Notes for: July 17, 2012
William Bolcom is one of the most prolific American composers, his list of compositions taking up three pages in his resume and covering virtually every type of music. He is also one of the country’s most honored composers, the winner of two Guggenheim fellowships, several Rockefeller Foundation awards, the Marc Blitzstein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Pulitzer Prize for music.
Born in Seattle, Bolcom was a child prodigy, entering the University of Washington at the age of 11 to study piano and composition and earning his B.A. at the age of 20. He continued his studies with Darius Milhaud at Mills College in California and in Paris, and completed his doctorate in composition at Stanford University. From 1973 until 2008 he taught composition at the University of Michigan, serving as chair of the composition department.
Bolcom is particularly well known for his settings of poetry, his setting of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience winning multiple Grammy Awards. In 1994, he composed Let Evening Come, a setting of poems by Maya Angelou, Emily Dickinson and Jane Kenyon, with the acceptance of death as a common theme.
Bolcom initially intended this work as a duet for two Metropolitan Opera stars, soprano Benita Valente and mezzo-soprano Tatiana Troyanos. While the composition was in development, however, Troyanos unexpectedly died. The design was then changed, replacing the late mezzo-soprano with a viola.
The three poems in Bolcom’s setting are: “Ailey, Baldwin, Floyd, Killens and Mayfield” by Maya Angelou, “‘Tis not that Dying hurts us so” by Emily Dickinson, and “Let Evening Come” by Jane Kenyon. The work was premiered in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and in Alice Tully Hall in New York by Valenti with pianist Cynthia Raim and violist Michael Tree.