and the txvo lovers listening to the ebb and flow of the
sea. Each of these elements--scene, characters, and ebb and flow--
has its own theme, as will be pointed out. The two central
stanzas are concerned with the meaning of this ebb and flow:
stanza 2, the meaning for "Sophocles, long ago," and stanza 3, for
us today. The second stanza is set in recitative, the third in
a transformation of the "ebb and flow" theme, a chromatic, more
uneasy, tortuous version of it. In stanza 4 the lovers and the
153
scene are again the subject. Not only do their themes return in
an order the reverse of that in stanza 1, but they have both
been changed by the interpretations given in the central stanzas.
The once peaceful lovers, once enjoying their beautiful surround
ings, are now clinging together against a joyless world. The
music for both lovers and scene remains the same music, but with
significant changes.
The song opens with an ostinato figure of repeated groups of
four sixteenth-notes in the second violin, and a figure of a
quarter-note and a half-note, moving by small, repeated intervals,
in the first violin. The two figures combine to suggest the
gently swelling sea; the gentleness is reinforced by the undisturbed
D minor tonality. The voice enters with a motive similar to the
quieter one of the two instruments. As the description of the
scene begins to unfold (m. 13), the cello enters to enrich the
texture, and the pitch of the voice rises. Then the section ends
with a descending cadence formula which fits the words, "...the
light Gleams and is gone," extremely well. But it is more a
cadence for the "light" than for the verse (the word "gone" is
followed by a semicolon, not a period), and so there is a deceptive
cadence rather than a full one.
The voice now continues (m. 20) to describe the scene in a
little, march-like tune, quite aptly patriotic, for the "cliffs
of England"--a tune which does not appear again. The strings,
154
however, begin a new theme at measure 20, a descending scale in
eighth-note and two sixteenth-notes rhythm and in imitative
polyphony. The voice then makes its change at measure 23 when,
with the words, "Come to the window," it gives its first hint
that it is addressing anyone in particular, takes up the theme
of the new section, and helps establish the new key of A minor
all at the same time. The tonality changes much more rapidly in
this section, reflecting the growing importance of what is being
said as well as the heightened emotion inherent in the act of
talking to someone other than ones self.
The word "only" at m. 27 could be taken in the sense of
"just:" "Just..listen," or it could be taken in the sense of
"but:" "But..listen." If the latter is what is intended, then
the peace of the poem begins its ending right here, very abruptly
after the poet has summoned his love to the window with "Sweet is
the night air." The foore dramatic interpretation of the word is
given substantiation by the transformation of the descending scale
into an arched one at m. 26, just before the line is spoken, and
by the transformation into triplet figures as the line is spoken
at m. 27. At m. 31 the sense that the poet is talking to someone,
which was established with "Come to the window," is reinforced
with the word, "Listen," in the imperative tense. Barber makes
his contribution to this effect by the descending octave for the
voice, the arresting for but one measure of the flowing string
melodies in favor of syncopated chords.
155
The descending scale denoting "address" immediately re
enters, and then the significance of its arch-like variant which
appeared at m. 26 becomes clear as it appears again in the voice
at m. 34 as setting for the "grating roar...which the waves draw
back,...and fling at their return,...Begin, and cease, and then
again begin." The use of the motive is obvious here. At measure
27 it signalizes rebuttal of the too easy descending scale which
has set "sweet is the night air," and takes issue with the simple
happiness which those words have implied. "Only" meant "But."
Life is not all in one direction.
The meaning of the poem is now summarized by the composer,
and the poet's summary in the last stanza is anticipated by the
composer, as (ms. 44-54) he uses the sublime music of the begin
ning, which had set "The sea is calm tonight," to set "and bring
the eternal note of sadness in." The use of this music, in
collaboration with the many repetitions of the other themes and
their variants, also contains the first stanza in a closed form,
thus setting it apart from the following stanzas.
The "eternal note of sadness" has been introduced, and
requires explanation. This is the function of the second and
third sections.
The "eternal" aspect is developed in stanza 2 by the intro
duction of Sophocles in a sudden transport back in time of over
two thousand years. Barber matches this technique by suddenly
156
stopping all flow of melody in the strings, substituting half
note chords, and, in the voice, by a scalewise progression whose
progress is retarded by many repeated notes, the whole resembling
recitative. The contrast with the polyphony of the first section
is striking and effective. It is effective, moreover, in the art
which underlies its deceptive simplicity. Its six lines have two
sections: Sophocles hearing the sound and the meaning it evoked
for him, and we hearing the sound. (The meaning evoked for us is
left for the poem’s stanza 3.) The music sets exactly this form.
The form of the recitative is
A (54,5) B (56-9) A (60,1) B 1 (62-3)
where the A is "Socrates heard...," B is his interpretation, and
AB' is "we heard," the B 1 being appropriately shortened since
our reaction is merely being prepared. The two A's are exactly
the same except for minor rhythmic variations due to word decla
mation. They are a very simple progression in D major. B sets
"turbid ebb and flow of human misery" with augmented and dimin
ished chords in C major and B major and a chromatically descending
scale, both of which are suitable to the text. B ’ prepares for
what is to come with augmented chords cadencing on the minor
dominant of the first B. The contrast between the simple state
ments of "he heard" and "we hear," and those of the misery which
is heard, are thus powerfully underlined in the composer's setting.
Stanza 3, as has been pointed out, is a continuation of
157
stanza 2. Accordingly, although its thematic material commences
in the accompaniment at measure 64, the voice continues with step
wise material somewhat similar to the voice line of stanza 2 and
at the same time appropriate to "The sea of faith" which, "at the
full, ... Lay...furled." Only at measure 68, where the "But" of
the text starts the words on a bent to which the section's theme
is more sympathetic, does the voice take it up. It is an inverted,
more chromatic, twisted, "melancholy" version of the "sea theme"
of m. 34. It goes through the keys of c, f, E^, A^ and B in four
measures (64-67), which gives it harmonic restlessness to match
the melodic. This quiets down, as the "roar withdraws," and the
"sea retreats," and the voice line falls from a "melancholy" d^
to a "drear" e^-, and all motion ceases on the last word of the
phrase (m. 77), on the dominant of D minor.
These A major chords are responsible by contrast for much of
the haunting effect of the A minor of measures 78 and 79, which
begin a pre-climax section of six measures. The voice is declam
atory. The accompaniment is in syncopated, quarter-note chords,
a texture which was last used at m. 31 of the first section, which
was the last time the poet directly addressed his love, as he
said, "Listen." At present, he is addressing her, saying, "Ah,
love, let us be true to one another!" It is the first line of the
final section.
The climax begins at m. 84 with the return of the "lovers"
158
theme of m. 23 of the first stanza. The next eight measures are
a construction of two-measure units. Measures 84 and 85 are
introductory. Measures 86 and 87 present three identical, descend
ing scale patterns of two-beat duration (in three-beat measures).
Measures 88 and 89 do the same thing with the arched version of
the same pattern. Throughout measures 86-89 the voice sings the
arched version. In ms. 90 and 91 the cello replaces the voice,
and the treble is transposed up a minor sixth. On the last of
these measures (91) the voice utilizes five d^'s to launch itself
to an f^ for "hath really neither joy," which is the climax proper
and, from the standpoint of the text, the point of the whole song.
n
The f^ is reinforced by accented chords on beat 1 in the treble
and beat 2 in the bass, after which occurs an equally effective
follow-up. The poet recounts five more things besides joy which
the world "hath not;" the singer sings these on a slowly descending
D minor chord; the first violin accompanies with descending scale-
wise triplets, a variant of the "lovers" theme. All close this
abating section together on a tone of regret, a plagal cadence,
leading directly into the recapitulation.
It is not a strict recapitulation. The slower of the two
motives is made to seem even slower by its new position below its
partner. The voice line falls more than it rises, as opposed to
its tendency in stanza 1. The most striking difference is the
stanza's climax at the word "clash" (ms. 113 and 114), prepared
159
by hemiola in the voice of the preceding two measures and
achieved by two successive dotted half-note chords expressing
d: IV - . The bass then slowly comes down this chord (m. 117
46
to the end), as the voice came down after the main climax of
measure 92.
In sum, there is sensitive musical response to the form of
the poem, so sensitive that it responds even to the poet's soften
ing of his own divisions by the relating of the first lines of
sections, through their meaning, to the preceding sections. There
is musical response to the individual lines and words of these
sections in the shapes of the melodic lines, including some that
are declamatory, the harmonies, the harmonic and tonal rhythm,
the use of homophony and polyphony, the use of chromaticism.
There is use of "leitmotif" technique, including the transformation
of themes as their textural counterparts are transformed. The
voice line is always cantilena, in that it is usually scale-wise
and closely related to the harmonies or tonalities of the accom
paniment. There is enough consecutive repetition of notes, figures,
and harmonies to strongly suggest Stravinsky, but there is enough
individual deviation from this repetition, enough harmonic interest,
enough tonal direction to suggest that Stravinsky has definitely
been departed from. There are enough tritones to suggest Schoenberg,
but these tritones are part of triads; the tritones resolve, and
160
the triads are related (m. 4). And yet such progressions as the
one previously cited for the word "clash" indicate a more advanced
harmonic vocabulary than that of Brahms, although the music often
suggests that master.
Hermit Songs
Barber struck another rich vein of poetic source material
in the Irish texts of the eighth to thirteenth centuries written
by monks and scholars, which he collected and set to music under
the title Hermit Songs, Opus 29.^ The title is the unifying
factor under which a great variety of themes of interest to men
of these times is treated, including many themes already discussed
and some new ones.
The sin of self-centeredness is the subject of the first
song: still a sin, even if the word "sin" has been translated
into the more modern word "sickness," even if the sin-sickness
is becoming more the province of psychiatrists than of priests.
The victim of the sin is making a pilgrimage to mourn for the
wounds of Our Lord, asking forgiveness the while because his
mourning is not truly sincere. The musical technique used is an
ostinato, or, rather, a pair of ostinatos, one for each hand, the
former an apt way of portraying walking, the latter good for
emotional conflict. It is a Stravinskian ostinato. The metre of
the bass is 6/8 time, and the bass moves in dotted quarter-note
161
chords in alternating harmonies. Against this the right hand
moves in eighth-notes of the speed of three to the bass's dotted
quarter, but arranged by means of regularly spaced accents re
inforced by grace notes, in patterns of 2/4. Above this the voice
line partakes of the 6/8 with occasional measures of 3/4 and
enough syncopation to frequently make a decision between the two
impossible. But in two ways the technique is not Stravinskian.
First is that the conflict between the rhythms is intimately
justified by the conflict in the heart of the pilgrim. He is
dragging his feet, and the music expresses this exactly. The
second way is that the vocal part is varied, arched, and warm.
The ostinato is all in the piano.
Of poignant effect is Barber's treatment of the line towards
the end of the song:
What shall I do with a heart that seeks only its own case?
0 only begotten Son by whom all men were made,
who shunned not the death by three wounds,
"Seeks only its" is given four equal notes against the three of
the piano; "own ease? 0..." receives very long notes. What has
taken place thus far is but preparation. At "only begotten..."
the eighth-note ostinato in the treble is abruptly replaced by
dotted quarters which join those of the bass; the ostinato is
taken up by the voice. At "death by three wounds" all forces join
in expressing 3/4 metre for just that one measure. The text-
painting is obvious. The heightening of this line by the strikingly
162
different yet uninterrupted use of the same material of the rest
of the songs is ingenious.
The tonal plan is also enlisted in the textual expression.
The song is in minor. The first mention of the King at m. 7
is in F^ mixolydian. minor returns to round off this section
at m. 18. At m. 19, "Pity me" is ambiguous in function: it both
ends the first section and starts the second. Accordingly it is
in the new key of major, but in its first inversion; root
position is delayed until m. 22. The "only begotten Son" section
discussed above is in D minor. The final section, once again
beginning with "Pity me," is again in G# minor and uses material
from the beginning and end of the first section.
II
The pan-tonality of the second song, "Church Bell at Night,"
the G^ minor triad with added diminished fourth in the left hand,
the d ^ in fifth position in the right, with an F-natural in the
low bass, to cite just one chord, the chords of a fourth in the
second line, all seem to conspire to cast a little doubt, perhaps,
on the hermit's vow that he would "rather keep tryst with (the
bell) Than be With a light and foolish woman."
III
There have always been people who have visions. Whether
these visions are miraculous, as they were considered of old, or
163
paranoic, as they are often regarded today, they are a human
attempt to deal with the unpleasant realities of life, and, as
such, are of interest. The vision of St. Ita is treated by
Barber in the form of a recitative and aria: the recitative
dealing with her request of her Lord for the Christ Child, the
aria with the fulfillment of her request. The strong dissonances
of the opening chords and the unmelodious declamation of the voice
sketch the strength of purpose needed to bring about such a feat,
even in the imagination. This music also sets up the contrast
of the tender A major for "In the form of a baby." The purity
of this triad in turn enhances the effect of the major triad
immediately following for "..nurse him," a downward tonal slip
which seems to say that He really does "come down to her in the
form of a Baby." The aria in minor follows nicely the

