Song Cycle for 2 Sopranos, 2 Mezzo-sopranos, Tenor, Baritone, and Piano

Duration: 65’

First Performance: (Philadelphia) 4 November 2019 / Church of the Holy Trinity, Philadelphia, PA / Lyric Fest and the Brooklyn Art Song Society / Laura Ward, Michael Brofman, piano. (New York) 3 June 2022 / Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn, NY / Lyric Fest, presented by the Brooklyn Art Song Society / Laura Ward, piano

Dedication: "Co-Commissioned by the Brooklyn Art Song Society and Lyric Fest of Philadelphia”

Text: (in order of appearance) Walt Whitman, Orson Welles, Aaron Copland, Joseph R. McCarthy, Abraham Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart, Paul Robeson, Stephen Crane, William Butler Yeats, Roy Cohn, Donald Trump, Emma Lazarus, Gwen Hagen, Mark Campbell, Rhianna Brandt, Christina Rosetti, Sappho, Tobias Schneebaum, Thomas Ken, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Seamus Hagen, William Blake, Daron Hagen, Roland Flint, Paul Goodman, Dante Alighieri (E)

Publisher: Peermusic Classical

Recording: Naxos | Spotify | iTunes

Part 1: Summer
America (Walt Whitman)
Un-American Activities (Joseph R. McCarthy; Aaron Copland; Orson Welles; transcript, HUAC, May 25, 1953)
Peace Quodlibet (Abraham Lincoln; Amelia Earhart; Paul Robeson; Eleanor Roosevelt)
War is Kind / Irish Airman (Stephen Crane; William Butler Yeats)
Mother of Exiles (Donald Trump; Roy Cohn; Emma Lazarus)
     Part 2: Autumn
The Moths (Gwen Hagen)
Pomodoro (Mark Campbell)
Quail (Rhianna Brandt)
No Sad Songs (Christina Rossetti)
Brown Penny (William Butler Yeats)
Love (Sappho)
Among the Asmat (Tobias Schneebaum; Orson Welles)
     Part 3: Winter
Western Wind (Anonymous, early 16th century)
Prayer in Midwinter (Thomas Ken)
That I Know (Gwen Hagen)
What Lips My Lips Have Kissed (Edna St. Vincent Millay)
Summer is Gone (Anonymous, 17th century Irish, adapted)
The Wolf (Seamus Hagen)
The Lamb (William Blake)
     Part 4: Spring
The New Yorkers (Daron Hagen)
The Green for Pamela (Roland Flint)
Almighty Father (Traditional, adapted)
Rain in Spring (Paul Goodman)
The Start of Everything (Dante Alighieri, Inferno)

Program Note:

The Art of Song (co-commissioned by the Brooklyn Art Song Society and Lyric Fest of Philadelphia) was composed at the artist retreat Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY during August 2018 and first performed in Philadelphia on 4 November 2019. The pandemic postponed the New York premiere until June 2022, when the Brooklyn Art Song Society presented Lyric Fest in Brooklyn. The work was recorded under Hagen’s supervision in Philadelphia at the Curtis Institute of Music over a two-day span in May and June 2022.

Hagen, now 61, had written dozens of songs before entering Ned Rorem’s studio at the Curtis Institute of Music in 1981, and had penned another 50 before graduating Juilliard a few years later. In the ensuing years, along with 13 operas, he has amassed a catalogue of over 500 individual songs and large-scale cycles. Widely recorded, several dozen are featured on Lyric Fest’s 2017 Naxos release Hagen: 21st-Century Song Cycles (8.559714). There is weight then to his comment when he writes, “As a song composer, The Art of Song represents for me something of a musical ‘closing argument,’ a braiding together of the various themes, vocal traditions, and aesthetic strands of my vocal composing—the performers move fluently from art song to musical theater to cantata to opera, in choral, solo, and ensemble numbers that combine texts spanning over a thousand years—over the past 45 years.”

