It is a safe bet that no other song cycle has matched the diversity of texts present in
Daron Hagen
's
The Art of Song
, composed in 2019. Text authors include
Walt Whitman
,
Donald Trump
William Butler Yeats
, and one
Seamus Hagen
(b. 2011), presumably the composer's son, who contributes a fine poem about a wolf. And that is just the beginning. The 24 songs are divided into seasonal sections: Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Spring. Summer, as the notes say, represents
Hagen
in "full citizen/activist/artist mode"; it is here that
Trump
(and Sen.
Joseph McCarthy
) show up. It is not clear why that mode should be connected to summer, but to some degree, this is the point;
is trying to represent a wide range of experiences, both exterior and interior. The variety occurs not only between songs but within them;
often sets texts in counterpoint to each other, with multiple singers. This may remind medieval music fans of the polytextual pieces of that era. This places strong demands on the singers (two sopranos, two mezzo-sopranos, a tenor, and a baritone), especially inasmuch as a number of the contemporary texts could not be reproduced in the booklet due to copyright restrictions. This doesn't turn out to be a problem; text intelligibility is good, and the singers of the
Lyric Fest
ensemble accomplish a plain but not inexpressive sound that matches the medieval-like textures. With reasonable clarity from a rehearsal room at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute, this fascinating album represents nothing less than a whole new kind of song cycle. ~ James Manheim