Love Songs and Epitaphs

13 songs for Soprano and Piano, written between 2017 and 2019 (approximately 30 minutes)

The audio below is from Alexandra Hegedus, mezzo soprano; Emily Morin, piano.

I wrote these songs over a long period and while several of them have been recorded, I’ve only ever gotten a chance to hear the ones on this page (so if you wanna cut a record, lemme know).

I’m less self-conscious about how sentimental this cycle is, and I don’t think it ever really gets that corny… but I do think I’m not at my lyrical best here. You never really leave your goth phase… you never really leave your emo phase… I challenge anyone to try and find the subtle quotations and references to 2000’s emo songs…

Still, this piece highlights a lyrical issue of mine: I have never been able to find lyrics in poetry that wasn’t explicitly written to be set to music (my piece O Tempo, for example); I need to look at fragments and feelings (my piece How Little is Within, for example, but I don’t think the world needs another white dude setting Emily Dickinson – shoutout to Rachel for that call-out). At the same time, while I’ve written quite a bit of vocal music, I’ve never been a strong melody-maker nor do I feel that I have been the best at writing “expressive” material. So, what I end up with is fragmented phrases, little fleeting emotions, flickers of light, etc. despite (or in spite of) the nobility of the subject matter.

I wanted every song to be a heart-aching sigh: a flash of a memory in autumn (most of them were written in autumn of whatever year). I don’t know if they sit well in the voice, or if they are easy to sing, or if this whole cycle is a messy pain, but I do love the effort and what they mean to me.

Original Note:

Each of these pieces is a small fragment, even a memory of music reflecting on love, relationships, and identity. The text is certainly abstract; it’s hard to find concrete ways of expressing the love or attraction that you might feel for someone else, and folks have been trying to understand that notion forever. I don’t think I’m the one to solve this problem, but each of these songs yarn for that answer. For myself, they or she or he always left something to hang on to, even if I never had the heart to say anything myself. For that, I’ll always be grateful to have been part of the story. All lyrics are by me, and are very much loose collections of words and phrases dealing with life, love, and death. In some way, I’m reaching back into my awkward high school emo phases, but I assure you that these pieces are much more lyrically abstract than that.

The rest of these pieces have not been recorded, but I’d love to work with someone on them, so if you’re interested in them at all, please feel free to download the score.