Staunton Music Festival Features Marvelous Pursuits

Marvelous Pursuits, scored for vocal quartet and piano 4-hands, is a setting of Barbara Goldberg’s delightful poetry cycle of the same name, in a scoring for vocal quartet and piano 4-hands. The poetry is a post-modern take on love and desire.Commissioned the New York Festival Chamber Players, it is a foil to Brahms’ Liebeslieder and was first programmed with them! I was drawn to these poems for their humor, sonic wordplay, dramatic structure, and lively musicality. And, of course the drama of a man with two mistresses, whose wife is having an affair with the piano tuner~ The internal rhyme is terrific in such pairs as mistresses/tranquillity; gaily/daily; kitchen/perfection; tart/ marzipan; and sherry/Vespers. All of these are chock full of musical inspiration.  The poetic  structure, with its varied character groupings and the epiphany of the man’s ultimate return to his wife, who is ‘suddenly, irresisbibly dear, suggested a musical denouément as well.  For more information, visit the composition page.