{"id":5831,"date":"2023-12-19T12:08:47","date_gmt":"2023-12-19T17:08:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alzand.com\/?p=5831"},"modified":"2024-06-04T12:58:23","modified_gmt":"2024-06-04T17:58:23","slug":"the-sky-with-all-its-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alzand.com\/?p=5831","title":{"rendered":"The Sky With All Its Stars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/alzand.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/AlZand_poster_SSM-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-5834\" src=\"http:\/\/alzand.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/AlZand_poster_SSM-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1802\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alzand.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/AlZand_poster_SSM-scaled.jpg 2560w, https:\/\/alzand.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/AlZand_poster_SSM-300x211.jpg 300w, https:\/\/alzand.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/AlZand_poster_SSM-1024x721.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/alzand.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/AlZand_poster_SSM-768x541.jpg 768w, https:\/\/alzand.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/AlZand_poster_SSM-1536x1081.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/alzand.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/AlZand_poster_SSM-2048x1441.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/alzand.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/AlZand_poster_SSM-200x141.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><br class=\"clear\" \/><br class=\"clear\" \/><span class=\"drop-caps\">A<\/span> January 16th recital at the Shepherd School of Music features the premiere of several new song cycles for voice and piano performed by guest artists Aidan Soder (mezzo-soprano), Wesley Ducote (piano), Mark Diamond (baritone), Michael Clark (piano), Marcus DeLoach (baritone), Grant Loehnig (piano), and Shepherd School students James Palmer (piano), Caitlin Aloia (soprano), Julia Holoman (mezzo-soprano) and William Dopp (bass-baritone). The program includes selections from <a href=\"https:\/\/alzand.com\/?page_id=800\"><strong>Tagore Love Songs<\/strong><\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/alzand.com\/?page_id=804\"><strong>Orange Torches Against the Rain<\/strong><\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/alzand.com\/?page_id=5046\"><strong>Two Songs on poems of Reg Huston<\/strong><\/a> and the world premiere of: <strong>Vespertine Songs<\/strong>, <strong>Four Not So Serious Songs<\/strong>, <strong>Unsentimental Love Songs<\/strong> and <strong>Your Letter Pleased Me Greatly<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Vespertine Songs<\/strong> are melodies of the night. <em>Of an Evening<\/em> is drawn from the descriptive prose of Charles Dickens (1812\u20131870), whose brooding evocation of a darkening city emphasizes a timeless, cyclic quality. Marina Tsvetaeva\u2019s (1892\u20131941) <em>Insomnia<\/em> has us wandering with a sleepless night owl and finding no solace in the streets. In <em>Points and Lines<\/em> Aldous Huxley (1894\u20131963) paints a beautiful metaphor of a night sky, a summer lake and the revelatory wonder of stars. \u201cAnne Knish\u201d is a pseudonym of Arthur Davison Ficke (1883\u20131945), a conservative American poet whose many \u201cspectralist\u201d poems like <em>Nocturne<\/em> parodied the imagist movement. Poetic irony then, that these are the only verses for which he is remembered. <em>Nocturne<\/em> is a nighttime soundscape of sorts: the enveloping noises of the evening fade into the distance, replaced by something even more magical.<\/p>\n<div class=\"videoWrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/19kqtP16bzE?si=9e5ZMWw01PPOqMUy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><strong>Four Not So Serious Songs<\/strong> comprise light-hearted settings of two poems by Robert Graves (1895\u20131985) and two by me. In <em>This Song is Going to End<\/em> our poor singer faces a looming existential crisis. An intemperate child protests his lot in <em>Careers<\/em>, a song which takes the form of a school-yard taunt. The nested structure of <em>Warning to Children<\/em> makes it a perfect poem for a patter song, its tripping rhythms spiraling down the page. <em>So You Say<\/em> is a gentle rebuke of melodramatic love songs, and a parody of their romantic tropes.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-5847\" src=\"http:\/\/alzand.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Darwin_Question-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1607\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alzand.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Darwin_Question-scaled.jpg 2560w, https:\/\/alzand.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Darwin_Question-300x188.jpg 300w, https:\/\/alzand.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Darwin_Question-1024x643.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/alzand.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Darwin_Question-768x482.jpg 768w, https:\/\/alzand.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Darwin_Question-1536x964.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/alzand.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Darwin_Question-2048x1286.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/alzand.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Darwin_Question-200x126.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/alzand.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Darwin_Question-scaled.jpg\"><br class=\"clear\" \/><br class=\"clear\" \/><\/a><strong>Unsentimental Love Songs<\/strong> are devoted to the quotidian side of love. The text of <em>This is the Question<\/em> is drawn from a page in Charles Darwin\u2019s diary (above), when the famed scientist methodically weighs the pros and cons of his impending nuptials. His sensitive, if somewhat self-absorbed character comes across charmingly in his amorous analysis. Edna St. Vincent Millay\u2019s (1892\u20131950) sonnet <em>I Shall Forget You Presently, My Dear<\/em> is a classic unsentimental love poem, one of many to feature her delicate balance of scoffing wit and fragile sincerity.<\/p>\n<div class=\"videoWrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/lmcqLaIuSKg?si=jPzSgNbJv5xKXQuK\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><strong>Your Letter Pleased Me Greatly<\/strong> is based on text by Erasmus (1466\u20131536), from the Dutch theologian\u2019s book on rhetoric, <em>Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style<\/em> (1512). In a virtuosic demonstration of prose embellishment, he famously provides 195 variations of the simple sentence <em>\u201cTuae litterae me magnopere delectarunt\u201d<\/em> [Your letter pleased me greatly]\u2014each variation bringing a very different sense and sentiment to the same basic point. Twenty variants are used in my piece for soprano and piano, and the work\u2019s approach reflects the same conceit: each short \u201cvariation\u201d uses similar musical material, but projected with a succession of different moods, characters, and structural forms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A January 16th recital at the Shepherd School of Music features the premiere of several new song cycles for voice and piano performed by guest artists Aidan Soder (mezzo-soprano), Wesley Ducote (piano), Mark Diamond (baritone), Michael Clark (piano), Marcus DeLoach (baritone), Grant Loehnig (piano), and Shepherd School students James Palmer (piano), Caitlin Aloia (soprano), Julia [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alzand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alzand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alzand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alzand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alzand.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5831"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/alzand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6165,"href":"https:\/\/alzand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5831\/revisions\/6165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alzand.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alzand.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alzand.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}