JUST-SPRING

ART SONGS OF JOHN DUKE (1899–1984)

LAURALYN KOLB, soprano; TINA TOGLIA, piano
80576-2

Born in Cumberland, Maryland, on July 30, 1899, John Woods Duke began his musical studies at the
Peabody Conservatory at the age of sixteen, where he studied composition with Harold Randolph and
theory and composition with Gustav Strube. After a period of volunteer service in the army he moved
to New York, studying piano there with Franklin Cannon and composition with Howard Brockway and
Bernard Wagenaar. He also studied, in Berlin and Paris respectively, with Artur Schnabel and, as did
many composers, with Nadia Boulanger. He made his debut as a pianist in Aeolian Hall in New York
in 1922, the same year he married Dorothy Macon, a writer who would later provide him with librettos
and other texts, including those for the stage works The Sire de Maletroit, The Yankee Pedlar, and The
Cat That Walked by Himself, and for one of his most touching songs, “Reality.”

In 1922 and 1923 he served as editor for the American Piano Company Recording Labs, making
several recordings there. It was at this time, in 1923, that his first songs were published by G.
Schirmer, Inc. It was also in 1923 that Duke was appointed to the Smith College Department of Music,
where he taught piano performance and, in the classroom, its literature, and where thirty-seven years
later he was named to the Henry Dike Sleeper Chair. Many of his songs were composed for colleagues
at Smith. The four Emily Dickinson songs recorded here, for instance, were composed as part of a set
of six for soprano Adrienne Auerswald, who sang them often. Duke retired from Smith in 1967,
composing in his “retirement” 126 of his 265 catalogued songs. He died in Northampton,
Massachusetts, on October 27, 1984.

Although he is known primarily for his songs, Duke was the composer of many other works, including
a concerto for piano and strings, an orchestral overture, two string quartets, several choral works, and
many incidental pieces for both chamber and choral combinations. His chamber works include three
works for viola, two of them with piano. The catalogue of works supplied by the Smith College
Archives also includes many titles obviously meant for humorous occasions, such as “For whom the
Bells Trill,” and “Liberty, Tonality, Sorority or Lady Macbeth of Northamsk,” and so on. Although he
did compose solo piano music, the list of pieces is surprisingly small: six pieces in all totaling ten
movements, all composed before 1940.

Comparison with the musical language of other notable American art song composers (Griffes,
Loeffler, or Ives, for instance) reveals (with the exception of some of his earlier songs) an unusually
consistent and personal style throughout most of Duke’s career, the composer venturing only slightly
afield of a conventional tonal practice derived mostly from European music of the nineteenth century.
Musical influences on his language, in fact, are almost entirely European, and mostly, I think, from the
music of the German-speaking world, although little of his music sounds particularly German in
character. While he did toy occasionally with French subjects and textures (“Water that Falls” is
certainly reminiscent of French keyboard color), most of his songs have an accompanimental texture
unmistakably his, continuing, in a way, the tradition of the German Lied, using poems in English. It
should be added that he also set Chinese, Latin, and Greek texts in translation, as well as Goethe in the
original German. His three Goethe songs (also composed for Adrienne Auerswald) are much more
interesting than their infrequent performances would indicate. He is best known, nevertheless, for his
settings of American and English poetry.

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Duke often claimed, both in his writings and in conversation with colleagues, to have developed his art
song style somewhat self-consciously after having studied in great detail the historical, poetical, and
musical contexts of three previous genres exhibiting a marriage of music and poetry: the Elizabethan
song, the nineteenth-century Lied and the French mélodie of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. His choice of poetry avoids almost completely the abstract in favor of the tried and true
themes of love and mortality, themes that most composers have found the most suitable for musical
treatment. Duke’s many enthusiasts often point to his insistence on the importance of his choice of
texts and its relation to his musical goal, but it is difficult to see how, with his particular brand of
tonality, he could have chosen otherwise. Much of the most influential, if less accessible, poetry of his
age—that of Eliot, Pound, Stevens, Williams, Lowell, Bishop, and others—he found unsuitable for
song.

While Duke’s life fits neatly into its century, his temperament and musical style seem delightfully at
odds with it. Devices and techniques endemic to the twentieth century, such as polytonality, serial
procedure, improvisation, the incorporation of elements from jazz, and even mixed meters are only
occasionally encountered in his works. None of these characteristics appear in the songs recorded here,
except for the witty, stylized rhythm of “I can’t be talkin’ of love,” obviously borrowed from another
world. As is the case with the classical Lied, most of Duke’s songs, at least the shorter ones, begin
with an introduction and maintain a fairly consistent texture in the accompaniment. As one would
expect from a musical language based on classical tonality, songs tend to begin and end in the same
key, even though, as is the case with many twentieth-century composers, key signatures are often
omitted, especially in the minor mode, or in the major where chromatic alterations would make
cancellations cumbersome. In Duke’s music such alterations often include major chords abruptly
punctuating the minor mode.

