Composer David Power
Poet Steven Meek

II from 'Three Poems for Louise Wain' by Steven Meek

All the broken robots come to me
With rusted-up parts, and misfiring hearts
Black dots where their eyes should be.

All the broken artists come to me
With tormented minds, their faces deep-lined
By visions of things still to be.

All the broken robots come to me
With anger and shame, and world famous names
White space where their hearts should be.

Louis Wain (1860 - 1939) was an English artist best known for his depiction of cats doing very human activities. I have liked his work for many years and, at one stage we had a Maine Coon cat named after him. When Steven Meek read his Three Poems for Louis Wain at an Open Mic event in Cleethorpes Library, I knew immediately that I wanted to set the middle one to music and Steve kindly gave me permission to do this. I hope people enjoy the song and that it inspires people to find out more about Wain's impressive artwork.

Performed by Anna Snow (soprano) and Kate Ledger (piano), Late Music, York (March, 2022)

Song For Louis Wain

Composer Flora Geißelbrecht
Poet Mascha Kaléko

From Feine Pflänzchen (Delicate Plantlets) by Mascha Kaléko

The piece “Karotten” is part of the cycle “Junges Gemüse”, which can be translated to English as “young vegetables” as well as “greenhorns”, which is a self-ironic reference to the composer´s young age, 17 years, at the time of writing it. The words are short, very pointed and humoristic poems, taken from german-jewish poet Mascha Kaléko´s collection “Feine Pflänzchen”, which translates as “Delicate Plantlets”. It was commissioned by the Austrian soprano Anna Maria Pammer and premiered in 2012. Since then, many vocalists have found joy in the chichi priggish agitation of Madame de Pompadour.

Performed by Anna Snow (soprano) and Kate Ledger (piano), Late Music, York (March, 2022)

Karotten

Composer Hayley Jenkins
Poet Carole Bromley

Flu set you going
like a ticking bomb,
growing, growing
in the cramped space
between skull and brain
which I imagine
as like a crack in a tunnel
where a buddleia
tries to flourish.
You see them from trains,
that urge to grow,
or mushrooms in a shed.
You had food and water;
you would make it.
I was your host,
me, this me that cries
and loves and is typing
these black letters
on infinite space.

From Sodium 136, Calder Valley Poetry

To My Cyst (2020) is an autobiographical ode to a brain tumour after surgery by York poet Carole Bromley. It reflects upon how the process of diagnosis and treatment instils a sense of anxiety. This anxiety is captured in the ambiguity of tonality and irregular metre. As the poem becomes more reflective and the anxiety subsides, the piece becomes more lyrical and more settled as the persona is filled with relief that her sight is restored and she can continue to write her poetry.

Performed by Anna Snow (soprano) and Kate Ledger (piano), Late Music, York (March, 2022)

To My Cyst

Composer James Williamson

This work is word-less, using only gentle “ah’s”.

When rocking my first-born Agnes to sleep, trying to remember words and melodies of lullabies was challenging. So much so, I would hum and improvise around half-remembered songs. Cradle Song takes this idea as a starting point. It is wordless, using only gentle “ah’s”. The same melody is repeated with both the piano and soprano echoing each other. This melody is punctuated with chords, whereby the bass notes spell out ‘Agnes’ (bar ‘n’). Overall, the idea of this gently undulating song is to emulate the sleep state between wakefulness and deep slumber, hypnagogia, where lucid dreams and hallucinations can occur.

Performed by Anna Snow (soprano) and Kate Ledger (piano), Late Music, York (March, 2022)

Cradle Song

Composer Lara Poe
Poet Kobayashi Issa

I chose a haiku by Kobayashi Issa for the text. The idea of winter seclusion appeals to me (although I would rather have snow than rain!) The music centres obsessively around the note E during the piece, although it momentarily moves elsewhere from time to time. The structure is in two parts: the first is quite pared down, with occasional flourishes. In the second part (which starts off with the second line, "Listening, that evening", the obsessive E moves around much more, and there is higher material floating over the vocal part – all returning to the E in the end.