Divided into four large “life seasons,” the 24 songs, accompanied by piano, are sung by two sopranos, two mezzo-sopranos, tenor, and a baritone. In the first section, Summer, Hagen is in full citizen/activist/artist mode, offering an overview of the human cost of American domestic politics since the Civil War. The second section, Autumn, turns inward, featuring poems about aging, love, nostalgia, and finding fulfillment in accepting one’s place in the world. The third, Winter, features words concerning advancing age, the loss of innocence, and the struggle to find (and maintain) faith. Hagen begins the final section, Spring, with a wry musical theater group portrait of a handful of young pre-9/11 New Yorkers before moving through the tragic loss of a child, the balm of prayer, the turning of the seasons, and, in the final Dante setting, the reconfirmation of song’s ageless functions: to witness, to remember, to mourn, to protest, to remind us of who we are, and who we can aspire to be, to begin again.

Selected Reviews:

The Lyric Fest ensemble…succeeds in performing the whole thing in a musically appropriate and gripping way. Their evocative, equally emotional and lyrical performance, coupled with clear rhetoric, gives structure, form and content to the 24 songs… © 2024 Pizzicato Read complete review

—Guy Engels, Pizzicato, January 2024

[The recording is] performed by Philadelphia’s Lyric Fest… It’s a skilful and nuanced performance that does justice to a really interesting collection of texts with complex and varied settings. © 2024 operaramblings Read complete review

—John Gilks, operaramblings, January 2024

It is a safe bet that no other song cycle has matched the diversity of texts present in Daron Hagen’s in The Art of Song, composed in 2019. Text authors include Whitman, Trump, Yeats, and one Seamus Hagen (b. 2011), presumably the composer's son, who contributes a fine poem about a wolf. And that is just the beginning. The 24 songs are divided into seasonal sections: Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Spring. Summer, as the notes say, represents Hagen "full citizen/activist/artist mode"; it is here that Trump (and Sen. Joseph McCarthy) show up. It is not clear why that mode should be connected to summer, but to some degree, this is the point; Hagen is trying to represent a wide range of experiences, both exterior and interior. The variety occurs not only between songs but within them; Hagen often sets texts in counterpoint to each other, with multiple singers. This may remind medieval music fans of the polytextual pieces of that era. This places strong demands on the singers (two sopranos, two mezzo-sopranos, a tenor, and a baritone), especially inasmuch as a number of the contemporary texts could not be reproduced in the booklet due to copyright restrictions. This doesn't turn out to be a problem; text intelligibility is good, and the singers of the Lyric Fest ensemble accomplish a plain but not inexpressive sound that matches the medieval-like textures. With reasonable clarity from a rehearsal room at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute, this fascinating album represents nothing less than a whole new kind of song cycle.

—James Manheim, Allmusic Review, March 2024

HAGEN The Art of Song • Laura Ward (pn); Gilda Lyons, Rebecca Myers (sop); Meg Bragle, Elisa Sutherland (mez); James Reese (ten); Steven Eddy (bar) • NAXOS 8.559919 (58:18 )

I have admired and reviewed the music of Daron Hagen (b. 1961) for many years now. While his catalog ranges over a dizzying range of media and genres, he’s unquestionably a specialist and master of vocal music. He’s stood out over the decades as a composer of opera, and a very innovative one. Currently it seems his passion is for creating “operafilm”—which is not just a film of a production, but where a film is the production (I think of his Orson Rehearsed and 9/10: Before the Fall as recent examples). But though he has this unerring instinct for music of the stage, the art song is also a big part of his output.

And this work feels like something of a capstone. The Art of Song (2019) is a roughly hour-long cycle for an ensemble of six singers with piano accompaniment. It sets a range of texts from such heavyweights as Whitman, Millay, and Yeats, but also members of the composer’s family, and even himself. It’s organized into four sections that follow musical seasons, not only with appropriate natural imagery but also suggestions of seasons of life.

Hagen is a composer who deeply appreciates the tradition, but that doesn’t mean he is reactionary. I found this piece original, because despite its immediate accessibility it ranges over a highly eclectic range of styles and expressions. It is almost a textbook in different approaches to ensemble setting, with every subset and combination possible. The sheer multiplicity of it stands out as one mark of originality; it also doesn’t hurt that he can write a wonderful tune! Some readers may know that my own tastes tend more toward experimental and modernist work, though touched with a rebellious and slightly contrarian streak (think of Ives). But that doesn’t keep me from enjoying Hagen’s work. In terms of writing in a manner that is truly natural and grateful for the human voice, yet not falling into cloying clichés, I think of him as a one of the best of his generation (the one peer who rises immediately to mind is John Musto).