}
recitative's B^ minor. It builds in excitement, using the
successively conflicting 6/8 and 3/4 rhythms to suggest the
emotional activity of the saint. This is aided by the sixteenth-
notes of m. 16 of the aria (page 9). The parallel fourths lend
an archaic flavor. Climax is achieved by the broken, dotted
quarter-note chords as the saint invokes all the maidens who have
suddenly appeared to "sing your best."
IV
A great deal has been written lately of the "New Theology,"
one which lays great stress on the human, as opposed to the
164
supernatural, side of Jesus. As an expression of this point of
view, the next poem, attributed to St. Brigid in the 10th century,
is a refreshingly modern one, a great find.' Hidden beneath the
humorous image of "a great lake of beer for the King of Kings....
Heaven's family drinking it through all eternity" is a strong
symbolism for truths the deep value of which it has taken phi
losophy two thousand years to appreciate. Barber has caught the
convivial spirit of the text by means of constantly moving melody
in voice and piano in eighth-notes, a constancy which is rendered
even more exciting by irregularity of metre, length of line, shape,
and relationship between the various voices. But added on to
this is the singling out of certain groups of two or three de
scending notes at the ends of phrases and sections for piquant
repetition and imitation. This occurs first in measure 7, in the
g-f-e^ of the voice and right hand, which is imitated in the bass.
The recurrence of the device at the end of every section is the
main part of the effect.
The song is of a rounded form. The tonic returns at
measure 30, along with the themes of ms. 2 and 7 at 32. The mid
dle section at m. 15 is in G*3 and D^.
For the fifth song Barber turns to a serious, tender Pieta.
There is not an accidental in the whole twenty-eight bars of
165
modal melody and harmony, but that does not mean it is not
thoroughly modern in its dissonance. The communication of grief
is accomplished through the repeated motive first stated in the
introduction. "The parting of day from night" sends the motive
into the bass. The climax, "Sore was the suff'ring," puts the
voice up a fourth, but the real climax of the text takes the
voice back down, and is delivered in a sensitive piano.
VI
The sixth song is a storm song, and another example of a
Stravinskian ostinato justified by the text. For the most part
the bass bears the burden of the ostinato, but the chaotic variety
of a storm is depicted by eruptions of eighth-note ostinato in
the treble, as at ms. 8, 20 and 29. Also, the irregularity of
alternating measures of 5/8, 2/4, 6/8 and 7/8 is interrupted in
the middle section of the song by a series of two measures of
3/4 (ms. 16 and 17), thus recognizing the function of the text
here as telling what has caused all the commotion— namely, the
wind. This song, too, has the Barber mannerism of echoing the
last notes of a phrase, at measures 20 and 32. In this case it
serves to simulate the thunder claps which accompany the storm.
VII
Another side of life, both ancient and modern, is the subject
of Song Seven, entitled "Promiscuity:"
166
I do not know with whom Edan will sleep,

But I do know that fair Edan will not sleep alone.
A very short, very simple little sentence, with much more between
the lines than in them. Barber sets both. In the first place,
the melody, with its repetitive sliding down the third and second
and up from the seventh of A minor is a rather slinky means of
expression. In the second place, the melody never appears alone
but always with an alto part which is in imitation at the fifth,
in E minor. Then, between the lines of text the piano repeats
what has just been said, wordlessly, as if accompanying what the
poet (and the singer) have left to the imagination. The alto of
these interludes is in the left hand, disguised by octave transpo
sition of every other note. The bass, during the sung sections,
has been, it turns out, expressing major, for this chord is
the one on which the last word of text lands as, in the imagination
of the poet, the two, Edan and whoever "whom" is, become one,
uniting on a tonality exactly midway between the tonalities of
the two voices of the imitation. The two pair of chords which
open and close the song are fragments, too, of these duets. The
pianissimo close adds to the fun.
VIII
A charming song follows, in which the monk likens his
enjoyment when his "mind fathoms a problem" to his cat's when his
"claws Entrap a mouse." The cat can be envisioned in the constant
167
triplets, the plodding scholar in the dotted quarters and halves,
each going their own way, or having their "own work to do daily,"
as the poem says. The great amount of repetition of the main
ideas seems to mirror one of the propensities of elderly scholars.
The half-step duets in measures 6 and following are a unique
musical idea which portray the cat in a playful mood. Equally
unique, however, is the creation of the ingratiating vocal melody
in phrases of the equivalent of four quarter-notes, made to fit
over the 9/8 accompaniment by the insertion of eighth-rests before
each phrase. Then, after three such phrases, the rhythmic disso
nance is resolved by the voice part joining the triple metre of
the piano. It is, again, as if the scholar and cat are each
going their own way, yet having occasional moments of communion.
IX
"The Praises of God," if translated into modern terms, says
that the man who does not find something to be happy about is a
very foolish man. Barber's setting is a veritable exercise in
ascending intervals. Not only are most of the paired notes
ascending leaps, but each pair is usually succeeded by another on
a higher level, perhaps, as in measures 1 and 2, expressing an
ascending arpeggio. The word "Laudation" evidently reminds
Barber of ancient practices, for he sets it to a jubilus based on
the notes of "..His voice and praise With joyful words" of ms. 6
and 7, repeats it, filling in the ascending fourths with Sixteenth-
168
note scales.
The cycle ends, as it began, on a serious note. The con
tented solitude of the hermit is caught in the chant-like vocal
line with its insistence on the third of whatever tonality is
being expressed, D^, E^, or D. The monotony is reinforced by the
constant recurrence of the three melodic figures of measures 1,
5 and 6 in the voice, and 7 in the bass (inverted in m. 10), and
the slow trill which is foreshadowed in m. 1, but does not get
under way until m. 11. The cycle's one extended piano interlude
is in this song. It is expressive of the silence and solitude
of the hermit's way of life.
The point has already been made, but will be here reinforced,
that Barber's choice of subject matter for these songs seems
ideally suited to inhabitants of the world of the twentieth century.
Dover Beach points out, by virtue of the period of the poem (19th
century), that the world has been confused before--and survived.
In the text itself, it is powerfully persuasive that there is
something left worth living for, so long as there is one person
to love and to be loved by, a thesis which has been fervently
developed by theologians and psychologists.
The subject matter of Hermit Songs has been discussed in the
body of this chapter, where one of them, at least, was termed "a
169
great find!" The significance of the text of the cycle cannot
perhaps be better summarized than by these three extracts from
the preface of the score
They are small poems, thoughts or observations,

some very short, and speak in straightforward,
droll, and often surprisingly modern terms of
the simple life these men led, close to nature,
to animals and to God.
"It was not only that these scribes and ancho

rites lived by the destiny of their dedication
in an environment of wood and sea; it was
because they brought into that environment an
eye washed miraculously clear by a continual
spiritual exercise that they, first in Europe,
had that strange vision of natural things in
an almost unnatural purity."
"Mochua and Columcille lived at the same time

and Mochua, being a hermit in the waste, had no
worldly goods but only a cock, a mouse and a
fly. ... Now it came to pass that these three
precious ones died soon. And upon that Mochua
wrote a letter to Columcille in Alba, sorrowing
for the death of his flock. Columcille replied
to him and this is what he said: 'My brother,1
he said, 'marvel not that thy flock should have
died, for misfortune ever waits upon wealth.'"3
Earlier in this paper, Aaron Copland was characterized as
"The American Britten." The similarities between Copland and
Barber are many; chief among them is the use of the ostinato and
the vital rhythm of Stravinsky, modified by their own personalities,
the modification influenced by the choice of texts. Of the two,
the texts of Barber are the more emotionally direct; the phi
losophy in them is more an important, underlying ingredient, less
the outstanding characteristic. Barber's music is correspondingly
more direct, less dry, less retarded in its ability to communicate,
by the admixture of simultaneous and competing ideas. When Barber
combines ideas, each one is apt to be so immediately attractive
that the ear has no trouble attaining pleasure, or else is content
to fasten upon one, letting the others go until a later hearing.
This attractiveness of ideas has a real bearing on the
difficulties of performance. The latter are considerable, mostly
deriving from the polymetrical construction; but the former so
satisfy even the gifted amateur that he is content to work on
until he can share his pleasure with others through a convincing
performance. To some extent this is true of every difficult song
reviewed in this paper. The difference is in how close Barber
comes to mee'ting the performer half-way. Whether this makes him
better or worse as a composer is not the point. There is immense
room for variety in the world of compositions. Barber's particular
balance of challenge, immediate attractiveness, and intimate,
sensitive and subtle relationship between significant text and
substantial music makes a necessary contribution to the contem
porary, varied scene.
^Samuel Barber, Dover Beach, Opus 3 (New York: G. Schirmer,

1936).
^Barber, Hermit Songs, Opus 29, (New York: G. Schirmer, 1954).
•Îbid., p. iii.
171
Chapter XIII
Ned Rorem
His Career
Born on October 23, 1923 in Richmond, Indiana, Ned Rorem
grew up in Chicago.
He wrote his first songs at the age of nine, received his

O
first musical training at the University of Chicago. In 1942
he was awarded a scholarship at Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.
He twice held fellowships at the Berkshire Music Center, Tangle-
wood. In 1948 he received the Master of Music Degree from the
Juilliard School of Music, New York City, where he studied
composition with Bernard Wagenaar.^ He has also studied privately
with Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson.^ From 1959 to 1961 he was
Slee Professor of Music and Composer in Residence at the University
of Buffalo, New York. He presently lives in New York City, where
he has been at work on a long cycle, Poems of Love and the Rain,
for Regina Safarty, and his first full-length opera, Miss Julie,
both with the help of a Ford Foundation grant.
His career received its first public recognition of potential
success with the election in 1948 as "best published song of the
year" by the Music Library Association of "The Lordly Hudson,"
and with the presentation of the Gershwin Memorial Award, in 1949,
for his Overture in C and its performance by the New York
172
Philharmonic.^
The next eight years were spent in Paris and Morocco. They
resulted in
The First Symphony - premiered in Vienna in 1951,
Melos, a ballet - awarded the Prix de Biarritz in

1951,
Two string quartets,
Dorian Gray - ballet, in collaboration with Jean Marais,

premiered in Barcelona in 1952,
A Childhood Miracle - one-act opera, drawing, "a master

writer for the human voice" from Time Magazine,
The Robbers - one-act opera,
Nine song cycles,
Design for Orchestra - commissioned by the Louisville

Symphony in 1955,
The Poet's Requiem for chorus, soloists and orchestra,

premiered by Margaret Hillis in 1957,
Several large choral works,
Second Symphony,
Third Symphony - premiered by Leonard Bernstein in 1959

in Carnegie Hall.^
Recognition and financial assistance came during these years
in the form of the Lili Boulanger award in 1950, a Fulbright
Fellowship for study with Honegger for 1951-52, the Eurydice
Choral Award in 1954 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1957. Recog
nition has also come in the list of conductors who have programmed
Rorem's orchestral works, a list including Eugene Ormandy, Leopold
173
Stokowski, Dimitri Mitropoulis, Paul Paray, Alfred Wallenstein

Q
and Fritz Reiner.
His Songs
The following commentaries on the musical philosophy, and
the music, of Virgil Thomson are offered for the light they throw
upon the musical philosophy, and the music, of his pupil, Ned
Rorem.
Well back in the 1920s, (Virgil) Thomson

was a man with a premise: the so-called Art
Music of our century was fast reaching the
point of no return; the German Romantic tra
dition, having played itself out, was trying
to disguise its moribundity by all manner of
complexity. Expressively, music was growing
more and more ponderous as its textures were
getting soggier and soggier. If the art was
to survive in any recognizable form, Thomson
held, air simply had to be let in. Music
needed some return of its function as enter
tainment. A more direct, a more accessible
rausic--realized in terms of the highest
standards of workmanship--was to be desired.9
In the middle 20's, ...Thomson set out

to write music as simply and lucidly as he
could. He wanted to produce good tunes and
good-sounding harmonies that audiences could
listen to and respond to with their hearts.
Because he always tried to be entertain
ing and charming, Thomson was for a long time
not taken seriously by his fellow musicians.
...(But) it soon became apparent that it
required a consumate skill to arrive at the
ease of expression and the precise logic
found in (his) music; that because this music
was so easy to listen to, it was not neces
sarily superficial or trite.
...He has continued to write simply. He
174
has wit and feeling. ... He has charm and

sophistication.10
...What caused the most surprise, how

ever ... (was) the simplicity of the score
(utilizing only the most elementary progres
sions and the most rudimentary harmonic
language)...within that simplicity Thomson
gave expression to an infectious wit, charm,
and even melodic beauty.H
It is impossible to listen to the Hymn

Tune Symphony without a smile and it is un
likely that one will listen to the end with
out a lump in the throat. Common chords and
major scales are the materials, and an
"American Classic" is the result. The idiom
is the musical terminology of the man in the
street, and the sophistication implicit in
the objective arrangement of such materials
is the sophistication that has travelled full
circle - back to the utmost simplicity.
"Never overestimate the public's knowledge,
baby," Thomson will say to an apprentice
critic, "and never underestimate its intel
ligence ."12
This "accessibility," "simplicity," and "lucidity," this
"musical terminology of the man in the street" had their influence
on Rorem:
Pretty, terribly pretty...its familiarity,

its neo-Romantic arching and curving have an
extraordinary rightness in Rorem's Songs.1^
Here is a traditionalist. While many of our

composers are imitating a Hindemith or
Stravinsky, Ned Rorem has created a more
personal style embodying a modality in his
melodic lines and a rich harmonic texture of
a mildly dissonant nature.1^
Ned Rorem's music is... representative of a

new Romanticism founded not only in the past
but securely buttressed by the sounder aspects
of twentieth century technique.^
175
With the above commentaries as background, the songs to be
discussed are, with one exception, those on the Columbia release,
Songs of Ned Rorem . ^ The exception is an addition, the second
of the "Cycle of Holy Songs," which has been added so that there
may be one complete cycle represented in the discussion.
Song for a Girl

(John Dryden)
"Song for a Girl" seems at first sight to have an enigma for
its text. Averring in the first line that she is young, the song's
protagonist yearns in the last line "to be fifteen." Further
study sheds more light on the paradox. Throughout the first three
stanzas (through m. 30) the girl betrays so much knowledge of the
ways of the world, and of its masculine citizens in particular,
in the very act of denying and disclaiming it, that the last line
is seen to be the truth of the matter, the first a lie. This
interpretation is born out by the musical setting, in that the
music for the "punch line" of each verse, the line in which the
girl reveals the things which she "does not know" which are of the
most shock value, is the music which is the most frequently heard:
it is the music of the piano introduction and coda. Reinforcing
this technique is the syncopation, reserved for these measures;
the only time this syncopation is not used is at the end of the
first stanza. Also reinforcing this technique is the reservation
of the only completely literal repetition of the introductory
176
measures for the most shocking of all the climax lines, that of
the second stanza, "Heave my Breasts and roul my Eyes."
The song is one of Rorem's very high songs: the first two
stanzas end on b^, the last on six and one-half beats of e^!
(It has been pointed out before in this paper that on notes above
g^ the only vowel which can be distinguished is "ah.") It is in
his pleasantly melodious style, resembling, with its oft repeated,
simple motives, an Irish lilt. Both of these factors help portray
the alleged ingenuousness of the girl. So does the strophic form
of the_song, but the alleged part of the preceding sentence, or,
rather, the true extent of the girl's sophistication, is revealed
by the variety in the treatment of the strophes. Stanza 2 (m. 13),
in which the girl becomes more specific in describing the tricks
she claims to be innocent of, employs a higher degree of dissonance
in the accompaniment and a vulgar syncopation in its climax line.
Stanza 3 (m. 22) employs imitation between voice and accompaniment,
perhaps expressing "learn the way." Stanzas 3 and 4 employ a
different motive featuring a descending interval, particularly in
the second half of the first line (ms. 23, 32), which contributes
a sympathetic note of regret. Stanza 4, the "truth" stanza,
takes on emphasis from its beginning a third higher than the
other stanzas, and from its forte dynamic marking.
177
To the Willow Tree

