Meet Class Notes Artists: The Dream Songs Project

When asked to name a composer, most people would probably say Bach or Mozart or Beethoven — the big three. Music of these three was popular during their lives and some pieces remain pretty solidly ingrained in western culture today (G Major Cello Suite, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Moonlight Sonata, anyone?). While the music of those and other composers is still wonderful and relevant, there is actually still plenty of composition action going on today — right here, right now, from composers who live in Minnesota and make money by writing music.

That is one of the main points that The Dream Songs Project (TDSP) wanted students to take away from their Class Notes Artist performances. TDSP particularly champions living composers, and since their inception in 2010, have commissioned several new works for their particular duo of mezzo-soprano and guitar. This has generated a nicely varied catalogue of art songs, some of which has rather unusual origin sources...

Many people use the word "song" as a sort of catch-all to describe any musical piece. However the term "song" should really only be used for a piece of music that has words or "lyrics." The composer writes musical ideas using rhythmic and stylistic direction that reflect the content of the words, whether things, actions or feelings. Any kind of written word is fair game for a composer's inspiration. It could be a piece of poetry, a story, a diary, or anything else (as you'll see).

Composer Christopher Gable, sometimes draws his song lyrics from quite creative and unlikely sources. The lyrics for his song Platting, Roseville Township are actually directions for the plotting of a new town. He found notes from a surveyor who was measuring the coordinates of Roseville Township in Minnesota over 100 years ago. The music is very regular, like workers working, and the lyrics are all cardinal directions and numbers. You could probably re-create the town just from listening to the song!

Another unusual source that he has used is a train schedule from the 1950s. in A Timetable, for the Redcaps, the vocalist gets to play the part of both the train and the conductor. The only actual singing is the imitation of a train whistle; the part also calls for accelerating chugging sounds and the announcement of the train stops from St. Paul to Duluth, spoken in the style of a conductor's announcement. The guitar plays the same chords over and over changing from strumming to picked arpeggios that double and accelerate as the train picks up speed on its journey. The guitar part comes to a gradual stop just like a train does when it arrives at its final destination. In both of these songs, the voice and guitar mimic the actions of a surveyor and a train respectively.

Composer Randy Bauer, wrote a collection of songs about animals. Both the vocal style and the music in the guitar are used to describe the traits of the particular animals. For instance, The Worm has very little range in the notes in both the guitar and the vocal part. The vocal part is stretched out and slow like a worm slowly stretches when it crawls (you can listen to this song by clicking on the audio clip above and see if you think it sounds like a worm!). In contrast, the vocal part of The Finch is high like a bird singing and flutters about quickly rather like a graceful bird, swooping and soaring. The word painting and articulation directions in these songs paint a pretty clear picture of each animal.

Composer Daniel Nass took his inspiration from a collection of writings by an early 20th century cowboy/hobo poet. Songs of Cowboys and Hobos is a cycle that details the life of someone who has no permanent home, forced to often live rough and hungry, and meet new people all the time. These songs are ideal for illustrating how the music in a song can reflect the emotions or mood of the character. The lovely song, Drink Deep, is a melancholy song about the loneliness of having to leave friends or having friends leave you, as is the case with a life of constant travel. The very short song Bread is about hunger and the vocal part has a whiny quality to it (well we all get a little whiny when we're hungry, right?). The chord and stylistic choices enhance the emotions portrayed in the lyrics. You can listen to both of these audio clips above and see what emotions you detect in the performance.

Today's composers continue to attempt to do what their first predecessors began thousands of years ago: capture the human experience and imagination in music. Luckily there are plenty of talented performers like TDSP out there eager to perform brand new and even strange material. It's a mutually beneficial relationship that will probably continue until the end of time.

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