monica songs

program note

Jonathan Leshnoff composed Monica Songs in spring and summer 2012, completing it in August, and making final edits to the score in December. This work was commissioned by Sandra Hyslop, with co-commissioners The Friends of Monica in Celebration of the Life of Monica Langhammer (1965-2003) and the Carnegie Hall Corporation.  Mr. Leshnoff wrote Monica Songs for the soprano Jessica Rivera, who, with the conductor Robert Spano at the piano, premiered the work in New York City at Zankel Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, on October 29, 2013.

Mr. Leshnoff and Ms. Rivera, with the assistance of Ms. Rivera’s husband, Barry Shafer, selected the six texts for Monica Songs from a variety of sources. They form a cycle of songs that—even though they are six independent pieces—work together as one cohesive unit. Mr. Leshnoff has balanced the themes of life and death, love and loyalty, joy and sorrow in music that echoes and enriches the poems and letters that were chosen for the composition.

Monica Songs opens and closes (Songs One and Six) with quotations from the Old Testament Book of Ruth. In the tale of Ruth and her daughter-in-law Naomi, Mr. Leshnoff has discerned the age-old truth that loyalty and love, the ne plus ultra of human experience, can triumph over deprivation and loss. Indeed, because of Naomi’s steadfastness and humility in the face of pain, she survives, significantly, to become the matriarch of the lineage of King David, that most famous of the ancient world’s poet-musicians.

Song One, “For where thou go I will go…” declares the love and loyalty that dominate the entire cycle. Songs Two and Three form a contrast in mood and texture. Emily Dickinson’s poem “We Cover Thee—Sweet Face—Not that We tire of Thee—but that Thyself fatigue of Us—…” is a somber reminder of the frustration and grief that the living feel in losing their grip on the dying. Mr. Leshoff follows that meditation on death with a brilliant declaration of new life, and spring, e. e. cummings’s “i thank you G-d for most this amazing day.” Songs Four and Five, drawn from a private collection of letters between a mother and a daughter, present a panorama of human emotions: the daughter’s wit and humor, as well as her existential doubts, and the mother’s love and affirmation. Song Six, “There is a son born to Naomi…” closes the cycle with the assurance that ultimately, out of great pain (Ruth and Naomi’s suffering) was born David—and his Psalms.

The music of Monica Songs confirms the poetic contrasts in moods and gives shape to the six pieces as one coherent, finely sculpted arch. Thus, Mr. Leshnoff has created a musical balance of consonance and dissonance; open, spare harmonies in contrast with thick, lush chord structures; and soaring arioso passages set alternately with more chromatic melodic materials. He has respected the wide-ranging internal demands of the texts for appropriate rhythmic treatment in both the voice and the piano.

Among the unifying musical elements is a melodic figure that appears throughout the cycle. Heard first in the piano’s opening statement, in the cello register, the figure traces a melodic leap of one octave, with an immediate descent of a third. This element occurs repeatedly in the vocal line as well. Mr. Leshnoff uses it effectively for setting important text phrases, such as “my God…” in the first song; “I love you…” in the fourth, fifth, and final songs; and “the father of David…” in the sixth. The melodic figure also appears in the humorous truck stop passages of the fourth song. Occasionally, for special emphasis, the octave expands to an upward-soaring interval of a ninth or tenth, adding dramatic weight and urgency to the singer’s declamation. Mr. Leshnoff recalls the “rising octave-falling third” melodic material one last time, as the entire cycle ends the way it began, with the piano tracing that melody in the cello register.

Mr. Leshnoff’s interweaving of the vocal and piano parts insures the integrity of the cycle. In its six movements he describes a musical journey from the pain of life and the mystery of death into the sparkling vitality of new spring, through the juke-box world of truck stops and absurd humor, past moments of worry and doubt, and ending finally in the affirmation of the creative spirit. The result is a complex cycle of songs that seem as natural as breathing.

—Sandra Hyslop