(Robert Herrick)
"To the Willow Tree" is a song of the grief that is left
when love has fled. The willow-tree's dropping lines, blurred
in themselves and by the tears in the eyes of the beholder, are
an apt choice of image for this grief. The composer*s monotony
of descending melodic pattern in both voice and piano, even more
the repetition of rhythmic pattern and the blurred harmony, are
apt for both lovers' grief and poet's image.
The exception which creates the form is Stanza 3 (m. 21),
where both poet and composer momentarily forsake the image of the
willow tree for something more concrete. The poet here intro
duces the neglect of the maid by the man. The composer recognizes
this in replacing the descending, predominantly chordal voice
line by a treatment which is more cantilena: a stepwise melody
involving some ascending movement.
The poet, in the first half of the song, builds towards the
word "tears." The composer answers this by beginning the second
stanza a step higher than the first, and by increasing the degree
of dissonance of this stanza. A corresponding build-up occurs in
the second half of the song. The poet has both lovers come to
the tree "to weep out the night," emphasizing that the separation
has been hard for the deserter as well as the deserted. The
composer depicts this dual action by the use of imitation at
178
ms. 34 and 35.
Finally, the poet lays emphasis on the last word of each
stanza, thus re-creating on a larger scale the monotonous feeling
already mentioned in connection with the repetitious melodic and
rhythmic patterns. The last word of stanza 1 (ms. 10 and 11) is
supported by a relatively infrequent functional harmonic progres-

7 7
sion, in this case, f'-e -A-b; that of stanza 2 (ms. 20-21) has
a quasi-fanfare over a D pedal; stanza 3's employs an expressive
roulade; the last word of the song is set to a quite tonally
indeterminate coda which contributes to the feeling of rootless
ness of the separated lovers.
Echo's Song
(Ben Jonson)
"Echo's Song (Slow, slow, fresh fount...)" is another song
of grief, this time using the fountain (and its echo) for its
image: Let us weep, me, you, and all of nature; for our beauty
is but borrowed, and does not endure. Again, repetitiousness
serves to portray grief, this time with a slow, arched, quarter-
note, quasi-ostinato in the bass, answered by eighth-note chords
on the off-beats in the right hand. This figure is not inappro
priate to either weeping or to the splash of a slow fountain. The
echo image is painted but once, in measure 12, where the piano
presents an ornamented version of what the voice has just sung.
179
The quasi-ostinato bass is more descended from Purcell than
Britten, more pre-Stravinsky than post-, being slow enough so
that it does not claim the main share of attention. This is left
for the voice part. This, with its irregular rhythm, intervals,
and shape of line is also reminiscent of Purcell--his declamatory
style.
The form is a greatly modified ABA, appropriate because the
text does not demand anything stricter, or closer to real da
capo. The sequences for the B section (ms. 9-12) and for "Drop,
drop, drop, drop" are also reminiscent of the old English master.
Upon Julia's Clothes

(Robert Herrick)
There is no grief connected with "Upon Julia's Clothes,"
rather there is the considerable enthusiasm generated within the
spirit of the normal male at the sight of a beautiful female.
This over-all mood is well caught by the major tonalities, the
rising sixteenth-note arpeggios in the left hand, the soaring
leaps in the voice and in the right hand, the rising scale-wise
sweeps in the bass.
No detail is neglected either. Momentary chromaticism at
measures 5 and 6 seems delightfully appropriate to the words,
"flows the liquefaction.." The rising line of the treble (ms.
6 and 7), emphasized by parallel octaves, expresses the reaction
of the observer. The ensuing descending lines (ms. 7 and 8),
180
partly in parallel sixths and thirds and otherwise euphoniously
accompanied, seem to personify the sigh of satisfaction which
follows such a transport. These lines also prepare an even
greater paroxysm of rapture as he forces his eyes to point that
way again, the difficulty as well as the reward of the effort
being painted by an abrupt modulation to F major. His eyes can
be seen to grow through the rising treble, more extended than the
last one, and in parallel triads this time. They can be seen to
follow the lady down the street in the imitation of ms. 11-13.
His delight climaxes with the A major chord of m. 13; then the
tonal descent back to D tells "how that glittering taketh him:"
it liquefies him. The music which set that word in m. 6 returns
to settle all doubts.
The Silver Swan

(Orlando Gibbons)
The gist of "The Silver Swan" is that much of what passes
for talk on this planet is expendable. This truth is demonstrated
by the poem itself, of which but three of its six lines are neces
sary to deliver its message: the first, second, and last. The
composer responds by setting these three lines (ms. 4, 7, and
30) to the song's first theme. The other lines are largely set
by the second theme, which is first heard at ms. 13 and 14 in the
voice. The composer in addition highlights that marvellous
epigram contained in the last line of the last couplet,
181
Farewell, all joys; 0 death, come close my eyes;
More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise.
by delaying it. He does this by making a great deal of its first
line. He repeats it, he uses the song's first theme as a counter
melody (m. 20), he interpolates repetitions of individual words,
an Elizabethan allusion (ms. 23-30), he develops the intervals
of the descending major second and the minor third (ms. 19, over
the word "more," 22, 23, and, in inversion, 24, 28, and 30).
Elizabethan roulades are used to good effect to remind the
listener of the period of the author, as well as to heighten the
pathetic mood. The pessimism of the song is established also by
the predominantly descending lines of the introduction, for which
the ascending octave, later used to set "living,” supplies
enhancing contrast.
Cycle of Holy Songs: Psalm 134
Three of the four songs of the "Cycle of Holy Songs" are
included on the Columbia record. The second, a slow, romantic
lament, is the one omitted. A discussion will be included here,
however, so that there may be one complete cycle represented in
the paper.
The first song, Psalm 134, is a song of joy. Rorem evokes
a vision of a high holiday in the ancient temple by combining an
accented pedal bass which could be the beats of a large drum, with
a repetitious diatonic melody, centering in modal-fashion around
182
the second and fifth degrees of A which, sounding like an ancient
chant of jubilation when sung, at the same time lends itself to
effective instrumental fanfare treatment in the piano.
The song is monothematic, a fact which also adds to its
primitive atmosphere. The theme is varied and exuberant, its
large, ascending leaps balanced by repeated notes, its step-wise
motives by arpeggios, the whole moving in energetic eighth-notes.
In measures 19-25 the theme is sung in minor to a quiet
accompaniment, reflecting the shift of mood in the Psalm wherein
"Bless ye the Lord)" becomes "The Lord...bless thee." Then the
accompaniment takes over again, and builds in a seven-bar inter
lude to a pre-climactic, fortissimo fanfare, still in the spirit
of a holiday Service. Climax and triple forte come with the
vocal entrance at m. 32. The whole song and its two halves are
framed by the three "Beholds" at measures 7, 20, and 41, cadencing
on c^.
Psalm 142
Psalm 142 is the quiet song of the cycle, being marked
andante (Ji = c. 69), legato e sempre espressivo, in contrast to
the allegro marking of songs I and II. The fourth song is slower,
but, marked maestoso (J - 66), it is not quieter.
The essence of the text is, "I cried unto the Lord - I poured
out my complaint." The psalm divides into two halves at m. 27,
183
the second half beginning with the first glimmer of faith in this
psalm of lamentation,
I cried unto Thee, 0 Lord: I said,

Thou art my refuge and portion
in the land of the living.
Each half also divides (at ms. 12 and 41), due to shifts of
meaning in the text. This text form is acknowledged by the AABA
form of the music. The most important shift, pointed out above,
is at m. 27, the glimmer of faith. The B music which is accorded
this shift is the theme of the first song which had been used
there to accompany the words, "Bless the Lord that made heaven
and earth." The use of this theme again at the end of the present
song (m. 53) allows the song to end on a note of hope.
The melody, with its eighth-note skips, is not particularly
plaintive, which is probably why Rorem cautions legato e sempre
espressivo, and which may have had a bearing on its omission from
the Columbia record. While speculating on this topic, the second
A (m. 12) is marked by a jarring conflict in m. 15 between text
and music, as the text ends a sentence and begins another while
in the middle of a musical phrase. The resulting confusion is
compounded by the fact that the second sentence begins with a
preposition. This occurs but the once; Rorem is usually more
careful.
The long sweeps of the bass, however, are quite expressive
of the "walking" in "trouble" of the first half of the song. The
184
harmony of the first A is quite ’'lush,'' with parallel triads
moving in long, step-wise passages, and resolving seventh chords,
particularly in ms. 7-9. The only dissonance is between voice
and piano. The second A contrasts a pathos of consonance and a
bitterness of dissonance in the same line.
The first half is climaxed at m. 22 by the introduction of
new material in the voice part and in the bass, featuring large
leaps and sharp shifts of tonality, reflecting the anguish of the
line, "Refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul." The second
half of the song has another sudden shift (m. 39), down a half
step, which captures the weakness implied in "for (my persecutors)
are stronger than I."
Psalm 148
Psalm 148, with its compelling verve, its diatonic and
syncopated jubilation, provides the point of highest excitement
in the cycle. The varied treatment of the theme, its ^ J.i.i

rhythm, the combination of this theme with that of the first song
(m. 51) provide considerable musical interest. There seem to be
discrepancies however between the music and the text. The text,
for the most part, comprises a list of creatures who are being
exhorted to praise the Lord. The exception is in lines 9-12
(ms. 18-29), where the text gives reasons for this praise. There
is a change of material in the music: the voice declaims much of
185
the time on one note and the bass features large leaps, but the
musical change takes place four bars earlier than the textual
one, while the text is still listing creatures.
A still more drastic musical change occurs at m. 36 as the
theme from the first song is sung, providing a change to a smoother
texture. The text does not particularly motivate this change
either: "Fire, and hail; stormy wind...." Now the text lists
"Mountains and all hills; fruitful trees, and all cedars:" If
anything, a more tranquil music might be expected, but this is
where the composer reintroduces the syncopated theme of the
present song in counterpoint with the continuing one of the first
song.
More fitting is the full return of the energetic theme in
the original key of C for "Kings of the earth, and all people;
princes and all judges of the earth," and the broad melody for
"Both young men, and maidens; old men, and children." The climax
of both text and music is in the last lines (m. 82 to the end).
Its effect depends upon the many repetitions in the voice part
of the e^-d^-e^ motive from the second bar of the song's theme,
the repetitions involved in the two-bar cell technique of the
accompaniment, the heightened use of chromaticism and dissonance,
descending sweeps in the bass, and a final, triple-forte statement
of the theme.
186
Psalm 150
"Psalm 150" makes its contribution to the contrast element
of the cycle in its triple metre, reinforced by its strong, large-
intervalled, quarter-note bass. Its maestoso tempo provides a
fitting close, imparting strength, and, at the same time, a fast-
slow- fast- slow form for the cycle as a whole. The song is
monothematic, and so closes the cycle as it was begun, and as the
third song ended, with the impact of repetitions. (The form is
aaba1 - a " b ' a " ' a ' - interlude - coda. The b ’s are very similar
to the a ’s; the primes signify transpositions.)
There is relief from all the sameness, in the shifts of mode

#
at the final a's of the two large sections, as the f and the b-
natural are both lowered a half-step, and in the free development
and climaxing contrary motion of the interlude. The unaccompanied
vocal coda brings the two modal versions of the theme into closer
contrast--a measure apart instead of a page. This principle of
condensation is then applied to the repetition technique which
makes up the song: just short motives are repeated in the last
five bars (with pickup), motives taken from the theme.
The Lordly Hudson

(Paul Goodman)
The promise of the magnificently resounding title is not
quite born out in the rather odd conversation with the taxi-driver
187
which is the text. One reason is the question left unanswered:
why does the passenger need to ask "what stream is this?" if he
is, indeed, "Home! Home!"? Another is the question answered too
much: "Driver, what stream is this?"
To this last point, the refrain, "It is our lordly Hudson
hardly flowing," appears five times in the poem's four stanzas.
Accounting for nearly a third of its sixteen lines, it is the
central two lines of stanza 1, the third line of stanza 2 and of
stanza 3, and the first line of stanza 4. Other lines are
repeated as well; in fact, the entire last stanza consists of
material repeated from other ones.
The refrain, "It is our lordly Hudson hardly flowing" sets
the tone of the music as well as of the poem. The "hardly flowing"
idea is caught in the opening two measures by the repeated f^'s,
accompanied by a leisurely descending scale from f to its lower
octave. "Lordly Hudson" is the reason for the figure of an
ascending minor seventh followed by a falling back of a minor
third. This combination of words and motif is always accompanied
by full chords, an f^ and a b ^ . The words, "hardly flowing"
usually trigger a rare triad--A^.
The motif is heard with other words, and often. The seventh
is often replaced by its complementary interval, a major second
(e.g. ms. 16, 21, 33), except at climaxes, such as that of stanza 3
(ms. 27-32).
188
The pride of the passenger in his "Hudson" and his "Home.1"
is also reflected in the figure of boldly rising thirds at ms. 9

