Miscellaneous Songs

text by James Sellars

ten songs for voice, keyboard and string quartet
Date of Composition: 1992

PROGRAM NOTES:

The ten Miscellaneous Songs are for unspecified voice (optionally amplified), keyboard (preferably electronic) and string quartet.  They are decidedly postmodern in style, tending to deal with the present in terms of the past and the past in terms of the present.  The musical idiom ranges from a crunchy chromaticism to a lilting diatonic sweetness.  Despite a degree of unity in this stylistic disunity, the songs do not constitute a cycle or even a set: one to all ten may be sung in any order as the singer(s) choose.

The texts to the Miscellaneous Songs deal with various contemporary ideas, from our increasingly administrated robotic lives in Function and the constant interruptions brought on by technology in Discontinuous, to a pleasant dream of escape in Dolce Far Niente. 

Sound in My Head and I’ve Decided are, in their self-absorption, songs to oneself.  Is This a Love Song, if not exactly self-absorption, is a self-dialog, less about the impossibility of love than about the impossibility of yet another love song.  To Write a Song carries our millennial skepticism a step further and questions the writing of any song – except, of course, one on the subject of writing a song.  I’ve Never Talked to a Tree is a doubly-coded song, sincere and satirical at the same time.

I Have Nothing to Say, a modular song, is based on John Cage’s famous statement, permuted into a poem by the Scottish poet Edwin Morgan.  JNNY is a setting of a pop tune and lyric by composer Todd Merrell (with a word and note changed here and there).

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I’ve Decided is about a decision, even when there are insufficient facts, just for the pleasure of self-determination.  The text is rather abstract, like an interior dialog one might have making up one’s mind.  The music jogs along much more decisively, but ends pensively, since one must often make decisions, especially in art and love, without knowing.  It is dedicated to my friend, the actor, john McDonough, who always seems to make decisions with optimism and the greatest hope for the best.  I’ve always found pluck and personal courage touching in the face of so much existential woe.

Musicians, especially composers, commonly have sounds running through their minds.  Most often this is desirable: music teachers, pointing to a musical passage, often ask their students, “Can you hear it in your head?”  But occasionally, as when one is trying to get some much needed sleep, mental stereo can be quite annoying.  Sound in My Head considers this musical condition and is dedicated to my composer friend Charlie Harmon.

I Have Nothing to Say was composed in its original form for a series of European concerts I performed with bassist Robert Black and vocalist Finn Byrhard in the autumn of 1986.  The present version for string quartet and keyboard was made in 1992.  The complete song text stems from only 14 words – “I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry” – a line first written by John Cage, then permuted into a 14-line poem by the Scottish poet, Edwin Morgan.  The highly formalized music affixes a specific pitch and duration to each syllable of the original line, which is sung as an introduction.  The remaining 13 lines write themselves, as it were, following exactly the permutations in the poem.  The accompaniment is through-composed.

This is my fourth setting of a tune and lyric by composer Todd Merrell (with a word and note changed here and there).  The flexible vocal line is set over an unyielding rhythmic grid of complicated harmonies and involved instrumentation.  I hear in it touches of Ravel, Shostakovich, and the Beatles.  JNNY (under the influence of “computer chic” she omits the e from her name) is a character whom Todd and I continue to develop.  At present for JNNY (sometimes JnnY), modernism is over.  She is no longer self-absorbed (as in the song) and has just bought for herself a computer program for baking bread.  In the end she goes into cybernetics and becomes Star of the internet.

Is This a Love Song – if there is a jot of doubt about it, it probably isn’t.  The real question is whether sincere love can be declared in music at all, what with thousands of pop-rock songs intoning “Yea, yea, yea, baby!” from millions of loud speakers.  Music itself may still be able to declare love, but language, the linguists tell us, is a self-referential, closed, and well-worn system.  Perhaps the answer is songs about love songs.

Discontinuous is a case study of the interruptions and discontinuity that flow seamlessly in our lives.  This is reflected idiomatically in the use of various musical styles, from Weber and Webern to Webber.  The words question the continuity of memory, the past, present, and future.  There are allusions to the telephone, the answering machine, the digital computer and jet lag.  When “the atoms jump up and down,” pointillism comes into play.  Finally, the adverbial “-ly” is displaced from “discontinuous” by an eighth rest only to allow for a tetrachord of four quite individual (discontinuous) pitches.  This song is dedicated to theater director Juanita Rockwell.

Dolce Far Niente is the wonderful Italian phrase for “the sweetness of doing nothing,” the blessing of leisure.  This song is dedicated to my friend Leslie Tomkins, a free-lance violist who lives and works in New York when she is not playing concerts around the globe.  Such a hectic life, I thought, deserves some sweet time off.  Dolce far Niente addresses that need: it is about the sweetest and most leisurely-paced music I have written.

Function is a setting of self-comments we use to get our high-tech lives: “Function, Now begin, In time, Hold, Turn,” etc., etc. – the machine runs us, as we run the machine.  This feedback loop is reflected in the music: motives and harmonies circle back onto themselves; the word “Function” is obsessively set to the same C and A over an unchanging, unyielding chord.

To Write a Song is a possible discussion, albeit abstract and poetic, a song writer might have with his or her muse.  Where, when one writes a song, does the song really come from?  Some formal aspects are carefully planned but don’t work out, while, on the other hand, some unplanned, fortuitous event may work perfectly.  The music is wistful, even desultory, as is the ideal state of mind when composing.  Longing to write a song will always produce a song.

I’ve Never Talked to a Tree is dedicated to the theater composer Mark Bennett.  Its point of departure is a song by Lerner and Lowe that begins with the seemingly absurd line: “I talk to trees.”  As with many postmodern pieces, this song ends with mixed signals.  It can be taken as a plea for preserving the environment, as a send of up New Age sentimentality, or even as the sincere thought of a present-day Druid who actually considers discourses with trees a possibility.