The anthem for the 11:15 service tomorrow will be Lee Hoibys Let This Mind Be In You. This is a nice performance of it, but Id like to find whoever it was who was whispering by the mike while they were recording and strongly suggest to them that they not do that again. Lee Hoiby was an American composer who was born in 1926 and died in 2011. Although he was himself a pianist, he was best known for his vocal music - mostly operas and songs. In a memoir I found, he says that when he was first starting out as a composer, his publisher suggested that one way to make a name for himself might be to write a series of 52 church anthems, one for each Sunday of the year. Let This Mind Be In You was the first in the proposed series, of which he only wrote a handful. He was a student and protegee of Gian-Carlo Menotti, who, in my opinion, was one of the best composers for singers of the 20th century. His music, which was not particularly avant-garde, was inherently vocal. It just fit the voice, which makes it very singable. Not easy - some of his pieces are real work to learn - but always music that fit the voice. Hoiby learned well from Menotti, and from Menottis partner, Samuel Barber, also a notably vocal composer. His best-known work is probably his opera based on Tennessee Williams play Summer and Smoke. I had the opportunity to play one of the roles in Summer and Smoke - that of the main characters mother - when in grad school at the University of Texas, but chose to turn down the role for a number of reasons. (One being that I really hated the way the role was written, although I liked the opera itself a lot.) There is a Hoiby piece that Im dying to sing one day. Titled Bon Appetit!, its an 18-minute piece in which the libretto combines two episodes of Julia Childs show The French Chef, in which she makes a chocolate cake. I first heard about it on NPR shortly before its premiere, when they were interviewing Jean Stapleton, who was the first person to sing the piece. Those of you who have seen All in the Family are familiar with one aspect of Miss Stapletons voice - who could forget the screeching through the shows theme song? - but in real life, she was a good singer who appeared in a number of Broadway musicals.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Sep 2014 21:36:51 +0000
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