9
and 10. This figure is also a part of stanza 3's climax.
The constant recurrence of these three motives, the repeated
f^'s and descending f scale, the minor seventh (or major second)
and minor third, and the rising thirds, contributes to the appeal
of the song as well as to the expression of the "hardly flowing"
image of the text. After outbursts of particularly lush harmony
(at ms. 39-40 and 45-46) they are heard at their closest proximity
to each other (ms. 52-56) where they signal the mouth of the river,
the end of the song. This function is also served by the lowered
third and second of the final descending f scale (m. 54).
To this writer, the song effectively enhances a not very
effective poem.
Snake
(Theodore Roethke)
Although he certainly does not dwell on the repulsive,
there are some examples in the Rorem catalog in two of the poems
of Theodore Roethke. "Snake," the first of these, makes use of
the ostinato technique, with appropriate departures from strict
repetition, since a snake's progress is seldom uniform: for
example, the shift in relationship between bass and treble from
m. 1 to m. 2, and the changes at ms. 7, 10 and 14. All voices,
including the hidden ones like the one hovering ove bb ^ in m. 7,
189
have tortuous, snake-like shapes.
The first two stanzas (ms. 2 and 16) describe the snake's
behaviour, the third the effect of observing it upon the beholder.
Rorem adjusts the accompaniment for the third stanza by doubling
the melody, unchanged in the voice, in the high treble in alter
nating octaves, thus causing the melody to reflect in this trans
formation the assimilation of the snake into the desires and being
of the poet, which is the substance of the text of this stanza.
At the same time he suggests the resulting heightened emotional
intensity through the diminution of the melody in the bass.
Rain in Spring
(Paul Goodman)
Paul Goodman's "Rain in Spring" provides a hiatus of perfect
tranquillity. The start of Spring, according to this poem, is
just "clear and refreshing rain," not even anything so disturbing
as "the longing for a lover."
The contrast between these two ideas, what Spring is and
what it is not, is expressed in the change of texture at measure
16. From the lightly falling i..l figure for rain, the neutral,
leisurely bass, the uncomplicated vocal cantilena hovering on the
fifth of D major, emerges a more purposeful figure, insistent in
its repetition of the first and fifth degrees of C minor and in
the thirty-second-note appogiaturas to them; the bass is purpose
ful in its sweep from c to GG; the vocal part is relatively
190
disturbed, founded on a g minor triad rather than a D major scale.
But the contrast is a gentle one, and the original mood
comes back also "without haste or strain," first in the poem
(m. 20), then in the tonality (m. 21), finally in the thematic
material (m. 22). Once the recapitulation is established, it is
distilled: only the first and last measures of the original
vocal melody are repeated, the one in the voice (m. 22) the other
in the piano (m. 24).
Root Cellar
(Theodore Roethke)
"Root Cellar" is the second Roethke song. With its strong
language--"obscenely...drooped...stinks!"--it says that no matter
how horrid things get, life persists: "nothing would give up
life." Rorem paints the repulsive here with a succession of
unrelieved dissonant chords. One way to analyze the first three
chords, for example, would be e$oj the second and third chords
i2
being built like the first.
The form is A (5) B(6 ) A(12), roughly, but it is no clearer
than the harmony, and neither one is any clearer than the contents
of the poem or more orderly than the contents of the cellar. A
is largely declamatory on one note until it comes to the word
"broke." To paint this word the voice leaps up a fifth. This
fifth becomes a feature of the B section, where it is made to
sound quite disgusting by its prior association with the word
191
"obscenely." B has to do with "drooping...lolling....hanging....
like snakes." All four of its lines feature vocal lines appro
priate to this idea, culminating in an augmentation, both of
length of notes and size of interval, for "congress of stinks!"
The accompaniment of B forsakes large leaps for a rising pro
gression which picks up dissonance as it goes, and loudness.
The recapitulation at m. 12 is limited to the voice part,
the early harmonization not returning until m. 20. This softening
of form is appropriate, since the text at m. 12 is more a con
tinuation of the words of section B; the words at m. 20 have more
to do with those of m. 2, are hence more demanding of A material.
This dichotomy seems to bother Rorem himself; for in his recording
he softens the climax at the end of the B section, thus making
the beginning of his recapitulation less of a new beginning, more
of a continuation.
Sally's Smile
(Paul Goodman)
Sally's smile has the power to bring her lover to a golden
mean between "caution and impatience." Both of these opposites
are depicted in the introduction, the one in the unvarying ostinato
of the left hand, the other in the impulsive one of the right,
which is augmented rhythmically, expanded in range, and otherwise
transformed to become the impetuous voice part of ms. 4-6. Both
192
caution and impatience are then "flung into the winds," by means
of the leap of a seventh at ms. 7-8, "that mile on mile pour
northward..." by means of the melodic oscillation of ms. 8- 10 .
Sally's smile is more dear to her lover than everything that
was most dear to him yesterday: flowers, home in Miami, his dead
mother. The nostalgia is expressed by the same tune as that of
the smile, but in Dorian A rather than the A major of the first
verse. The distances are traversed again, to the same repeated
figure as the "mile on mile" of the first verse, back to Sally,
and back to A major. Thus a sameness in the melody expresses
that all these things are dear to him, yet changes in the tonality
express the degree. The melody is very simple, yet its treat
ment imparts subtle meaning.
Such Beauty As Hurts To Behold

(Paul Goodman)
"Such Beauty As Hurts To Behold" is one of those songs which
has dramatic contrast built into its very title. This element
forms the basis of the first two stanzas of the poem (ms. 1 and
8 ): the painful beauty and some contradictory reactions to it.
Stanza 2 gives the cause of these: the gift of love. Stanza 4
is a thanksgiving.
The melody contains the element of beauty of stanza 1 in its
ascending sixth followed by a basically stepwise melodic progres
sion; the accompaniment conveys the "hurts;" both sensitively
193
trace the subtle details. "Hurts" is reflected in a half-step
dissonance between voice and piano in m. 2 , and between the two
voices of the piano in m. 4. "Gentle" finds expression in the
slowly falling chromatic line of the bass. "Shivering" is left
to the voice part, momentarily turned declamatory on one note,
"cold" to the chromatically rising, parallel fifths of m. 6 .
Stanza 2 builds broad contrasts into the melodic line to
allow text-painting of such words as "stunned" (octave leap),

9
"empty" and "peace" (low notes), and "height" (high gb ). The
warmth of the accompaniment characterizes the over-all mood of
the stanza--"vital peace."
The peaceful warmth of stanza 2 becomes the harmonic heat
of stanza 3: "the lust that blooms like red the rose." The
sense of line 3 (m. 16), that this lust is something apart from
the lover,.shows in the mechanical revolving of the voice around
g'*'. Then the likening of this desire to a song is the perfect
excuse for Rorem1s launching into a new tune, some contrapuntal
accompaniment, some triadic harmony. The chords alternate between
I and VII^ (ms. 19 and 20) and I and II (21 and 22) in D minor,
carrying out harmonically the melodic repetition above them. This
verse is the climax, which is fitting because it is the signifi
cant stanza of the song, giving meaning to the first two stanzas.
The thanksgiving of stanza 4 is likewise a fitting subject for
recapitulation treatment.
194
My Papa’s Waltz
(Theodore Roethke)
"My Papa's Waltz" represents pre-bedtime playtime with a
tipsy father. Tipsiness is in the form of the poem: either half
of stanza 3 makes perfect sense as a part of the poem, but the
two halves do not fit each other. There is tipsiness in the form
of the song: Rorem takes these two halves which fit in with the
rest of the poem--gives them different music from the rest of the
poem; they have nothing to do with each other--he gives them
identical music. There is certainly an aroma of inebriation in
the out-of-tune orchestration of this waltz, the chromatic vacil
lations and slides. A dissonant effect is achieved by contrasting
these aberrations with a very staid bass.
During the first two stanzas the dancing grows gradually in
extravagance--in both text and music. The melody of stanza 1
rises chromatically from b ^ to c ^ , before the dancers lurch and

hl h
fall--bD to b . The beginning of stanza 2 is considerably more
active in terms of syncopation, dissonance, and dynamics than
stanza 1 , as the cookingware begins to join in the commotion, but
this crescendo is well overshadowed by what takes place to describe-
the quality and degree of "Mother's" appreciation. Not only does
the dissonance increase, but the staid bass becomes ominous in its
sustained and sombre sonorities.
Any doubt as to whether the third stanza, with its lines
195
At every step you missed

My right ear scraped a buckle.
is intended to indicate that the boy is accepting this dance as
rough affection or calloused brutality is settled by the banality
of the melody and the bass, the unobtrusive, inoffensive chro
maticism of the inner voices, little bits of tenderness which
convey the former interpretation.
In any case, there is no abatement in the frenzy of the
dance before the execution of the final step: the one into bed.
The final verse uses the first melody, but with an accompaniment
greatly enlivened by eighth- and sixteenth-note figuration and
by an abrupt coda marked forte, sforzando, and con tutta forza.
Early in the Morning

(Robert Hillyer)
"Early in the Morning," which expresses enjoyment of some
of the creature comforts of life in Paris--
I was breakfasting on croissants

And caf& au lait
Under greenery like scenery,
Rue Francois Premier.
is an unpretentious poem. The music matches this quality exactly.
The form of the song is strophic; the form of the strophes is
A A* B B 1, or, in detail, a a 1 a*' a 1" b c b' c 1 where the primes
signify very little change, and the c's are b's inverted. The
simple form gives a good picture of the total aspect of the melody;
the impression made by counter-melodies here and there is in
196
keeping. Painting of details is not a feature, with the possible
exception of the descending melody under the lines describing the
showers which "drench away the dust." "Paradise" is accompanied
by a more than normally lively countermelody, but "Rue Francois
Premier's" is more lively yet-. The abbreviated recapitulation
curiously uses B melody (m. 43) for words which originally were
set to A melody.
I am Rose
(Gertrude Stein)
"I am Rose" is the less well known statement on this subject
by Gertrude Stein. It makes as little and as much sense as its
more famous relative.
Four text lines, or eleven measures, in length, it is one
of the short songs. It is also one of the simple songs. One-
half of the text is composed of the words "I am Rose." The melody
shares this tendency to be repetitious: one-half of it is
composed of the first three-note motive or its mirror. The bass

Jtl
for the most part simply descends from dtf to BB. The uncompli
cated harmonic progression--I*VII*I*IV*I*V*VI*V*IV*II*I*I gives
the measure-by-measure analysis--is disturbed by but one acciden
tal, which gives a momentary mixolydian color at m. 6.
It is not simple-minded: the right hand imitates the voice,
but it imitates the first vocal phrase with the melody of the
third, the third with a slightly ornamented copy of the first.
197
For the fourth point of imitation the bass joins in with the
last three notes ("anything"). This sophistication invites a
look below the surface of the text; this reveals that the
"meaning" of the poem is inthe^ last two lines; the first two
do not contribute very much. This, in turn, explains why Rorem
has set "sing" by the highest note in the voice part, and
"anything" by the intensifying, three-fold imitation.
See How They Love Me

(Howard Moss)
"See How They Love Me" contains three stanzas for the
three things that "love me," the grass, the sea and the s k y -
one for the girl who does not. Each of the first three stanzas
is constructed of two couplets, each set to a melody consisting
of an inverted arch followed by an arch in normal position, the
latter being subject to considerable variation. Each stanza has
its own, unifying, descending bass line. The melody, constantly
repeated yet never the same, the different pitch levels, the
widening leaps, the abrupt key changes, not only mirror the
variety of arguments the young man is using on his love, but
perhaps may evoke visions of the different angles from which he
is attempting a kiss.
The second stanza (m. 8 ) employs imitation to suggest the

2
wooing waves of the sea. The third stanza soars to a high gb ,
a note which sets "High sky," prepares, by proximity, the climax
stanza to come, and heightens the warmth of the low e^5^ of
"warm me" by standing in contrast to it.
Stanza 4 matches the contrast in the text: "yet you rebuke
me," by inverting the first three notes of the melody, augmenting
the intervals and otherwise transforming the rest of the melody.
The accompaniment uses a strong countermelody borrowed from
measure 4; the voice and the right hand rise here to their high
est points in the song, the bass to its lowest.
The coda effectively brings together the song's two main,
conflicting ideas by stating once more the textual refrain, "See
how they love me," to the inverted form of the melody previously
used to set "yet you rebuke me." This stroke is rendered more
powerful by the use of augmentation in the voice while the piano
delivers the melody in its original form.
Visits to St. Elizabeth's: Bedlam

(Elizabeth Bishop)
The longest song to be treated is "Visits to St. Elizabeth's,
in which the length of the poem is one of the devices used by the
poet to create a work of art whose raw material and final effect
is insanity: namely, the insanity of Ezra Pound.
In addition to the length, which helps convey the dreariness
of the succession of days in a madhouse, three other devices are
used. First is the obvious patterning of the poem after a well
known nursery rhyme, with the dual implication of mental
199
insufficiency and innocence inherent in this allusion, not to
the particular rhyme chosen, but to any nursery rhyme. The
second device is dependent upon the particular choice of nursery
rhyme. That is the great amount of recurrence of lines of text:
the rhyme chosen is "The House That Jack Built." The repetition
reminds one of the limited and therefore repetitive conversation
of the either very old or very ill.
The final device, also taken over from the model, is a
peculiar quality which comes partly under the heading of form,
partly under the heading of content. This is the emphasis upon
nouns, the listing of nouns. These nouns are related to each
other by verbs, but the verbs, and the action and life implied
in them, are relegated to a secondary position by the structure
of the sentence.
This is the cat

