Four Elizabethan Songs

1937-40

6 minutes

Medium-high or medium voice and piano

John Donne, John Lyly, William Shakespeare, and Sir Philip Sidney

May 1, 1941, Composers Forum Laboratory, New York City. Hilda Bondi, soprano, and Erich Weil, piano

Available on demo CD

1. Daybreak
2. Spring’s Welcome
3. Dirge
4. The Bargain

The songs have the same tonal approach as the Prelude for String Quartet….Keyboard gestures enhance the text….The writing is Rennaissancelike but in a contemporary setting. Fine never overwrites or uses cliches….frequently there is a surprising tonal subtlety….Humor is especially evident in ‘The Bargain.’ The vocal lines are well written and not complicated, and when necessary the piano provides pitch support.

–Heidi Von Gunden, The Music of Vivian Fine, Scarecrow Press, 1999

“Dirge (after Shakespeare)…a piece beautiful in its emotional depth and a calm, clear-eyed mastery mirroring an amazingly potent, fine intellect.”

–Lazare Saminsky, Musical Courier, February 1, 1943

 

“Four Elizabethan Songs…date from the end of the ‘30s, and as such are written in a more tonal style. Lois Stipp…communicated the alternately sombre and frolicking moods of these spare, economical art songs.”

–Richard Chon, The Buffalo News, April 27, 1987

Dirge

Dirge
William Shakespeare

Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid
Fly away, fly away, breath,
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, O prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true did share it.

The Bargain

The Bargain
Sir Philip Sidney

My true love hath my heart, and I have his,
By just exchange, one for another given:
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,
There never was a better bargain driven.

My true love hath my heart, and I have his,
His heart in me keeps him and me in one,
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides
He loves my heart, for once it was his own,
I cherish his, because in me it bides.

My true love hath my heart, and I have his,
By just exchange, one for another given:
I hold his dear and mine he cannot miss,
There never was a better bargain driven