Bolcom: Songs of Innocence and of Experience
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William Bolcom (b. 1938) Songs of Innocence and of Experience: A Musical Illumination of the Poems of William Blake Ever since I was seventeen, when the...
William Bolcom (b. 1938)
Songs of Innocence and of Experience: A Musical Illumination of the Poems of William Blake
Ever since I was seventeen, when the reading of William
Blake was to make a profound difference to my life, I
have wanted to set the entire Songs of Innocence and of
Experience to music. Several songs were actually
completed in 1956; The Sick Rose, and the opening,
revised, of the Songs of Innocence, are survivors of that
time, and the work remained in my mind until 1973, when
I moved to Ann Arbor to teach at the University of
Michigan. I felt that I could thus simplify my life enough
to be able to realise the cycle I had dreamed of for so long.
Most of the work was completed in the years 1973-74
and 1979-82; the opening of the Songs of Experience was
fully sketched in 1966 and several of the major songs date
from the early and middle 1970s. The largest problem
was the form the entire setting would take. It could not be
a standard opera, and the stopping and starting that
constantly bedevils the oratorio form would prove fatal
for 46 poems over an evening.
The final ordering of the Songs left by Blake, as will
be seen, is quite different from the one I had become used
to in my earliest reading. In the 1880s William Muir, an
artist greatly involved with the revival of interest in
Blake's engravings and paintings, actually printed some
of the poet's works from the original copper plates. He
then (as Blake with his wife Catherine had done) handcoloured
them, although, to my mind, not as interestingly
or vividly as had Blake himself. In Muir's edition of The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1888) I found by chance in
the appendix an ordering of the Songs of Innocence and of
Experience (reproduced in what looks very much like
Blake's own hand); Blake had presumably left this for his
wife should anyone have wanted a further printing of the
Songs, which had been one of the few of his engraved
works that had had any sale. (Evidently no one asked
Catherine Blake for a copy.)
This ordering, new to me, gave me what I needed in
trying to find an overall shape to the work: a series of
arches, in both subject and emotion, that marked the piece
off into nine clear movements, each inhabiting a certain
spiritual climate and progressing ever further in Shewing
the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. With slight
changes I have used Blake's last ordering in my piece. I
had always wanted to end the evening with The Divine
Image, which Blake had engraved and then rejected for
the Experience cycle, and I revised the order of the last
part to accommodate the poem.
The Blakean principle of contraries -- "Without
Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion,
Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to
Human existence." (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)
-- would also dominate my approach to the work,
particularly in matters of style. Current Blake research has
tended to confirm what I had assumed from the first, that
at every point Blake used his whole culture, past and
present, highflown and vernacular, as sources for his
many poetic styles. Throughout the entire Songs of
Innocence and of Experience, exercises in elegant
Drydenesque diction are placed cheek by jowl with
ballads that could have come from one of the "songsters"
of his day (small, popular books or pamphlets of words
set to well-known tunes, in the manner of John Gay's
1728 Beggar's Opera). It is as if many people from all
walks of life were speaking, each in a different way. The
apparent disharmony of each clash and juxtaposition
eventually produces a deeper and more universal
harmony, once the whole cycle is absorbed. All I did was
to use the same stylistic point of departure as Blake in my
musical settings.
If any one work of mine has been the chief source and
progenitor of the others, I would have to say that this is it.
My fascination with the synthesis of the most unlikely
stylistic elements dates from my knowledge and
application of Blake's principle of contraries, and I have
spent most of my artistic life in pursuit of this higher
synthesis. In this work, through my settings, I have tried
my best to make everything clear; I have used music in
the same way Blake used line and colour, in order to
illuminate the poems.
To me, William Blake is the most urgent of poets.
