Milton Babbitt, A Solo Requiem Part One Bethany Beardslee, soprano

My Solo Requiem returns me to 1952, and my first meeting with a prodigious, teen-age Godfrey Winham in Salzburg. Two years later he left England to enter Princeton, and still later became Bethanys second husband. Her first had been that remarkable musician, Jacques Monod, and it was for Bethany and him that Du was composed. It is in memory of Godfrey that the Solo Requiem, was written. During one of my last visits to Godfrey as he suffered his long illness, he confided that he was planning a work to be performed by computer synthesized soprano, but since he could find no suitable text in the writings of his favorite poets, Shakespeare and Hopkins, he asked me to have a poem fashioned for the purpose by John Hollender, who had written the text of Philomel for the work I had composed for Bethany. There was too little time for John to write a text for the work that Godfrey never could have composed or realized. So, the Solo Requiem begins and ends with Shakespeare, and includes Hopkins, Stramm (whose poetry I set in Du), a particularly pertinent poem by Dryden, and only Merediths Dirge in Woods has no explicit personal intimations or connotations.

Comment by Mel Powell: [Hindemith] would have loved, as I love, as any musician must love, your magnificent Solo Requiem. Even though one has come to expect only grand sturdy works from you, this seems to me to be incomparably strong, majestically honoring the memory of Godfrey.

Poems:
Sonnet 71 (Shakespeare)
No Worst, There is None (Gerard Manley Hopkins)
Dirge in Woods (George Meredith)
Urtod Death (August Stramm)
In the Memory of Mr. Oldham (John Dryden)
Sonnet 71 (Shakespeare)

Bethany Beardslee, Soprano
Cheryl Seltzer & Joel Sachs, Pianos

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Milton
• Babbitt
• Solo
• Requiem
• Bethany
• Beardslee
• Seltzer
• Sachs
• Winham
• Salzburg
• Powell
• Princeton

[khantarya]

GREAT WORK,OF THE RECENTLY DECEASED GENIUS BABBIT! THANK YOU,FOR

THIS TOUCHING UPLOAD,IN THIS SAD MOMENT!

[allegramente5000]

it`s immediately identifiable as Babbitt- he is good at word setting and the piano part seems to change mood all the time. There`s nothing academic about this composer.

RIP

[trees1]

Amazing, I just saw this score at the library yesterday. It is very substaintial piece.

[japanesesweet]

Thanks for this! one of my favourite pieces by Babbitt.