Performed by Anna Snow (soprano) and Kate Ledger (piano), Late Music, York (March, 2022)

Winter Seclusion

Composer Anna Disley-Simpson
Text by Anna Disley-Simpson

Glistening,
Dancing with the wind,
Watching tentatively.
Glowing,
Warming up the world when it's dark,
So softly.
Behold the moonbeam and banish the bad dreams.
And underneath your blanket you bring shelter
To everyone and everything you see.
You bring safety,
We are protected and yet free.
Your selfless simplicity
A lifetime of majesty,
Listening,
Tucking all the bad dreams
Into silver boxes.
Whispering
Lullabies.

A delicate and luminescent lullaby, Mother Moon anthropomorphises the moon into a shimmering maternal figure who provides a blanket of comfort over the world at night-time.

Performed by Anna Snow (soprano) and Kate Ledger (piano), Late Music, York (March, 2022)

Mother Moon

The Grasses Of The Garden

Composer Benjamin Tassie
Poet Jacqueline Saphra

What dream is streaming from your eyes?
Incredible, a stream that never dries.
I long to lick the panic
from your cheeks:
Inhale your fading daylight

I want to touch and taste your secret mouth
Suck the sorrow from you
I can fill your emptiness
with plastic sighs
This is a paradise where nobody cries

Welcome to tomorrow
I’ll feed you any fire you like
What do you like?
Let’s begin.

Originally written for the National Opera Studio’s 40th Anniversary celebrations, ‘Salvage’ sees the charming and lustful Aegir receive a mute visitor to the sanctuary of their family’s Ark. Set after an apocalyptic flood, Ageir and their kin live among the salvaged ruins of their opulent, former lives, medicated, hedonistic, but unsatisfied.

Performed by Anna Snow (soprano) and Kate Ledger (piano), Late Music, York (March, 2022)

Salvage

Composer James Else
Poet Emily Dickinson

My River by Emily Dickinson

My River runs to thee -
Blue Sea - Wilt welcome me?

My River wait reply.
Oh Sea - look graciously!

I'll fetch thee Brooks
From spotted nooks -

Say Sea - take Me?

Dickinson’s poem explores themes of love and nature, with the lover's affection mirrored by the river’s inexorable journey to the sea. This setting aims to echo the uncertainty of whether their desires will be requited, consumed or possibly both.

Performed by Anna Snow (soprano) and Kate Ledger (piano), Late Music, York (March, 2022)

My River

Composer Peter Moran
Poet Christian Bök

Fast-moving unison lines and ever-changing rhythms require a very particular kind of text. Christian Bök's poem Busted Sirens was created using AI to answer a list of questions posed by another poet. The AI's mechanical answers and the unpredictable repetitions of stock phrases are what structure the music.

Performed by Anna Snow (soprano) and Kate Ledger (piano), Late Music, York (March, 2022)

Busted Sirens

Composer David Lancaster
Poet John Goodby

Blue silk slats slander perfume
Tied with a fist conversation
A fishbone in the mirror a grave
Walking in the dark turning-point
It is a lion cathedral decline

John Goodby’s poem is from his collection The No Breath - which Ian Brinton described as ‘a moment caught, a slot, a windowlet, a suggestive sense of something lying beyond the immediate’. It was factored from other pre-existing texts using selective processes (not entirely dissimilar to ‘cut-up’ technique), to create an abstract yet strangely poignant miniature. To mirror that process I have taken musical ideas from some of my own earlier songs and woven them together to create something new. John Goodby is a leading authority on Dylan Thomas and Professor of Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University.

Performed by Anna Snow (soprano) and Kate Ledger (piano), Late Music, York (March, 2022)

Court

Composer Emily Doolittle
Text Eric Satie

Se bien lever
Se bien tenir
Se bien coiffer
Se bien regarder
Se bien promener
Se bien porter
Wake up nicely
Stand up nicely
Comb your hair nicely
Look at yourself nicely
Behave yourself nicely
Take a walk nicely
Care for yourself nicely

Many of Erik Satie’s piano works have cryptic texts mixed in with the music. It can be unclear whether these are intended to be spoken by the pianist, or simply as enigmatic performance instructions, but they are witty and poetic, and deserve to be heard! Nicely is part of a set of three songs based on some of these texts, to complement a program of songs by Satie.
The text is by Erik Satie, and is not a poem per se, but comes from his piano piece Petit prélude à la journée.

