Summer SONGS

for SOPRANO and Piano

Written: 2016
Duration: 21'
Instrumentation: soprano and piano
Commissioned by The ASCAP Foundation via the Charles Kingsford Fund, for Marnie Breckenridge and the American Modern Ensemble
World Premiere: American Modern Ensemble, Marnie Breckenridge, soprano, Merkin Hall, New York, NY, May 26, 2016.
Publisher: Bill Holab Music

View Score | Buy Sheet Music | Buy/Stream Chamber Version Audio
Note: a version for soprano and chamber ensemble is also available.

PROGRAM NOTe

There is a seemingly endless supply of poems about summer. After writing Winter Songs for bass-baritone, I realized that I had inadvertently only set poems by male poets, so I decided to restrict myself to female poets for this cycle as a way to create a balance between these two works.

Summer Songs begins with a setting of Summer Music by May Sarton, a light, happy, playfully musical poem filled with allusions to nature. The second movement is a setting of The Kite by Anne Sexton, a poem about honoring and enjoying the moment and the simple things in life, such as flying kites with children. Childhood, the third movement, is a setting of a poem by Sharan Strange about children capturing fireflies. The fourth movement, Moths, is a setting of a poem by Jennifer O’Grady about moths, but relating to late night conversation on a front porch. The cycle ends with a setting of Summer Night, Riverside, by Sara Teasdale, a passionate, warm, optimistic poem that muses on the timelessness of summer.

Summer Songs was commissioned by The ASCAP Foundation Charles Kingsford Fund, for Marnie Breckenridge and the American Modern Ensemble. Special thanks to Marnie Breckenridge for her assistance in selecting the poems for this cycle.

  • SUMMER SONGS
    For soprano and piano

    I. Summer Music
    May Sarton

    Summer is all a green air—
    From the brilliant lawn, sopranos
    Through murmuring hedges
    Accompanied by some poplars;
    In fields of wheat, surprises;
    Through faraway pastures, flows
    To the horizon’s blues
    In slow decrescendos.

    Summer is all a green sound—
    Rippling in the foreground
    To that soft applause,
    The foam of Queen Anne’s lace.
    Green, green in the ear
    Is all we care to hear—
    Until a field suddenly flashes
    The singing with so sharp
    A yellow that it crashes
    Loud cymbals in the ear,
    Minor has turned to major
    As summer, lulling and so mild,
    Goes golden-buttercup-wild.

    Summer Music by May Sarton, from Collected poems: 1930-1993. © W.W. Norton & Company, 1993.
    Reprinted with permission from Lippincott Massie McQuilkin.



    II. The Kite
    by Anne Sexton

    Here, in front of the summer hotel
    the beach waits like an altar.
    We are lying on a cloth of sand
    while the Atlantic noon stains
    the world in light.
    It was much the same
    five years ago. I remember
    how Ezio Pinza was flying a kite
    for the children. None of us noticed
    it then. The pleated lady
    was still a nest of her knitting.
    Four pouchy fellows kept their policy
    of gin and tonic while trading some money.
    The parasol girls slept, sun-sitting
    their lovely years. No one thought
    how precious it was, or even how funny
    the festival seemed, square rigged in the air.
    The air was a season they had bought,
    like the cloth of sand.
    I’ve been waiting
    on this private stretch of summer land,
    counting these five years and wondering why.
    I mean, it was different that time
    with Ezio Pinza flying a kite.
    Maybe, after all, he knew something more
    and was right.

    The Kite by Anne Sexton, from The Complete Poems, © Mariner Books, 1999. Reprinted with permission from Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc.



    III. Childhood
    by Sharan Strange

    Summer brought fireflies in swarms.
    They lit our evenings like dreams
    we thought we couldn’t have.
    We caught them in jars, punched
    holes, carried them around for days.

    Luminous abdomens that when
    charged with air turn bright. Imagine!
    mere insects carrying such cargo,
    magical caravans flickering beneath
    low July skies. We chased them, amazed.

    The idea! Those tiny bodies
    pulsing phosphorescence.
    They made reckless traffic,
    signaling, neon flashes forever
    into the deepening dusk.

    They gave us new faith
    in the nasty tonics of childhood--
    pungent, murky liquids promising
    shining eyes, strong teeth, glowing skin--
    and we silently vowed to swallow ever after.

    What was the secret of light?
    We wanted their brilliance--
    small fires hovering,
    each tiny explosion
    the birth of a new world.

    Childhood by Sharan Strange, from Ash, Copyright © Beacon Press, 2001.
    Reprinted with permission from Sharan Strange.



    IV. Moths
    Jennifer O’Grady

    Adrift in the liberating, late light
    of August, delicate, frivolous,
    they make their way to my front porch
    and flutter near the glassed-in bulb,
    translucent as a thought suddenly
    wondered aloud, illumining the air
    that’s thick with honeysuckle and dusk.
    You and I are doing our best
    at conversation, keeping it light, steering clear
    of what we’d like to say.
    You leave, and the night becomes
    cluttered with moths, some tattered,
    their dumbly curious filaments
    startling against my cheek. How quickly,
    instinctively, I brush them away.
    Dazed, they cling to the outer darkness
    like pale reminders of ourselves.
    Others seem to want so desperately
    to get inside. Months later, I’ll find
    the woolens, snug in their resting places,
    full of missing pieces.

    Moths by Jennifer O’Grady, from White. © Midlist Press, 1999.
    Reprinted with permission from Jennifer O’Grady.



    V. Summer Night, Riverside
    Sara Teasdale

    In the wild soft summer darkness
    How many and many a night we two together
    Sat in the park and watched the Hudson
    Wearing her lights like golden spangles
    Glinting on black satin.
    The rail along the curving pathway
    Was low in a happy place to let us cross,
    And down the hill a tree that dripped with bloom
    Sheltered us,
    While your kisses and the flowers,
    Falling, falling,
    Tangled in my hair....
    The frail white stars moved slowly over the sky.
    And now, far off In the fragrant darkness
    The tree is tremulous again with bloom
    For June comes back.
    Tonight what girl
    Dreamily before her mirror shakes from her hair
    This year’s blossoms, clinging to its coils?

    Poem in the public domain.

Press Quotes

The music for Paterson’s The Four Seasons [including Summer Songs] is distinguished by lyricism and a vivid sense of colour. Each cycle’s mood is generally attuned to its season, such that a fresh, pastoral character informs spring whereas an at-times solemn quality infuses winter... There’s much to recommend in the release, from the work itself to the performances by the vocalists and instrumentalists, but one thing especially deserving of mention is how seamlessly Paterson matches the character of the music to the texts... It’s eminently possible that a listener lacking fluency in English would still derive a clear impression of the poets’ words from the composer’s musical material.
— Textura