Classical Music | Mezzo-Soprano

Recorded on 04/07/2010, uploaded on 05/02/2010

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

A gifted composer for the voice, Samuel Barber composed a fair number of songs during his career. In so doing, he became perhaps the foremost composer of song in American classical music as he exemplified himself with his penchant for exquisitely expressive lyricism and by his admiration for the tradition of German lied. Four Songs, op. 13 is one of Barber’s earlier collections of songs and dates from a particularly industrious period in the composer’s life. Composed over the last years of the 1930s, it is contemporaneous with the First Essay for Orchestra, the Violin Concerto, op. 14, A Stopwatch and an Ordinance Map, and Reincarnations.

Unlike its predecessor, opus 10, Barber did not unite the four songs of opus 13 by choosing poems of similar subject matter or by connecting music motives. Each is an individually wrought piece of music, collected together only for the purposes of publication. The first song, “A Nun Takes a Veil,” is based on a poem by the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Dealing with the subject of solitude, which Barber had a keen interest in for much of his life, Hopkins text is rendered with a rather simple melody supported by a mainly chordal accompaniment in the piano that captures the peacefulness of the woman’s commitment to become a nun. The next song, “Secrets of the Old,” is on a text by W. B. Yeats. It is more playful than the first, with an energetic vocal line and light piano accompaniment that depicts the friendship of old women. “Sure as this Shining Night” is perhaps the most well-known song of the collection. On a text by James Agee, the song is yearning, yet imbued with hope. Lastly, “Nocturne” is a gentle lullaby between lovers on a text by Frederic Prokosch. Barber’s setting is enchanting with a delicate use of chromaticism in the outer sections that frame a more active central episode.     Joseph DuBose

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.