During the last century many composers of vocal art-music tended to use the voice merely as another instrument, often stripping away some of the most wonderful qualities inherent in the human voice. The twentieth century allowed enormous creativity and innovation in developing extended techniques for vocalists, but many singers and audiences continue to insist that the vocal music they want to sing and hear include beautiful, tuneful melodies and clear, understandable texts. If you are a lover of traditional art song and are always searching for repertoire selections that are highly melodic, and clearly written with the voice in mind, you can find a breath of fresh air in the settings included in this volume of 14 songs by composer Ben Moore.
Upon first glancing at the attractive cover of this collection of songs, it is easy to miss a fascinating element about this rising young composer. The painting on the cover, Late Afternoon, is by the composer himself: Moore maintains a dual life in both artistic media, visual and aural. Looking at some of his accomplishments in both areas, it is apparent that a certain sort of ordered intelligence runs through his works. More specifically, it seems that this artist/composer is not afraid of the past, but rather embraces many of the most beautiful aspects of his artistic heritage while imbuing his work with its own personal colors and tones.
In a brief and lucid preface, Moore explains that all of the songs in this book are about some level of love and that the poems he used had appealed to him for many years. His choice of poetry by Joyce, Yeats, Herrick, and Keats demonstrate that Moore has wonderful taste in picking texts. Pleasant, short introductions to each piece, in a pleasing prose style, give a sense of the humanity of the composer and of the simple beauty of the compositions included in this volume. For the final song, Moore demonstrates his abilities as both a melodist and lyricist with a rather personal ode to music simply titled “On Music.” This final piece gives a sense of individualism to the composer and closes the volume in a poignant way.
Traditional tonal harmonic order reigns throughout these 14 songs with only occasional forays into clashing dissonance or unusual harmonic twists. Attention to word colors and syllabic stresses shows that Moore has a solid understanding of prosody and that the clarity of the text is paramount in his mind. The melodies are mostly smooth, consonant, and inherently vocal, though several include elements that are more athletic. In this volume, which is for medium voice, the range generally spans about an octave and a fourth from B below middle C to two Fs above middle C, making them accessible to a wide range of middle voices. The pleasing and idiomatic piano parts are well conceived and range in difficulty from intermediate to advanced.
Moore composed many of the songs in this volume for soprano Deborah Voigt—eight of them are included on her recent recital CD, Deborah Voigt Sings American Songs, with pianist Brian Zeger—but male singers could sing the selections in this songbook just as easily, since the poetry is not inherently gender specific. Like many well-written songs, singers could use them as challenging and effective concert repertoire or as songs for study at the pre-college and college level. Quite simply, the 14 songs printed in this book are intrinsically likable, and have already proven to be a hit with a wide range of singers and audiences.
No doubt some will criticize Moore’s style of composition as represented in this volume because of its clear similarity to “Broadway-style” vocal writing. Moore’s style includes elements of other non-Broadway, American song composers, such as Hundley and Rorem, but he is unlikely to gain strong support from the academic composition community, due to his more conservative compositional language. This may be Moore’s exact intent and could actually be part of a bigger trend away from the more experimental elements of the twentieth century back towards those wonderful and eternally valuable commodities: beauty and audience accessibility.
If you are interested in performing works that have yet to reach a wide market but are sure to be well-received in the concert hall, at your senior voice recital, or at your family reunion, rest assured that these fine settings by Ben Moore will please the palette and leave your audience wanting more.
For more information about Ben Moore or to order a copy of this songbook, visit his website at www.mooreart.com.