Though the words are probably Satie's notes on his own morning routine, I've interpreted them from the point of view of a child getting increasingly frustrated by parental demands!

Performed by Anna Snow (soprano) and Kate Ledger (piano), Late Music, York (March, 2022)

Nicely

Composer Nicola Lefanu
Text Penguin Book of Japanese Verse

The Land sleeps
The hill asleep
At its feet the sea asleep
Through forlorn winter
I journey on.

This song is from my 1981 song-cycle A Penny for a Song. The text comes from the Penguin Book of Japanese Verse.

The song is a re-imagining of Chopin’s Prelude for piano, op28 no1. I adapted the poem so as also to acknowledge a debt to Winterreise.

Performed by Anna Snow (soprano) and Kate Ledger (piano), Late Music, York (March, 2022)

The Land Sleeps

Composer James Cave, poet Caleb Klaces

Caleb Klaces' poem features a series of startling, oblique images, creating links between space travel ('Laika' 'moon' 'NASA'), commerce and economics ('tiara' 'Prada' 'Triple-A'), imperialism, absurdism and surrealism ('Dada' 'Tzara'). As a counterpart to Klaces' stark, brittle imagery, my song makes use of gradually shifting, minimal figurations, and isolated 'bell-like' tones.

Performed by Anna Snow (soprano) and Kate Ledger (piano), Late Music, York (March, 2022)

Downgrade from Triple-A/Hopeful

Composer Tom Armstrong, text Robert Macfarlane

Berceuse 1917 uses isolated words taken from the penultimate chapter of Robert Macfarlane’s The Old Ways, a fictionalised recreation of the final months of the poet Edward Thomas’ life as a WW1 artillery officer. Macfarlane includes a refrain listing music playing on the gramophone in Thomas’ various billets - Chopin’s Berceuse is one of the pieces mentioned. Both voice and piano are derived from the Chopin, the latter given tiny slivers of music from each bar. The parts are arrayed in 10x10 grids that the performers can read through in any direction, coordinating loosely with each other.

Performed by Anna Snow (soprano) and Kate Ledger (piano), Late Music, York (March, 2022)

Berceuse 1917

Chaos is the fifth song from a song cycle entitled Fragments by Darlington composer Hayley Jenkins. It was written in 2017 for Payee Chen (soprano) & Kate Ledger (piano)
I Breathe
II Writing
III Fragrance
IV Drunk
V Chaos

Fragments consists of five miniatures and sets five very short poems by American poet Christopher Poindexter. Christopher describes himself as an ‘observer’ and his book Naked Human is an exploration of humanity at its finest and at its worst. When reading his work, I found the succinctness of his words, the informal structures he uses and the thinking spaces they create very musical. Therefore, the five disconnected untitled poems have been arranged as such to link to Poindexter’s text to discover what makes us human.

Each fragment works to mirror the poems structure and tone, sometimes leaving enough space for ‘thoughts’ on each subject being presented and sometimes moving swiftly on- as fleetingly as written. The role of the vocalist is to be the voice of these ‘thoughts’ adding colour, emotion and movement in the intensity of each brief fragment.

To hear more of Hayley's work, visit her SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/jenkinsonare

Fragments: V Chaos

'one hundred second songs' is a project curated by three North East composers to promote collaborations between composers and poets. The project aims to establish a library of new 'songs' which are short and succinct enough to be programmable in concerts of all genres and styles. If you are a composer or a poet who would like to be part of the project, please send us an email: onehundredsecondsongs@gmail.com and we will be eager to discuss possibilities to collaborate. With thanks, David Power, David Lancaster & Hayley Jenkins.

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