The Minotaur is a half man/half bull from Greek mythology that is often viewed as a monster. Cecilia Livingston and Duncan McFarlane's song cycle hyacinth reimagines the Minotaur as a lonely child, imprisoned because of the way he looks, remembering fragments of a life above ground and, above all, remembering his mother.

The episode features a recording of the song by soprano Laura Strickling and pianist Daniel Schlosberg. They will be releasing a professional recording of the cycle this August with the Sono Luminus label.

You can find more information about Cecilia Livingston's music via her website.

This episode explores the first song in a cycle I assembled from stand-alone songs by Pauline Decker—using curation as a form of advocacy.

It features a world-premiere recording of the song by tenor James Gilchrist and pianist Jocelyn Freeman. A recording of the entire song cycle, also featuring mezzo-soprano Katie Bray, can be found on my website Art Song Augmented. The score to the cycle is available via ClarNan Editions, a division of Classical Vocal Reprints.

For an account of the creation of this cycle, see my essay "Love Letters" from the Women's Song Forum.

Das Blatt im Buche

Anastasius Grün

*Ich seh’ eine alte Dame,

Die ein altes Büchlein hat,

Es liegt in dem alten Buche

Ein altes, dürres Blatt.

So dürr sind wohl auch die Hände,

Die’s einst im Lenz ihr gepflückt.

Was mag wohl die Alte haben,

Sie weint, wenn sie’s erblickt?

The Leaf in the Book

*I see an old woman

Who has a small, old book,

In the old book lies

An old, dried leaf.

The hands that once picked it for her in springtime

Are likely just as dry.

Whatever could be amiss with the old woman,

She weeps whenever she sees it?

(translation by Sharon Krebs)

* The original first line of Grün's poem is "Ich hab' eine alte Muhme" (I have an old aunt). I changed it to "Ich seh' eine alte Dame" (I see an old woman).

I head back to university teaching tomorrow—and I know many teachers and students who are already back at it. In honor of this back-to-school season, here's an episode on a wild and wonderful song by New-York-based composers Lainie Fefferman and Jascha Narveson. In addition to composing a wide variety of music as individual artists, they are part of a synth-pop duo called The Beverage Station. The duo will release a full album, including this song, on May 30, 2025, from Gold Bolus Recordings.


Labor Day
Lainie Fefferman

Brand-new faces
Familiar halls
Tracking paces
Feel it in my throat

Bones break
Back aches
I could punch through walls

And then there's you

Heart explosions
Arms aglow
Big emotions
Pack up its time to go

Hours come
Seconds go
Cut to my fun walk home

Where there is you

Familiar faces
Brand-new halls
Making spaces
Sharing all I love

Calm comes
Back stroke
Keeping tallies of smiles and cheers

I know I've lost what I'm doing here

On September 27, 2024, Signum Records will release a recording of Rodrigo Ruiz's cycle of seventeen songs, Venus & Adonis, based on William Shakespeare's poem of the same name. In this episode, I dive into one of my favorite songs from the cycle, where Venus takes Adonis's hand and entreats him to open his heart to her.

For more information about Rodrigo Ruiz, you can find him on Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and LinkTree.

You can also learn more about his songs from this page on my website Art Song Augmented, and from this episode on his setting of a poem by Heinrich Heine.

The recording in this episode features soprano Grace Davidson and pianist George Herbert, who also appear on the forthcoming album of the cycle.

Frosty in Desire
William Shakespeare (adapted by Rodrigo Ruiz)

POET
With this she seizeth on his sweating palm,
and trembling in her passion, calls it balm,
Earth’s sovereign salve to do a goddess good.

Pure shame and awed resistance made him fret,
which bred more beauty in his angry eyes.

So fastened in her arms Adonis lies;
still is he sullen, still he lours and frets,
'twixt crimson shame and anger ashy pale.

Still she entreats, and prettily entreats;
she red as coals of glowing fire,
he frosty in desire.

(25, 27–8, 69–70, 68, 75–6, 73, 35–6)

The Mass for the Endangered, by Nathaniel Bellows and Sarah Kirkland Snider, appeals not to God but to nature itself and (in Snider's words) takes the "musical modes of spiritual contemplation" associated with the Latin mass and applies them to "concern for non-human life—animals, plants, and the environment."

The third movement of the Mass, "Alleluia," describes the brutal destruction of the natural world yet at the same time offers a promise of renewal.

The episode features a recording of the movement by Gallicantus, under the direction of Gabriel Crouch; an album of the entire Mass was released in 2020 by New Amsterdam and Nonesuch Records.

If you're interested in learning about another haunting collaboration by Bellows and Snider, check out my podcast episode on "The River," from their song cycle Unremembered.

Alleluia
Nathaniel Bellows

Sea of cradle, foundling,
current, cold and quelled as morning.
Braid of vapored ashes,
shadowed creche, collapsing.

Contour, carve, corrode—
breathe through camphor, coal,
seed each breeze with gold.
Poison, parch, pollute—
plow the coast, the dune,
flow toward constant moon.

