Description
The program title, Charm Me Asleep, is taken from Robert Herrick’s lyrical ode on the transformative power of music to bring healing and restoration in times of physical and emotional distress. The poem’s suggestion that music can transform us to a higher plane was commonly held in Herrick’s day and dates back to the Greeks.
While music can accomplish transformation in a variety of ways, this concert focuses on my personal favorite device: musical color, what musicians call musical timbre. In music, the masters of color are French composers from the late 19thcentury who, like their Impressionist contemporaries in painting, use color not to build tension but rather to give immediate pleasure. Gabriel Fauré’s breathtaking Requiem is an early example of French Impressionism in music: colorful, lyrical, emotionally restrained, avoiding the dramatic gesture in favor of a gentle, urbane humanism. This music sounds to me like what I imagine it must be like to be inside a beautiful jewel… radiant color compressed into perfection, transforming all from darkness to light.
The “Trois Chansons” (Three Songs) of Dutch composer Henk Badings is written with a similarly French harmonic palette. In fact, Badings, who was born in Java, employs an even richer, more colorful harmonic style, bordering on the exotic. Craig Kingsbury’s “Chants from the Southwest” uses harmony to paint a very different musical landscape. Here, in place of the lush, sophisticated French harmonies, Kingsbury brings a more sparse, open harmonic palette, beautifully capturing the vastness and sweep of the open land. Beauty comes in an infinite variety of colors and we, the listener, are ever on the trail of beauty. For beauty has the power to stop us in our tracks long enough to experience the fragility and purpose of life. And, in so doing, live a more fulfilling life. Recorded March 2025.
