01/30/07
My favorite songs? I don't listen to singing that often, and I usually prefer choral music to the single vocalist. But I do have some favorite songs. For example:
- Ancient Voices of Children (song cycle on Lorca poetry by George Crumb)
- Blake Songs (song cycle on William Blake poetry by George Rochberg)
- I'm Bidin' My Time (song by George and Ira Gershwin
I even like some songs that are by people not named George. Take guys named William, for example:
- The Serpent (a song on a Roethke poem, by William Bolcom)
- Foy porter (a virelai by Machaut)
- Douce Dame Jolie (another virelai by Machaut)
In fact, of all the songs I like, Machaut is the composer who hits my parade the most often. His first name was Guillaume (William, right?), and he was alive in the 1300s. Talk about likin' the Oldies!
A few other favorites:
- Freezing (Philip Glass; David Byrne, lyricist? I forget)
- Ann Street (Charles Ives)
- The Cage (Charles Ives)
- Tigeroo! (Irving Fine)
- The Listeners (Norman Dello-Joio, to the classic poem by Walter de la Mare)
- Ambiance (Jeff Jones, a long piece setting Sam Beckett poetry)
- Psyche (Manuel de Falla, I forget the lyricist)
- The Vatican Rag (Tom Lehrer)
There are a lot of popular songs I like, too. Too many to list.
And there are arias from cantatas and operas that I love, too, including Wachet auf, ruft und die Stimme
by J.S. Bach, and The Hymn to the Sun
by Philip Glass.
But it's Machaut's Douce Dame Jolie
that's running through my brain right now. I like the way it moves from Dorian to Aeolian to the melodic minor mode.
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