O Captain! my Captain! - for Bass-Baritone and Pianoforte

I think this piece is fairly straightforward. It is a setting of a well-known poem commissioned by a bass-baritone in my studio at school. It is set to the Walt Whitman text "O Captain! my Captain!" as follows:

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;

The ship has weather

The text is sad and unfortuenate, but I loved it! Mattew Sullivan. A suitable name!

;)

Wow...

I really love this piece. I think the melody is great, and I think you have a great talent at setting words.

The piano part isn't very complex, but I think that adds to the character of the piece. Beautiful job.

I like the harmonies. At times they are jarring, but in a good way.

With a good baritone, I am sure the live recording will be wonderful.

I feel like it would be nice to get away from A every now and again. You do it so well in that central march-tempo section. I loved that. A lot. It was very text-driven and engaging. The end in particular, with its A pedals, dragged on, a very long time. You already have instances of cluster-harmonies. Altering the pedals at certain phrases in that cluster-scheme might help.

You do a good job of variance in phrase length. There are only a few instances of 4+4 bar phrases, and while they do feel that way, they don't stick out.