So moved was I by it that I posted a picture of a dazzling late November tomato from my garden on my Facebook feed in November 2018. Within moments, Christopher Rouse (Godspeed, Chris!) posted, “Better eat it soon!” To which I immediately replied, “Oh, it was et mere seconds after I snapped the pic!” A few beats later, Mark Campbell posted, “There is a song in this, Daron,” to which I replied, “If you pen the lyric, I will set it!” “I just might,” Mark responded, “But it’s not a comic song, as much as tomato is usually a comic word.” “Agreed,” I typed, and forgot about it.
A few days later, Mark sent me one of the finest, most “settable” lyrics I’ve ever read. Thanking him, I resolved to put it aside until I had a project in hand that was worthy of its excellence. A year later, Lyric Fest of Philadelphia and the Brooklyn Art Song Society co-commissioned me to create a sixty-minute song cycle for six solo voices and piano four-hands. On my birthday this past November, the resulting valedictory cycle, which I titled The Art of Song, was premiered by its commissioners at the Church of the Holy Trinity on Rittenhouse Square. Mark’s poem joined a big garland of poems, and figured prominently as one of the emotional and musical anchors of the piece as a whole.
I realized, as I walked into the church for the concert, that I had last been there during an era now almost entirely lost: November 1982. With me was my then teacher Ned Rorem—the Curtis Institute of Music being just across Rittenhouse Square—and my benefactor at the time, curator and chairman of the Philadelphia Museum of Art Henry McIlhenny—whose townhouse stood also on the square, next door to the Ethical Culture Society and its pretty little performance hall. (Although the romantic in me would have preferred that Henry’s fortune derived from tabasco sauce, it in fact grew out of his grandfather’s invention and development of gas meters.) Ned had invited Henry to the recital in order that he might hear some of the music that had derived from his financial generosity. Several classmates were about to premiere on a concert series sponsored by the church a sonata for cello and piano that I had penned for the occasion. (The music is in a box unopened since the 80s now somewhere in my in-laws’ attic—proof that, while I rarely withdraw something I’ve written, pieces tend to withdraw themselves.) On the same program, my fellow art song swashbuckler, soprano Karen Hale (then Noteboom) and I were set to perform a slew of brand new songs—all of which ended up in the first song cycles of mine that E.C. Schirmer published—Echo’s Songs and Love Songs.
If my last visit to the church had taken place during my life’s April, then surely my return celebrated it’s November. Here I was, myself now, like the “funny word” tomato in my garden—the pomodoro in Mark’s lyric— “a flashing ember in the ashen garden;” here to celebrate my 58th birthday with the premiere of a new work after the “end of summer had long passed, / to shine the last,” and—as he cannily repeated the line, “to shine the last and brightest.”
Harmony drives emotion in the instrumental component of vocal music the way that lyrics drive the tune. I’ve long composed autobiographical songs in G major. “Pomodoro’s” harmonic “reality” is C major; but it harmonically aspires to be in G major. A stubborn tritone (or raised fourth scale degree; the third of C’s secondary dominant—which injects a great deal of harmonic “lift” into a chord progression) F# keeps edging the music into the key of G (the dominant) when the emotion intensifies.
Mark’s poem begins, as a character sketch number should, conversationally.
When I first saw the thing,
I thought it was a hoax.
The cruelest of jokes.
Had to be store-bought, I thought,
Tied to the vine with a string.
Split neatly up into short digestible bits that the composer can deal out like cards in a light parlando style—think old-time recitative but a little more elevated, like contemporary popera—not actually tuneful, but agreeable, bougeoir, and disarming—his tone evokes Billy Bigelow from Carousel; he’s knowing, wry, an affectionate trickster. But beneath the chit-chat, Mark is keeping the construction tight by internally rhyming hoax / jokes, and bought / thought and then literally tying up the stanza with thing / string. It requires music that disarms the listener and draws them in—a Sondheim-like musical theater vamp, perhaps; but something that, like the words, has the craft to conceal its craft, and the humility not to broadcast how clever it is.
A tomato in my garden
In November.
Late in November.
Mark sits on the delicious, warm “r” sound in garden and November, and—knowing that most composers (certainly me) will want to linger there—repeats the word. This invites the composer to warm up the music, too, to turn up the emotional heat a tad. The lyric provides a neat transition to the next lines, which ably continue ramping up the emotional heat.
A flashing ember in the ashen garden,
Before skies darken,
Before the ground begins to harden,
A bit of (welcome) purple in the fire imagery, which he blows on with a triple rhyme—garden / darken / harden—all those juicy, fruity “r’s” to sing and use to “feel” as a singer. The composer’s job here is obvious: the rhymes are quickening, so the harmonic and rhythmic pulse should, too. In this case, I broke from groups of four eighths into groups of three—an intentional little stretto effect, a little heartbeat gallop, gentle and virile.
