Phantoms of Myself (2000)
For High Voice and Piano
Duration: 15’
Movement Titles: I Wake Thinking of Myself as a Man | A Story | Confession | Her Sadness Runs Beside Her Like a Horse | 'Quiet, quiet heart' | Absence | "I wake to your gestures...'
Text: Susan Griffin (E)
First Performance: 10 May 2000 / Theresa L. Kaufmann Concert Hall, 92nd Street YMHA, New York City / Ashley Putnam, soprano / Daron Hagen, piano
Dedication: "Commissioned by and dedicated to Ashley Putnam.”
Publisher: Carl Fischer | Purchase Sheet Music
Accompanying Ashley Putman in the world premiere of Phantoms of Myself at the 92nd Street Y, NYC, on 10 May 2000 (p/c: Hiroyuki Ito/Getty Images)
Selected Reviews:
“The seven song Phantoms of Myself (2000) with soprano Gilda Lyons is in performance and as Art Song stunning. The cycle covers a 24-hour day via the selected poem-texts of Susan Griffin, feminist and poetic strength. The cycle was initially commissioned for first performance by Ashley Putnam. Ms. Lyons brings her own magic to the songs.”
—Grego Applegate Edwards, Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review, February 2018
“Mr. Hagen's new cycle ... was based on a set of poems by Susan Griffin, suggested to the composer by the performer [sic], the dynamic soprano Ashley Putnam. In the first poem, [Hagen frames] the pugnacious vocal line with chunky parallel chords and volleys of pointillistic figurations in the piano part. ... The audience's response was enthusiastic.”
— Anthony Tommasini, New York Times, 15 May 2000
“Phantoms is one of the finest contemporary American women’s cycles I know. From the raw 60s blues of Confession to the French tendresse of the lullaby, Quiet, Quiet Heart, the Lutheran reverie of Absence to the serial anguish of A Story, there’s not a single weak song. I assign this cycle again and again to my students and they never fail to fall in love with it.”
—Paul Sperry, Manhattan School of Music masterclass, fall 2022
Program Note:
Susan Griffin, philosopher, poet, Emmy-winning playwright, and feminist thinker, celebrates not only feminism and femininity but also human nature in her poetry. I am drawn to her work because of its enormous emotional and technical range. From poems that Ashley Putnam and I chose together I arranged a sequence based on a twenty-four hour cycle, beginning and ending with the act of waking, following the poet through what I imagine might be the sequence of her thoughts and emotions during the course of a single day. I accompanied Ashley in the premiere of Phantoms of Myself on May 10th, 2000 at the Therese L. Kaufmann Concert Hall of the 92nd Street Y in New York City.