That ate the rat
That nibbled the cheese...
This is is the principal clause of the sentence, comes at the
beginning, focuses the attention on the object, "the cat," and
the nouns lined up behind him. This accent on objects--this
listing of objects--conveys the feeling of sitting in a chair,
observing surrounding events, imagining others, drawing but a
tenuous line between those observed and those imagined, conveys
the aura of dementia.
Then, Miss Bishop works a subtle but chilling change on the
200
original nursery rhyme. In the original the cat ate the rat.
In "Bedlam" the "tragic man lies in the house of Bedlam." The
sense of immediacy imparted by the use of the present tense is
accentuated by the contrast between it and the sense of detach
ment of the original, where the horror is safely in the past.
The techniques of the composer are compatible with these
devices. The dual implications of the use of the nursery rhyme
are gone one further by a duality in the music of the manic and
the depressive. Pathetic measures such as ms. 10 and 11 with
their descending parallel seventh chords and the descending sixth
and monotone recitation in the voice turn quickly into a sforzando
explosion of irrationality (m. 16) which turns just as quickly
back to the pathos of the C minor harmony and plaintive sing
song of the voice at m. 16. This mercurial temperament is
characteristic of the whole song.
The poet's repetitiousness is reflected in Rorem's use of
recurring idees fix§es such as the material of the opening two
measures, as well as the major and minor thirds and the augmented
fourth contained therein. These appear throughout the song,
spinning a thread of unity which seems to be provided primarily
to be broken: by broad expanses of cantilena melody (ms. 43 and
131) which appear like the poet's images--having no compelling
relation to the rest of the music, especially since they appear
but once, having the quality of nouns, capturing the attention
2 01
at the expense of the verbs. The text which they set reappears
under different musical guises which adds to the sense of
confusion.
One of the most striking details occurs after the words
"busy man," referring to Pound, as a blaring C major fanfare,
celebrating the importance of his busyness, is wrenched out of
key, the sense of importance shattered by the FFF, four-octave
f# (m. 104).
A Christmas Carol
(Anonymous - 15th Century)
"A Christmas Carol," with its fifteenth century poem is an
interesting combination of the archaic and the modern. The first
stanzas, sung unaccompanied in the mixolydian mode, the allusions
to age in the parallelisms and empty fifths of the introduction
and the interludes, the slow, organal octaves which accompany the
opening lines of stanza 3 are full of atmosphere, but colored
somewhat by a curious conflict between the modes of verse and
interlude, the former in D mixolydian, the latter in D aeolian.
This technique reaches a climax in stanza 3 in the intro
duction of allusions to more recent harmonic styles--sevenths,
ninths, and other chromatic alterations in the introduction and
closing measures--in contrast to the organa of the main section.
The technique seems particularly appropriate to this stanza, which
202
is an invitation to all men to rejoice--the men of modern times
as well as those of old.
The Nightingale
(Anonymous - 15th Century)
In "The Nightingale" Rorem, in addition to giving a musical
interpretation of the fifteenth century poem, gives as well a
hint of the circumstances under which it might have been sung.
The poem itself is a parable: I love a nightingale, but she
left me; but you don't know whom I mean. This last idea is
repeated a sufficient number of times to assure that its opposite
is the meaning actually (and intentionally) conveyed.
The opening, plucked ostinato creates the illusion that the
parable is a song being sung to a lady (the voice part with its
sprightly, step-wise sixteenth-notes does better service as the
nightingale), and the instrumental flourish at the ends of the
stanzas strengthen the illusion: the knight can be envisioned
in a gallant bow. The flourish at the end of the song in partic
ular, having nothing to do with the "rueful" mood of the text,
can be best understood as bearing on the courtly behaviour of an
unaccepted suitor who, having spoken his piece, is on the point
of chivalrously taking his leave.
The unassuming minor-keyed melody is appropriate to the
period of the poem. The accompaniment adds a counter melody to
the latter half of each of the first two stanzas, that of the
203
second being more engaging due to its large leaps. This build
up of interest is continued in stanza 3, where the accompaniment
has the main melody, the voice its own, slower one. In stanza
4 the accompaniment adds to the old English flavour by means of
parallel thirds and sixths.
The poem's progress is also reinforced by the tonal plan.
For stanza 2 the nightingale's approach which is suggested in the

#
text may be supposed to cause the rise of the tonality from F
minor to A minor, causing the voice to center on c^ rather than
a-L. In stanza 3 the singer voices his appreciation of the near
ness of the nightingale by singing a step higher yet, in the
tonality of D minor. But it is in this stanza that the beloved
object "takes her heart away." This, the song's turning point,
is reflected in the first tonal shift to occur as a stanza is
in progress: down a step to C minor. The making of the point
is rendered more secure by the descending bass of four quarter-
notes at the beginning of the stanza and the first introduction
of quarter-notes in the voice in the melodic "sigh" of m. 35.
The turning point has been passed; the lover's anguish is
reiterated in the restless tonality of the interlude, but its
most poignant expression is reserved for the next stanza as he
says, for the sixth time, "Yet ye know not whom I mean." The
heretofore smoothly flowing melody is departed from as the
rhythm gives way to equal eighth-notes which leap by a minor
204
third to the anguished highest note of the song, and the four-
note descending bass of stanza 3 becomes one of seven notes
(ms. 46-49). Then the knight remembers his breeding, anguish
becomes regret in the sixth descending by dignified quarter-
notes (m. 51) before the previously mentioned polite farewell.
Spring and Fall

(Gerald Manley Hopkins)
"Spring and Fall" is a song of grief in which a child is
told that no matter what the circumstances that set grief off,
the dying of the leaves, or something else, they are merely the
/
trigger; the powder, the real source of grief is in the child
herself, in her humanity:
It is the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.
The ostinato bass is the musical representative of the
grief which is the subject of the song. The many changes in the
music above the ostinato characterize the manifold guises of
grief. The voice establishes an air of intimate conversation
deriving from the one-note, free-rhythmed, quasi-parlando style
in which it begins. As the speaker, becoming more confident of
Margaret's attention, warms to his topic of grief, the voice
takes over the melodic interest from the piano, and the bass,
losing its hesitant, fourth-beat rest, becomes more confident
in its steady quarter-notes. This change also suits the meaning
205
of the words themselves,
As the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder.
The directing of this philosophy toward a child is now re
emphasized as the speaker develops his topic in the new tonality
of aeolian. The poet's "I know a secret" lines are then
underscored,after one of the song's two functional dominant
sevenths (m. 18: 4th beat), by clothing the descending bass
ostinato in massive parallel triads, putting them under an
intervallically augmented version of the voice line at m. 14.
The opposite kind of emphasis is applied to the last half of
this section, as but one chord accompanies the otherwise un
accompanied "What heart heard of, ghost guessed." This technique
has the added virtue of ensuring the intelligibility of the most
difficult line of the poem.
The secret itself, the source of grief (as distinguished
from that which merely releases it) is the climax of the poem.
It is in the last line. This, after the song's second functional
dominant chord (which is this time a ninth), is set to a quasi
recapitulation of the first vocal melody of measures 10 and 11,
the text of which promised that Margaret would understand "bye
and bye."
Spring
(Gerald Manley Hopkins)
"Spring" is one of the genre of English songs which preach
206
And therefore take the present time,

Witha hey, and a ho, and a hey nonny no,
With a hey, nonny nonny no
For love is crowned with the prime
In Springtime, in Springtime
The only pretty ring time
Hey ding-a-ding-a-ding
Sweet lovers love the Spring! - Morley
"Spring" is of this genre, but it is enriched as well by some
of the views of the Puritan movement, to which it takes exception
in the second stanza:
What is all this juice and all this joy?

A stain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, Lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, 0 maid's child, thy child, thy choice and
worthy the winning.
"All this juice" refers to the beautifully expressed
glories of Spring of the first stanza. A peaceful, D minor
ostinato in half-notes is present throughout most of the stanza,
setting it apart from the second. The vocal melody, based on
the melody of the introduction-accompaniment, displays the variety
suggested by that of the text, for example, the repeated motives
in the long, drawn out phrase for "When weeds, in wheels, shoot
long and lovely and lush," the sudden plunge to c^ for "low
heaven," the slow trill of a minor third for "echoing thrush,"
the three e^-'s for "ring the ear."
The words, "It strikes like lightnings to hear him sing,"
call for something sudden: Rorem shifts from eighth-notes to
a quarter-note motive (an inversion of the introduction). The
207
immediate repetition of this ne-w motive for "The glassy pear
tree leaves and blooms" seems to make this happening a result
of the first. The image of racing lambs having their fling is
treated by means of ascending arpeggios in both voice and piano.
The melody of the "racing lamb's" vocal part then, after being
echoed in the piano (ms. 31 and 32) undergoes a development of
its descending fourth and third which introduces the vital second
stanza which has been quoted above. The descending fourth pro
vides the kernel of the climax of this stanza (ms. 45-48). The
fourth is rejoined by the third to provide the material of the
postlude. The three uses of the fourth thus frame the stanza
and the distillation of fourths for the central use lends dra
matic effect to the climactic lines with which that episode is
associated.
This climax is typically prepared by lightly accompanied
and unaccompanied measures immediately preceding it, a technique
which only copies the poet's, as "In the beginning...." suggests
just this treatment.
To You
(Walt Whitman)
"To You" is the first of three Walt Whitman songs.
Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire \

to speak to me,
Why should you not speak to me?
And why should I not speak to you?
203
is the entire text. A simple question on the surface, it calls
for a modest melody. A question with far reaching implications,
it requires an undercurrent, for the melody, of substance.
The picture of two strangers, each going his own way, is
expressed in the double ostinato accompaniment of the first half
of the song: the duple metre of the right hand co-existing with
the triple of the left. There is separation, too, in the voice
part between the b ^ and the e ^ , which is left unresolved by
the final, seventh degree note, harmonized by an augmented octave
dissonance.
The resolution comes at measure 6 , as the strangers commu
nicate at least to the extent of asking the question of why they
do not communicate. Beginning with the initial tonic chord of
m. 6 the right hand and the left cooperate, rhythmically and
harmonically. The voice part carries out this suggestion of
reconciliation by converging from octave-separated d^'s to the
tonic, G^. The limited extent of the reconciliation is shown by
the accompaniment of the tonic G^: the introductory ostinato.
Youth, Day, Old Age, and Night

(Walt Whitman)
The philosophy of "Youth, Day, Old Age, and Night" is that
the "night" of "old age" has "grace, force and fascination" equal
to that of the "day" of "youth," in that there is time available
for resting as well as for enjoyment of all the remembered days
209
of youth.
The introductory bars express both the :'immense sun" of
youthful vigor and the "restoring darkness" of tranquil age--the
one in the stark rhythm, the other in the descending lines of
all voices.
"Force and fascination" are in the strong non-sequential
rhythm and wide intervals of the vocal line of the first and
third lines of the poem (ms. 5 and 19) and in the bi-chords of
the accompaniment. "Grace" and "sleep" are in the contrastingly
soft, initial triads which begin lines 2 and 4 and in the
sequential, smaller-intervailed voice parts.
The word-painting of "immense sun" by a full-measure roulade
touching high a^, of "sleep" by the descent by a leap of a minor
seventh to low c-L, of "The night follows close" by imitation at
an interval of one beat, of "darkness" by the long, low d^, all
make their contribution to the musical translation of the poem.
0 You Whom I Often and Silently Come

(Walt Whitman)
The determining line of "0 You Whom I Often and Silently
Come" is the third stanza:
Little you know the subtle electric fire that for

your sake is playing within me.
"Little you know" results in a song which is over almost
before it has begun, so well kept a secret it is. It begins
2 10
abruptly, after a one-chord introduction, is over after only
fourteen measures of allegretto, and a one-note postlude.
''Subtle electric fire" calls for a climax, but a quiet one.
Accordingly, Rorem provides three strophes with nearly identical
melody. This is not an obtrusive form, and the essentially un
interrupted patter of eighth-notes is not unlike the electric
current imagery of the poem. Moreover, the strophes are marked,
successively, mf, mp, p. Subtlety is taken care of.
Climax is achieved by a gradual growth of activity in the
accompaniment: gradual so as not to interfere with the subtlety
of the voice part. The bass proceeds from a quiet, inverted
arch for stanza 1 through a quiet upright arch for stanza 2 , to
a steep, large-intervalled arch (ninths) for stanza 3. The
first two arches are dovetailed: the last notes of the first
are already the first notes of the second. The transition into
the third arch is more drastic, involving a leap of a twelfth.
Arches in the treble move for the most part in contrary
motion to those of the bass, increase the speed of their notes
from J. to) X t o i T ) , as well as the amount of keyboard space
they cover. They make these transitions, not between stanzas,
but near the ends, thus softening the form. Thus, in spite of
uniform vocal melody and descending dynamics, climax is achieved
by faster notes and wider range in the treble, and by larger
leaps in the bass.
211
Interesting is the way in which the voice line fits the
meaning of all three stanzas. Fundamentally, it descends from
e^ to close in on e^: coming down almost to e^-, it breaks off
at f*1, suddenly diving and coming up to its goal from c ^ .
This shape suits the words, "come where you are," "or remain
in the same room with you," and "Little you know the subtle
electric fire," almost equally well.
Pippa's Song
(Robert Browning)
The setting of "Pippa's Song," Browning's poem beginning
with "The year's at the Spring" and ending with the famous lines,
God's in His heaven,

All's right with the world.
is simple, yet rich in ideas. It stands out among Rorem's songs
as the only one to use canon— three voiced at that--throughout
the song. It is also exceptional in its use of tremolo almost
throughout.
The octave leaps with which most of the phrases begin, the
exceptionally high tessitura and the constant tremolo give an air
of excited pleasure in nature. The three-voiced canon creates
the illusion that all of nature joins in echoing, from the "dew-
pearl'd hillside," the singer's rejoicing. The gradual ascent
of the voice line (a line drawn through the high notes of the
phrases would touch d^, f ^ , c^, d^.) to "God's,"
212
and "All" is the obvious technique for setting the meaning of
the words and the form of the poem. The bass is engaged in
step-wise descent for most of this, only changing direction so
as to rise with the voice after "The lark's on the wing."

