The Sake Of You

“The Sake Of You” was commissioned by mezzo Devony Smith and pianist Danny Zelibor for their debut album In This Short Life, along with “Sew My True Love (Jubilee)”. Devony and Danny are both treasured collaborators, most frequently performing an artsong of mine called “Mary’s Song” from the song cycle As He Is Mine. “Mary’s Song” features in its third refrain an optional “belting” moment in which the singer is requested to climactically sing in their chest voice, a technique more common in musical theater and pop writing than in classical. Devony produces a magnificent version of this, so, when she and Danny approached me about writing some songs for their album, we knew we wanted to continue this unique idea. Devony and Danny’s album In This Short Life featured texts exclusively by American writers. Taking the Scottish text of “Mary’s Song” as inspiration, I began to explore Appalachian folk song lyrics. A musical lineage is traceable from the folk music traditions of Appalachia back to Scotland and other parts of the British Isles (in addition to African and indigenous traditions), so it felt a logical progression. For many years, Jean Ritchie has been one of my favorite collectors and performers of American folk music. I dove deep into her catalogue and found the two texts that became these artsongs (and many more I hope to set in the future). Of special musical interest in this song is the engagement of a drone—here defined as a pitch or group of pitches sounding constantly throughout a piece of music. As a lover of the simple as an anchor for the complex, I frequently use drones in my vocal and instrumental music. On an emotional level, I find that a drone communicates an insistence, an obsession, in which I find a lot to say. On the one hand, it is a jail cell, a harmonic prison, and the voice and piano are constantly pushing against the bars. Reharmonizations, dissonances, weaving above and below the drone—nothing is able to move or change it. But on the other, a drone is as much a canvas as it is a wall. These songs are the sounds of a person throwing themself against their own limitations: musical and emotional. Over the course of these songs, the character singing them does not change—they are merely revealed.