559216-18 bk Bolcom US 12/08/2004 12:36pm Page 40 AMERICAN CLASSICS WILLIAM BOLCOM Below: Longtime friends, composer William Bolcom and conductor Leonard Slatkin, acknowledge the Songs of Innocence audience at the close of the performance. and of Experience (William Blake) Soloists • Choirs University of Michigan Above: Close to 450 performers on stage at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor, Michigan, under the School of Music baton of Leonard Slatkin in William Bolcom’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Symphony Orchestra University Musical Society All photographs on pages 37-40 courtesy of Peter Smith/University Musical Society Leonard Slatkin 8.559216-18 40 559216-18 bk Bolcom US 12/08/2004 12:36pm Page 2 Christine Brewer • Measha Brueggergosman • Ilana Davidson • Linda Hohenfeld • Carmen Pelton, Sopranos Joan Morris, Mezzo-soprano • Marietta Simpson, Contralto Thomas Young, Tenor • Nmon Ford, Baritone • Nathan Lee Graham, Speaker/Vocals Tommy Morgan, Harmonica • Peter “Madcat” Ruth, Harmonica and Vocals • Jeremy Kittel, Fiddle The University Musical Society The University of Michigan School of Music Ann Arbor, Michigan University Symphony Orchestra/Kenneth Kiesler, Music Director Contemporary Directions Ensemble/Jonathan Shames, Music Director University Musical Society Choral Union and University of Michigan Chamber Choir/Jerry Blackstone, Conductor University of Michigan University Choir/Christopher Kiver, Conductor University of Michigan Orpheus Singers/Carole Ott, William Hammer, Jason Harris, Conductors Michigan State University Children’s Choir/Mary Alice Stollak, Music Director Leonard Slatkin Special thanks to Randall and Mary Pittman for their continued and generous support of the University Musical Society, both personally and through Forest Health Services. Grateful thanks to Professor Michael Daugherty for the initiation of this project and his inestimable help in its realization. “Songs of Innocence and of Experience” by William Bolcom is copyright g 1985 by Edward B. Marks Music Company. BMI. Live Concert Production Producers: Michael Kondziolka and Bradley Bloom Concert Sound Engineer: Roger Amett Production Support: Jasper Gilbert (Director), Emily Avers, Claire Rice, Sue Hamilton, Jeffrey Beyersdorf, David Aderente, Robert Grijalva, Mark Jacobson Concert Sponsorship: Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation and Linda and Maurice Binkow The Regents of the University of Michigan University Musical Society Board of Directors Above: Ilana Davidson sings “The Angel” from Songs of Experience. Top right: Measha Brueggergosman performs “The Lamb” Live Concert produced by The University of Michigan School of Music, Karen Wolff, Dean, and the University in Songs of Innocence. Musical Society, Kenneth Fischer, President, on April 8th 2004 at Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Bottom right: Joan Morris sings “The Little Vagabond” with Tommy Morgan and Peter “Madcat” Ruth on harmonicas. 8.559216-18 2 39 8.559216-18 559216-18 bk Bolcom US 12/08/2004 12:36pm Page 38 Songs of Innocence ! Holy Thursday CD 2 43:00 and of Experience U-M Chamber Choir Soloists 1:08 Songs of Experience, Volume I Combined Choruses Part I CD 1 51:29 Songs of Innocence @ The Blossom 0:41 1 Introduction 2:20 Part I Measha Brueggergosman Orchestra 1 Introduction 3:08 # Interlude 0:25 2 Hear the Voice of the Bard 2:55 Thomas Young Orchestra Nmon Ford 2 The Ecchoing Green 2:32 $ The Chimney Sweeper 3:14 3 Interlude 0:51 Combined Choruses Nathan Lee Graham Orchestra U-M Chamber Choir 3 The Lamb 3:20 4 Earth’s Answer 4:54 Measha Brueggergosman % The Divine Image 3:50 Christine Brewer Joan Morris 4 The Shepherd 2:14 Peter “Madcat” Ruth Part II Part III 5 Infant Joy 1:58 5 Nurse’s Song 1:10 Marietta Simpson ^ Nocturne 2:03 Joan Morris MSU Children’s Choir Orchestra Above: Actor and singer 6 The Fly 1:43 6 The Little Black Boy 4:07 & Night 5:01 MSU Children’s Choir Nathan Lee Graham Nathan Lee Graham Thomas Young speaks the part of “The 7 The Tyger 1:50 Chimney Sweeper” in * A Dream 1:41 Combined Choruses Songs of Innocence. Part II Ilana Davidson 8 The Little Girl Lost 1:10 7 Laughing Song 0:33 ( On Another’s Sorrow 1:53 Nmon Ford Right: Tommy Morgan on U-M Chamber Choir Combined Choruses harmonica in Songs of 9 In the Southern Clime 2:08 8 Spring 1:45 ) The Little Boy Lost 2:48 U-M Chamber Choir Innocence . Thomas Young Carmen Pelton Combined Choruses Combined Choruses 0 The Little Girl Found 4:47 Combined Choruses 9 A Cradle Song 4:04 ¡ The Little Boy Found 1:56 Linda Hohenfeld Nathan Lee Graham 0 Nurse’s Song 1:36 ™ Coda 1:32 Joan Morris Orchestra 8.559216-18 38 3 8.559216-18 559216-18 bk Bolcom US 12/08/2004 12:36pm Page 4 Part III CD 3 42:42 8 A Little Girl Lost 4:44 Songs of Experience, Volume