Alleluia

Hearth of stone, of tar, of lava,
shelter shielding mother.
Oh, save us mother!

She who is sleeping,
Is she who will wake.

Fracture, foist, defoul—
shatter cliff and shoal,
sand each stone to whole.
Harbored, held, unharmed—
she’ll wake, rise, rejoin,
her daughters and her sons.

Alleluia

The title track from Rhiannon Giddens's recent album You're the One—which was just released by Nonesuch Records—is a love song, but not one about two adults; it's about a moment Giddens experienced with her newborn son, pressing her cheek against his and realizing that her world would never be the same again.

In this episode I reference a book by Matt BaileyShea called Lines and Lyrics: An Introduction to Poetry and Song. If you're interested in learning more about how words and music relate in pop songs and art songs and everything in between, I'd urge you check out his book. It's superb, and really accessible to specialists and non-specialists alike.

You're the One
by Rhiannon Giddens (the song was cowritten with Lalenja Harrington)

I knew you were the one
Were my one and only
And I knew
That you would always know me
Cause you were the one
Who kept me from feeling
So sad and lonely in my life and

I never knew
Life could be so wonderful
That there could be someone
Who was so beautiful
And I never knew
That I could be so free
To love someone like you and

I wanna love you forever
And I’ll be with you
For worse and for better
And I never thought I’d fall
But you’re the one

I thought my life was drawn
In shades of gray and
That washow
I would live my everyday and
Aimless no direction found
My destiny was going through the motions of a life and

Then you came along
With your sweet sweet smile and
Then you put your cheek
Right next to mine and
All those shades of gray slowly turned into a
New technicolor world and

I’m gonna love you forever
And I’ll be with you
For worse and for better
And I never thought I’d fall

And I’m gonna love you forever and
I’ll be with you for worse and for better
And I never thought I’d fall
But you’re the one

You’re the one
Your smile contains the sun
Rays of glory
You’re the one

Have you ever felt as though a single moment—gazing into someone's eyes, listening to a passage of music, looking at a landscape—transports you to another realm? Maurice Bouchor's poem is about just this kind of experience, an experience that the French composer Mel Bonis transforms into a magical sound world that deftly blends Romanticism and Impressionism.

The episode features a recording of the song by Hélène Guilmette and Matin Dubé, from an album called L'Heure Rose.

For more information about Mel Bonis, go to the Mel Bonis website, maintained by Christine Géliot. You can also learn more about her songs at my website Art Song Augmented.

Songe (an excerpt from Vers le pur amour)
by Maurice Bouchor

Guidé par de beaux yeux candides,
Dans ma barque féerique aux reflets d'argent fin,
Vers l'amour, je voudrais faire voile sans fin
Sur des rêves bleus et splendides,

Vers l'amour dont le souffle frais
Berce des champs de fleurs dans une île enchantée
Et qui, pour apaiser mon âme tourmentée,
M'ouvrira de saintes forêts.

Et plus tard, quand, loin de la terre,
O Viola ! Guérie des brûlantes langueurs,
Nous irons caresser les songes de nos coeurs
Dans l'île heureuse du mystère.

Dans le libre ciel des esprits,
Quand nous aurons quitté la nature mortelle,
Ne goûterons-nous pas une paix éternelle ?
Rêveusement, tu me souris.

———

Guided by beautiful, innocent eyes,
In my magic boat with reflections of fine silver,
Toward love I would like to sail endlessly
On blue and splendid dreams.

Toward love, whose fresh breath
Cradles fields of flowers in an enchanted island,
And which, to appease my tormented soul,
Will open holy forests to me.

And later, far from the earth,
O Viola, cured of burning languor,
We will go to caress the dreams of our hearts
On the happy island of mystery.

In the free sky of the spirits,
When we have left our mortal nature,
Will we not taste eternal peace?
Dreamily, you smile at me.

Arthur Symons's poem captures a lazy June afternoon, with a fountain burbling and the moon hanging in the sky, waiting for the coming of night. Elizabeth Maconchy transforms the poem into a song of mesmerizing stillness and beauty.

The episode features a world-premiere recording by soprano Joanna Songi and pianist Matthew Fletcher, based on an unpublished manuscript found in the Maconchy archive at St. Hilda's College, Oxford. You can find a YouTube video of their performance here.

For an illuminating look at Maconchy's life and work, see the final chapter of Anna Beer's book Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music.

Also please check out the Maconchy page on my website Art Song Augmented, which includes another recording by Songi and Fletcher, as well as additional resources and access to scores.

In Fountain Court
by Arthur Symons

The fountain murmuring of sleep,
A drowsy tune;
The flickering green of leaves that keep
The light of June;
Peace, through a slumbering afternoon,
The peace of June.

A waiting ghost, in the blue sky,
The white curved moon;
June, hushed and breathless, waits, and I
Wait too, with June;
Come, through the lingering afternoon,
Soon, love, come soon.