What he says is as immediate as ever, but particularly to
us: he came from an epoch of social change as total as
ours. With clear and unjudging vision Blake saw where
the human race was heading; it could be argued that the
Songs of Innocence and of Experience may be the most
lucid explanation we have of what forces have brought us
to where we are now. If there is any solution to our
unending crisis, it is only through acceptance and
understanding of our own nature, and if I have caused a
more careful listening to Blake's message, then my work
over a span of 25 years will not have been in vain.
William Bolcom, 1984
Recollections on the Twentieth Anniversary of Songs of Innocence and of Experience
After the April 1984 United States première of this work in
Ann Arbor's Hill Auditorium - the world's first
performances had taken place 8th and 9th January of that
year with the Stuttgart Opera Orchestra under Dennis
Russell Davies - there have been twelve performances of
Songs of Innocence and of Experience: at Grant Park in
Chicago with Gustav Meier, who did the first Ann Arbor
performance; with the Brooklyn Philharmonic under Lukas
Foss; with the Saint Louis Symphony, both there and in
New York, and the BBC Symphony in London, also under
Leonard Slatkin; and with the Pacific Symphony in Costa
Mesa in Southern California under former Ann Arborite
Carl St Clair. A piece of its sheer size cannot hope to be
played too often, and I am still amazed, twenty years later,
that it has been heard all these times, sixteen performances
in all.
I was once afraid it would never be heard or even
finished. Although parts of Songs date from almost fifty
years ago, I certainly did not (and economically could not)
work on it steadily; Songs is one of those works one does
without commission. Finding time and relative peace to
compose it in the sheer all-day effort to survive freelance in
New York had proved impossible. When we moved to Ann
Arbor, finally I was able to put the piece together; of course
I did not realise that my wife Joan Morris and I would still
be here thirty-something years later.
You will notice many instruments unusual to the
orchestra. I love writing for the "modern" symphony
orchestra, but often I am confronted with the sad fact that
its disposition, the term for its total instrumentation, has
hardly evolved since World War I. (Up until then the
orchestra admitted instrument after instrument when
players in each attained a certain level of proficiency; why
the subsequent inertia has occurred is a subject best
explored elsewhere, but it would seem likely that any
organization as codified, as rigidly delineated as today's
orchestra is in danger of disappearing.) The University of
Michigan School of Music provided a possible escape from
this unevolved orchestra. A rough demographic analysis of
the student population taken in the aggregate yields a
potential orchestra including saxophones, expanded
percussion and brass, and electric instruments; all these are
represented onstage along with the varied musical styles
these instruments and their players bring to our new
orchestra.
More important, even though Stuttgart has had the
world première, Songs of Innocence and of Experience had
been primarily meant to be a work involving our whole
School of Music. (A school of our size could fall too easily
into watertight departmental thinking on the part of both
faculty and students; what a shame not to get to know and
collaborate with other kinds of musicians, or actors, or
dancers, in one's learning years!) In the chorus of a St
Matthew Passion performance when a student in Seattle, I
experienced a deep feeling of oneness with the whole
community of musicians onstage that permeated my soul;
we were singers and instrumentalists, each from different
disciplines, brought spiritually together by Bach's music. I
vowed some day to write something that could afford such
an experience to students after me, that would permit a true
bringing of many kinds of performers together; the hope is
that the greater understanding of ourselves that Blake leads
us toward in this cycle will thus be experienced here
communally, on and off stage. The knowledge these poems
gives us is often frightening, but it makes us free and in the
end gives us joy.
