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William Bolcom - Songs of Innocence and of Experience (William Blake) / Slatkin, University of Michigan School of Music | 
| Artists: Ilana Davidson, Nathan Lee Graham, Leonard Slatkin, Joan Morris, Carmen Pelton, Nmon Ford
Creators: William Bolcom, Christine Brewer
Label: Naxos American
Category: Music
List Price: $26.99
Buy New: $14.70
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Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 64647
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 3
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 4.9 x 1
MPN: 8559216-18
UPC: 636943921623
EAN: 0636943921623
ASIN: B000641YZK
Release Date: October 19, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new 3 CD set, sealed in original factory shrinkwrap. 100% customer satisfaction guaranteed. We process and ship orders daily.
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| Tracks:
Disc 1
| • | Introduction - Thomas Young | | • | The Ecchoing Green - Combined Choruses | | • | The Lamb - Measha Brueggergosman | | • | The Shepherd - Peter 'Madcat' Ruth | | • | Infant Joy - Marietta Simpson | | • | The Little Black Boy - Nathan Lee Graham | | • | Laughing Song - U-M Chamber Choir | | • | Spring - Thomas Young | | • | A Cradle Song - Linda Hohenfeld | | • | Nurse's Song - Joan Morris | | • | Holy Thursday - Combined Choruses | | • | The Blossom - Measha Brueggergosman | | • | Interlude - Orchestra | | • | The Chimney Sweeper - Nathan Lee Graham | | • | The Divine Image - Joan Morris | | • | Nocturne - Orchestra | | • | Night - Thomas Young | | • | A Dream - Ilana Davidson | | • | On Another's Sorrow - Combined Choruses | | • | The Little Boy Lost - Carmen Pelton | | • | The Little Boy Found - Nathan Lee Graham | | • | Coda - Orchestra |
Disc 2
| • | Introduction - Orchestra | | • | Hear The Voice Of The Bard - Nmon Ford | | • | Interlude - Orchestra | | • | Earth's Answer - Christine Brewer | | • | Nurse's Song - Joan Morris | | • | The Fly - MSU Children's Choir | | • | The Tyger - Combined Choruses | | • | The Little Girl Lost - Nmon Ford | | • | In The Southern Clime - U-M Chamber Choir | | • | The Little Girl Found - Combined Choruses | | • | The Clod And The Pebble - Thomas Young | | • | The Little Vagabond - Joan Morris | | • | Holy Thursday - Carmen Pelton | | • | A Poisin Tree - Nathan Lee Graham | | • | The Angel - Ilana Davidson | | • | The Sick Rose - Marietta Simpson | | • | To Tirzah - Combined Choruses |
Disc 3
| • | The Voice Of The Ancient Bard - Nmon Ford | | • | My Pretty Rose Tree - Chorus Men | | • | Ah! Sun-Flower - U-M Chamber Choir | | • | The Lilly - Thomas Young | | • | Introduction To Part V - Orchestra | | • | The Garden Of Love - Thomas Young | | • | A Little Boy Lost - Carmen Pelton | | • | A Little Girl Lost - Christine Brewer | | • | Infant Sorrow - U-M Chamber Choir Soloists | | • | Vocalise - Combined Choruses | | • | London - Nathan Lee Graham | | • | The School Boy - Linda Hohenfeld | | • | The Chimney Sweeper - U-M Chamber Choir | | • | The Human Abstract - Nmon Ford | | • | Interlude: Voces Clamandae - Orchestra | | • | A Divine Image - Soloists |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Bolcom's dream of setting Blake's poems to music began when he fell under their spell as a teenager; he worked on the composition of Songs of Innocence and of Experience on and off for 25 years, completing it in 1982. This live recording celebrates the 20th anniversary of the work's American premiere. Following an early edition of the poems that assigns them a different order from the customary one, he created nine movements to form "a series of arches." Blake's own principle of "contraries" and his use of many poetic traditions is a perfect counterfoil for Bolcom's eclecticism, which encompasses styles ranging from solemn chorales, lush romanticism, abrasive, dissonant modernism, to jazz, folk, country, and rock. His interpretation of the poems, which he calls "A Musical Illumination," is sometimes startling, but always interesting, highly personal, and unquestionably sincere. Some of the settings enhance and heighten the poems, entering deeply into their spirit and mood. Others seem at variance with them: "The Lilly," a peaceful, serene poem, set to crashing, aggressive music, is an extreme example, and some stratospheric, jagged soprano lines seem to add nothing to the text. For some of the most arresting, convincing settings, Bolcom uses his well-known and beloved cabaret style, sung to perfection by his wife and partner, mezzo-soprano Joan Morris. Indeed, the entire performance is beyond praise. The work calls for a whole army of participants: several choruses, including a children's choir, a dozen vocal soloists, a speaker, a harmonica player, a fiddler, and a huge symphony orchestra augmented by electronic instruments and extra brass and percussion. The last produce a large number of terrifying explosions, both between and within the songs, as well as fascinating sound effects, like imitations of running water, delicate tinkles, and ominous roars and rumbles. The singers are superb; the women contribute incredible coloratura leaps, melting lyricism, caressing warmth, while the men include a heroic tenor, a commanding baritone, and sometimes sung, sometimes spoken scatting. Leonard Slatkin holds his enormous forces together with total control and authority. --Edith Eisler
