"Your Birthday" [Elizabeth R. Austin]

"Your Birthday" [Elizabeth R. Austin]

First line of lyrics: My heart is like a singing bird

Part of: "Birthday Bouquet"

Austin, Elizabeth R.; music (American, a.k.a. Elizabeth Scheidel, born 1938)

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

1990 [composition]

New York: American Composers Alliance

genre: song|song cycle

solo: high voice

instrumentation: piano

initial sharps/flats: no sharps or flats

initial time signature: 3/4

origin: United States

female composer

English

Rossetti poem(s): "A Birthday"

Place in the larger work: The second song in a song cycle called "Birthday Bouquet," which includes 1. "for your birthday" (e e cummings); 2. "Your Birthday" (Christina Rossetti); 3. "Remember" (Christina Rossetti); 4. "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" (W.B. Yeats)

Tempo markings: "Andante con moto"; quarter note = 63

Recordings: "A Birthday Bouquet." Lyrics by Christina Rossetti, e.e. cummings, and W.B. Yeats, performance by Susan Gonzalez, soprano, and Marcia Eckert, piano. Songs by Women, Leonarda Productions, 2002, https://www.discogs.com/Susan-Gonzalez-Marcia-Eckert-Songs-By-Women/release/8292648. Accessed 14 January 2019.

Dedication: "for Gerhard"

Notes: Program notes for the score, written by the composer, mention that "different ostinato patterns link" this setting with the first song in the cycle, "for your birthday." The composer goes on to write that the piece, which is "full of sun and shadow, contains a brief quote from Hugo Wolf's 'Gesang Weylas' (from 'Morikelieder'), a personal 'dream picture' shared by my husband and myself." As the lyrics do not contain any changes from Rossetti's original text, the "quote" Phillips mentions must be musical.

Format 1: musical score

4 pages (pp. 6-9); song cycle performance time 9 minutes

Other data reference(s): Austin, Elizabeth R. "List of Works - Discography - Publications." Elizabeth R. Austin. 2016, http://www.elizabethaustinmusic.com/home-page.html. Accessed 14 Jan. 2019.
"BIRTHDAY BOUQUET." American Composers Alliance, https://composers.com/composition/birthday-bouquet. Accessed 14 Jan. 2019.

Cataloguer: Sarah Pennington, University of Ottawa

musical score: University of Ottawa Library, Ottawa, Canada

Record: CRM-birthday-austin

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