O
After the climactic d for "All," the music relaxes, yet
at the same time builds to another climax, fff. The total
effect is one of a post-climactic resolution, yet a vehement
one. The octave leaps are replaced by smaller ones, the canon
is reduced from three voices to two, the harmony of the coda is
more stable, more ruled by a tonic, the G major relaxes into
G lydian, the tremolo disappears, the singer ends on a relatively
low high g^. It is as if the momentous last lines have trans
formed the earlier nervous excitement into a secure bliss:
secure, because all of this relaxation has been accompanied by
the molto crescendo. The final chord is, once more, tremolo.
Lullaby of the Woman on the Mountain

(Padriac Pearse)
"Lullaby of the Woman on the Mountain" captures the tentative,
increasingly effective overtures of slumber, the delicious giddi
ness which soon resolves into oblivion. The chief means,
musically, is the sleep-inducing monotony of the rocking bass
ostinato and of the constantly recurring theme (ms. 2- 6 : alto
part).
There must be no disturbance, no interference with the
213
hoped-for effect of this lullaby. So the music of the first
couplet (ms. 7-15), the only one treating the child, shows no
change of texture, only a gentle shifting of the mode, as it
passes into the music of the couplets treating the list of
creatures which the old woman counts off, hypnotically, which
are to keep quiet for the child. The song has no climax; there
is a forte half-way through the song (m. 34), but it is too
early in the song, too unprepared, too little reinforced by
other music devices, too much in passing to be a real climax.
A lullaby can well afford to dispense with a climax. Another
nice touch of realism is the way in which the old woman can be
imagined to fall asleep herself as she breaks off at m. 54 in
mid-couplet, taking up again in mid-theme, at m. 58.
What If Some Little Pain

(Edmund Spenser)
"What If Some Little Pain" is at least as interesting for
the translation of its lines into music as for its imaginative
presentation of the paper's white margin.
The essence of the poem isthat after the little pain of
death comes peace. The poem's first four lines (ms. 1-10) treat
of this pain, the last two (ms. 11- 21) of the peace which follows.
In the first half of the musical setting there is the wave
of pain in the sharply figurated arch of the piano's treble part,
214
restless in its changes of direction, and in its unevenness of
intervals, and there is tension in the long lines and wide range
of the vocal line. In the last half there is the rest after
pain in the long, four-fold melodic sequence in the voice,
descending by whole-tones from f^ to f^. "Rest" is in the
descent, "after" is in the sequential aspect, in the whole-tones
there is inexorability.
Thus far, the composer has set the lines. But he has dis
regarded the proportion chosen by the poet. Of the poem's six
lines, the poet assigned to the pain of death the first quatrain,
to the rewarding peace only the last couplet, although this
peace is mentioned towards the end of the quatrain. Rorem goes
one step farther, causing the couplet to occupy thesame number
of measures as the quatrain, thus recognizing the relative
weight in meaning of the couplet, rather than its length.
The first half of the song is accompanied by the ground
bass often associated in tradition with death: the association
is reinforced by the descending, minor quality of the bass, its
repeated notes. Although this idea is not directly continued in
the second half of the song, it is continued indirectly in the
descending voice line.
In a Gondola
(Robert Browning)
The craft mentioned in the title of "In a Gondola" is not
215
mentioned in the text. The poem rather relates a sequence of
events taking place in the gondola: a girl says "Kiss me like
a moth (stanza 1), now like a bee (stanza 2), now let's sleep
(last two lines)."
The gondola is rather mentioned in the most uninterrupted
ostinato in the Rorem catalogue: three descending quarter-note-
chords in slow 3/4 time. For stanza 2 only the key changes; it
changes again for the last two lines, and the bass, although not
the treble, departs from its ostinato. The same figure which
expresses the down-stream progress of the boat is perfect for a
lover bending over his love. The motive appears also, in vary
ing degrees of disguise, throughout the vocal line.
And yet, such bending over in a gliding gondola has impli
cations which cannot be expressed by descending patterns, and
so the climax notes of the succeeding vocal phrases slowly climb,
d^ - e - f^ - g^ - a - b (all in the first verse. In the
second verse (m. 18) themoth is replaced by a bee, the key
mounts a third, from minor to E minor, and the climax notes,
starting back a bit at f ^ , mount more quickly now to c^ as "all
is rendered up."
They are the same people, and yet they will never be the
same again. The music returns to the original pitch, but the
bass is changed so as to express E major instead of the original
C# minor, and the arch which the melody has been striving for
216
throughout the song has achieved a kind of perfection, as her
head bends over his head in sleep.
Requiem
(R. L. Stevenson)
Death is represented by the descent of the bass and of the
ends of most of the vocal phrases, strength by the many dominant-
tonic progressions as at ms. 10-11 and 13-14.
The high point of the song commences at m. 16, where, the
text saying nothing for the moment, but rather directing that
something be said ("This be the verse you grave for me:"), the
voice declaims on one note. This has the effect of directing
the listener's attention to the piano, where the idea of descent
is concentrated in four measures of descending parallel triads--
four in first position, four in second, four in third, and two
in third with doubled fifth--against a pedal bass featuring a
repeated descending octave. This device is the pre-climax. The
climax is at ms. 19 and 20, with the text, "Home is the sailor"
set by a IV-V-I progression to the home key (G^ minor), which,
once reached, is established by seven descending quarter-notes,
g^ to G^.
The voice fittingly ends on a tonic chord for "Home from
the hill." Yet the dominant ending of the postlude suggests
that there is more to come, that death is not the end.
Important points made in this discussion will be summarized,
217
and related to points made concerning the other composers
treated in this paper, in the next chapter.
^Record jacket, Songs of Ned Rorem, Columbia, Stereo -

MS 6561; Monaural - ML 5961.
^Cover, Henmar and Peters editions of Rorem Songs.
3Ibid. 4Ibid.
^Letter to this writer from the composer, 1964.
^Record jacket. Îbid. 3lbid.
^William Flanagan and John Gruen, "Virgil Thomson," The

International Cyclopoedia of Music and Musicians, 9th edition,
ed. Robert Sabin (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1964), p. 2218.
■^David Ewen, Twentieth Century Music (Mew York: Prentice-

Hall, Inc., 1952), p. 435.
1LIbid.
•^-^Peggy Glanville-Hicks, "Virgil Thomson," The Musical

Quarterly, XXV (April, 1949), p. 215.
•^William Flanagan, on record jacket.
■^Garland Anderson, "The Music of Ned Rorem," Music Journal,

21: 34 (April, 1963), p. 71.
15Ibid., p. 72.
■^Songs of Ned Rorem (record), Columbia, Stereo - MS 6561;

Monaural - ML 5961.
218
Chapter XIV
Conclusions
It is the intention of this chapter to discuss the place
of Rorem in the field of the contemporary song, with respect to
subject matter, music including melody, harmony, rhythm and form,
intellectuality, and, chiefly, text-painting.
Concerning the problem of finding subject matter which
deals with an age of anxiety, Rorem has chosen rather to side
step the problem, preferring to focus his listeners' attention
on what is left to mankind of the joys of life, of love, and of
nature. In only two songs, "Root Cellar" and "Visits to St.
Elizabeth's," does he treat the repulsive themes which solved
the problem for Schoenberg. Nor does he adopt humor as the
answer. Only one song, "My Papa's Waltz',' shares this solution
of Poulenc and Stravinsky.
Similarly, very few of his songs draw on religion for their
theme. These few show a fundamental difference from the John
Donne sonnets of Benjamin Britten, in that they are songs of
praise and thanksgiving to the Deity, whereas the Britten songs
are firmly rooted in man's side of the relationship between God
and man, in man's struggles for peace with his God, or, in
modern terms, with his nobler self and with his fellow men. In
this way, Britten causes his listeners to face the sordid state
of the planet of today; Rorem reminds us that we still have a
219
great deal to be thankful for.
In this he has more of pertinence to say, perhaps, than
does Hindemith, whose songs are concerned with the mythological
birth of the Christian religion and, as a by-product, stress the
insignificance of man in the face of an overpowering deity. But
it is man's potential to deal with his lot which one would prefer
to have stressed, if art is to bear a message, not his helpless
ness.
Rorem's real preference for the lyric song is consistent
with the position on subject matter claimed for him above: an
emphasis on the brighter side of twentieth-century existence.
Some of his poems are concerned with pure beauty, nothing more.
(Cognizant of the shelves of literature by philosophers
attempting to define beauty, this writer will accept the dictionary
definition in order to avoid being diverted from the considera
tion of Mr. Rorem:
1. That quality or aggregate of qualities

in a thing which gives pleasure to the
senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or
spirit; physical, moral, or spiritual
loveliness.•L)
Having defined the term, it will now be restated that some
of his poems are concerned with pure beauty, nothing more. Among
these are "The Lordly Hudson," "Rain in Spring," "Early in the
Morning," "Lullaby of the Woman of the Mountain." Most of his
poems, however, have something more than lyricism, than sheer
220
beauty, than beauty for its own sake. Most of them have human
emotion and human values as their raw material, say something of
importance about the human condition in a lyrical, beautiful
way. !lTo the Willow," "Upon Julia's Clothes," "Echo's Song,"
"The Silver Swan" are among these, as are most of the others on
the list. And some balance lyricism and philosophy more toward
the end of the scale occupied by the Copland-Dickinson songs,
notably those by Walt Whitman, "To You," "Youth, Day, Old Age,
and Night," and, by Edmund Spenser, "What if Some Little Pain."
Turning to the music, Rorem, like Hindemith, has published
his manifesto. It appears in various places. It is summed up
in a comment he made on Francois Poulenc:
Both man and music were delicious - an

adjective now suspect to the brain-washed
public alerted to disrespect what it might
like or understand. The very nature of
Poulenc's art is to be liked and understood
which is therefore its momentary defeat.^ -
(The aesthetic of Virgil Thomson is obviously seconded here.)
This statement is quite consistent with his choice of poems and
with the belief illustrated by this choice, that the beautiful--
as opposed to the ugliness of Schoenberg, the satire of Poulenc,
the religion of Britten, the philosophy of Copland--is a fit
subject for the modern art song, that it is as worthy a principle
around which to construct a song as is the problem-solving of
Dallapiccola, the nervous rhythm of Stravinsky, or the complexity
of Copland.
221
Also consistent, and serving to illustrate what Rorem means
by delicious, is the more specific statement concerning melody:
Melody, of course, is the primary

ingredient of song.
Great melodists are not necessarily

great composers. Nor is it prerequisite
of a composer to be able to write unfor
gettable tunes...the continuous arching
flow that is melody. Those whose tunes are
born in spacious lines all but complete in
themselves will probably concentrate on the
vocal mediums.^
The Rorem melodies are, by and large, and compared with
those of most of the other composers treated in this paper,
flowing tunes of spacious arch, all but complete in themselves.
There are some exceptions, such as the declamatory style of
"Echo's Song," where he is alluding to the Purcellian music to
which the poem might have been set in the time of its writing,
or the one-note treatment opposed to difficult arpeggios of
"Root Cellar," his nearest approach in both subject and style to
Schoenberg, or the wide-intervalied texture of "Youth, Day, Old
Age and Night," but even here the notes are related to other
notes of the phrase, or to the notes of other phrases by the
step-wise relationship which Hindemith insists to be the true
basis of melody.
In this respect Rorem stands in direct opposition to
Schoenberg, whose melody was consciously angular, Webern, of whose
style "melody slowly recedes, or rather is transcended,"
222
Dallapiccola, who hides step-wise progressions under the surface
of a style which is predominantly angular. Rorem takes rather
as his model the frank, direct melody of Poulenc, gives it variety
in its shape, warmth in its softer curves, which finds its source
in the greater human warmth of the subject matter. He is also
allied to Hindemith, although the dry, neutral melody which
Hindemith often employed is not a part of Rorem1s style. Much
the same may be said of Copland or Barber. The warmth which was
employed occasionally by Hindemith, frequently by Copland, most
of the time by Barber, is employed almost without exception by
Rorem.
This may be said also of Ralph Vaughan Williams, but here
the resemblance to that composer stops. Even though Rorem, like
Vaughan Williams, employs strophic form, the shape of the melody,
the figuration of the accompaniment, the keys are constantly
varied so that, at worst, one is not disturbed by the hearing of
music which one has learned to associate with one textual component
return in the company of another one incompatible with the old.
At best, as in the songs of Ives, the accompaniments, less con
cerned than Vaughan Williams with rich sonority, are varied and
free not only to mirror the changing requirements of the text
but to truly enhance the text.
The harmony, also, may be traced to Poulenc in its basic
diatony, spiced with varying degrees of dissonance, sometimes a
223
degree as low as Poulenc's, sometimes as high as that of Barber
or Copland. The harmony differs from Poulenc's in a greater
incidence of modality and of modulation, a far lower incidence
of dominant-tonic and other functional progressions.
Rhythm partakes of none of the extreme intricacy of Webern
or Dallapiccola, or even of the constantly changing metres of
Copland, or the lack of metric signatures of Barber, which amounts
to the same thing. Flowing tunes of spacious arch seem to require
bland texture: even rhythm, as well as even pitch relationships.
What jagged rhythms there are, and there are not a few found in
the piano part, are contained within regular metres, thus colouring
the vocal part above, but never disturbing it.
Rorem uses ostinatos, but these are never so obtrusive as
those of Stravinsky, being usually confined to the bass and in
slow notes, therefore leaving the center of attention to the
melody. In almost every case the ostinato has an expressive, as
well as a structural function.
Intellectual content has been mentioned in connection with
some of the composers treated in this paper. The term has not
been defined. Intellectual content is present in any work of
art. To construct and arrange chords so that they sound with
the particular variety of sonority which is commonly called
"Romantic," whose sonorities "go somewhere" in a manner which has
been termed in this paper and elsewhere as "functional," to
. . 224
combine these with a four squareness of bass and a smoothness of
melody into a total result which this writer termed ’’British"
takes intellect. And yet Vaughan Williams is not commonly thought
of as one of the intellectual composers.
What is it that causes Schoenberg to be termed an intellec
tual composer because he manipulates tone rows rather than the
chords of Vaughan Williams, Webern, who manipulates rests and
sounds, Dallapiccola, rows for the purpose of relating to the
text, Stravinsky, rhythms in varying combinations with ostinato
figures, figures in varying contrapuntal combinations with them
selves and others, Hindemith, leittonalities, Copland, trans
formations, interpolations, and extensions in complex combinations?
Why are these men in their varying ways and to their varying
degrees termed intellectual composers and not Vaughan Williams?
Why is not Debussy, who combined tones in new or rediscovered
combinations, used rediscovered progressions, combined them with
rhythmic figures in textures whose impression upon the listener
was one of colour, of mood, of atmosphere, of time in suspension,
rather than one of action, termed an intellectual composer?
Surely it took intellect to accomplish this.
The difference is one of degree. Vaughan Williams and
Debussy used their intellects to create effects which could be
appreciated by the normally experienced listener, understood by
the normally knowledgeable musician. Schoenberg's and Webern's
225
music, to which one can respond without a knowledge of the row,
is nevertheless so different from most people's previous experience,
even decades later, so concentrated in harmony, so complex in
texture as to be extremely difficult. It is in the word
"extremely" that the source of the term "difficult" lies as
applied to him, even more than in the row. To this Dallapiccola
adds necessity for knowledge of the row for full understanding of
the relationship between text and music--surely a principle reason
for the existence of a song.
In the case of Stravinsky the difference is different. In
Stravinsky there are complex rhythmic and contrapuntal relation
ships which may be appreciated at once as an emotional effect but
appreciated more, and understood, only after further hearings.
Added to this is a lack of close connection between the music and
the text. Loose connection there is, but one feels that the text
is superfluous, that a violin substituted for the voice would only
be a welcome removal of what is really a distraction. Not only
is the voice part musically undistinguishable from the instrumental,
but the vocal part is divorced from the text by means of the dis
regard for the stresses of the syllables. Having taken one step
toward the recommendation made above, why stop? For this reason,
Stravinsky might be termed, better than as an intellectual song
composer, as a non-song composer.
Hindemith, while having a great deal to say to the non-
226
sophisticate who is willing to listen many times to the music,
nevertheless has so much content on the cerebral side of this
discussion that he felt it necessary to write eleven large pages
of program notes--one to every seven pages of music--to his
"Marienleben." Even a perfect mastery of these leaves a gap in
the aural appreciation of those listeners without perfect pitch,
an overwhelming majority of music lovers. His cycle is, at least,
devoted to the interpretation of the text.
In the case of Copland the term intellectual might be applied
because of his often severe style, but it is a style for whose
assimilation hard listening is sufficient--unaided by a handbook.
As commonly understood, then, the intellectual composer may
be defined as one whose music contains material which cannot com
municate to the normal listener, or which cannot communicate
except with an inordinate amount of effort. It could be argued
that a song exists to enhance the emotional effect of a poem on
the listener. By extension, to the extent that a song's effect
is buried by its being incommunicable to the listener, perhaps it
is not a song at all, but an exercise in logic. As Ives questioned,
"Must a song always be a song?" If the answer to this is an
unqualified "yes" (which is not to say that it is), then the songs
of Ned Rorem are equally worthy to be called songs with those of
all the composers discussed in this paper, for they are consistently
227
attractive melodically, devoid of difficult-to-detect devices,
not devoid of emotional appeal or of time-honored devices for the
translation of the content of the text, emotional and otherwise,
into musical language, thus enriching the communicr.tion.
If one were to grant the premise that a song, of all musical
forms, is the one which presupposes flowing melody as a definitive
part, then Debussy, Britten, Ives, Hindemith, Copland, Barber
would be admitted as song composers, their less than flowing
passages explained as elements of non-vocal music admitted for
contrast. Poulenc, Vaughan Williams and Rorem would be classified
as more perfect, since their songs are the most consistently
"melodic." But there are further lines to be drawn. Poulenc
draws upon a relatively limited repertoire of subject matter,
limited to cynical regard of the foibles of mankind. Vaughan
Williams looks on the positive side of existence, but is a style
so rooted in the strophic folk song suitable to the art song? Or
is not an art song expected to contribute values beyond that of
a pretty tune and a supporting accompaniment? Is it not expected
to contribute more directly to the expressive values of the text.
Rorem, it would seem, contributes these values in rather fuller
measure than Vaughan Williams, and to texts of more varied con
cerns and positive values than Poulenc.
As in the case of Hindemith, there are two statements by
Rorem on this topic of musico-textual relationship.
228
A composer examines verses with an intention