Album Description
William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience date from the turbulent period in English and American history when the United States was in its infancy. Occupying 25 years of William Bolcom's compositional life, his "musical illuminations," inspired by Blake's own wide panoply of poetic styles in the cycle, travel thrillingly from intense dissonance to folk, rock, and reggae to encompass the breadth of the Blakean spiritual universe.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
A supremely moving work of art February 26, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I am writing this not as a music critic but as someone who has enjoyed William Blake's poetry for most of my life. I bought this CD because of Blake's poetry. I realized that of late I had not been reading poetry or enjoying it as much as when I was younger. I became hooked right away and I have been playing this CD over and over again for more than a month. I can't listen to any other piece of music. Some of the pieces are better than others, but everything sung by Nathan Lee Graham is moving beyond words (at least any words I know). So I think anyone who enjoys poetry, the English language, history, ideas or the human voice will enjoy listening to this CD over and over again. This music has touched me like no other piece of music ever. I think the artists, particularly Nathan Lee Graham, should all become rich and famous. I was even thinking that A Divine Image should be released as a single. I think it would go to #1, with a bullet.
 Enjoyable? June 19, 2006
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
By what measure should we judge a piece of music? Should it be by its level of complexity? by its technicality? by the level of emotion it conveys, or does not? Or should a piece of music be judged solely upon whether or not we, as listeners, enjoy it?
Like it or not, music has almost always been judged by whether or not we, as listeners, enjoy it - but what gets factored into our personal enjoyment of a piece of music is many things, including, but not limited to, whether or not we appreciate its complexity, technicality, and how effective it is at conveying its purpose. When most people discuss music, when they talk about what they like or what they don't like, they often mention qualities of the music which suited them or which rubbed them the wrong way.
Bolcom's Songs of Innocence... is one such piece of music that I, as a listener, am confused over. I'm not sure if I like it, but I'm quite positive that I don't dislike or even hate it. As a whole, I find that I'm fairly displeased with the overall result, yet, on a closer inspection, I find that I am quite pleased with each of its parts; therefore, it's a bit of a paradox to find that I enjoy each and every part but not the summation its parts. The truth is, when looking at this piece of music as a whole, it utterly boggles the mind because it is, in truth, so large and it covers so much ground musically and lyrically that it's quite impossible to absorb it all in one sitting, in one listening. To just say that Songs of Innocence opens with a fairly standard aria surrounded by orchestral accompaniment and ends, over 2 hours later, with a reggae-sounding song is not enough because in between the beginning and end, Bolcom includes other genres ranging from rock, country, jazz, and soul...and of course, "classical."
This piece of music has been described as representing all of the 20th century's achievements in music in one fell swoop. But just because it does so, does that insinuate that it deserves to win a Grammy, as it did in 2006, and does it deserve the laud and praise it is receiving? A serious part of me wishes to say 'no' because I feel I've heard better pieces of music from the 20th century. Sure, Mahler's 9th Symphony does not capture the whole of the 20th century within its 1 1/2 hour grasp, neither does any of Shostakovich's or Robert Simpson's symphonies. And so, I'm forced to resign myself to the fact that Bolcom has created an astonishing achievement with this work.
