Two Night Songs

Hello all,

I'm uploading two songs that I've just completed here at my university. The composition department is doing a project in collaboration with a graduate class of singers; each of the composers is being assigned one or two poems which they will set in a song. Then, each composer is assigned a singer from the class. Each poem has something to do with night, silence, sleep, death, etc. The two poems I was assigned were Paul Lawrence Dunbar's "Silence and Whirling Worlds" and Whitman's "This is Thy Hour, O Soul."

"Thy Hour" (for soprano) is based on an octatonic collection (1,2 to be exact). The language in this piece is dark and melancholy. This song actually will be the "introduction" to the other songs on the program, as it is the first to be sung on the program.

"Silence and Whirling Worlds" (for tenor) is based on a diatonic collection of the pitches of A-flat major, although there are deviations from that. The piano part incorporates a sextuplet "whirling" rhythm that I feel is an important part of the piece.

I'll post the links to the mp3 and PDF of each song below (I hope it works).

Thanks for looking!

"Silence and Whirling Worlds" mp3

"This is Thy Hour, O Soul" mp3

Thy Hour.pdf

Silence and Whirling Worlds.pdf

I really like both of them, though if I had to pick one it'd be Silence and Whirling Worlds.

I love Silence of the Whirling Worlds because of its flow from phrase to phrase. Overall very good stuff. :D

Out of curiosity, was the left hand of the piano like a voice responding back to the tenor?

Yeah! The left hand of the piano was doing imitative counterpoint, which is actually in the same register as the tenor.

Thanks for listening! Glad you liked it.

Well done!

I wish I had more time to go through these (perhaps soon), but I really enjoyed both. Silence and whirling winds was well set. I'm glad you came back with the initial A section of the ascending and descending sextuplets. Pleasing melodic figures and I enjoyed the imitation as well.

I'm very partial to the Whitman setting and I will definitely have to listen to it some more. I actually did a setting of the same poem for an a capella choir. I will post it soon and I'm pretty sure another member did the same one as well not too long ago (Morivou, perhaps?). That's interesting that we all picked the same one. Anyway, I think the octatonic leanings are very appropriate for this poem since it's very ethereal. It's a good balance of some very unsettling and at the same time, ear-catching harmonies. I will go back and analyze it some more later.

Are you studying or teaching composition? It's obvious that you know what you're doing. If you have a moment, please take a look/listen to my latest work also in this forum. It's a setting of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis. I could always use some more feedback. Cheers!

FMcG

Fingers-

Thanks so much for listening! Glad you enjoyed the songs.

That is interesting that three of us used the same Whitman poem. It really is an evocative poem, and I think as the opening song it will serve as a nice introduction to all these "night songs" that the composers at my school are writing.

(I am currently a sophomore music composition student at Shenandoah Conservatory in Virginia.)

I'll definitely take a look at your choral piece in the next couple of days. Thanks again for the feedback!

Hornet

I'm very partial to the Whitman setting and I will definitely have to listen to it some more. I actually did a setting of the same poem for an a capella choir. I will post it soon and I'm pretty sure another member did the same one as well not too long ago (Morivou, perhaps?). That's interesting that we all picked the same one. Anyway, I think the octatonic leanings are very appropriate for this poem since it's very ethereal. It's a good balance of some very unsettling and at the same time, ear-catching harmonies. I will go back and analyze it some more later.

FMcG

Yes. I have set this poem. :) Interestingly enough, I interpreted it differently than you did, but both of our interpretations are easily understood and viable. I think that's amazing! Your setting was beautiful. If you wanna, it's in Major Works under "A Clear Midnight" by me.

I thought your use of piano as a SOLO instrument as WELL as accompaniment was extraordinary. Well done. :)

Thanks! I appreciate the feedback. I'll take a look at your setting sometime soon.

I really like this piece. Your harmonic language is reminiscent of Debussey in many ways to me. I hope you are able to eventually get this performed. Very good work!

JA-

Thanks for listening! Someone here at school made the comment about the harmonic language being similar to Debussy, too. I did listen to a lot of his songs before I started writing these, so it's not surprising that they might have some similarities to Debussy's.

As of right now, there is a performance scheduled for Nov. 19, and I have two great singers lined up for it, which I am really excited about.

Thanks again for the comments!

