Recital songs with a Catholic sensibility
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,086
    I'm looking for art songs for baritone with a Catholic sensibility. These are not for liturgical use. One should be willing to sing them in the same space as the tabernacle ("Catholic sensibility" might not necessarily imply that). They could have a moralistic component, or not, or treat Catholicism as normal lived reality. Some (not all!) of Barber's Hermit Songs might apply, though really I'm looking for things more everyday than monks' poems.

    Any ideas?
  • irishtenoririshtenor
    Posts: 1,325
    What about RVW's Five Mystical Songs? Or Dvorak's Ten Biblical Songs?
  • And, there are the Zwolf Geistliche Gesange by H. Schutz.
    These are awfully nice, and can be sung in English translation if desired.
    All the texts are from the psalms.
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • doneill
    Posts: 207
    Some of the Lieder of Hugo Wolf have religious themes, and were transcribed for organ by Max Reger.

    Thanked by 1noel jones, aago
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,193
    You might try Virgil Thomson's "Five Songs from William Blake." I've sung these and they are beautiful.
    Thanked by 1M. Jackson Osborn
  • Hugo Distler -
    Drei Geistliche Konzerte fur Sopran und Orgel

    I'm not personally familiar with this work, but it might be worth 'looking into'.
    I think that he has other sacred solo works.
  • CCoozeCCooze
    Posts: 1,259
    What about Samuel Barber's Hermit songs?

    Oh... that's why I should have read the last couple sentences..
  • Oh, and there are the Holy Sonnets of John Donne, by B. Britten!
    And, in the nether regions of my mind I seem to recall that there is a set of sacred solos by H. Purcell. I can't remember their title just now. I know that they are in my library - I'll look for them later.
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • MarkS
    Posts: 282
    Apparently quite a few Schubert songs to choose from—many of which I did not realize existed until this morning (so thanks for causing me to think about it!):

    https://www.eren.ch/neuchatel/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2016/09/Moon_schbert_religion.pdf
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • matthewjmatthewj
    Posts: 2,700
    Like Flowerday's Blog?
    Thanked by 1eft94530
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    Huh? What?
  • MarkS
    Posts: 282
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,086
    I'm seeing a lit of "Christian sensibility" here, from Protestant composers, and certainly they are things worth doing. But not much in the way of a specifically Catholic worldview. And I'm really looking as much or more for secular songs as sacred songs...things not necessarily directed to God.
  • Hmm... Catholic worldview?
    I wish I could remember composer and song, but years ago at a vespers concert I had a soprano soloist do a recital for the concert half. On it we did a marvelous song whose subject was St Bridget, whose idea of heaven was everyone gathered jubilantly (obstreperously?) around 'a great vat of beer'. How's that for 'Catholic sensibility'?
  • MarkS
    Posts: 282
    Protestant composers


    Schubert was certainly Catholic!
  • And the psalms are certainly Catholic... whoever set them to music, as is any scripture.

    Perhaps if you were to provide some of the aspects of Catholic sensiblity and world view that you have in mind.

    Perhaps you wish only to reference canonically Catholic composers?
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,216
    Schubert's litany of saints:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrqIEwQhRMo

    Richard Strauss' "Allerseelen":
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb07ItufkDs
    Thanked by 1Jeffrey Quick
  • irishtenoririshtenor
    Posts: 1,325
    Wasn't Dvorak Catholic and an organist?
  • JL
    Posts: 171
    The first one that comes to mind is Faure's "En priere". If you have time, have a look at the offerings at IMSLP and at Gallica (the digital collections of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.) Both have some overlooked gems, and they are completely free.

    And please, please do not sing Purcell or Schuetz or their contemporaries with piano. It does a disservice to the music and ends up making you look uninformed. If you have got a competent harpsichordist (or theorbist) at your disposal, Mazzocchi's Musiche Sacre e Morali has some fine pieces, and there's more to be found in the Italian "morale e spirituale" vein, a style approved and used by none other than St. Philip Neri and the gang.
  • davido
    Posts: 944
    La Procession - Franck
  • I often think of Henry Purcell, Heinrich Schütz, Johann Sebastian and others sitting there up there playing cards and shaking their heads, looking down and saying,
    "No, no! Play my music! Play my music! The music will come through no matter what instrument plays it if I have written good music and you are a good musician."
    Thanked by 1MarkS
  • Clever, Noel!
    But, I would qualify the implied equivalency of any historic composers music played on instruments other than those of his sound world as enthusiastic but untenable wishful thinking. True, I'll grant that, depending on just which modern substitute instrument we are substituting for an harpsichord, an oboe d'amore, a viol, or this or that, the music may reach into the realm of genuine art. I may like it. I may have lots of company in liking it. But intellectual honesty bids me reflect that it isn't the sound that the man, Heinrich Schutz, envisioned, heard, thought of, or would have dreamed of. Therefore, it isn't exactly Schutz' music. Do we really, seriously want to argue that notes and their conceived of tonal timbre have but the most ephemeral relationship. Do we really want to suggest that Handel played on a violin is the same as Handel played on a modern flute, not a Handelian flute but a big fat breathy modern one? Sound is what music is made of. Not just the notes, but the sound in the composer's mind. Sound defines music. Sound is what music is.

