Baby Song of the Four Winds, Guru, and Recovering

Written in 1994, “Baby Song of the Four Winds” celebrates the birth of Colin Graham Everett, son of Biscardi’s close friends, Carole and C. J. Everett. As the composer states: “This lullaby is from the point of view of the baby, who invites the four winds to be his companions. The gentle south and west winds play with him. Unpredictable, the north wind wakes him up to life. The tranquil east wind brings comfort to this cycle of wakefulness and sleep.” Carl Sandburg’s rhythmic message inspires Biscardi to write a rocking, graceful setting marked by occasional text painting. The gentleness of the south and west winds is conveyed through an oscillation between two pitches, D and E, in the piano part. Biscardi uses touches of staccato articulation for lighter effect at mention of the baby’s “cowlick.” The most violent departure, when Sandburg addresses the north wind, is marked by an abrupt shift to chromatic and active music and harp-like textures in the piano. The initial tranquility is reprised at the end.
Guru is Biscardi’s setting of poetry by Allen Ginsberg that in a few succinct strokes—lasting just over ninety seconds—perfectly conjures up, in the composer’s words, “those city and interior landscapes that only Allen Ginsburg could write about in such a unique way.” The vocal lines are mostly simple vacillations between two pitches, setting up a wavering mood of disquiet. Biscardi’s piano accompaniment is extremely spare, and the only moment of liberation comes in the final musical phrase where bell sounds are invoked.
According to Biscardi, “Recovering was written for my friend, Thomas Young, in memory of his wife, Marilyn Helinek. It is a setting of two poems by Muriel Rukeyser, including two lines from ‘The Poem as Mask: Orpheus’ and the entirety of ‘Recovering’.” As a colleague of Rukeyser noted upon her death in 1980, “Muriel, like no one else, proved to us that recovery - recovery of what has been lost or what has been denied us - is the true work of poetry and of our lives.” Biscardi responds to the parallel poetic structure with rhyming musical phrases, which all begin with a marked chromatic melody. A short piano interlude separates the opening sentiment from the second, larger text “Recovering.” The second poem is framed by a musical quotation which brings out an inner voice and modifies the opening of J. S. Bach’s chorale, Es ist das Heil uns kommen her (Now is to Us Salvation Come). Biscardi achieves deep emotional pathos through repeated tones in the vocal line (a kind of musical meditation), which alternately clash and coordinate against the changing harmony. His writing for the piano is tight and dissonant, providing a psychological commentary on the text’s message. The action gradually begins to slow until, over the final phrases, the voice settles resignedly on a single pitch (B) repeated more than twenty times in succession.

(c) Jason Stell and Chester Biscardi