STRANGE SONGS
This is a collection of five vocal works; in the case of the first, second, fourth, and fifth, these are much expanded from original chamber versions during the summer of 2010 and spring of 2012.
In 2004, as I was about to graduate with a BS in physics from NCSU, I wrote an odd little poem called I'm a Physicist and That's Just Fine. Not long after, I set it for baritone and piano. The arrangement here is much longer and more complex than the original song.
I
attended
a
macrobiotic
meeting
in
Boston
in
1979
where
there was to be an entertainment at the end given by
attendees. I
quickly wrote Little Miss Nonfat as a
composition
that anyone who could read music could perform; it was
for spoken
chorus in
four parts. However, my search for performers was in
vain. This
orchestral
version is far longer and more involved than the very
simple original,
which
was under two minutes long.
Lo these many years ago (over thirty, I believe) I read Martin Gardner’s Annotated Alice, which included Robert Scott’s 1872 translation of Jabberwocky into German. Since then, Jabberwocky has been translated into many languages, but to my ear, Scott’s is the best, even better than the English original.
I knew at once that I would set Der
Jammerwock
to music, but life
intervened and it was not until the summer of 2005 that
composition
started.
Having heard the Czech Nonet in Raleigh, I decided to
write it for
nonet and
baritone; and as I had no surviving orchestral works,
this version for
baritone
and chamber orchestra. The total time composing this
short piece, from
July 19,
2005 to March 1, 2006, is exceptionally long, and
indicates the
peculiar
difficulty in composition.
Math Class: or, Does the Zero
Have Buddha-Nature™?
started off in 1982 as a companion spoken
chorus piece to Little Miss
Nonfat, also in four parts, written after a
year as a physics and math
major at
In the summer of 2003, I was doing
physics at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and
decided to
write a
satirical song about the decades of rejection I had
suffered from
musicians.
Thus, I dedicated it to the many musicians who gave me
so much material
from
1984 through 2005 by turning down my music because it
was too easy, too
hard,
too long, too brief, too classical, too popular, too
modern, too
old-fashioned,
too secular, too religious, too fast, too slow, too
serious, too
humorous, they’re
busy playing something else, or in short, because I
wouldn’t give them money. Thankfully,
since
2006 things are much better
and I have found some wonderful performers.
As
mentioned in the Performance Notes, the solo
vocalist should be amplified when
this is performed with orchestra.
Photo
by Lon Cooper, 1975, of me in front of the NTSU
library, as printed in
the campus newspaper