    The problem for us which arises is that some of us can appreciate and admire Gould's Bach whilst knowing full well that it doesn't sound like any sound Bach ever heard or would have thought of, and quite assuredly is not played like Bach.

    Then, there are those who don't care about that and don't wish to be bothered with the pesky issue of probable near 'authenticity'. Why, even so great a luminary as RVW held the burgeoning 'period instrument' movement with unabashed contempt.

    This reduces our situation to one of three types: 1) those who will tolerate nothing but period authenticity, 2) those who prefer period authenticity but appreciate the artistry of 'non-authenticity', and 3) those who prefer modern approaches and pooh-pooh period authenticity.

    It's quite conceivable that our composers 'sitting up there' wherever they are sitting smile at some of the things that we do with their music, and guffaw at some of the other things that we do with and to their music. The point is that, yes, a 'non-authentic' performance may be phenomenally exquisite. It just as well may not be. But whether it is or isn't it doesn't sound like anything in the composer's mind or in his sound world. To really hear Schutz, the real Schutz, we must needs gleefully employ the sounds he thought of and lived with. That's all. That's not a negative judgment upon Schutz that isn't really Schutz.

    I cannot express the dismay and utter horror I experienced when, a few weeks ago, I saw an advertisement featuring one of the most eminent young artists of our time, none other than Benjamin Grosvener, in an advertisement for piano simulacra. We live in an age of fakery (many even admire it - even prefer it), which makes the unreal and the inauthentic the presumed equal of the real and authentic. This is but another manifestation of the 'relativism' that Benedict XVI was so deeply concerned about.

    Still, Noel, you may be right - our musical heroes probably do enjoy a good chuckle at some of our treatments of their work. whilst frowning a good frown upon other things that we do to their music.

    I attended a recital of violin and harpsichord music last Thursday evening. Superb violinist from Hungary who is a member of the Houston Symphony. He was all but electric in everything from Bach to Frank and beyond. The piano though? Clunk, clunk, clunk! In textures that were so obviously harpsichord in conception and style, and demanded the harpsichord sound, the piano was, even when played exquisitely, like a water buffalo in a flower bed. It just didn't work. One hears the same sort of mis-match from those exalted artists who play Bach's harpsichord concertos on the piano. The result is so comical (no matter the fame of the pianist) that one is astonished that ripples of snickering aren't heard throughout the gullible audience.
  • dad29
    Posts: 2,232
    jubilantly (obstreperously?) around 'a great vat of beer'


    Works for ChesterBelloc!
    Thanked by 1M. Jackson Osborn
  • Donald Swann did a cycle of the music for the poems of J.R.R. Tolkien, if you are looking for something with a Catholic sensibility, but not addressed to God.
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • Richard MixRichard Mix
    Posts: 2,799
    One should be willing to sing them in the same space as the tabernacle ("Catholic sensibility" might not necessarily imply that).
    And I'm really looking as much or more for secular songs as sacred songs...things not necessarily directed to God.
    These are indeed different requests: 'secular Catholicism' might mean anything from honor killing to là ci darem, and the songs of Elgar, Chopin, Franck and Haydn put a severe test to the notion of a common sensibility.

    But you might think about Mörike, who although a protestant minister, I think has that sense of immanent divinity behind the everyday that you might be getting at. Surely you've sung Fußreise? Or Messiaen, whose theme is the nearness of worldly and divine love; the 2 cycles seem to me a challenge for non-soprano voices to bring off in transposition, but as Hodja Nasrudin said when he was caught adding yogurt culture to a lake, "Of course I know the odds but consider the payoff!" Or try Trois mélodies (1930, Durand) in a Therese of Avila vein.
  • Donald Swann?
    I have done a marvelous soprano song of his for Christmas, entitled Jesu parvule'.
    (Actually, I didn't do it, but my soprano did.)
    It is an unutterably charming piece which I enthusiastically commend to anyone who has a good soprano and wants something really lovely for Christmas or Christmastide.
    Easy to medium difficulty with a high in the neighbourhood of g or so with organ accompaniment.
  • Jackson,

    Donald Swann of Flanders and Swann, and At the Drop of Another Hat...... that Donald Swann.
  • Chris -
    I'm at a loss here. Who are Flanders and Swann? Have I been living on the wrong planet? (Ha! Some have thought so.) To me Donald Swann is the composer of this charmingly exquisite Christmas song that I discovered in a bin at Wadler's aeons ago. Do fill me in!
    __________________________________________

    Alright. I just looked them up on Wikipoedia. Small wonder it is that I didn't know them. The world of entertainers is beyond my existential frontiers. Not that I can't find them entertaining when I just happen to encounter them, which happens now and then. The Europeans seem to take entertainment to far cleverer extremes than the relatively tame Americans - though there are few anywhere who could better Rosalind Russel doing Gilbert and Sullivan, or Wagner, or the meeting of the ladies' music society.
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,471
    There are probably several songs for the OP's purpose among Donald Swan's works. (Francis Thompson, Caedmon, St Luke trans Knox, ...)
    Thanked by 1M. Jackson Osborn
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,086
    If I actually do this project where I want to do it, there will be a baroquish pipe organ right next to the piano, which will work for anything Baroque.

    Is the voice in En priere Jesus, or some kid pretending/wanting to be Jesus? If the first (which seems the more obvious reading), then it's very odd Christology.