Program/Peformance notes:
Songs of the Poet is a song cycle, not in the sense
of telling a narrative, but rather in depicting some of the major themes
set forth by Walt Whitman—albeit set with a dramatic arc. The
composer chose a rather traditional tonal framework for the songs because
he felt that this best conveyed the intense passions portrayed in the
poetry. The cycle begins on an ambiguous D-major-minor tonal center
but ends triumphantly in D major. In all of Mathews’s songs the
piano plays an equal role with the singer. His grouping of Whitman poems
deals with the essentiality of love to the human spirit and its redeeming
qualities, even when unrequited; the enormous importance of music and
nature to Whitman’s writing; how the artist’s work mirrors
the essence of his being; and the transcendence of the soul. The title
for the cycle was chosen because of the inordinate number of instances
in which Whitman refers to his poems as songs.
In Sometimes With One I Love, Whitman expresses his belief
that love, even when “unreturn’d,” is of imminent
value. Mathews expresses the rejection with great passion, which then
serves as the catalyst of artistic creation. In Ned Rorem’s fascinating
but divergent approach to this same poem, he seemingly treated the rejection
with resignation.
Text:
Sometimes with
one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse unreturn’d
love,
But now I think there is no unreturn’d love, the pay is certain one way
or another,
(I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return’d,
Yet out of that I have written these songs.)
- Walt Whitman
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