of determining what manner of music will co
incide with what words in what section of the
4
poem.^
and
Metricious originality is to be avoided at

all costs... Mickey-Mousing...when a brick
falls on the foot the music goes ouch.'^
As is the case with Hindemith, there is no contradiction;
the truth encompasses both statements. There is a long list of
musical shapes, textures, devices, etc., which are a part of any
music except the experimental, which, when they coincide with
emotions and situations in the text may seem to be associated
with them, may thus reinforce the listener's emotional perception
of the poem, hence of the song. When the incidence of these
meetings of music and meaning are as high as they are in Rorem,
then the composer must admit to text-painting as an element of
his style. If these meetings are too obvious, if they do not
form a part of purely musical shape and progress, that is when
they "Mickey-Mouse." Rorem is justified in denying that he
"Mickey-Mouses." But, on the other hand, if the music goes its
own way, the shape of the music having no relationship to the text,
this may be music, as in the case of Stravinsky, it may be song,
as in the case of Vaughan Williams, but it is not art song. Rorem,
in living up to his first statement, is deserving of the name,
"composer of art songs."
There is a curious other side to this coin--which is that,
229
for a composer so apparently anxious to enhance a poem with his
music and vice-versa as is Rorem, he is sometimes surprisingly
wasteful of one of the surest aids to this enhancement, the
enunciation of the text by the singer. This is particularly true
of the songs whose vocal line rises to near astronomical pitches

O
above c , such as the Six Songs for High Voice and Orchestra,
including "Pippa1s Song," "Song for a Girl," and "In a Gondola."
One of the songs rises to f . As has been pointed out before,

O
enunciation of vowels above g^ is wasted--on all but the singer,
and others who may know the words beforehand.
This assumption that the audience either knows the text,
or is reading it off the program, or doesn't need a knowledge of
it to appreciate the work of art, permeates public performance
practice, however, particularly in this country, in the singing
of songs and opera in foreign languages. Perhaps these are valid
assumptions, freeing composers from a tiresome restriction. But
they do contribute to the inaccessibility of serious music to
anyone but connoisseurs--and the imitators of connoisseurs.
rk /V
There will be no attempt to reach a dogmatic, final conclusion,
firmly based upon irrefutable fact, as to the place of Ned Rorem
in the field of contemporary song. As stated in the introduction
of this thesis,
...many of the findings will be, of necessity
230
subjective. To an artist-performer, music

is, above all else, communication of feeling.
Many subjective evaluations have been made in the course
of the thesis, and in the course of this concluding chapter.
The principle, subjective impression left with this writer after
examining the songs--those of thirteen twentieth-century composers
including Ned Rorem--is this. Rorem1s are, for the most part,
tuneful, bland and mildly dissonant. Rorem's commentators are
agreed on this, and this paper does not dispute it. As such,
however, there is ground for the same charge that was levelled
earlier at Schoenberg in comparing his use of dissonance to that
of Ives, that dissonance may be too powerful a weapon to be used,
as by Schoenberg, as a normative sound. The same criticism was
made of Stravinsky's rhythmic ostinatos. Both of these techniques
have seemed more effective when used as one of a battery of
techniques, as in Ives, or Copland, or Barber.
One is bound, now, to say of Rorem, after examining the works
of twelve other composers, that pretty melody and bland texture
and mild dissonance may add up to too persuasive a weapon to be
used every day, also. This is not to say that there is not
variety in the songs of Rorem. There is. And even in a group of
the blandest songs, close examination reveals a variety -stemming
from the varying, detailed requirements of the texts. But all
things are relative, and the songs of Debussy, Ives, Britten,
Copland or Barber strike this writer as having more sharply
231
defined personalities, resulting chiefly from the rather greater
contrast between them: contrast in tempo, motive, degree of
dissonance, but primarily in the unique and forceful way in which
these and other various musical elements are composed into a
musical profile, or what Roger Sessions, as quoted in the intro
duction of this thesis, called a “musical gesture." Nor is close
examination wasted on these other songs. Although not needed to
disclose a profile, it is rewarded by the disclosing of many fine
details.
* * *
If the reader is left somewhat suspended, the intention of
the writer has been accomplished. If he is motivated to read the
paper again--to listen to the music again, in order to ascertain
just what has been said--if he does this and still feels up in the
air and undecided as to the place of Ned Rorem as a Twentieth
Century Song Composer--things are as they should be, providing,
that is, he has gained some heightened appreciation of the musical
gestures of Vaughan Williams, Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky,
Francois Poulenc, Charles Ives, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern,
Benjamin Britten, Paul Hindemith, Aaron Copland, Luigi Dallapiccola,
Samuel Barber, and Ned Rorem.
W ebster's Collegiate Dictionary, 5th ed. (Springfield, Mass.;

G. and C. Merriam Co., 1941.), p. 92.
232
^Ned Rorem, "Poulenc - A Memoir," Tempo, Vol. 64 (Spring,

1963), p. 29.
^Rorem, "Writing Songs," American Record Guide, Vol. 26

(February, 1960), p. 407.
4Ibid., p. 492.
5Ibid., (November, 1959), p. 213.
233
Appendix I
AN ALPHABETICAL LIST OF THE SONGS OF NED ROREM INCLUDING DATE OF

COMPOSITION, POET, PUBLISHER, VOCAL RANGE, REMARKS
(An asterisk indicates that the song is included in the
Coluinbia recording, "Songs of Ned Rorem,"
and discussed in the thesis.)
SINGLE SONGS
Alleluia. 1946. Hargail. Medium-high (b-g#2). Rhythmic, fast.
As Adam Early in the Morning. 7/24/57. Walt Whitman. Henmar.

Medium-high (c^ -e ). Sensuous, chromatic, piano easy.
An Angel Speaks to the Shepherds. 8/27-31/52. St. Luka Southern.

Medium-high (d^-ab^). Dramatic. Moderately difficult for
voice and piano.
*Bedlam. (See Visits to St. Elizabeth's).
*A Christmas Carol. 1952. Text: 1500 A.D. Elkan Vogel. Medium-

high (c^--f^). Accompaniment easy.
*Early in the Morning. 1954. Robert Hillyer. Henmar. Medium-

low (d^— f^). Simple, step-wise.
*Echo's Song. 2/15/48. Ben Johnson. Boosey. Medium (eb^-f^).

Declamatory.
*Epitaph. 1953. Text: 15th Century. Elkan Vogel. Medium

(dl-f2). Short, sustained.
*The Lordly Hudson. 1947. Paul Goodman. Mercury. Medium

(dt> -g2). Flowing, rhapsodic.
*1 am Rose. 9/29/55. Gertrude Stein. Henmar. Medium (f^-f^).

Simple, lyric, short.
*In a Gondola* 12/2/53. Robert Browning. Henmar. Very high

(f#!-c# ). Lyric-dramatic. Composer's orchestration available.
Jack L'Eventreur. Folder Magazine 1956. Very high.
Little Elegy. 3/29/49. Elinor Wylie. Hargail. Medium

(c#^-e2). Short, lyric, easy accompaniment.
234
*Lullaby of the Woman on the Mountain. 8/18/50. Padriac Pearse.

Boosey. Medium (c$^-f$ ). Lyric, easy accompaniment.
The Lord's Prayer. 7/2/57. Henmar. Medium (el-g2). Lyric.
Memory. 5/27/59. Theodore Roethke. Henmar. Medium (d^--e^).

Slow, piano easy.
*My Papa's Waltz. 9/59. Theodore Roethke. Henmar. Medium

(b-f# ). Humorous, pa thetic.
Night Crow. 8/22/59. Theodore Roethke. Henmar. Medium

(c^-g ). Expressionistic.
On a Singing Girl. 4/29/46. Elinor Wylie. Hargail. Medium-

high (f-f2). Quiet declamation, piano easy.
*The Nightingale. 8/11/51. Text:1500 A.D. Boosey. Medium

). Folk style, easy accompaniment.
Philomel. 6/9/50. Richard Barnefield. Hargail. Low (b-e^).

Plaintive. Folk style.
*Pippa's Song. 12/3/53. Robert Browning. Henmar. Very high

(d^dS). Sustained, Composer's orchestration available.
*Psalm 134. 10/16-17/51. Southern. Medium (d^-g ^ ) . Melismatic,

restrained, joyful.
*Psalm 148. 10/11-15. Southern. Medium (c-*— g^). Fast, syncopated.
*Psalm 150. 10/51. Southern. High (d^-a^). Maestoso.
A Psalm of Praise. 1945. Psalm 100. Associated. Medium

(cl— g2). Fast and nervous.
*0 You Whom I Often and Silently Come. 7/16/57. Walt Whitman.

Henmar. Low (c^ -e^). Lyric, accompaniment easy.
*Rain in Spring. 6/7/49. Paul Goodman. Boosey. Low (a-e^).

Accomoaniment easy.
*Requiem. 11/9-10/48. R. L. Stevenson. Peer. Medium ( c ^ - f ^ ) .
The Resurrection. (Cantata) 8/5/52. St. Matthew. Southern.

Medium (b^-ab-). Dramatic, difficult.
235
*Root Cellar* 7/12/59. Theodore Roethke. Henmar. Medium

(bb_gb ^ Declamatory.
*Sally's Smile. 9/12/53. Paul Goodman. Henmar. Medium

(el-f$ Fast.
*See How They Love_Me. 10/6-7/56. Howard Moss. Henmar. Medium-

high (eb -a^ ). Lyric, easy accompaniment.
*The Silver Swan. 2/25/49. Ben Jonson. Peer. High (e^— c^),
Elizabethan.
*Snake. 8/18-21/59. Theodore Roethke. Henmar. Medium (e^-f^).
A Song of David. 1945. Psalm 120,, Associated. Medium

(d^— g^). Chant-like, dramatic.
*Song for a Girl. 11/20-21/53. Dryden. Henmar. Very high

(e^— e^). Irish lilt. Composer's orchestration available.
*Spring. 1/47. Gerald Manley Hopkins. Boosey. High (c^-a^).
^Spring and Fall. 1946. Gerald Manley Hopkins. Mercury. Medium

(d#" ). Easy accompaniment.
*Such Beauty As Jjkirts .to Behold. 7/10/57. Paul Goodman. Henmar.

Medium (e^ -g^ ), Accompaniment easy.
*To the Willow. 5/50. Robert Herrick. Mercury. Bass (A-c-*-).

Available only in the cycle: Flight for Heaven.
*To You.7/17/57. Walt Whitman. Elkan Vogel. Medium (d^— e^).

Simple.
*Upon Julia's Clothes. 5/50. Robert Herrick. Mercury. Bass

(d-d ). Available only in the cycle: Flight for Heaven.
*Visits to St. Elizabeth's (Bedlam). 1957. Elizabeth Bishop.

Boosey. Medium (d^-g^). Long, dramatic.
The Waking. 6/9,11/59. Theodore Roethke. Henmar. Medium

(dl-g2). Expressionistic, piano easy.
*What if Some Little Pain. 12/20/49. Edmund Spenser. Hargail.

Medium (c^— f^). Lyric, accompaniment easy.
*Youth, Day, Old Age, and Night. 7/6/54. Walt Whitman. Henmar.
High (d - a ). Dramatic.
236
Appendix II
SONG CYCLES (In chronological order of composition)
Scenes from "Another Sleep." 4/5/51. Julien Green. Henmar.

