Griffin Candey

Silver Songs

$45.00

Duration: 23'

Instrumentation: Mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone, and piano

Delivery Method: Physical Delivery
Performance Materials: Full Score

Silver Songs, Griffin Candey (2024) 23'
Six songs about movies for mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone, and piano
Poetry by Rae Armantrout, Richie Hofmann, Rebecca Hoogs, Jeanne Murray Walker, Kate Northrop, and Frank O’Hara

1. Ave Maria
2. The B Movie
3. Scene from Caravaggio
4. Another Plot Cliché
5. The Difficulty
6. The Film

Silver Songs (2024) explores our fascination with and relationship to movies — how we see ourselves in them, how we use them as symbols, how we use them as a social space and currency. The cycle really began with Frank O'Hara's Ave Maria, a poem I'd loved for a while for being a quintessentially O'Hara bon mot of American culture, knowing it would make for a big, flashy, campy marathon of a song (beginning, as it does, with a command: "Mothers of America: let's your kids go to the movies!") Several years later, I encountered Kate Northrop's warm and nostalgic The Film, and the theme seemed too rich to resist. These six texts run the gamut from sly and biting (O'Hara) to pensive (Jeanne Murray Walker's heartbreaking The B Movie) to quietly internal (Richie Hofmann's masterful Scene from Caravaggio) to cartoonishly-explosive (Rebecca Hoogs' high-energy Another Plot Cliché.)

A few years later, I wrote a standalone song for the fabulous Mirror Visions Ensemble (a setting of Ada Limón's stunning What I Didn't Know Before,) and during that premiere, the ensemble also performed Tom Cipullo's extremely lovely cycle, Secrets, commissioned some years before for three singers and piano; the format worked so incredibly well in showing many facets of a theme that, when Scott and Grant and I discussed a larger cycle the following summer, I suggested a similar multi-vocalist format. (They responded by allowing me to write for Grant, Abi, Daniel, and Mischa, truly an abundance of musical riches that feels a bit like driving a rocket ship in the very best way.) I cannot thank Scott and Grant (and everyone at MVE) enough for the opportunity to dive into this banquet of poems — they mean a lot to me, and I'm thrilled that we get to share them with more folks via this project.

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147-023-FS
Delivery Method: Physical Delivery
Performance Materials: Full Score

About the Work

Duration: 23'

Movements:
1. Ave Maria
2. The B Movie
3. Scene from Caravaggio
4. Another Plot Cliché
5. The Difficulty
6. The Film

Instrumentation: Mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone, and piano

Commissioned by: Commissioned by Mirror Visions Ensemble

Silver Songs (2024) explores our fascination with and relationship to movies — how we see ourselves in them, how we use them as symbols, how we use them as a social space and currency. The cycle really began with Frank O'Hara's Ave Maria, a poem I'd loved for a while for being a quintessentially O'Hara bon mot of American culture, knowing it would make for a big, flashy, campy marathon of a song (beginning, as it does, with a command: "Mothers of America: let's your kids go to the movies!") Several years later, I encountered Kate Northrop's warm and nostalgic The Film, and the theme seemed too rich to resist. These six texts run the gamut from sly and biting (O'Hara) to pensive (Jeanne Murray Walker's heartbreaking The B Movie) to quietly internal (Richie Hofmann's masterful Scene from Caravaggio) to cartoonishly-explosive (Rebecca Hoogs' high-energy Another Plot Cliché.) A few years later, I wrote a standalone song for the fabulous Mirror Visions Ensemble (a setting of Ada Limón's stunning What I Didn't Know Before,) and during that premiere, the ensemble also performed Tom Cipullo's extremely lovely cycle, Secrets, commissioned some years before for three singers and piano; the format worked so incredibly well in showing many facets of a theme that, when Scott and Grant and I discussed a larger cycle the following summer, I suggested a similar multi-vocalist format. (They responded by allowing me to write for Grant, Abi, Daniel, and Mischa, truly an abundance of musical riches that feels a bit like driving a rocket ship in the very best way.) I cannot thank Scott and Grant (and everyone at MVE) enough for the opportunity to dive into this banquet of poems — they mean a lot to me, and I'm thrilled that we get to share them with more folks via this project.

Pages: 76