38 Songs & Arias
38 Songs & Arias
1 score (233 p.); 30 cm.
Language: English, German, Spanish
“Daron is the finest composer of art song in the United States today”
— Ned Rorem
Burning Sled Music
ISBN: 0692719385
ISBN13: 9780692719381
UPC: 9780692719381
Price: $75.00
From the Afterward
by Daron Hagen
It is moving to climb on to the stage, when giving a vocal Masterclass, lean over the pianist’s shoulder, reach for the music on the rack, and discover an E.C. Schirmer edition of some of the many art songs of mine that they released during the period in the 1980s that I enjoyed an exclusive publishing agreement with them. The music, of course, was borrowed from the library.
“To say that [Hagen] is a remarkable musician is to underrate him. Daron is music”
— Opera News
I left E.C. Schirmer at the same time that the music-publishing world in the United States began the historic transformation that is stillsorting itself out as I write, in 2016. I entered into an exclusive agreement with Carl Fischer, the New York publisher now primarily known for its band catalogue but which, at the time, had a particularly forward-looking and robust promotional vision in place for its concert music catalogue. The pace of the music industry’s change accelerated; it became evident that self-publishing had become not only a practical and desirable alternative, but also essential in order to fulfill the needs of contemporary musicians and presenters.
When I left Carl Fischer, they retained many of the copyrights that I signed over to them. However, most of the copyrights of the songs published by E.C. Schirmer have reverted to me, and I’ve reissued those under my own imprint, Burning Sled Music. (The name refers to Rosebud, the childhood sled seen ablaze at the end of Orson Welles’ film Citizen Kane.) It has been fifteen years since Carl Fischer’s publication of The Daron Hagen Songbook. I’ve written four more operas since then, and a hundred or so more songs.
“The finest American composer of vocal music in his generation”
— NATS Journal of Singing
The present volume, 38 Songs and Arias, contains an assortment of vocal compositions that are “one offs” written either for sheer pleasure, commissioned for a specific occasion, or culled from musicals and reviews. It also contains a scena, a song cycle, two spirituals and three sea chanties. Finally, I’ve included arias from two new operas, Little Nemo in Slumberland and A Woman in Morocco. Taken together, the collection affords an overview of my activities as a vocal composer during the past decade or so, with glimmers of the very early theater songs.
CONTENTS
Uncollected Songs
Musik: Atem der Statuen (2013) / Rainer Maria Rilke
La Flor de la Canela (2014) / Chabuca Granda
The Bixby Letter (2015) / Abraham Lincoln
The Nightingale (2014) / Paul Verlaine (trans. Hagen)
Rain in Spring (1983) / Paul Goodman
The Green for Pamela (1985) /Roland Flint
25 (1984) / Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Elements of Poetry (1996) / Robert Kelly
Tomorrow (1986) / Dag Hammarskjöld
Three Sea Chanties
Bantry Bay (1983) / James Lyman Molloy
The Sea Ritual (1983 / George Darley
In Love With the Sea (1980/2002) / Hagen
Blake Songs
Song Cycle for Voice and Piano on Poetry of William Blake
Infant Sorrow (1989)
A Cradle Song (2016)
The Sick Rose (2014)
The Little Boy Lost (2016)
Infant Sorrow, Again (1986)
Love and Harmony (2001)
The Lilly (2016)
Theatre Songs
House to Half / Ed Flesch
I’ve Never Wanted Anyone Before / Hagen
(And Then) I Let Him Go / Daron Hagen
I Believe in Song
Remember How It Was?
From the opera A Woman in Morocco
Love Comes With a Knife / Rumi / Hagen
This Lovely Scarf / Barbara Grecki / Hagen
And You Ran Toward It. Why?
There Was a Woman
Permission
Oh, to Hell With You, Ahmed!
The Best That I Can Do
Two Spirituals
Wayfaring Stranger / Bever’s Christian Songster
Angel Band / Jefferson Haskell
From the opera Little Nemo in Slumberland
Flip’s Tango / J.D. McClatchy
Dr. Pill’s Gavotte
Morpheus’ Lament
We Need a World of Dreams
We Few
Scena for Male Voice and Piano / William Shakespeare
