Beauty Intolerable: Songs of Sheila Silver
Albany Records
In 2012, conductor Gwen Gould introduced me to composer Sheila Silver, on the street in Chatham, New York. It was the start of a tempestuous year for me, surrounding Silver’s composition and premiere of the suite of songs she titled “Beauty Intolerable.” The album was written for three female voices, piano, and a speaker — a woman who would recite an Edna St. Vincent Millay poem before the musicalization of the poem would be sung.
I arranged for my friend Tyne Daly to be the speaker for the first performance of the work in Hudson, New York, and for my friend Tandy Cronyn (daughter of Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy) to be the voice of Millay at Symphony Space in New York City, both of which took place in June 2013. My friend Dona Vaughn staged the song cycle. I attended both performances and was eager to have the work recorded. Now, at last, here it is.
Like Silver, Vincent Millay made an impact in the world of vocal music. Silver is a career opera composer, but Millay also had great personal success as the librettist for the Metropolitan Opera’s “The King’s Henchman,” with music by Deems Taylor. Millay set many of her lyric poetry to music and set two lyrics by playwright Floyd Dell, which she sang in his play.
Silver has written other song cycles, though nothing as extensive and complex as her Millay songbook. This new two-CD set takes a long look at Silver’s work, and includes “On Loving,” written in 2011, in memory of Diane Kalish (which includes another setting of a Millay poem); “Transcending,” written in 1995, in memory of Michael Dash; and “Chariessa,” a group of settings from fragments of poetry by Sappho, which dates from 1977-78. Millay also was inspired by Sappho, who appears in some of her poetry.
All things work in harmony, cacophony, and melody here. The CD set also includes a short suite of four songs drawn from “Beauty Intolerable,” arranged for contralto Stephanie Blythe who worked for me early in her career at the Berkshire Opera, in Lenox, Massachusetts. And, just to keep things interesting, there is a solo piano work, “Nocturne,” commissioned for Gilbert Kalish’s Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and premiered by him in 2015. He plays it brilliantly on this CD set.
At the premiere of “Beauty Intolerable,” the singers were Deanne Meek, Risa Renae Harman, and Lauren Flanigan. For the recording, Flanigan is replaced by Lucy Fitz Gibbon and Dawn Upshaw. Upshaw is also the singer for the three songs in “On Loving,” which include Millay’s “Mindful of You.” It would have been nice to hear the poetry on this recording, as we did in the live performances; it was a great help to hear their particular cadences and rhyme schemes. Instead, this CD provides printed texts, which do help as Silver’s settings are complex and sometimes wonderfully chaotic, as befits the poetry.
It is very interesting to hear the progress of the composer’s style from the mid-1970s to today. What changes most is the complexity of settings, from the radically progressive of the past to the overwhelmingly discordant of the present. Her musical work is consistent; however, she brings more underscoring into the recent work and the final impact of the poems she has chosen to work with is often lessened through the layered musicality she employs.
When I listen to “Beauty Intolerable,” I am swept into foreign worlds that alter with each hearing. For pure rendering of texts, I prefer “Transcending,” which uses the poetry of W.B. Yeats, H.D. Thoreau, and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Also, the baritone voice of Sidney Outlaw brings both a gravity and a graveness to these songs which clearly make them resound in memory. In much the same way, Stephanie Blythe’s deeper tones make her quartet of songs from the principal work cleaner and clearer than the soprano renderings in the full work. Both of these short song-groups should receive many performances.
Upshaw’s work in “On Loving,” with texts by Millay, Shakespeare, and Kahlil Gibran, is superb. She sings these songs with a joyous ring that makes even the most solemn lyric pay off beautifully: “For I never saw true beauty till this night.”
This collection of songs from an inspired composer will often grace my player. It will take many hearings to set them all in my mind and memory. To know I played even a small part in their creation and their introduction is a cheery thought to cherish. I hope that everyone reading these reflections will add the CD into their collection and make the songs a constant presence in their lives.
