This Be
Her Verse
a song cycle
Creators
Music: Kathleen Tagg
Libretto: Lila Palmer
Commissioned
Golda Schultz & Jonathan Ware, 2021
Album released on Alpha Classics
Summary
“Escape, resist, build up the wall –
Still Body, Tribe, Bond, Love! Seeps through...
You’ll be up nights, to hold them all
And hate and love the trespass too.”
A celebration of feminine experience and a riposte to several hundred years of the male voice in classical music, the cycle focuses on watershed moments in a woman’s life, from self-creation and singleness to the demands and pressures of marriage and family life, with crystalline clarity and dry wit. The texts reference and respond to male poets, addressing the yawning void in feminine literary representation across time, as set by male composers. The climactic number of the cycle, Single Bed, references the ways in which women have historically maintained their independence and agency through singleness. In After Philip Larkin, the poet tackles the so-called ‘mind-body problem’ for women: the difficulty of maintaining female personhood within the ‘motherhood plot’, while celebrating the rich fulfillment of that experience. The cycle asks disquieting and oblique questions and gives no easy answers about what is ontologically and emotionally possible for women.
Run Time: 20 minutes
Photos by Nick Johns
What People Are Saying
“Schultz’s new album with pianist Jonathan Ware, This Be Her Verse (Alpha Classics), confirms her versatility and musical intelligence. The album’s title is from a new song cycle by Tagg, to texts by Lila Palmer. They are deft, upbeat, sharp and true, a celebration of the single bed and clean sheets.”
— The Guardian
“A brutal, honest sampling of a woman’s perspective on married life and motherhood... A howl of indignation.”
— Washington Classical Review
"They are powerful expressions of women railing against injustice, and an ideal vehicle for a soprano with the dramatic and vocal talents of Siobhan Stagg. They are also a lot of fun in their wit, bite and musical playfulness.”
— Classic Melbourne
“The classical music industry still all-too-often pays only lip service to the idea of centring women’s creative voices, but This Be Her Verse is the real deal. A thoughtful celebration of songs by women, performed with flair and imagination. A vibrant and welcome contemporary account of female experience.”
— BBC Music Magazine
“A three-poem cycle marked by skillful vocal writing, percussive effects for the piano, and poetry reflecting lived contemporary female experience, proved a highly fruitful commission, and should furnish not only Schulz but other sopranos with a bracing repertory staple.”
— Opera News