A few things come to mind, but this is just to give a sense of range. It could be made from any number of pieces in the set. The a cappella opening has a sound evocative of shape-note singing, though not using the actual technique. (Is it possible for consonance to be bracing, almost abrasive? Hagen seems to think so here.) A richly Romantic song, such as “Pomodoro,” takes us into a world that touches on that of the composer’s mentor Ned Rorem, or perhaps even Barber, though nothing sounds like an easy cop. The setting of Blake’s “The Lamb” has a childlike simplicity that is the most innocent of prayers. And early on, there is a number where something is done that I never thought could be pulled off—a setting of the words of Donald Trump, blended with those of his mentor Roy Cohn into a deliciously nasty brew that is a comic aria of villainy.

In many of these pieces, the whole ensemble is used to great effect. Often one or two soloists will be framed by a shifting background of the other voices, providing space and atmosphere. Towards the end there is a great Sondheimian essay, using the composer’s text, where all join to trace a miniature history of postwar arts in New York City, as experienced by a group of enthusiastic youngsters who are progressively tempered—but in the end, not beaten—by reality.

Disclosure: I know the composer and count him as a friend, but not a close one. If I felt I had to pull my punches, I’d not review this. The performances are spot on: Everyone is open, uninhibited, and yet technically exact. Laura Ward holds it all together with piano accompaniment so rich that one doesn’t miss a larger ensemble. Lyric Fest is a Philadelphia-based vocal presenting organization that obviously has a number of regular artists it can call on, both performers and composers, to create innovative programs. It seems professional and artistic on the highest level. This is certainly an early contender for my next Want List.

—Robert Carl, Issue 47:6 (July/Aug 2024) Fanfare Magazine

HAGEN The Art of Song • Laura Ward (pn); Gilda Lyons, Rebecca Myers (sop); Meg Bragle, Elisa Sutherland (mez); James Reese (ten); Steven Eddy (bar) • NAXOS 8.559919 (58:18 )

The music of Daron Aric Hagen (b. 1961) continues to stimulate and amaze. Opera (Orson Rehearsed, reviewed by myself in Fanfare 44:6, and which made my 2021 Want List), vocal music (Fanfare 45:3) and book (Duet with the Past, Fanfare 43:6) have all received praise. It’s good to see a major song cycle released on Naxos, then: The Art of Song (2019), recorded under the auspices of Lyric Fest (lyricfest.org, its tagline, “connecting people through song”).The vocal-plus-piano collective here is also referred to as “Lyric Fest” in the documentation and comprises Gilda Lyons and Rebecca Myers (sopranos), Elisa Sutherland and Meg Bragle (mezzos), James Reese (tenor), Steven Eddy (baritone), and Laura Ward (piano).

Divided into four seasonal sections (Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring, in that order), The Art of Song comprises 24 songs on texts from authors as widely divergent as Walt Whitman and Donald Trump. In between are transcripts from the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee, 1953), and words by Sappho, Abraham Lincoln, Dante Alighieri, Christina Rossetti, Edna St. Vincent Millay, W. B. Yeats, and also Hagen himself. Settings vary from solo song to ensemble, but Hagen’s expertise is everywhere in evidence.

The line-up of singers is uniformly excellent: It’s good to revisit the voices of some, and to meet new singers to watch out for. Gilda Lyons, James Reese, Steven Eddy, and Elisa Sutherland are new to the Fanfare Archive, but Rebecca Myers sang on a Mozart Requiem reviewed in Fanfare 42:5, and Meg Bragle has enjoyed a number of entries via John Eliot Gardiner and his Bach cantatas cycle. Perhaps at the top of my list is tenor James Reese, who is beautifully sweet-voiced in “Pomodoro,” a setting of Mark Campbell from the “Autumn” segment of the cycle, and is similarly superb in Winter’s “ That I know,” but it is how the voices intertwine and complement each other that is the real key here.

