I head back to university teaching tomorrow—and I know many teachers and students who are already back at it. In honor of this back-to-school season, here's an episode on a wild and wonderful song by New-York-based composers Lainie Fefferman and Jascha Narveson. In addition to composing a wide variety of music as individual artists, they are part of a synth-pop duo called The Beverage Station. The duo will release a full album, including this song, on May 30, 2025, from Gold Bolus Recordings.


Labor Day
Lainie Fefferman

Brand-new faces
Familiar halls
Tracking paces
Feel it in my throat

Bones break
Back aches
I could punch through walls

And then there's you

Heart explosions
Arms aglow
Big emotions
Pack up its time to go

Hours come
Seconds go
Cut to my fun walk home

Where there is you

Familiar faces
Brand-new halls
Making spaces
Sharing all I love

Calm comes
Back stroke
Keeping tallies of smiles and cheers

I know I've lost what I'm doing here

On September 27, 2024, Signum Records will release a recording of Rodrigo Ruiz's cycle of seventeen songs, Venus & Adonis, based on William Shakespeare's poem of the same name. In this episode, I dive into one of my favorite songs from the cycle, where Venus takes Adonis's hand and entreats him to open his heart to her.

For more information about Rodrigo Ruiz, you can find him on Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and LinkTree.

You can also learn more about his songs from this page on my website Art Song Augmented, and from this episode on his setting of a poem by Heinrich Heine.

The recording in this episode features soprano Grace Davidson and pianist George Herbert, who also appear on the forthcoming album of the cycle.

Frosty in Desire
William Shakespeare (adapted by Rodrigo Ruiz)

POET
With this she seizeth on his sweating palm,
and trembling in her passion, calls it balm,
Earth’s sovereign salve to do a goddess good.

Pure shame and awed resistance made him fret,
which bred more beauty in his angry eyes.

So fastened in her arms Adonis lies;
still is he sullen, still he lours and frets,
'twixt crimson shame and anger ashy pale.

Still she entreats, and prettily entreats;
she red as coals of glowing fire,
he frosty in desire.

(25, 27–8, 69–70, 68, 75–6, 73, 35–6)

The Mass for the Endangered, by Nathaniel Bellows and Sarah Kirkland Snider, appeals not to God but to nature itself and (in Snider's words) takes the "musical modes of spiritual contemplation" associated with the Latin mass and applies them to "concern for non-human life—animals, plants, and the environment."

The third movement of the Mass, "Alleluia," describes the brutal destruction of the natural world yet at the same time offers a promise of renewal.

The episode features a recording of the movement by Gallicantus, under the direction of Gabriel Crouch; an album of the entire Mass was released in 2020 by New Amsterdam and Nonesuch Records.

If you're interested in learning about another haunting collaboration by Bellows and Snider, check out my podcast episode on "The River," from their song cycle Unremembered.

Alleluia
Nathaniel Bellows

Sea of cradle, foundling,
current, cold and quelled as morning.
Braid of vapored ashes,
shadowed creche, collapsing.

Contour, carve, corrode—
breathe through camphor, coal,
seed each breeze with gold.
Poison, parch, pollute—
plow the coast, the dune,
flow toward constant moon.

Alleluia

Hearth of stone, of tar, of lava,
shelter shielding mother.
Oh, save us mother!

She who is sleeping,
Is she who will wake.

Fracture, foist, defoul—
shatter cliff and shoal,
sand each stone to whole.
Harbored, held, unharmed—
she’ll wake, rise, rejoin,
her daughters and her sons.

Alleluia

The title track from Rhiannon Giddens's recent album You're the One—which was just released by Nonesuch Records—is a love song, but not one about two adults; it's about a moment Giddens experienced with her newborn son, pressing her cheek against his and realizing that her world would never be the same again.

In this episode I reference a book by Matt BaileyShea called Lines and Lyrics: An Introduction to Poetry and Song. If you're interested in learning more about how words and music relate in pop songs and art songs and everything in between, I'd urge you check out his book. It's superb, and really accessible to specialists and non-specialists alike.

You're the One
by Rhiannon Giddens (the song was cowritten with Lalenja Harrington)

I knew you were the one
Were my one and only
And I knew
That you would always know me
Cause you were the one
Who kept me from feeling
So sad and lonely in my life and

I never knew
Life could be so wonderful
That there could be someone
Who was so beautiful
And I never knew
That I could be so free
To love someone like you and

I wanna love you forever
And I’ll be with you
For worse and for better
And I never thought I’d fall
But you’re the one

I thought my life was drawn
In shades of gray and
That washow
I would live my everyday and
Aimless no direction found
My destiny was going through the motions of a life and

Then you came along
With your sweet sweet smile and
Then you put your cheek
Right next to mine and
All those shades of gray slowly turned into a
New technicolor world and

I’m gonna love you forever
And I’ll be with you
For worse and for better
And I never thought I’d fall

And I’m gonna love you forever and
I’ll be with you for worse and for better
And I never thought I’d fall
But you’re the one

You’re the one
Your smile contains the sun
Rays of glory
You’re the one

Have you ever felt as though a single moment—gazing into someone's eyes, listening to a passage of music, looking at a landscape—transports you to another realm? Maurice Bouchor's poem is about just this kind of experience, an experience that the French composer Mel Bonis transforms into a magical sound world that deftly blends Romanticism and Impressionism.