3 songs, b-ek , b^-e^, d-*--f^. Moderate difficulty.
Who knows if this other half of life in which we
think ourselves awake is not another sleep a little
different from the first, from which we awaken
when we think we are asleep? (From the cover.)
Cycle of Holy Songs. 10/6-17. Psalms 134, 142, 148, 150.

Southern. Medium (b-a^). Psalm 142 is a lament. The
other three are listed above under single songs, and
are on the Columbia Record, "Songs of Ned Rorem."
From an Unknown Past. 2 1951. Renaissance poets, mostly anonymous.

Southern. (g$-f?^ ). Arranged by the composer from the
original version for mixed voices a capella.
The Lover in Winter Plaineth for the Spring. Anonymous XVI

Cent, (d-*--d^). Easy.
Hey Nonny No. (Men are fools that wish to die!) Christ Church
MS. (g^-e^). Lowest song except for the bass cycle: Flight
for Heaven.
My Blood is So Red. (or The Call.) Anonymous, (c^-d^).

t 2
Suspiria. Anonymous. (d^-e )._
The Miracle. 1600. (b^-f^).
Tears. Dowland's Third Book of Airs: Weep you no more, sad

fountains. (b^-e^).
Crabbed Age and Youth. Shakespeare? (b^-e^).
Flight for Heaven. 5/50. Robert Herrick. Mercury. For bass

(p#_eb Nine Songs, piano interlude.
To Music to Becalm His Fears. (F^-e^). Difficult rhythm.

*1
Cherry Ripe. (G-d*5 ). Difficult piano part.
Julia's Clothes. (d-d^). Difficult piano part. On Columbia

Record. Discussed in thesis.
237
To Daisies, Not To Shut So Soon. (B-d^^). Difficult piano

part.
Epitaph. (c-c^-). Easy.
Another Epitaph. (c-c-*-). Easy.
To the Willow Tree. (A-c^). Moderately difficult piano part.

On the Columbia Record. Discussed in thesis.
-//.I
Comfort To a Youth That Had Lost His Love. (G^-d$ ).
To Anthea (Bid me to live.). (F^-e*5 ). Difficult.
Poemes pour la Paix. 1953. MS. Six songs in French.
Four Dialogues for mezzo-soprano, tenor, and two pianos. 1954.

Frank O'Hara. Henmar.
The Subway.
The Airport.
The Apartment.
In Spain and in New York.
King Midas. 1961. MS. Ten Songs for Two Singers.
Poems of Love and the Rain. 12/62-1/63. Donald Windham, W. H.

Auden, Howard Moss, Emily Dickenson, Theodore Roethke,
Jack Larson, e. e. cummings, Kenneth Pitchford. MS.
(Published by Boosey in late Spring, 1965).
Three Poems of Tennyson. 1963. MS.
Appendix III
SONG FOR VOICE AND STRING QUARTET
Mourning Scene. 7/20/47. II Samuel 1: 19-27. Henmar. (c-*— g^).
Appendix IV
SONGS FOR VOICE AND ORCHESTRA
Six Irish Poems. 1950. For rent only. Southern.
238
Six Songs for High Voice and Orchestra. Also for Piano Reduction.
11, 12/53. Henmar.
Pippa's Song. See above under Single Songs.
Cradle Song: 0 My Deir Hert, Young Jesus Sweit. 12/17/53.

XVI Cent, (g^-d13 ). Piano part easy.
Song For a Girl. See above under Single Songs.
Roundelav: Chloe found Amyntas lying. 11/25/53* Dryden.

(f1- ^).
In a Gondola. See above under Single Songs.
Song to a Fair Young Lady going out of town in the Spring.

11/16/53. Dryden. (c-f^).
Appendix V
KEY TO PUBLISHERS
with addresses as of January, 1965
Associated Music Publishers

1 W. 47th Street
New York City.
Boosey and Hawkes

Oceanside, New York.
Elkan Vogel, Inc.

1716 Sansom Street
Philadelphia 3, Pennsylvania.
Hargail Music Company

157 West 57th Street
New York 19, New York.
Henmar Press, Sole Selling Agents;

C. F. Peters Corp.
373 Park Avenue South
New York, New York 10016.
Mercury Music, Selling Agent:

Theodore Presser Company
Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.
Peer International Corporation
c/o
Southern Music Publishing Company
(see next entry).
Southern Music Publishing Company

836 11th Avenue
New York, New York 10036.
240
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CITED
A. Scores
Barber, Samuel. Dover Beach, Opus 3. New York: G. Schirmer,

1936.
______ . Hermit Songs, Op. 29. New York: G. Schirmer, 1954.
Britten, Benjamin. The Holy Sonnets of John Donne, Op. 35.

London: Boosey and Hawkes, Ltd., 1946.
Copland, Aaron. Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson. London: Boosey

and Hawkes, Ltd., 1951.
Dallapiccola, Luigi. Goethe-Lieder. Milano: Suivini Zerboni,

1953.
Debussy, Claude. Le Promenoir des deux Amants. Paris: Durand,

1910.
______ . Trois Ballades de Francois Villon. Paris: Durand, 1910.
Hindemith, Paul. Das Marienleben. Mainz: B. Schott's Soehne,

1943.
Ives, Charles E. "Charlie Rutlage." Charles Ives: Seven Songs.

Cos Cobb Press, Inc., 1932; Reissued New York: Arrow Music
Press, Inc. j?. 5.
______ . "General William Booth Enters Heaven." Nineteen Songs

by Charles E. Ives: New Music Quarterly, IX. New York:
New Music Edition Corp., 1935. p. 2.
______ . "The Greatest Man." Thirty-four Songs by Charles E.

Ives: New Music Quarterly, 3rd ed., Vol. VII. New York:
New Music Edition Corp., 1933. p. 13.
______ . "Soliloquy." Ibid. p. 50.
Poulenc, Francois. Le Bestiaire: ou Cortege d'Orphee. Paris:

Max Eschig, 1920.
. Chansons Gaillardes. Paris: Hegel, 1926.
241
Rorem, Ned. See asterisk-marked items of Appendix I of this

paper.
Schoenberg, Arnold. Three Songs: Sommermued. Tot. Maedchenlied.

Hillsdale, New York: Bomart Music Publications, Inc., 1952.
Stravinsky, Igor. Quatre Chants Russes. London: J. and W.

Chester, Ltd., 1920.
Webern, Anton. Drei Gesaenge Aus "Viae Inviae," Opus 23. Wien:
Universal Edition, 1936.
Williams, Ralph Vaughan. Songs of Travel: Part I. London:

Boosey and Co., 1905.
B. Recording
Songs of Ned Rorem. Columbia. Stereo - MS6561; Monaural - ML5961.
C. Books
Berger, Arthur. Aaron Copland. New York: Oxford University

Press, 1953.
Cowell, Henry, "Charles E. Ives." American Composers on American

Music. Ed. Cowell. Stanford University Press, California,
1933.
Cowell, Henry and Sidney. Charles Ives and His Music. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1955.
Ewen, David. Twentieth Century Music. New York: Prentice-Hall,

Inc., 1952.
Hawkins, Ralph, and others. Bela Bartok: A Memorial Review.

London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1950.
Hindemith, Paul. The Craft of Musical Composition: Book I .

Theoretical Part. 4th ed. New York: Associated Music
Publishers, T h e . , 1945.
______ . Das Marienleben: Introductory Remarks and English

Translation of the Poems. New York: Associated Music
Publishers, Inc., 1948.
242
„ Ives, Charles E. 114 Songs. Redding, Conn.: By the composer,

1932.
Kirkpatrick, John. The Music Manuscripts of Charles Edward Ives.

New Haven; By the author, 1960.
Sessions, Roger. The Musical Experience of Composer, Performer

and Listener. New York: Atheura, 1962.
Vennard, William. Singing: The Mechanism and the Technique.

Los Angeles: By the author, 1962.
Webster*s Collegiate Dictionary. 5th ed. Springfield, Mass.:

G. and C. Merriam Co., 1941.
D. Articles and Periodicals
Anderson, Garland. "The Music of Ned Rorem," Music Journal, 21:

>4 (April, 1963), pp. 34, 71-72.
Craft, Robert. "Anton Webern," The Score and I, M. A. Magazine.

No. 13 (September, 1955), pp. 9-22.
Flanagan, William and Gruen, John. "Virgil Thomson." The

International Cyclopoedia of Music and Musicians, 9th ed.,
ed. Robert Sabin. New York: Dodd Mead and Co., 1964.
pp. 2216-2225.
Glanvilie-Hicks, "Virgil Thomson," The Musical Quarterly, XXV

(April, 1949), pp. 209-225.
Hansheimer, Hans. "What Happens to the Voice in Contemporary

Music," Bulletin of the National Association of Teachers of
Singing, XV (February 15, 1959), pp. 26-27, 33-34.
Hill, Richard S. "Arnold Schoenberg: Three Songs," Music Library

Association Notes, Series IX (June, 1952), pp. 503-504.
Lippman, Edward Arthur. "Webern: The Complete Music," Musical

Quarterly, XLIV (July, 1958), pp. 416-419.
Mann, William S. "Song: 20th Century," Grove1s Dictionary of

Music and Musicians, ed. Eric Blom, VII, 5th ed. London:
Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1954. pp. 950-962.
243
Nathan, Hans. "The Modern Period: The United States," A History

of Song, ed. Denis Stevens. New York: W. W. Norton, 1961.
pp. 408-460.
______ . "The Twelve-Tone Compositions of Dallapiccola," Musical

Quarterly. XLIV (July, 1958), pp. 289-310.
Rorem, Ned. "Poulenc - A Memoir," Tempo, Vol. 64 (Spring, 1963),

pp. 28-29.
______ . "Writing Songs," American Record Guide, Vol. 26

(November, 1959), pp. 164-166, 216-218; and (February, 1960),
pp. 406-409, 492.
Wildberger, Jacques. "Dallapiccola, ’Cinque Canti,1" Melos,

Zeitschrift fuer neue Musik, Heft 1/26 Jahr (January, 1959),
pp. 7-10.
D. Letter to the Writer
Rorem, Ned. New York: September 30, 1964.
244
VITA
The writer, William Sills Wright North, was born in Walton,
New York, on August 13, 1926. He was graduated in January, 1944
from The Mount Hermon School, Mount Hermon, Massachusetts. He
received the Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia College of
Columbia University in the City of New York in 1947. In 1949 he
was granted the Master of Music degree in Performance and
Literature and the Performer's Certificate in Voice from the
Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester, Rochester,
New York. He is a member of Pi Kappa Lambda honorary fraternity,
University of Illinois chapter.
He is Associate Professor of Music (in Voice) and Director
of the College Choir at Allegheny College, Meadville, Pennsylvania,
where he has been a member of the Department of Music since 1949.
In addition to these duties he has appeared frequently as soloist
in recital, oratorio, and opera.

Ned Rorem As A Twentieth Century Song Composer (1965)

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Ned Rorem As A Twentieth Century Song Composer (1965)

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This dissertation has been

microfilmed exactly as received 6 6 -4 2 5 7

NORTH, W illiam S ills W right, 1926—

U n iv e r sity o f I llin o is , D .M .A ., 1965

University M icrofilm s, Inc., A nn A rbor, M ichigan

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

THE GRADUATE COLLEGE

S U P E R V IS IO N BY. WILLIAM SILLS WRIGHT NORTH

E N T IT L E D . NED ROREM AS A TWENTIETH CENTURY SONG COMPOSER

DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS

Recommendation concurred inf

t Required for doctor’s degree but not for master’s.

The interest, the time, and the patience devoted by

Professor Charles E. ilanim to assisting in the preparation

of this thesis is gratefully acknowledged.

Chapter I - Ralph Vaughan Williams........................ 6

Chapter II - Claude Debussy............................... 12

Chapter III - Igor Stravinsky............................. 26

Chapter IV - Francois Poulenc............................. 39

Chapter V - Charles Ives................................... 53

Chapter VI - Arnold Schoenberg................... 68

Chapter VII - Anton Webern................................ 78

Chapter VIII - Benjamin Britten......................... yi

Chapter IX - Paul Hindemith............................. 105

Cnapter X - Aaron Copland........................... 124

Chapter XI - Luigi Dallapiccola........................... 1^1

Chapter XII - Samuel Barber................................ 15z

Cnapter XIII - Nea Rorem................................... jl/i

Song for a Girl (John Dryden)................. 175

Chapter XIV - Conclusions................................ 218

Appendix I - AN ALPHABETICAL LIST OF THE SONGS OF

Appendix II - SONG CYCLES.......................... ....... 236

Appendix III - SONG FOR VOICE AND STRINGQUARTET........ 237

Appendix IV - SONGS FOR VOICE AND ORCHESTRA............ 237

Appendix V - KEY TO PUBLISHERS.......................... 238

The intent of this thesis is to evaluate the songs of Ned

Roretn by comparing them to songs of twelve acknowledged leaders

in the field of contemporary song, with especial emphasis on

relationships between poetry and music.

The composers to be discussed are Ralph Vaughan Williams,

Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, Francois Poulenc, Charles Ives,

Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Benjamin Britten, Paul Hindemith,

Aaron Copland, Luigi Dallapiccola, Samuel Barber, and Mr. Rorem.

The study could be profitably pursued from many points of

view: harmonic, formal, melodic, stylistic analysis— such would

be more fittingly undertaken, however, by people who have

specialized in these fields. The present writer has sought a

way in which he might make a unique contribution as one who has

been trained in the performing arts.

Pursuing this direction, the writer has considered discussing

how one might go about the interpretation of the songs in per­

for all the composers, something, moreover, which would not

sufficiently involve the songs as literature. Any singer, further­

more, is expected to understand the poem he is singing so as to

be able to project it effectively, to be "musical" enough to

execute that side of a work with sensitivity.

understanding of his art, would be an insight into the many subtle

relationships between the poem and the music. It is reasonable

each other, there will be more impact of communication than when

music and text seem to be independent of each other, or even at

This, then, is the aspect of the songs which has been

selected for emphasis. Harmonic, formal, melodic, and stylistic

of necessity, subjective. To an artist-performer music is, above

how one might go about the interpretation of the songs in per

sufficiently involve the songs as literature. Any singer, further

In an address to the National Convention of the National Asso

because it is familiar, familiar because it is governed by famil

So far the style presents no problem to listener or per