One should not underestimate the courage of such a stance. For the last several decades of his life,
modernism—tonal, serial, and gestural—dominated the most influential American musical scenes. One
cannot point to very many composers of this period who were, in their music, wholly unaffected by it,
who went about their business composing naturally vocal music with the conviction that there are
certain inescapable qualities in music that will, after this modernist diversion, be reaffirmed with age.
Of course it would be unfair to paint a picture of him as a musical hermit. In hearing his music, one
should bear in mind that the composer as a pianist played enthusiastically, regularly, and in good faith
many challenging works of the twentieth-century literature, including one of the sonatas (presumably
the first) of Roger Sessions, with whom he carried on a lively correspondence.

John Duke, even with his quasi-European musical language, is unquestionably, in sound and spirit, an
American composer. What makes him so is not easy to pin down, for many of his settings are of poems
by English poets. Furthermore, most of his songs haven’t the obvious trademarks we associate with
other “American” composers. Duke does not, like Charles Ives (the grandfather of all “American”
composers), find much room in his works for the quotation of vernacular material presumed to be
familiar to everyone, although he does occasionally use a kind of American leitmotif, the children’s
ditty in the accompaniment of “Just-Spring” being the most prominent in these twenty-three songs.
Nor does Duke use, as did Aaron Copland or Leonard Bernstein, especially American subject matter;
neither tales from the Wild West nor Shakespeare transformed into the conflicts of American inner-
city life will be found in his music. One is more likely to find “universal” or natural quotations, such as
the wood thrush’s song in “The Bird.”

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Even a comparison to Samuel Barber, whose texts do not generally reveal an obsession with
nationality, and whose music also avoids, for the most part, irony and complexity, seems inappropriate,
although it may be just these characteristics which might be said to be the most American. Finally, I
think it may be Duke’s optimism and a touch of naiveté which lend his music, at least in part, a cast
unmistakably American in spirit.

I came to know John Duke around the time he was exactly twice my age of forty. A friendlier man I
shall never meet, nor one to complain less about his lot, his performances, his life, though like most
octogenarians he had had his share of things he might have complained about. Unlike most composers,
at least the ones I’ve known, he considered himself a fortunate and lucky man: “this charmed life of
mine” is a phrase anyone who knew him well remembers him saying; indeed, he said it often. He was
much liked by colleagues, and by students who had sung his songs.

His attitude toward the accompaniment of a song was particularly interesting. He tried as much as
possible, he said, to make the accompaniment a kind of independent piece on its own, barring the
occasional place where punctuation was needed for a recitative, or where some other unusual vocal
moment showed forth. None of them could serve as independent pieces, of course, but they do have
more of a feeling of completeness in themselves than most song accompaniments. Indeed, he seems to
have reserved most of his pianistic ideas for them. Perhaps it is for this reason that such an
accomplished pianist found so little time to compose solo music for his own instrument.

When he coached singers in the art of singing his songs, the first step was always to ask for a recitation
of the text, if possible from memory. He was much more apt to talk about the poem of the song than
about his setting of it. If one understood the poem, one would make it known in the recitation, and that,
in the best of worlds, would translate itself immediately into a better singing of the song. We have
come through an age when permission seems to have been granted for composers to set words any way
they choose, regardless of the poem’s play of poetic rhythm and diction. Duke had no patience with
such an attitude. To listen to a Duke song while following the text, especially to one which is a setting
of one of the more sophisticated poets, is rewarding. Most syllables feel as though they have been
transformed from poetic to musical rhythm and meter with hardly a hitch.

To be sure, as with all composers, there are Duke songs which call out more forcefully for
performance than others, but just when one may settle into thinking that this or that gesture might be
more appropriate to another age, one hears something new and graceful one hadn’t quite noticed
before, or one hears anew a song like “April Elegy,” with its chromatic accompaniment that stays
perfectly within the bounds of emotion set by the text. I have always taken it as truth that one is
doomed to failure setting Emily Dickinson to music. At least failures abound, even among the famous.
But inspired performances of Duke’s settings of “Let down the bars, O death” (recorded here) and
“Nobody knows this little rose” make this urgent poetry seem most appropriate to music.

Poets of all ages—those who did not write songs—have rarely understood why composers have this
need to transform poetry that stands perfectly well on its own into such a foreign state. The greatest
poetry, the poetry that does stand magnificently on its own, often resists the addition of music, a
warning composers ignore at their peril. The best poetry for music, often, is that which lies somewhere
between the obscure and the purely sentimental. There is an abundance of poetry from Teasdale,
Millay, Robinson, Wylie, and other contemporaries of Duke who (some assert) were read more in their
day than now, poets who, at least in the poems Duke chose to set, stayed clear of abstract argument in
favor of poignant feeling. Their natural images and settings, their preoccupation with grief or

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disappointment, with joy or the “mud-luscious” memories of childhood, are at the core of his
repertory. If some of the poems set by Duke (and many other composers of his generation) seem a bit
tired or naive seen from the perspective of our own driven age, some of them also seem to breathe a
second life from having been set to music, from having been treated as the songs they sometimes
resemble.

