Lita Grier’s (b. 1937) compositional career has had an interesting trajectory: she took 30 years off to work in the background in the commercial and broadcasting sides of the music world, returning to composing in the mid-1990s.  She left composition behind because her music is melodic and tonal and that surrounding her at the time was serial, atonal, and academically-based, not at all to her liking or foreshadowing of success.  She also felt some gender discrimination in the then heavily male-dominated compositional world.  Born in NYC, she entered Juilliard at 16, studied under Lukas Foss at Tanglewood, did her graduate work at UCLA under Roy Harris, and now resides in Chicago, where she was named ‘Chicagoan of the Year’ in 2005.  She has won numerous prizes and awards for her compositions on both sides of the hiatus.

The CD, the 1st devoted entirely to Grier’s music, opens with Five Songs for Children, the 1st 3 composed in 1962 and the last 2 in 1999, but they fit together seamlessly, each to a text by a different poet: Edna St. Vincent Millay, Amy Lowell, Walter de la Mare, Christina Rossetti, and Emily Huntington Miller (all but 1 females, it will be noted).  It closes with another set of 5, Reflections of a Peacemaker, by a child poet, Mattie J.T. Stepanek (1990-2004), who died 3 weeks before his 14th birthday of a rare form of muscular dystrophy, but began writing poetry at age 3 and in his short life had 5 collections appear and make the NY Times’ bestseller list, with a 6th published posthumously also appearing there.  The set bears the title of the last of those collections, whose subtitle is A Portrait Through Heartsongs, but draws 3 of the poems from the earlier Celebrate Through Heartsongs.  The work was commissioned by the Chicago Children’s Chorus in celebration of its 50th anniversary in 2007, and is performed by that ensemble here.

In between are works from both ends of Grier’s career, beginning with the sole work composed during the hiatus: “Sneezles” from 1972, based on an A.A. Milne poem about Christopher Robin and written for her son when he was young.  It is also the sole work to use accompaniment instrumentation beyond the piano: oboe and percussion.  Next comes her earliest vocal work, the Five Songs from A Shropshire Lad written in 1955, when she was 18, followed by the Two Songs from Emily Dickinson from 1962.  These 2 sets are, not unexpectedly in view of Grier’s age at the time of composition, somewhat derivative-sounding, the former reminiscent of the early 20th century English Art Song tradition, many of whose composers such as Berkeley, Butterworth, Ireland, Moeran, Orr, and Sommervell (although not others like Holst, Quilter, and Vaughan Williams) also set Housman, including the ever-popular “When I was one and twenty” also found in this set.

Then comes her most recently completed and longest vocal work to date, the 10-song cycle for vocal quartet composed in 2004-2008 with 3 commissions from the Ravinia Festival and its president Welz Kauffmann: Songs from Spoon River, portraits inspired by texts in Edgar Lee Masters’ (1868-1950) Spoon River Anthology, with 1 from The New Spoon River, where characters speak from beyond the grave reflecting on the successes and failures of their lives, and sometimes dispensing advice.  This is a true cycle rather than a simple set, with opening and closing songs that bookend the others, some of which have inter-relationships and cross references, such as a granddaughter addressing her grandmother who spoke earlier.  Most are soliloquies, 2 are quartets.

The 36-page booklet contains notes by University of Northern Illinois professor Ted Hatmaker that give detailed descriptions of all the works, as well as all the texts (with a few typos and omitted lines, alas) and bios and photos of the composer and performers.

Grier seemingly has an inborn knack for judicious selection of texts and skill for making the notes caress them and bring them to life.  These musicians also literally caress the songs: it is easy to imagine Areyzaga singing to a group of children sitting in a half-circle before her.  Those singing for the Spoon River characters seem to embody them, while those performing the Housman and Dickinson songs seem to be veritably speaking for their poet-narrators.  These works are a marvelous addition to the art song repertoire, and this recording a wonderful addition to a CD library.  Perhaps its availability will encourage other singers (or children’s choruses) to program these fine works in their recitals.

© 2009 Marvin J. Ward