Songs for Ellen (1991)

Songs for Ellenis a collection of songs that I wrote for soprano Ellen Frohnmayer. “The Angel Gabriel” is an arrangement of an anonymous Basque folk song celebrating the angel’s appearance to the Virgin Mary. Thomas Hardy’s “The Oxen” is a complex reminiscence of the simple, childhood faith that the animals knelt in reverence at the birth of Jesus. In “The Nightingale’s Song,” adapted from the Medieval long poem The Owl and the Nightingale, the bird advises and consoles a young girl who has gone astray; shallow love, shesays, “does not last long. / It merely brushes with its wing, / Then goes, just like the song I sing.” Robert Frost’s great poem, “A Late Walk,” describes a quiet moment that embracesboth a world-wearinessthat is “sadder than any words” and a tender gesture of hopefulness. Finally, in “Winds of Autumn,” adapted from Walt Whitman, the poet listens intently to the tones of the organ, to the winds in the trees at dusk, and to the pulse of his love in the quiet of the night

1. “The Angel Gabriel”—A gentle arrangement of a Basque folk song celebrating the visitation of the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary.
2. “The Oxen” (Hardy)—Thomas Hardy’s melancholy rumination on the first Christmas Eve.
3. “The Nightingale’s Song” (from The Owl and the Nightingale)—The anonymous Medieval text contemplates the ambiguities faced by a young girl abandoned by her lover. The Nightingale soothes her with its song.
4. “A Late Walk” (Frost)—Robert Frost’s immensely tender lyric of love in the face of despondency.
5. “Winds of Autumn” (Whitman)—Adapted from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, the melancholy text sings tenderly of remembered love.