William Bolcom, 2004
Songs of Innocence and of Experience (more info)
Performed by:
Michigan University Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by:
Leonard Slatkin
Christine Brewer, soprano
Marietta Simpson, mezzo-soprano
William Bolcom, piano
Joan Morris, mezzo-soprano
Measha Brueggergosman, soprano
Ilana Davidson, soprano
Linda Hohenfeld, soprano
Carmen Pelton, soprano
Peter Ruth, harmonica
Jeremy Kittel, violin
Nmon Ford, baritone
Nathan Lee Graham, vocals
Thomas Young, tenor
Tommy Morgan, harmonica
Recording date: 08 April 2004
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Part 1: Introduction - 3:08
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Part 1: The Ecchoing Green - 2:32
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Part 1: The Lamb - 3:20
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Part 1: The Shepherd - 2:14
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Part 1: Infant Joy - 1:58
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Part 1: The Little Black Boy - 4:07
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Part 2: Laughing Song - 0:33
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Part 2: Spring - 1:45
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Part 2: A Cradle Song - 4:04
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Part 2: Nurse's Song - 1:36
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Part 2: Holy Thursday - 1:08
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Part 2: The Blossom - 0:41
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Part 2: Interlude - 0:25
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Part 2: The Chimney Sweeper - 3:14
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Part 2: The Divine Image - 3:50
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Part 3: Nocturne - 2:03
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Part 3: Night - 5:01
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Part 3: A Dream - 1:41
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Part 3: On Another's Sorrow - 1:53
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Part 3: The Little Boy Lost - 2:48
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Part 3: The Little Boy Found - 1:56
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Part 3: Coda - 1:32
Songs of Experience, Volume I (more info)
Performed by:
Michigan University Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by:
Leonard Slatkin
Christine Brewer, soprano
Marietta Simpson, mezzo-soprano
William Bolcom, piano
Joan Morris, mezzo-soprano
Measha Brueggergosman, soprano
Ilana Davidson, soprano
Linda Hohenfeld, soprano
Carmen Pelton, soprano
Peter Ruth, harmonica
Jeremy Kittel, violin
Nmon Ford, baritone
Nathan Lee Graham, vocals
Thomas Young, tenor
Tommy Morgan, harmonica
Recording date: 08 April 2004
-
Part 1: Introduction - 2:20
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Part 1: Hear the Voice of the Bard - 2:55
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Part 1: Interlude - 0:51
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Part 1: Earth's Answer - 4:54
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Part 2: Nurse's Song - 1:10
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Part 2: The Fly - 1:43
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Part 2: The Tyger - 1:50
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Part 2: The Little Girl Lost - 1:10
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Part 2: In the Southern Clime - 2:08
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Part 2: The Little Girl Found - 4:47
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Part 3: The Clod and the Pebble - 1:47
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Part 3: The Little Vagabond - 2:31
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Part 3: Holy Thursday - 2:44
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Part 3: A Poison Tree - 2:09
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Part 3: The Angel - 3:15
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Part 3: The Sick Rose - 3:14
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Part 3: To Tirzah - 3:32
Songs of Experience, Volume II (more info)
Performed by:
Michigan University Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by:
Leonard Slatkin
Christine Brewer, soprano
Marietta Simpson, mezzo-soprano
William Bolcom, piano
Joan Morris, mezzo-soprano
Measha Brueggergosman, soprano
Ilana Davidson, soprano
Linda Hohenfeld, soprano
Carmen Pelton, soprano
Peter Ruth, harmonica
Jeremy Kittel, violin
Nmon Ford, baritone
Nathan Lee Graham, vocals
Thomas Young, tenor
Tommy Morgan, harmonica
Recording date: 08 April 2004
-
Part 4: The Voice of the Ancient Bard - 2:29
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Part 4: My Pretty Rose Tree - 1:43
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Part 4: Ah! Sun-Flower - 2:30
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Part 4: The Lilly - 1:36
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Part 5: Introduction - 0:49
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Part 5: The Garden of Love - 2:04
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Part 5: A Little Boy Lost - 2:27
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Part 5: A Little Girl Lost - 4:44
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Part 5: Infant Sorrow - 2:23
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Part 5: Vocalise - 2:57
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Part 6: London - 3:54
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Part 6: The School-Boy - 3:23
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Part 6: The Chimney Sweeper - 1:20
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Part 6: The Human Abstract - 3:22
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Part 6: Interlude - Voces Clamandae - 1:32
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Part 6: A Divine Image - 5:29