How Cher will get you through Finals Week with the power of Showtunes

If you're bummed out, confused, or mad about anything, watch Cher perform all the rolls of Westside Story at once. Even if you don't like Cher or musicals. Watch it because you are morbidly curious. My friend showed me this my freshman year of college, and it has been my go-to YouTube material when I need a lift ever since.

Enjoy!

The Greatest Love of All

If there is one performer I could bring back to life, I could tell you who I'd pick in a heart beat:

Whitney Houston - Just listening to her voice gives me a chills and breaks my heart that that voice will never make music again.

Music of your childhood

Everyone can think of at least a few artists that can bring back childhood memories in a heartbeat. I'm not talking about Raffi or Sesame Street. I'm talking about the songs that when played can instantly bring to mind the time you were seven and car-sick and sharing the backseat with your siblings on a thirteen hour drive to see grandma. Here are some of the artists that were constantly in the six-CD changer of our Husker-red Chevy Suburban.

John Denver - I can recall a particular moment when my family was driving through the mountains in 2001 to watch the Huskers play Miami in the Rose Bowl. The windows were down, the sun was shining, and "Rocky Mountain High" was blasting from the car. It would have been a beautiful moment were I not trying to keep from blowing chunks - I had issues with car sickness as a little kid. Fortunately, I no longer associate this legendary artist with puke and now enjoy listening to his mellow tunes on a sunny day.

The Eagles - For a brief period of time, my parents owned a red convertible Pontiac Catalina. My dad told me the radio could only play oldies, and that is why I can sing the guitar solo at the end of "Hotel California" by heart.

Women of Faith - My mom and her sisters used to attend the Women of Faith concerts whenever they came to Omaha, and each time my mom would always come home with a new CD. The songs, while cheesy at times, are catchy and singable and uplifting. There are still a few songs that I like to keep on my phone.

I firmly believe that you inherit your parents' musical tastes, which is probably why I love music so much now: they both have great taste.

Senior Recital - I DID IT!

Now that the dust has settled from my recital, I have finally had a chance to get the audio recording of it online. I am so thankful to everyone who came to listen on a busy April Sunday. Enjoy!

English Program notes from Recital: Lee Hoiby

Where the music comes from

Written in 1974, Hoiby dedicated this song to a support group he was once in called “The Guide.” In 1986 he revised the song, a common practice of his. This revision includes the modulations after each stanza, giving the piece an overall popular music feel.

Wild Nights

Dickinson uses the sea as a metaphor throughout the text, and Hoiby enhances that imagery with an unruly flow in the accompaniment. Wild Nights is about a wild heart looking for a place to drop anchor.

Goodby, goodby, World

I must admit that in choosing my English pieces, I was merely searching “Lee Hoiby” on Spotify and listening to the songs with interesting titles. I only clicked “Goodby, goodby, World” by mistake. Its title seemed a little heavy for my taste. But I’m so glad I listened because this is now my favorite song in the set. With text from Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, this song is about leaving something behind that you know you can never come back to again. This song was originally intended to be the second song in his Three Women song cycle, but had too much difficulty getting publication rights from the Wilder family.

There came a wind like a bugle

This is the fourth and final song in The Shining Place, a cycle of Emily Dickinson poetry. Storms come through our lives literally, figuratively, and often without warning. There isn’t much we can do besides batten down the hatches and hope for the best. What’s beautiful is what follows the storm: the strength of the human spirit to continue on. For most of this song, the melody, harmony, and piano are wild and unpredictable: a reflection of the scene of terror and destruction painted by the text. Yet after all that destruction, the church bells still ring! It’s not surprising that at this point in the song we have an identifiable key and meter. Dickinson makes a poignant commentary on the ways of the world: “How much can come and much can go, and yet abide the world!” and Hoiby makes it even more meaningful by setting it to such moving music.

German Notes - Gretchen sings Goethe

German Set - Goethe Texts

Gretchen am Spinnrade

Schubert isolatesa moment from Goethe’s Faust, where the tormented mind of Gretchen, who under a love-spell, is attempting to work through her new obsession with the main character, Faust. In this scene, she sits at a spinning wheel, easily identified in the winding ostinato of the piano.The modulation between minor and major harmonies is in tandem with Gretchen's struggle between her torment over loss and her obsession with Faust. Schubert was a teenager when he wrote Gretchen am Spinnrade, yet it is one of his most famous works. It is considered to be the first modern Lied. Listen for the climax of the song: when she is so overcome with images of Faust’s passionate kiss that her spinning wheel gets stuck, and then she struggles to get it going again.

Mignon

Text for this piece comes from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. The character Mignon implores Wilhelm to help her understand their complicated relationship. In each verse she explores the different roles this man has played in her life: First as her beloved, then as a protector, and finally as a father figure. Schumann’s setting of Mignon comes at the end of his Lieder-Album für die Jugend (Album of Songs for the Young). The cycle was intended to help train singers in skill and interpretation, with each song increasing in difficulty and complication of text.

Serenate

Serenate explores the complication and tragedy of human behavior in a simple, almost childlike manner. The big idea in this song is asking why we torment ourselves and feel we can only find pleasure elsewhere. In regards to song, Brahms was often criticized for choosing mediocre texts by lesser-known poets. Serenate however is a setting of some of Goethe’s most insightful sentiments.

Recital Prep: French Program Notes

Songs of Gabriel Fauré

L’hiver a cessé

L’hiver a cessé is the final song from La Bonne Chanson, a song cycle that sets a collection of Paul Verlaine poems of the same name. Superficially this poem is about the end of winter and long-awaited joy and excitement that accompanies the transition into springtime, much like the feeling one gets during the first sunny week in March (In Nebraska we sometimes must wait until April or May). In this recital, it, is the optimistic feeling that I am getting closer to the ‘springtime’ of my life. I am about the graduate college and my future is yet to be determined: “All my hopes have their turn at last. Let summer come, and let autumn and winter come after. Every season will be dear.” The future may be great, ugly, wonderful, and terrifying and I embrace each possibility with open arms.

Le pays de rêve

The message of this song is that the  journey is often more important than the destination, so enjoy it! Although in this dreamy song we do not reach a destination, we savor the delicate beauty of the dream-land through which we are travelling. The 12/8 meter along with the gentle rocking of the piano is very much in the style of a boat song, however, the accompaniment is in a higher range than usual, suggesting that our voyage is not through the sea, but perhaps through the clouds. Like L’hiver a cessé, there is a sense of getting closer to something, but in this piece, there is even less consideration of what is to come, and more emphasis on exploring the celestial body of one’s own dreams. Notice in the middle of the song when the rocking motion of the song rather abruptly switches to a stagnant 4/4 as the voyager takes a step back and considers her journey and place in the universe. Indeed profound,  it is a beautiful place, and we soon continue our journey through the land of dreams.

Aprés un rêve

One of Fauré’s earlier works, Aprés un reve is a setting of Romain Bussine’s poem of the same title, translated from Italian. This is also the simplest of the three Fauré pieces programmed today. Where the first two were a duet between piano a voice, the singer is merely supported by chords of the piano, symbolic of the lonely circumstances the lyrics depict. The song is composed in a minor key, yet the lyrics are only sad because they use the past-tense, clearly dwelling on a love that once existed. There is to me in this song an expression of not only loss and denial, but the inability to understand why something so wonderful came to an end.