"Song" [Juliet Raphael]

"Song" [Juliet Raphael]

First line of lyrics: When I am dead, my dearest

Raphael, Juliet; music (American)

Rossetti, Christina Georgina; text (English, 1830-1894)

1927 ca [publication]

New York: Albert & Charles Boni

genre: madrigal|song

solo: voice

instrumentation: piano

initial sharps/flats: four sharps

initial time signature: 4/4

origin: United States

female composer

English

Rossetti poem(s): "Song" ("When I am dead, my dearest")

Composition history: A composer's note alongside the score explains that Raphael "endeavored to translate the words of the poets into music" which she was inspired to do after hearing James Stephens chant the verses of "Fifteen Acres." She was "strongly impressed [. . .] by the close interrelationship of the cadence, rhythm, tone, and accent in his chanting, and in the music which the words had suggested." In her other settings since, she has kept "the melody as closely as possible in consonance with the spirit and metrical form of the verses." She goes on to write, "For example, the poem 'Up-hill' consists of eight questions and eight answers. The questions, in a minor tone, modulate successively upward, one half-step - a frantic quest for the solution of the eternal query - whither? The answers are treated in a major key, mysterious, confident, final." (Raphael, xi)

Tempo markings: "Con gravita"

Performance instructions: In the Author's Note, Raphael writes "The music has been done only as a setting for the words - sung or chanted. To those who love poetry, and love to hear it read, chanted, or sung, this book is offered." (Raphael, xii)

Dedication: "To My Father"

Notes: The second song of seventeen in the song collection called "Madrigal and minstrelsy," which includes 1. "Laughing song" (William Blake); 2. "Song" (Christina Rossetti); 3. "The fifteen acres" (James Stephens); 4. "A woman's last word" (Robert Browning); 5. "Music, when soft voices die" (Percy Shelley); 6. "Home they brought her warrior dead" (Alfred, Lord Tennyson;) 7. "Matin song" (Thomas Heywood); 8. "Little lamb" (William Blake); 9. "Sonnet XXIX" (William Shakespeare); 10. "Song no. 2" (Stephens); 11. "The fiddler of Dooney" (William Butler Yeats); 12. "Arab love song" (Francis Thompson); 13. "Night" (William Blake); 14. "Give a man a horse he can ride" (James Thomson); 15. "Up-hill" (Christina Rossetti); 16. "Nurse's song" (William Blake); 17. "When you are old" (William Butler Yeats). Each setting is accompanied by an illustration by Marc Harchberger (American, 1900-1975), who also illustrated the cover of the collection.

Format 1: musical score

2 pages (pp. 21, 23)

Other data reference(s): Raphael, Juliet. Madrigal and Minstrelsy. Albert & Charles Boni, 1927.

Cataloguer: Emily McConkey, University of Ottawa

musical score: Raphael, Juliet. Madrigal and Minstrelsy. Albert & Charles Boni, 1927. Mary Mellish Archibald Memorial Library, Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick

Record: CRM-songwheniamdead-raphael

File(s): CRM-songwheniamdead-raphael.pdf

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