Search - Donald Gramm, Samuel Barber, Paul Bowles :: But Yesterday Is Not Today-The American Art Song 1927-1972

Proof that American songs can be great

Thomas F. Dillingham | Columbia, Missouri USA | 07/05/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I have had the lp issue of this album for many years and have enjoyed it more with each encounter. The songs by Duke, Bowles, Citkowitz, Chanler, and Copland are based on some familiar poems, but the songs are not, themselves, well-known. I particularly have liked the witty and memorable Duke settings of E.A. Robinson's "Luke Havergal" and "Miniver Cheevy," but the real musical highlight of the disc would probably be the settings of James Joyce's "Chamber Music" by Israel Citkowitz. Donald Gramm is in fine voice for his selections and Bethany Beardslee proves again her legendary status as an interpreter of all kinds of modern music. It is definitely a good thing that this has been reissued on CD and I hope it will reach a wide audience."

A favorite for 30 years

Robert Glazier | 10/04/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Like the next reviewer, I had this on record, and now have the CD. I have loved this music for 30 years. If you love 20th century American music, give it a try. I wish you as much pleasure as I have received from it."

A fresh, telling look in the mirror

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 04/05/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I found pleasure in this CD of American art songs, especially because it brought back estimable singers like Donald Gramm and Bethany Beardsless. Having devoted themselves to modern music and art songs over conventional opera careers, they are the kind of performers who have slipped out of the spotlight all too soon.



As for the songs themselves, they shouldn't be oversold. The general idiom is very conservative and often colloquial. Quite a few numbers are pop ditties in disguise, the musical equivalent of light verse. Others reflect folk tradition or hark back to earnest Victorian platform songs. It was hard for American composers to escape these derivative influences, which is why Charles Ives stood out so distinctively (he isn't represented here, however).



Theodore Chanler seems content to be a musical Ogden Nash. Paul Bowles is more minimal, elegant, and French. John Woods Duke's settings of Edward Arlington Robinson attempt to match the poet's everyday Midwestern surface with underlying irony and tragedy. (I have a weakness for Duke's "Luke Havrgal," which hits upon a magical combination of fulsome romantic sentiment and luscious melody.) Israel Citkowitz sets five poems from James Joyce's "Chamber Music" in a spare, unobtrusive style reminiscent of Ned Rorem; frankly, I'd be hard put to tell the two apart. We end with a song each from Copland, Barber, Roger Sessions, and Robert Helps. Of these, one is a classic (Barber's "Sure on This Shining Night") and another points the way to the language of modernism that left conservatism far behind (Sessions' "On the Beach at Fontana").



Even if one cannot claim that American composers found a medium for the art song that equals the French chanson or German lied, this CD gives us a refreshing and teling look in the mirror."