Six Songs for Philip Frohnmayer (2011)

My Six Songs for Philip Frohnmayer were written to honor this friend and colleague, a remarkable baritone singer, and a yet more remarkable man, during the time of his courageous struggle with cancer. I would write a song when I came across a poem that seemed to me to resonate in some particular way with his character and personhood, and I wrote the songs for his voice, in the hope that someday he might sing them—a hope that would never be realized. “On the Beach at Night,” a tender lyric adapted from Walt Whitman, reminded me of Phil as the loving father of his daughter, Anne Marie. Sidney Lanier’s famous poem, “A Ballad of Trees and the Master,” is essentially a meditation on Christ’s suffering, and I very much associated this poem with Phil’s suffering as a cancer patient. Lanier’s beautiful poem, “Look off, dear love, across the sallow sands,” expressed to me the remarkable love between Phil and his wife, Ellen. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Out of the bosom of the air,” one of that poet’s bleakest expressions of despair, speaks to our loss when Phil passed away. “The Ferryman,” adapted from a short dialogue poem by Christina Rosetti, reminded me of Phil’s remarkable ability to alleviate pain through wit. The final song in this cycle is the one Phil wished most to sing—fittingly, I think, because it expresses such courage in the face of infirmity and its obstacles. Adapted from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” its tones, I hope, come at least a little way toward evoking Phil’s fortitude.

1. “On the Beach at Night” (Whitman)—A tender lyric in which a father lovingly reveals the secrets of the heavens to his daughter.
2. “A Ballad of Trees and the Master” (Lanier)—Sidney Lanier’s Lenten meditation on the meaning of suffering, death, and redemption.
3. “Evening Song”—A beautiful lyric poem about the love and tenderness shared by husband and wife.
4. “Snow-Flakes” (Longfellow)—Longfellow uses the metaphor of a snowy evening to illustrate the quiet desperation of a great loss.
5. “The Ferryman” (Christina Rosetti)—Rosetti’s gently witty tale of a maiden asking to be ferried across the water by a boatman who insists that she pay the fare.
6. “From ‘Ulysses’” (Tennyson)