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