George and Ira Gershwin: Homeward Bound

George and Ira Gershwin: Homeward Bound

The 1927 musical Strike Up the Band was a flop, but it contained some of George and Ira Gershwin’s best songs.  One of the lesser-known ones was “Homeward Bound”, sung by soldier boys at the end of a fictitious war in a satirical story. I am inordinately...
John Danyel:  Grief, keep within

John Danyel: Grief, keep within

John Danyel (1564-1626) is in the shadow of John Dowland, who is rightfully installed in the pantheon of the greatest songwriters ever.  But Danyel left us some amazing songs, and this is one of them.  It’s a mini song-cycle, whose three parts share a...
Barbara Strozzi: Sete pur fastidioso

Barbara Strozzi: Sete pur fastidioso

Roommates and lovers (who are sometimes both) are cooped up together these days, occasionally annoyed with one another.  I include a song which may describe something like that by the Venetian singer-songwriter Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677).  She was perhaps the most...
Gabriel Fauré:  Dans la forêt de Septembre

Gabriel Fauré: Dans la forêt de Septembre

Imagine a world without the songs of Gabriel Fauré if you can.  I can’t.  He published mélodies over the course of 60 years, and leading up to the twentieth century, they became miracles of austere but sensuous beauty.  They seem made for older people to understand. I...
Jerome Kern / Dorothy Fields:  Pick Yourself Up

Jerome Kern / Dorothy Fields: Pick Yourself Up

I once said that one of my favorite singers was Fred Astaire. Steve Blier muttered, “that explains a lot”. You’ll have to ask him what it explained, but it might have been that I like things simple, unaffected, and with good diction. In the 1936 film Swing Time, Fred...