II Nmon Ford ! The Clod and the Pebble 1:47 Part IV Christine Brewer Thomas Young 1 The Voice of the Ancient 9 Infant Sorrow 2:23 @ The Little Vagabond 2:31 Bard 2:29 U-M Chamber Choir Soloists Joan Morris Nmon Ford 0 Vocalise 2:57 # Holy Thursday 2:44 2 My Pretty Rose Tree 1:43 Combined Choruses Carmen Pelton Chorus Men $ A Poison Tree 2:09 3 Ah! Sun-Flower 2:30 Part VI Nathan Lee Graham U-M Chamber Choir ! London 3:54 % The Angel 3:15 4 The Lilly 1:36 Nathan Lee Graham Ilana Davidson Thomas Young Combined Choruses @ The School-Boy 3:23 ^ The Sick Rose 3:14 Linda Hohenfeld Marietta Simpson Part V # The Chimney Sweeper 1:20 & To Tirzah 3:32 5 Introduction to Part V 0:49 U-M Chamber Choir Nathan Lee Graham Orchestra Combined Choruses $ The Human Abstract 3:22 6 The Garden of Love 2:04 Nmon Ford Above: Soprano Christine Thomas Young Brewer in the dramatic “Earth's % Interlude: Voces Clamandae 1:32 Answer,” Songs of Experience. 7 A Little Boy Lost 2:27 Orchestra Carmen Pelton Combined Choruses ^ A Divine Image 5:29 Top right: Contralto Marietta Nathan Lee Graham, Soloists, Simpson in “Infant Joy,” Songs and Combined Choruses of Innocence. Right: Baritone Nmon Ford opens Songs of Experience with “Hear the Voice of the Bard.” 8.559216-18 4 37 8.559216-18 559216-18 bk Bolcom US 12/08/2004 12:36pm Page 36 O! father & mother, if buds are nip’d He sits down with holy fears, William Bolcom (b. 1938) And blossoms blown away, And waters the grounds with tears; And if the tender plants are strip’d Then Humility takes its root Songs of Innocence and of Experience: A Musical Illumination of the Poems of William Blake Of their joy in the springing day, Underneath his foot. Ever since I was seventeen, when the reading of William spiritual climate and progressing ever further in Shewing By sorrow and care’s dismay, Blake was to make a profound difference to my life, I have the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. With slight Soon spreads the dismal shade wanted to set the entire Songs of Innocence and of changes I have used Blake’s last ordering in my piece. I How shall the summer arise in joy, Of Mystery over his head; Experience to music. Several songs were actually had always wanted to end the evening with The Divine Or the summer fruits appear? And the Catterpiller and Fly completed in 1956; The Sick Rose, and the opening, Image, which Blake had engraved and then rejected for Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy, Feed on the Mystery. revised, of the Songs of Innocence, are survivors of that the Experience cycle, and I revised the order of the last Or bless the mellowing year, time, and the work remained in my mind until 1973, when part to accommodate the poem. When the blasts of winter appear? And it bears the fruit of Deceit, I moved to Ann Arbor to teach at the University of The Blakean principle of contraries — “Without Ruddy and sweet to eat; Michigan. I felt that I could thus simplify my life enough Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, And the Raven his nest has made to be able to realise the cycle I had dreamed of for so long. Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to # The Chimney Sweeper In its thickest shade. Most of the work was completed in the years 1973-74 Human existence.” (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell) — and 1979-82; the opening of the Songs of Experience was would also dominate my approach to the work, A little black thing among the snow, The Gods of the earth and sea fully sketched in 1966 and several of the major songs date particularly in matters of style. Current Blake research has Crying “‘weep! ‘weep!” in notes of woe! Sought thro’ Nature to find this Tree; from the early and middle 1970s. The largest problem was tended to confirm what I had assumed from the first, that “Where are thy father & mother? say?” But their search was all in vain: the form the entire setting would take. It could not be a at every point Blake used his whole culture, past and “They are both gone up to the church to pray. There grows one in the Human Brain. standard opera, and the stopping and starting that present, highflown and vernacular, as sources for his many constantly bedevils the oratorio form would prove fatal for poetic styles. Throughout the entire Songs of Innocence “Because I was happy upon the heath, 46 poems over an evening. and of Experience, exercises in elegant Drydenesque And smil’d among the winter’s snow, % Interlude: Voces Clamandae The final ordering of the Songs left by Blake, as will diction are placed cheek by jowl with ballads that could They clothed me in the clothes of death, be seen, is quite different from the one I had become used have come from one of the “songsters” of his day (small, And taught me to sing the notes of woe.