Irving Fine - The Choral New Yorker (1944) [1/2]

Irving Fine (1914 - 1962)
The Choral New Yorker: Four Choral Patterns with Piano Obbligato (1944)

I. Prologue: Hen Party 0:00
II. Scherzando: Caroline Million 3:40
III. Concertante: Pianola D'Amore
IV. Epilogue: Design for October

Chamber Choir, Norman Scribner, dir.
Joseph Holt, piano acc.

The Choral New Yorker (1944) is based on four poems, by four different poets, from The New Yorker--witty, sardonic and even scathing, delightful, and then deeply nostalgic. Fine's spirited settings of the poems capture them with high virtuosity and penetration; his settings also require from the singers and pianist their own high virtuosity, technical and emotional. ~ David Hoose

The first piece, Prologue: "Hen Party" (Moderato ma ben rimato), dedicated to Fine's father, features a perky and declamatory vocal part that corresponds nicely to Peggy Bacon's wickedly satiric description of gossiping women. ("The pack gathers on the black Sunday/Mrs. Lathers and Mrs. Grundy give a party for all the witches; In aged ermine, the Queen viper, the Ace of vermin/The Pied Piper overlooked her and Cotton Mather should have cooked her.") Occasional echoes of Stravinsky and perhaps Poulenc can be heard in this vivacious yet droll music. The choral part is for mixed voices (SATB) with soprano solo.

Scherzando: "Caroline Million" follows without pause, connected by a semitonally dissonant D-natural from the last chord of the prologue. It is set for four-part treble chorus (SSM) with soprano and alto solos. The text, by Kentuckian Isabel McLennan McMeekin, concerns a bloodthirsty, century-old hillbilly woman who sits by her fireplace smoking a corncob pipe and fingering a Bible: "Hot with desire to kill her lumpy daughter and feed her to the crows." This lively and witty music is jazzily syncopated, subdivision occurring within regular meter (thus, 4/4 divided into 3+3+2). The style sometimes approaches that of a Broadway musical, but never lapses into vulgarity.

Dedicated "to my Parents," the third number, Concertante: "Pianola d'Amore" (Allegro risoluto), is scored for three-part men's chorus (TBB). The determinedly silly text, by David McCord, evokes English comic-madrigal style as filtered through Gilbert and Sullivan. ("Sing hey, sing ho, sing heigh-o/For the blue that's in the sky-o.") Appropriately, Fine's music—beginning with a spirited, almost jazzy piano introduction—is tonal, jolly and rhythmic. The syncopated staccato accompaniment chatters along with the chorus, at one point indulging in an assenive little bitonal cadenza. The ending is humorously abrupt.

The finale, Epilogue: "Design for October" (Lento), scored for mixed voices (SATE) with baritone solo, sounds an impressively elegiac note. A simple progression of mildly dissonant chords, used to great expressive purpose, is its foundation. Simplicity is also the hallmark of the poem, by "Jake Falstaff" (pseudonym of Herman Fetzer), a lament for the passing of summer: "Then I heard a voice saying summer is gone!/Gravely I watched the summer die, and the last of the crying geese go by/Summer is ended!" In their American-vernacular, open-air sound, the quiet piano introduction and the initial baritone solo suggest the Copland of Billy the Kid and Our Town; and indeed the influence of Copland prevails throughout, both in harmony and rhetoric. The choral writing is extremely mellifluous, albeit traditional, seeming so even during the dramatic dissonance that occurs in the piano part when set against unison chorus at the words "No more at morning will you hear the crying geese of the dawn." With its uncomplicated means and direct sentiment, Design for October impresses as the emotional crown of this splendid cycle. ~ Philip Ramey

Art: Saul Steinberg, cover of The New Yorker, March 29, 1976

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• irving
• fine
• choral
• chori
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• new
• yorker
• bernstein
• copland
• american
• neoclassicism