Table Of ContentTWENTIETH- AND TWENTY- FIRST-C ENTURY
SONG CYCLES
Twentieth- and T wenty-F irst-C entury Song Cycles: Analytical Pathways Toward Performance presents
analyses of fourteen song cycles composed after the turn of the twentieth century, with a focus
on offering ways into the musical and poetic structure of each cycle to performers, scholars, and
students alike. Ranging from familiar works of twentieth- century music by composers such as
Schoenberg, Britten, Poulenc, and Shostakovich to l esser- known works by Van Wyk, Sviridov,
Wheeler, and Sánchez, this collection of essays captures the diversity of the song cycle repertoire
in contemporary classical music. The contributors bring their own analytical perspectives and
methods, considering musical structures, the composers’ selection of texts, how poetic narra-
tives are expressed, and historical context.
Informed by music history, music theory, and performance, T wentieth- and T wenty-F irst-
Century Song Cycles offers an essential guide into the contemporary art- music song cycle for
performers, scholars, students, and anyone seeking to understand this unique genre.
Gordon Sly is Associate Professor of Music Theory at Michigan State University.
Michael R. Callahan is Associate Professor of Music Theory and Chairperson of the Music
Theory Area at Michigan State University.
TWENTIETH- AND
TWENTY- FIRST- CENTURY
SONG CYCLES
Analytical Pathways Toward Performance
Edited by
Gordon Sly and Michael R. Callahan
First published 2021
by Routledge
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editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
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Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data
Names: Sly, Gordon Cameron, 1958– editor. | Callahan, Michael, 1982– editor.
Title: Twentieth- and twenty-first-century song cycles: analytical pathways toward
performance / edited by Gordon Sly and Michael R. Callahan.
Other titles: 20th- and 21st-century song cycles
Description: New York: Routledge, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020022681 (print) | LCCN 2020022682 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367220259 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367220266 (paperback) |
ISBN 9780429270369 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Song cycles—20th century—Analysis, appreciation. |
Song cycles—21st century—Analysis, appreciation.
Classification: LCC MT120 .T9 2020 (print) | LCC MT120 (ebook) |
DDC 782.4/70904—dc23
LC record available at https://lccnloc.gov/2020022681
LC ebook record available at https://lccnloc.gov/2020022682
ISBN: 9 78-0 - 367-2 2025- 9 ( hbk)
ISBN: 9 78-0 -3 67-2 2026-6 (p bk)
ISBN: 9 78-0 - 429-2 7036- 9 (e bk)
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CONTENTS
Introduction ix
Gordon Sly and Michael R. Callahan
1 “ As if with lightning bolts”: The Ombra and Tempesta in Schoenberg’s
Das Buch der hängenden Gärten 1
Jessica Narum
2 Georgy Sviridov’s Pushkin Romances: Approaches to Interpretation 17
Lisa Feurzeig and Rachael Gates
3 Poetry, Voice, and Resistance in Poulenc’s Tel jour telle nuit 32
Peter Kaminsky
4 Guilt, Deliberation, Affirmation: Britten’s The Holy Sonnets of
John Donne as Catharsis 48
Gordon Sly
5 Arnold van Wyk’s Van Liefde en Verlatenheid (“ Of Love and
Forsakenness”): Love and Others in 1950s South Africa 64
Matildie Wium
6 The Queer Context and Composition of Samuel Barber’s Despite and Still 79
James Sullivan
7 Four Verses of Captain Lebyadkin: Nihilism and Transcendence in
Late Shostakovich 97
Michael Chikinda
viii Contents
8 Perceiving Imaginative and Intellectual Oscillation in George
Crumb’s Apparition 116
Peter Lea and Julia Bentley
9 Modern and Sentimental Voices in Scott Wheeler’s Wasting the Night 129
Benjamin Binder
10 “ Let Me Count the Ways”: Nostalgia and Repetition in Libby Larsen’s
Sonnets from the Portuguese 150
Cara Stroud
11 Climbing the Mountain: Thoughts on Robert Morris’s Cold Mountain Songs 165
Brian Alegant
12 Portrayals of Incongruity in William Bolcom and Sandra Seaton’s
From the Diary of Sally Hemings 177
Michael R. Callahan
13 Longing for a Fragment: Sappho as a Figure of Hope in Paul Sánchez’s
ὁδοιπορία 195
Mike Morey
14 There and Then, Here and Now: Higdon’s Civil Words 211
Laura Dallman
Notes on Contributors 223
Index 227
INTRODUCTION
Gordon Sly and Michael R. Callahan
This volume offers analytical readings of 14 song cycles composed since the turn of the twen-
tieth century— from Arnold Schoenberg’s Das Buch der hängenden Gärten of 1908– 9 to Jennifer
Higdon’s Civil Words, composed in 2014. English, French, German, Russian, and Afrikaans
texts are represented, by poets as diverse as John Donne, Alexander Pushkin, Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, H an- S han, and Sappho. Composers as prominent as any of the twentieth c entury—
Schoenberg, Britten, Poulenc, S hostakovich— are here, as are those lesser k nown—V an Wyk,
Sviridov, Wheeler, Sánchez. Diverse, too, are the compositional techniques and discourses
in evidence: the complex serialism and expressionist atonality of Robert Morris and Arnold
Schoenberg; the eclectic stylistic juxtapositions and theatricality of George Crumb; the idiosyn-
cratic “ p ost- t onal” languages of Benjamin Britten, Francis Poulenc, Samuel Barber, and Dmitri
Shostakovich; and the highly individual styles of American composers born in the second half
of the twentieth century— Libby Larsen, Scott Wheeler, Jennifer Higdon, and Paul Sánchez.
Analytical approaches are similarly various: that the cohort of authors represented here com-
prises music theorists, musicologists, and performer- s cholars ensures a multiplicity of perspec-
tives and methods. Concerns with pitch structures, key schemes, and local and broad formal
designs; a composer’s selection and organization of texts, construction of poetic narratives, and
musical depictions of narrative arc and tensions; explorations of e xtra-m usical contexts that
make these compositions products of their time, place, and circumstances— e ach is explored in
individual and textured ways.
This work originated in a conference on t wentieth- and t wenty- first- century song cycles
that was convened on the Michigan State University campus in April 2018. The conference
format was unusual: a 30- m inute scholarly presentation on a cycle was followed immediately
by a live performance of that full cycle. Audiences for each session of the t hree- d ay conference
comprised scholars, singers, and collaborative p ianists—i n roughly equal parts. Each scholar,
then, had designed a presentation that acknowledged the plurality of the audience and was
suitably inclusive in its approach and language. This volume adopts its main motivation from
that of the conference. The principal aim of each chapter is to offer vocalists and collaborative
pianists a way of exploring and contemplating meaning in a work that they might perform.
Accessibility, therefore— b oth of language and of methodological a pproach—i s a priority. The
chapters are designed to be readable by and useful to performers; they do not directly suggest
