LETTERS FROM EDNA

LETTERS FROM EDNA
8 Songs for Mezzo-Soprano and Piano
on Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

Publisher
E. C. Schirmer Music Company

Catalog Number
8587

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Description
“Letters from Edna” presents eight letters sent by the great American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay to her family, friends, and business associates. The letters describe the people Millay met, the places she went, and the experiences she had with great enthusiasm and energy. Her touching accounts of friendship, and her final loving testament to her mother, are expressed with her characteristic wit and tenderness.

Text
1 – To Mr. Ficke and Mr. Bynner (December 5, 1912)
2 – To Arthur Davison Ficke (February 9, 1913)
3 – To Anne Gardner Lynch (December 23, 1921)
4 – To Harriet Monroe (March 1, 1918)
5 – To Norma Millay (May 25, 1921)
6 – To Arthur Davison Ficke (July 9, 1943)
7 – To Arthur Davison Ficke (October 24, 1930)
8 – To Mother (June 15, 1921)

Vocal Range
G 3  :  G 5

Duration
18′ 00″

Vocal Tessitura
E 4  :  C 5

Year of Composition
1993

First Performance
May 14, 1995
Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut

First Performers
Katherine Eberle, mezzo soprano
Juliana Hall, piano

Reviews
“Not all of the texts Hall sets with alluring imagination turn out to be poems. As the titles tell or suggest, ‘Letters from Edna’ (1993) and ‘Syllables of Velvet, Sentences of Plush’ (1989) are based on missives, the former by Edna St Vincent Millay and the latter by Emily Dickinson. That these songs have the flavour of poetry is a testament both to these supremely lyrical and resourceful writers and to composer Hall, whose glistening, poignant music follows the natural arc of the words while enhancing the conversational flow.”

– Donald Rosenberg,
   Gramophone

“Every measure of music recorded here is a clear demonstration of Hall’s exceptional abilities for taking almost any kind of text and giving it new life through music. Two of these four song collections are actually settings of letters rather than poems, but Hall does not seem the least troubled by the challenge of setting nonpoetic texts to music. On the contrary, she seems to relish the challenge, because it seems to draw especially vivid music from her pen…’Letters from Edna’ consists of songs that are every bit as colorful and vivid as the poet herself. There is an almost jaunty joy in these letters, no matter what the circumstances under which they were written; one can sense Millay’s intense love of language in the way she puts words together.”

– Gregory Berg,
   NATS Journal of Singing

Listen
Molly Fillmore, mezzo soprano
Elvia Puccinelli, piano