Long after we’ve counted our losses
And tossed them into sauces.
An agreeable climax to the parlando arc of the first third of the song—a self-deprecatory bit of practicality: losses become sauces the way that life gives us lemons and we make lemonade.
But there it was,
Round and ripe and real,
With no autumnal flaws.
Bigelow is back, rolling in those delicious “r’s” (round / ripe / real) and pulling us back to the opening conversational parlando—as though to say, “don’t worry, I won’t be highfallutin’."
And then Mark does something elegant because it is prosaic, but sincere, not overly-clever:
I felt compelled to kneel,
And sigh, sigh, sigh:
This is Monteverdi—like me, a November-born Scorpio: Lasciatemi morire, or “let me die.” —But not 20th century death of course, but 16th century death as orgasm. In this case, a spiritual orgasm, more a metaphysical naturalism—the kind of lyric that simply must be attached to falling 2-3 suspensions (returned are the tender triplets of a quickening heart) because, well, that’s what Mark knows composers have done in the west with this gesture for four centuries. It is a delight to set these words chastely to music, and to be able to use them to prepare the singer’s delivery of the central image of the lyric, which calls for intense musical lyricism:
“Pomodoro.”
The Calaf yearning to burst out from within the self-effacement of our Bigelow does so and we’re charmed. He’s a dear, this one, and by nature feels compelled to immediately give us a nice big explanatory Protestant parenthetical that undercuts the Italianate grandiosity of his expression:
(Forgetting I’m not Italian,
Nor much of a gardener,
Though through the years I had acquitted myself,
Adequately enough.)
Mark ends with a little touch of Voltaire’s gardener’s humble pride, like another Billy knuckling his forehead to Vere. As though nodding in agreement, the music bridges with two little repetitions of the fragment of melody to which the words “adequately enough” were just sung. And with those excellent progenitors standing in the wings, the lyric deserves to soar.
Pomodoro.
Pomodoro.
Mark gives us two iterations of the word pomodoro, allowing the composer to climax (as one may and does in Italian) first on the first “ah-o” syllable in the word, and then on the “or” third syllable, a terrific set of mouth shapes (which Mark obviously knows) and also a nod to Italian opera, with which our Bigelow has evidently gotten away from Carousel long enough to develop more than a passing acquaintance. At this point, it becomes not just a lyric and a song about aging, but —poignantly—how singers are often at their best just as their voices are leaving them; about the difference between music theater and opera.
For “tomato” was too mundane, too common,
For this rare phenomenon.
So now we know that the first time the singer sings the word earlier in the song he has to saw “to-may-to” and this time “to-mah-to” because we’re going to go there, too, as Americans who write songs and are about to call the whole thing off. Look at all the “mm’s” there—tommmmato, mmmundane, common, and then a feint to the yummy “r” sound again (“rare”) and a payoff in the delicious word “phenomenon.” Sexy, sensual, and smart. And now, for this sort of song, convention calls for the revelation of a secret, and Mark does not disappoint. It is the composer’s honor to step aside, to provide some simple background chords, to let the lyric speak—with the greatest intimacy and simplicity in the song, since it is the singer’s truth—for itself:
For it had waited,
Until the end of summer had long passed,
To shine the last.
Mark repeats the point, as a lyricist must—
To shine the last and brightest…
…Where he gives the composer an ellipsis because he knows that the syllable “bright” is a gorgeous one to loft high, softly for a male voice, and he is making that possible for the composer without having been asked. Repetition as a device (and punning, since the second and third syllables of the title sound like “adore”) having been established in the lyric, Mark gives two final iterations of the delicious word in question, which provided the climax of the song, and now provides its tender, wistful release.
It’s the difference between lyrics and poetry, lyric theater and a straight play. A great librettist like Mark Campbell knows how to show his hand without committing “hand of author;” knows what kind of words a composer needs to make the combination of the two the only thing that matters. There’s profound poetry and dignity in that.
Pomodoro.
Pomodoro.
POMODORO
When I first saw the thing,
I thought it was a hoax,
The cruelest of jokes.
Had to be store-bought, I thought,
Tied to the vine with string.
A tomato in my garden
In November,
Late in November,
A flashing ember in the ashen garden,
Before skies darken,
Before the ground begins to harden,
Long after we’ve counted our losses
And tossed them into sauces.
But there it was,
Round and ripe and real,
With no autumnal flaws.
I felt compelled to kneel,
And sigh, sigh, sigh:
“Pomodoro”
(Forgetting I’m not Italian,
Nor much of a gardener,
Though through the years I had acquit myself,
Adequately enough.)
Pomodoro.
Pomodoro.
For “tomato” was too mundane, too common,
For this rare phenomenon.
For it had waited,
Until the end of summer had long passed,
To shine the last,
To shine the last and brightest...
Pomodoro,
Pomodoro.
—Mark Campbell (2018)
The tomato in question.