But, as monolithic as it may be in size and in scope, there are moments when it does not feel entirely cohesive, and there are moments, during the latter half, when I honestly wanted the disc to hurry up and finish for no other reason than I felt like I was being presented the same material and the same concepts over and over and over again. However, in terms of technicality and complexity, Bolcom has taken a series of poems and created something wholly other and enjoyable out of them. He even does a fantastic job of conveying the emotion of each unique poem by arranging music around it that fits like a glove. Is it enjoyable to listen to? It is, for the most part, but, as I've already said, it can seem to run a bit long at times. On the whole, though, I do recommend this disc to anyone interested. If Bolcom is remembered for nothing else in 50-100 years, it will be this piece of music.
Remarkable performance April 17, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
As a graduate of the University of Michigan (some time ago) who attended every single performance of both student orchestras while a student, I was eager to hear how the kids played in this Grammy performance. In short, the performance is simply magnificant.
This is not easy music to listen to or play and it is unlike any of the Bolcom music I had heard before. It has a multitude of styles, colors, tonalities, etc. With each listening, however, I hear and appreciate more of this complex piece.
The (professional) soloists are generally excellent with occassional poor diction. The chorus is outstanding, but the orchestra and music steal the show.
An Excellent Example of Modern American Composition February 17, 2006
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
I had the double pleasure of hearing a performance of this live in Ann Arbor AND purchasing the CD for subsequent enjoyment.
Bolcolm's composition, though somewhat dated (in the notes above you can see that this was actually written some time back) is still very fresh in 2006.
The use of seeming disparate forms of music (check out the raggae ending juxtaposed against some fairly depressing wording) has a "World Music" feel.
The University of Michigan Choirs, in spite of numbering over 400 on stage and on the CD still manage to produce a clear sound. A strong testimony to the quality of the directors of those choirs.
BRAVO- This truly deserved the recent Grammy recognition.
A work that has aged well January 3, 2006
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
It's remarkable that a work written in the 1970s that incorporated aesthetics gleaned from the world of popular music in some of the song settings doesn't sound dated today. Bolcom apparently had been wise to focus on the elements geared to "illuminating" the Blake poems, such that the fit with the text trumped the stylistic clothing time after time.
On the other hand, the elevation of Blake's principle of contrariety to an organizational schema for the poems AND musical styles gives one pause, if only out of philosophical fairness. I can think of only two other works that exhibit such stylistic dislocations and extreme contrasts: Bernstein's "Mass," and Frank Zappa's "Lumpy Gravy." Bernstein had the benefit of an existing narrative (modified to suit his more eclectic sensibilities as a Jewish composer approaching a Catholic ritual) and the common thread of the Celebrant tying things together. Zappa would never have invoked the name of Blake to justify the bizarre juxtapositions in Lumpy Gravy. Why not simply say that form followed function on a per-song basis in this case, rather than to claim that Blake's arrangement of the poems is the secret key to why this large work enfolds as it does. Is there a massive macro structure? Maybe, but it's more likely that Blake is laughing at the emperor's new clothes that were sanctimoniously thrown over his proposed sequencing of the poems.
The performance is astonishing, as befits the massed forces required to do this work justice. The songs have superficial affinities to other music. One moment you'll be thinking, "this sounds like Fancy from Holst's Choral Symphony," the next you'll think it's an echo of John Rutter, then searing Humphrey Searle brass declamations followed by pseudo-Mahlerian children's choirs and a sequence that sounds like it might have appeared in a Hindemith opera. A couple of numbers anticipate 21st century Broadway numbers, without ever deteriorating into a copy of Bernstein's Mass (the similarities are superficial rather than substantive, as noted earlier).
There's something here for everybody, which (ironically) means there's the possibility there's something here to alienate everybody as well. When you're all over the map, you'll have your advocates and detractors regardless how well you attempt to justify the master plan. Bolcom correctly notes that this was a labor of love, and not a commissioned piece. One can tell that it was a labor of love, and it should be appreciated for what it is, and not derided for what it is not, nor could ever be. There'll always be the wag who'll propose to edit out the dissonant, disjunct parts to build a "better" piece of music more palatable to mass audiences not interested in having the consonant songs punctuated by some of the heaviest blocks of low-brass chords ever recorded. For people who think Parry was the last word on setting Blake to music, this recording should be a revelation -- either of their shallow unwillingness to "use their ears like a man" (Ives), or, one would hope, of a very personal vision of the breadth and scope of Blake's ideas brought to life in the world of sound.
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