Scott Perkins: Whispers of Heavenly Death: Vocal Works by Scott Perkins
Navona

Whispers of Heavenly Death, a comprehensive set of vocal pieces by Connecticut native and California State University music professor Scott Perkins, offers multiple ways by which to appreciate its content. One might concentrate on the vocal performances by not one but four different singers; adding to that, there's splendid contrast when those involved are a mezzo-soprano, soprano, bass-baritone, and tenor. Or perhaps one might focus on the music Perkins has so sensitively composed for the texts or even simply the words themselves, given that the authors involved include Walt Whitman, John Donne, Lia Purpura, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Rainer Maria Rilke. Attending to the beauty of their writing, even without the music, affords ample satisfaction all by itself, and with eight song cycles and thirty-two songs in total presented, there's no shortage of material in play.

Contrast is certainly evident between the singers. The recording's framed by two song cycles featuring mezzo-soprano Julia Mintzer, and soprano Jamie Jordan, bass-baritone Dashon Burton, and tenor Zachary Wilder also perform two cycles apiece, making for a formally well-balanced presentation and distribution of material. Following a commanding, heartfelt opening performance of Whitman's Whispers of Heavenly Death by Mintzer, whose voice resonates with a rich, full-throated vibrato, Jordan distinguishes Holy Sonnets of John Donne with a bold, octaves-spanning performance that mirrors texts grappling with issues of mortality and carnality. With poems dating from a tenth-century anthology of Anglo-Saxon poetry and sung in Old English, Riddle Songs stands out for Burton's canyon-deep delivery. Wilder sings Dogen Songs with a clearly enunciated elegance befitting minimalist poems written by a thirteenth-century Japanese Zen monk, and immediately thereafter delivers a zestful performance of Spring and All, a three-part setting of William Carlos Williams poems. Despite such dramatic differences in vocal delivery, continuity is established when pianist Éric Trudel plays in every song (the only other musician is flutist Helen Park, who performs in Purpura's Three Songs for Autumn).

On the compositional front, Perkins' approach is striking. Fundamentally he fashions the musical mood to the text, but instead of hewing to a conventional verse-and-chorus structure, he departs from it by customizing the melodic line to each line, the result a connection between words and music that's uncommonly close. Admittedly that doesn't lend itself to instantly memorable songs where melodic repetition and hooks are emphasized; it does, however, result in music of integrity and sophistication. Perkins honours the authors in treating their words with respect, and attentive listening is required to appreciate just how thoughtfully the music matches the texts. Naturally there are many examples that illustrate the approach, but a small number will suffice to show the methodology at work.

In the five-part treatment of Whitman's title work, Mintzer sings the second verse of “Darest Thou Now O Soul” without accompaniment, the choice accentuating the loneliness of a soul caught between life and death (“No map, there, nor guide / Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand / Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land”); in the second part, the work's title song, an ascending melodic line is used for “Footsteps gently ascending, mystical breezes, wafted soft and low,” after which a lilting piano pattern precedes “Ripples of unseen rivers, tides of a current, flowing, forever flowing,” the instrument's movements gently wave-like. In Holy Sonnets by John Donne, Perkins gives the lines, “I am a little world made cunningly / Of Elements, and an Angelike spright” a playful quality, again the musical style matching the tenor of the words, while the quiet piano intro to Spring and All's “The Farmer” captures the ponderous nature of a “farmer in deep thought.” In “Foreign Lands” from Summer Songs, a graceful piece that Jordan performs with a splendour to match, Perkins' music ascends audibly for the lines “If I could find a higher tree / Farther and farther I should see”; if the sombre tone of its concluding “Summer Sun Shone Round Me” seems puzzling, the explanation arrives when the song ends with: “The deep grass moved and whispered / And bowed and brushed my face / It whispered in the sunshine: ‘The winter comes apace.'”

December 2018