Three Dickinson Songs

As impercpetibly as grief

Will there really be a morning?

Good morning midnight

André Previn’s solo vocal pieces were conceived with particular singers in mind, female singers more often than not. Beginning with the Five Larkin Songs for Janet Baker in 1977, a fascinatingly varied repertoire has been developed through collaboration with an array of distinguished musicians, including Kathleen Battle, Sylvia McNair, Renée Fleming, Barbara Bonney… While not all the pieces are strictly classifiable as song, the Three Dickinson Songs certainly come under that heading. Written for Renée Fleming in 1999, they are a distinctive contribution to a vast catalogue of Dickinson settings assembled over the last hundred years by at least as many (mainly American) composers.

As imperceptibly as grief is characteristic Previn in its freely selected, non-schematic harmonies, a vocal part that is shapely in line and at the same time sensitive to the natural rhythms and pitch inflections of the words, and a fluent piano part that subtly carries the thematic interest from stanza to stanza. Something of the reflective quality of the first song resurfaces in the middle section of Will there really be a morning? which is otherwise a bravura outburst of daytime rhythmic energy. It is restored in full in Good morning midnight, a spontaneous succession of melodic gestures selected not so much for the sake of stylistic uniformity as for their expressive value in an equivocal poetic context.