Art song as a genre is having a moment in America. Read on to learn why it’s important.
In the midst of more news of arts organizations’ fiscal woes and closures recently, a ray of light for classical singers came in the 2024 GRAMMY Awards® Best Classical Solo Album category. Featuring some of the top performers in the world, the nominees weren’t just more presentations of often recorded art songs from history—instead, they included brilliantly pastiched track lists: John Dowland alongside traditional Sephardic song (Broken Branches, Karim Sulayman and Sean Shibe); Florence Price next to French jazz (Because, Reginald Mobley and Baptiste Trotignon); a massive collaboration of 40 new songs with texts by 40 different poets (40@40, Laura Strickling and Daniel Schlosberg); an album of exclusively 20th–21st century Black composers (Rising, Lawrence Brownlee and Kevin J. Miller); and, the winner, presenting Samuel Barber’s well loved “Knoxville: Summer, 1915” with traditional Black gospel and folk-rock (Walking in the Dark, Julia Bullock).
In this flurry of creativity and long-overdue representation, these albums showed us that art song is having an exciting moment in North America. I spoke with some of these GRAMMY® nominated artists and other art song leaders to discuss what that means for the genre, and the hope it could mean for the classical music world.
Art song’s most unique trait is its equal relationship between music and poetry. The latter component inspired soprano Martha Guth and pianist Erika Switzer, founders of Sparks & Wiry Cries, to create their songSLAM competition. What started as a podcast between two collaborator friends eventually became a nonprofit performance organization. Then, they started to think about how they could encourage audience investment in concerts, beyond just attendance. “Then,” Guth says, “we thought: how does a poetry slam work?” And songSLAM was born, a competition where teams each comprised one singer, pianist, and composer present a world premiere, and the whole audience votes on their favorite presentation of the night. Guth says they were shocked by the standing room only size of the audience at the first event in New York. By 2024’s end, songSLAM events will have been presented in four different countries and 10 cities around the globe, with more planned for the future.
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Countertenor Reginald Mobley is internationally recognized not only for his recent GRAMMY nomination, but also for a meteoric concert and oratorio career, a highlight being a soloist at King Charles III’s coronation ceremony in 2023. He calls art song’s inherent, direct communicability with the audience a unique opportunity. “It’s a chamber music genre (unlike opera and oratorio). You can, and should, look people in the eyes, and not just while performing—in recital, an artist can actually stop the performance and speak directly to the audience.”
All of the artists I spoke with agree that art song is about connection. Renowned American composer Libby Larsen says, “There are lots of really interesting things that can be done [with art song], but are we as composers and performers actually connecting with the person who is there to listen?” After all, she continues, “in art song, you only need three minutes to change a person’s soul.” Mobley thinks that’s where art song’s compact structure significantly overlaps with pop music: “It’s something digestible that speaks to someone’s emotion. That’s why Taylor Swift is important, why Billie Holiday was important; in these three-and-a-half-minute spaces, someone is singing these words that speak to me in a way I didn’t think I could articulate.”
And, with its microscale, says Mobley, “it has an ability to survive anywhere. Art song is evergreen.” Many agree that there is a deeply felt perception of boundaries around this genre. Symphonies can offer free tickets to people, but the act of getting to the concert hall may still be prohibitive. One of the most appealing aspects of art song as a chamber music genre is that it is nimble enough to go where the people are. Mobley is a programming consultant for the Handel and Haydn Society, an ensemble with a strong community outreach mission.
“Music works like a blueprint for a community, in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts,” he says. “My ‘Every Voice’ concert series focuses on various communities in Boston. One program will focus on the Black community, another the Jewish community, and another the queer community—and through the music, we show the contributions to art and humanity these communities have made. It’s a chance for people to see just how important your neighbor is and to create the space to reach out to each other.”
Which is why it’s especially important to see diverse programming in art song programs. Samuel Martin is the founder and Artistic Director of the Cincinnati Song Initiative, which offers a smorgasbord of art song recitals, podcasts, and educational opportunities, collaborating with dozens of art song experts. He says, “Art song repertoire can’t exist in a vacuum. There’s no inherent reason why we should just rinse and repeat the same repertoire written by the same kinds of people in the 18th and 19th centuries.” Larsen agrees, “Theirs are the shoulders we stand on; they’re not the idols we bow down to.” It is worthwhile to learn historical repertoire which established modern art song, but we all need to ask ourselves the question: Why do we continue to expect specific groups to be represented in art song recitals but not others?
Clara Osowski, an internationally recognized recitalist, and cofounder of the Source Song Festival in Minnesota, says that art song is a unique way to understand the past (“Schubert clearly had some of the same issues that we do!”). But it’s also a way to measure against the past to create something new in our own time. Larsen says, “My students can write in any style they want, but they must understand who they are in the world. It’s about training to authenticity. Because they have no right to call their voice ‘original’ until they know it is original.”
Relating to audiences can be a problem for classical music organizations, when people can click a button and instantly consume any media—and change it just as quickly. “You can’t get away with performing classical music just for the sake of it, like it was hundreds of years ago, when it was so much more ingrained in pop culture,” Martin says. Mobley reasons, “There are artists like Kendrick Lamar, who have a much more expansive artistic vocabulary, like what we think of Shakespeare,” and other genres that we barricade because of some preconceived notions or “rules of engagement” as Larsen calls them, in classical music, but “art song is not just strophic music in German or Ned Rorem.” Mobley says, “Spirituals can be art song. Baroque music can be art song. It all lives in the same chamber music area between opera and oratorio.”
Sparks & Wiry Cries and Niloufar Nourbakhsh recently co-curated a program in which Persian flamenco, contemporary singer-songwriters, and Iranian classical music were intertwined within the western classical recital format. “It shows that the roots of folk and classical essentially live side by side,” Martha Guth says. “The conventions we’ve enacted for whatever reasons have resulted in some barriers, and we don’t need them anymore.”
Guth goes on to say that this does not result in any less quality or nuance in performance. All the artists agree that a high level of performance is of top priority in any musical programming. As Osowski says, “First of all: [personal] music literacy. The strength of individuals is how you build ensemble.”
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Michael Brofman, founder and artistic director of the Brooklyn Art Song Society, recognized as a leading art song organization in the United States, has led regular concert seasons in New York and nationwide guest appearances for the last 10 years. “In any art song,” he says, “you have to be fundamentally curious. In opera there are two and a half hours wondering, ‘What does this piece mean?’ Whereas an art song, it can be two and a half minutes. You have to think each measure through, because even when you’re not singing—in the piano part or just in a rest—something expressive is happening.” At that micro level, he adds, you have to be completely prepared to make decisions expressively and instantaneously.
How should young art song singers prepare? Experts say to learn your languages, starting with your first language, because if you can’t communicate effectively in your native language, it’s even harder to communicate in another. Study music and poetry, because you cannot be an artist until your techniques allow your artistry to shine. And have a philosophy—understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.
Also realize that being a professional singer in America most often means being self-employed; there are very few permanent “jobs” to be had, so have a courageous and entrepreneurial spirit. You have to be a self-starter and be able to ask questions—and not be afraid of the answers. And, most importantly, just give concerts! We learn how to do it by doing it. There are endless possibilities—art song is so versatile and encapsulates all that makes us human, so it can connect us all to each other, in a way, across time and space.
“I can sing through a song and connect to not just the composers’ beautiful melodies and harmonies, but also to the words they set, and thus feel connected to those who came before me,” Mobley says. “Art song allows me to feel as though I’m a part of a greater whole, that we belong to each other.”
Visit these art song festival websites for more information:
sourcesongfestival.org (songSLAM)
