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.
The Last Invocation evokes through sumptuous melody the transcendence
of the soul as it frees itself from its bodily prison. This song won
Mathews the Recognition of Excellence award at the Fifth Diana Barnhart
American Art Song Competition in 2003 (adjudicators were John Harbison,
composer of the opera The Great Gatsby, and tenor Paul Sperry).
The song is suitable in both secular contexts and as part of a sacred
service.
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