The episode features a recording of the song by Hélène Guilmette and Matin Dubé, from an album called L'Heure Rose.

For more information about Mel Bonis, go to the Mel Bonis website, maintained by Christine Géliot. You can also learn more about her songs at my website Art Song Augmented.

Songe (an excerpt from Vers le pur amour)
by Maurice Bouchor

Guidé par de beaux yeux candides,
Dans ma barque féerique aux reflets d'argent fin,
Vers l'amour, je voudrais faire voile sans fin
Sur des rêves bleus et splendides,

Vers l'amour dont le souffle frais
Berce des champs de fleurs dans une île enchantée
Et qui, pour apaiser mon âme tourmentée,
M'ouvrira de saintes forêts.

Et plus tard, quand, loin de la terre,
O Viola ! Guérie des brûlantes langueurs,
Nous irons caresser les songes de nos coeurs
Dans l'île heureuse du mystère.

Dans le libre ciel des esprits,
Quand nous aurons quitté la nature mortelle,
Ne goûterons-nous pas une paix éternelle ?
Rêveusement, tu me souris.

———

Guided by beautiful, innocent eyes,
In my magic boat with reflections of fine silver,
Toward love I would like to sail endlessly
On blue and splendid dreams.

Toward love, whose fresh breath
Cradles fields of flowers in an enchanted island,
And which, to appease my tormented soul,
Will open holy forests to me.

And later, far from the earth,
O Viola, cured of burning languor,
We will go to caress the dreams of our hearts
On the happy island of mystery.

In the free sky of the spirits,
When we have left our mortal nature,
Will we not taste eternal peace?
Dreamily, you smile at me.

Arthur Symons's poem captures a lazy June afternoon, with a fountain burbling and the moon hanging in the sky, waiting for the coming of night. Elizabeth Maconchy transforms the poem into a song of mesmerizing stillness and beauty.

The episode features a world-premiere recording by soprano Joanna Songi and pianist Matthew Fletcher, based on an unpublished manuscript found in the Maconchy archive at St. Hilda's College, Oxford. You can find a YouTube video of their performance here.

For an illuminating look at Maconchy's life and work, see the final chapter of Anna Beer's book Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music.

Also please check out the Maconchy page on my website Art Song Augmented, which includes another recording by Songi and Fletcher, as well as additional resources and access to scores.

In Fountain Court
by Arthur Symons

The fountain murmuring of sleep,
A drowsy tune;
The flickering green of leaves that keep
The light of June;
Peace, through a slumbering afternoon,
The peace of June.

A waiting ghost, in the blue sky,
The white curved moon;
June, hushed and breathless, waits, and I
Wait too, with June;
Come, through the lingering afternoon,
Soon, love, come soon.

The Haitian-American composer Nathalie Joachim transforms a Haitian hymn, and in so doing creates a multi-layered tapestry of sound that evokes the many voices of Haiti—past, present, and future.

"Resevwa Li" comes from Joachim's Grammy-nominated 2019 album Fanm d'Ayiti (New Amsterdam Records), featuring the Spektral Quartet.

Resevwa Li

Men n’ap proche devan ou Granmèt
Avèk tout ti kado n yo papa
Li mèt tout piti kou li ye,
Tanpri resevwa li

Adye papa souple
Kisa pou m ta ba ou
Ou ki fè tout bagay
Ou ki mèt tout bagay

Kado nou pot pou ou
Se tout jefò n ap fe
Pou peyi n devlope
Pou lavi nou pi bèl.

Receive Them

We come before you, God
With all of our little gifts, Father
As little as they may be
Please receive them

Oh father, please
What should I give you
You, who make everything
You, who create everything

The gifts we bring to you
Are all of our efforts
To benefit our country
For our lives to be the most beautiful

translation by Nathalie Joachim

Connie Converse was one of the first singer-songwriters, an uncommon talent who predated Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. But she was barely known in her day, and after making a handful of low-fi recordings in the 1950s, she disappeared in 1974. Her songs weren't widely known until some of those low-fi recordings were released on CD in 2009. This episode looks at one of her most affecting songs, which appears on Walking in the Dark, a recent album by soprano Julia Bullock, in an arrangement by Jeremy Siskind. Julia Bullock performs the song with Christian Reif.

For more information on Connie Converse's songs, go to her page on my website, Art Song Augmented.

Also, be on the lookout for Howard Fishman's book about Connie Converse, To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse, which is forthcoming in May 2023.

One by One
Connie Converse

We go walking in the dark.
We go walking out at night.
And it's not as lovers go,
Two by two, to and fro,
But it's one by one.

One by one in the dark
We go walking out at night.
As we wander through the grass
We can hear each other pass,
But we're far apart.

Far apart in the dark
We go walking out at night.
With the grass so dark and tall
We are lost past recall
If the moon is down.

And the moon is down.
We are walking in the dark.
If I had your hand in mine,
I could shine, I could shine
Like the morning sun,
Like the sun.