Please post a live recording when this happens! I'll bet they will be amazing. ;)

Will do! :)

I listened to the "Silence and Whirling Worlds"

I have to say, it was quite beautiful. It almost hypnotizes you and puts you into this other world...amazing job! I hope you continue to posts your works!

Heckel

Thanks, Heckel, for listening to my piece! I appreciate your comments.

Nice work! I think both pieces sound great, but I have a few comments on notation in Silence and Whirling Worlds. I love seeing clean looking Finale scores when Finale is such a beast, and you did a great job, but have you considered using a key signature (1-3 flats depending on what you're going for)? That would get rid of some accidental clutter (not that it looks bad, the notation would simply look a bit more streamlined). You could also remove the measure numbers in the piano part, or make them non-printing.

Now for the picky stuff. Be careful of collisions, such as accidentals running into beams (like in mm. 12 and 14 in the left hand of the piano). Beginning in 22 some ties collide with notes and could be manually adjusted. In 25 and 26 the ties on the Gs should be flipped. Also, piano rolls are typically placed outside of the accidentals and extend from the top of the highest note head to the bottom of the lowest note head, so you may want to adjust them in mm. 24, 25, and 27. I may be a stickler for these sort of things, but when you get in the habit of adjusting them automatically you will become a more conscious composer and a better engraver.

Thanks for the comments. I do appreciate seeing professional-looking scores, and I try to produce scores of good quality myself, and so I will definitely give your comments consideration. You're definitely right about collisions involving ties, accidentals, and beams; after looking at a score for so long, I suppose my eyes just miss things like that!

Thanks again for listening!

I really enjoyed listening to these and would also love to hear a live recording :)

My favourite part about them both was the piano writing, particularly Silence and Whirling Worlds. Thy Hour was great also, although I didn't understand the dotted rhythms when they came in but I suspect that is probably just me.

In my A-level I have been studying art song and this is something quite different to my set-works. I have been practising writing songs (although never finished one :( ) and I found your style appealed to me considerably :)

Thank you for posting,

Oscar

Thanks so much for listening. About the piano writing -- I tried to make the piano and the singer EACH soloists, rather than having just the singer as a soloist. Of course, the piano also serves the role of accompanist, but I tried to avoid mere "accompaniment" figures in the piano writing.

I really appreciate all the comments!

I sang through both songs. Compositionally these pieces are wonderful. I like the cohesiveness of the harmonic language throughout, and the care with which the text is structured with the music.

One issue that may come up: the ending of "Silence and..." Since you're calling on the tenor to traverse the lower register and passagio in a very short span of time, it's likely that the sound of that phrase will come out of nowhere, even though compositionally, it makes perfect sense. Exacerbating this issue (which may not actually be an issue, if that's what you want the sound to be) is the fact that a very different phonation is required in a register like that - and because the highest note we've heard for a while is a G (which most tenors can still manage without extreme modification), the timbral shift from the passagio to the high upper range will be very sudden.

If you take a listen to some Puccini or Verdi, and note the way they approach such extremes - they'll either lead up to it with some phrases that top out at A and Bb first, or lead up to the C stepwise, treating it as the climax of the phrase, and then come down for the end of said phrase, or else they mean for it specifically to be an outburst or interruption.

Christopher,

Thanks a lot for the comments. I see what you mean about the sudden shift in registers; I'll have to ask my singer to sing through that part for me so I can see exactly what the effect will be. (Last time I heard him sing it, I wasn't finished with the song.) Not being a singer myself, it's something I never would have thought of on my own, so I'm grateful you pointed that out.

Thanks again!

No problem. I'd like your perspective on my own vocal work, actually - the two arias from Rappaccini's Daughter.

You take all these comments really well; it's a rarity on the forum. I don't even think I take it that well... :P

Well, I really am glad that people are taking the time to listen to my pieces and comment on them... I don't know, it just seems meaningful when others are interested in what I (or any composer) have created, and what they think about it, whether it's praise or criticism. Both are valuable. OK, enough with the sappy stuff. :D

Sure, I'll take a look at your music sometime soon.

Great pieces. I really thought you did an exceptional job of painting the words of the poem with the music, and I really like the harmonic language of "Silence and Whirling Worlds". There were a couple piano interlude sections I wasn't quite sure about, but I have a feeling you had a vision for them that I am not catching from the cg recording, and that with the live recording the issue will resolve itself.

Thanks for listening/commenting. Yeah, I'm hoping that with live performers I'll be more able to hear certain things that the Finale playback just doesn't do very well.