The piece itself, The Art of Song, is a co-commission by the Brooklen Art Song Society and Lyric Fest; it was premiered in Philadelphia in 2019, but the pandemic forced the New York premiere forward to 2022, a performance concurrent with the present recording (which actually took place over two days in Philadelphia). Song has always been close to Hagen’s heart: He had already penned many before his work with Ned Rorem, and 50 more followed before he graduated from Juilliard. A mere 61 years old (60 is the new 30 in my book), Hagen has nevertheless said that this piece represents “something of a musical ‘closing argument,’ a braiding together of the various themes, vocal traditions, and aesthetic strands of my vocal composing—the performers move fluently from art song to musical theater to cantata to opera, in choral, solo, and ensemble numbers that combine texts spanning over a thousand years.” This, then, is a tapestry, and sometimes texts do indeed intertwine in one song; perhaps it is also something of a way-station, one hopes, rather than a summing-up—a place to stand back and look at what has been achieved. And by “the performers move fluently from” Hagen of course means that he moves fluently from the one form to the other, as indeed he does.

There is inbuilt optimism to the work’s structure: Starting with Summer means that, over four sections, it rotates towards a final section on “Spring,” the season traditionally associated with rebirth. Within the sections, there are individual sub-structures: “the political fall of the United States” is the premise for “Summer,” from Whitman to McCarthy to Trump, for example. “Autumn” deals with decay, aging, and encroaching death; “Winter” moves inwards. “Spring” is slightly recontextualised, as it focuses on memories (Paul Goodman’s “Rain in Spring”) and the journey from youth to death (“The Green for Pamela” by Roland Flint), yet it retains hope. The work’s close is radiant in its shadowed beauty: “Remember tonight, for it is the start of everything” say the words from Dante’s Inferno.

There is no doubting that Hagen brings his operatic expertise to the table: The hectoring piano bass in “Un-American Activities” reflects the interviewer’s insistent questions in no uncertain manner. The score demands great precision (try the “Peace Quodlibet”), and it is impossible to imagine a tighter performance than this one. Haunting beauty meets dissonant piano breaks in “War is Kind” / Irish Airman.” Gilda Lyons’s performance of “The Moths” (Gwen Hagen’s text) that opens “Autumn” is particularly noteworthy, as is tenor James Reese’s splendid sense of momentum and storytelling in the very next movement, “Pomodoro.”

Ensemble singing is expert: Try “Brown Penny” (text by W. B. Yeats), or the wordless keening at the end of “Autumn,” or the urgent “Western Wind,” a setting of an anonymous early 16th-century text that opens “Winter,” or the unaccompanied vocal brilliance of “The Wolf” (text Seamus Hagen) from later in that same season.

Throughout, pianist Laura Ward plays with complete command. She is the perfect piano partner, individual in her delivery, exact in her textures and crisp in her articulation. Hagen’s musical vocabulary is vast, and most of it seems deployed at some point over the hour that is The Art of Song. This is the perfect summation of Hagen’s talents. The recording itself is superb; pianist Laura Ward and composer Daron Hagen are listed as producers, with Loren Stata as engineer.

This disc complements the previously released (but not yet reviewed by Fanfare, to my knowledge) 21st-Century Song Cycles, also performed by members of Lyric Fest and including After Words, Songs of Experience, Phantoms of Myself, Four Irish Folk Songs, and Four Dickinson Songs.

—Colin Clarke, Issue 47:6 (July/Aug 2024) Fanfare Magazine

“Daron Hagen (b. 1961) is one of America’s foremost composers of vocal music, with 13 operas and over 500 songs and cycles to his name; his last release made my Best of Year. ... He writes in a lyrical and tonal language with periodic dissonance and stylistic diversions as feels appropriate. His settings show utmost fidelity to the text – everything feels natural and well-reasoned. ....The Art of Song consists of 24 songs, with texts spanning thousands of years, from Sappho to Yeats, from Aaron Copland to his young son Seamus. Styles run the gamut from song to musical theater to Baroque cantatas and beyond. ... Its sheer breadth of texts, styles, and themes are united by a reflection of not just song, but how we use our voice to express thoughts, feelings, and secrets, as candid public record or poetic art, as in the heightened form of song. It is moving to see these universal truths rendered so completely and poignantly with the kind of sensitive, personal touch that Hagen brings. ... The 6 vocalists sometimes sing alone, but often together, sometimes approaching chamber choir textures. All are excellent performers who approach the many styles and demands of the cycle with utmost skill, personality, and sensitivity.” 

—Faro, American Record Guide, July / August 2024