"The centerpiece of the program is Songs of Madness and Sorrow (1997), based on texts from Michael Lesy's Wisconsin Death Trip (University of New Mexico Press). This eye-opening book uses newspaper clippings and photographs to tell of the insanity and mayhem that seemed to sweep through rural Wisconsin in the 1890's — a time when the gap between the immensely rich and the grindingly poor grew ever larger, and when northwoods winters imposed terrible hardships.
"One of the texts Hagen chose appeared in the Wisconsin State Journal in February 1900: 'Mike Grazialny, an employee at the Menasha Wagonware Company, went violently insane while at work. He was taken with a fit of insanity and rushed out of the shop where he was employed. He began to yell most frantically. It was not long before every one of the thousand workers in the shop joined in with his yells. They just didn't know the man was crazy. The entire city was awakened by the din.' Another is from the log of the Mendota State Mental Hospital: 'Admitted June 20th, 1901. Resident of Jackson County. Age 34. American. Married. Seven children. Poor. Melancholia — fear of some injury by the devil or from some other person. Insomnia. Filhty. Emaciated. Extreme weakness — tremor — very religious.' And so it goes through hundreds of reports.
"Hagen's music fits this sort of thing perfectly, and I sense that he found plenty of inspiration when composing it. It is mesmerizing.... Tenor Paul Sperry does an excellent job of delivering the text clearly and changing characters for each, and the Cleveland Chamber Symphony supports him with sensitivity and conviction.
"Hagen had the fragile late-19th Century Wisconsin psyche in mind when he wrote his Serenade for Ten Instruments (1999), but he meant to portray how far we have come since then. 'I imagine it performed outdoors on a beautiful, cool, late-summer evening on the rolling lawn of a prairie-style home somewhere along the shores of Lake Mendota, the smell of grilling brats, newly-cut grass, lake water, and Leinenkugel beer in the air — perhaps with the now-abandoned Mendota Asylum for the Insane indistinctly in sight across the waters?' This image is conveyed quite nicely by the music, which has an out-of-doors atmosphere quite in keeping with serenade tradition. The playing by the Oakwood Chamber Players is graceful and expressive, especially in the lovely Intermezzo.
"And then there is Hagen's Concerto for Brass Quintet (1995), written for and performed by the Wisconsin Brass Quintet. The composer's notes describe in detail the five movement work's organization. I'll summarize by saying 'Sennets' is splashy and based on triadic pitch sets, 'Melodia' lyrical and wistful, 'Invention' syncopated in Torke-like minimalist style, 'Romance' darkened by flugelhorns and euphonium, and 'Tuckets' all blaring fanfares. This outstanding piece is given a bold reading that is full of variety, though my sense is that 'Invention' would have benefitted from a lighter, bubblier approach." — Kilpatrick, American Record Guide, November / December 2004
"Well, to my ears, the aesthetic salvation of the brass quintet has been Daron Hagen's Concerto for Brass Quintet from 1995, declaratively played by the Wisconsin Brass on Hagen's new Arsis CD Songs of Madness and Sorrow. In the Concerto, Hagen employs five different compositional strategies to create a five-movement work that is simultaneously varied and unified (no easy feat this) and, at the same time, musically enjoyable for listeners and, I imagine, the players as well who each get some limelight. In this first movement, "Sennets," four major triads built from a diminished seventh (Bb-Db-E-G) form the basis of a quasi-serial canonic manipulation. The second movement, "Melodia," is a more traditional hymn-like theme and variations which thankfully uses the first movement's four triads to banish any possible Salvation Army associations. The centerpiece, "Invention," is my favorite: two interlocking rhythmic cells battle it out making for some exciting post-minimalist counterpoint. For "Romance" the trumpeters switch to fluegelhorns and the trombone to euphonium for a darker, richer sound world populated with quartal harmonies at times reminiscent of Hindemith, and other times west coast jazz. Finally, "Tuckets," gives in to the temptation to write a fanfare — it is a Brass Quintet after all — but Hagen redeems himself by using that wonderfully ambiguous series of triads once again.
"But that's not all… The work that lends the disc its title, Songs of Madness and Sorrow, is a dramatic cantata created for tenor Paul Sperry which offers us a slice of the kind of music Hagen has become most known for. At first I was worried that the 19th century Midwest narrative might degenerate into mere nostalgic America, but through Hagen's keen text-setting abilities, a collection of historic Wisconsin newspaper articles and advertisements, mental health records and oral accounts, becomes a riveting one-man opera and a dialogue with a forgotten past that feels strangely familiar in our own time. Serenade for Ten Instruments, scored for wind quintet, trumpet, string trio and double bass, opens with a return to the fiery post-minimalist rhythmic energy of the brass quintet's third movement but soon morphs into more dramatic territory (much of this music derives from material originally composed for Hagen's opera Bandanna). All in all, this is music that will grab you on first listen and reward you further each time you return to it." — Frank Oteri, NewMusicBox, October, 2004
"The vocal work on offer is the half-hour Songs of Madness and Sorrow for tenor and chamber orchestra. The texts, all taken from public domain sources, are a compendium of newspaper accounts of death, madness, frustrated love, jingoism, and medical quackery. In some ways, it is a musical companion to that remarkable book of mortuary photographs, Wisconsin Death Trip. Hagen’s scoring is, of course, resourceful; and here he takes a much less melodic stance than is usual with his vocal music. It heightens the sense of accounts being read from a newspaper on the one hand and on the other serves effectively to render minimal the problems that Paul Sperry would have with any sort of lyrical singing at this point in his career. While one would not be adverse to hearing the few moments of genuine melodic sweetness in the hands of a singer capable of realizing them, Sperry’s utterly clear and flatly Midwestern pronunciation effectively convey the sense of very dark news from the shores of 19th-century Wisconsin.
"The performances are all excellent and the recordings, made over a number of years at three separate venues, are all fine. Recommended. " — Fanfare Magazine
Songs of Madness and Sorrow