Duke “thought” naturally in a high voice, an obvious reason, in many of his songs, for the absence of
dark musical ideas. He was also able to impart to some of his best songs mysteries impossible to
describe in words, ones not often associated with song. For me, he is at his best in situations not
overtly emotive, where quieter feelings are allowed to hold sway. I would recommend to anyone who
feels a kinship with this music to listen to a broader selection of his songs than any one singer or
recording can offer. My own favorites, in addition to a few recorded or mentioned here, include “When
Slim Sophia Mounts Her Horse” (1959, Walter de la Mare ) and “Survivor” (1972, Archibald
MacLeish). The musical picture given us in the former, of Sophia riding down the avenue, is masterly
song writing and masterly tone painting, leaving entirely to our imagination the relation between the
admirer and the perceived. The theme of the latter, the indomitable spirit to survive, the last leaf
clinging to the tree, will always be the song I most remember John Duke by, having heard him in one
of his last public appearances accompany this song with understated poignancy.

Many of Duke’s songs are available in anthologies, but others remain, sadly, out of print, although
copies of some may be obtained under certain conditions through the Smith College Archives. Duke’s
music is taken very seriously by those who know his work intimately. After all, about how many
American composers could it be said that all 265 songs have a natural feel for the voice, an elegantly
matched pianistic accompaniment, a recognizable and personal style, and a musical language that
never resorts to false syntax? It is easy to see why American singers love to sing his songs.
— Donald Wheelock

Composer Donald Wheelock is the Irwin and Pauline Alper Glass Professor of Music at Smith College.

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Just-Spring*
[Poem titled “in Just-”]
(E. E. Cummings)

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and
piracies and it’s
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it’s
spring
and
the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

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Acquainted With the Night
(Robert Frost)

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-by;

And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

“Acquainted with the Night” from THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST edited by Edward Connery Lathem.
Copyright 1928, © 1969 by Henry Holt and Co., © 1956 by Robert Frost. Reprinted by permission of Henry
Holt and Company, LLC.

Water that Falls and Runs Away+

(Mark Van Doren)

Water that falls and runs away,

You are my friend, you talk to me.

Where you come from, where you go,

You never tell me, though I know.

What are you saying then all day,

Over and down and away and away?

For I do listen, my sweet friend,

And will until the world’s end;

Nor do I beg you to declare

More than sky does, more than air,

Where you come from, where you go,

Which I only dream I know.

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i carry your heart*
(E. E. Cummings)

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

The Mountains Are Dancing*

[Poem titled “when faces called flowers float out of the ground”]
(E. E. Cummings)

when faces called flowers float out of the ground

and breathing is wishing and wishing is having—
but keeping is downward and doubting and never
—it’s april(yes, april;my darling)it’s spring!
yes the pretty birds frolic as spry as can fly
yes the little fish gambol as glad as can be
(yes the mountains are dancing together)

when every leaf opens without any sound

and wishing is having and having is giving—
but keeping is doting and nothing and nonsense
—alive;we’re alive, dear:it’s(kiss me now)spring!
now the pretty birds hover so she and so he
now the little fish quiver so you and so i
(now the mountains are dancing,the mountains)

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when more than was lost has been found has been found
and having is giving and giving is living—
but keeping is darkness and winter and cringing
—it’s spring(all our night becomes day)o,it’s spring!
all the pretty birds dive to the heart of the sky
all the little fish climb through the mind of the sea
(all the mountains are dancing;are dancing)

* “i carry your heart with me (i carry it in,” “when faces called flowers float out of the ground,” and “in Just-”
from COMPLETE POEMS: 1904–1962, by E. E. Cummings, Edited by George J. Firmage, are used with the
permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation. Copyright © 1923, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1978, 1980, 1991 by the
Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust. Copyright © 1976, 1979 by George James Firmage.

April Elegy
(Alfred Young Fisher)

April rain in the wind-washed clover,

Sing melodies to ease deep pain, deep death.
Gently blow above her,
April rain.

If song nor wind nor wind-washed strain of song can comfort her,
O, then cover her with silence and never come again.

Silence and peace to those who love her,

Peace in the eyes of the windy plain,
Earth nor sky nor song can move her
Nor April rain.

Morning in Paris
[Poem titled “Early in the Morning”]
(Robert Hillyer)

Early in the morning

Of a lovely summer day,
As they lowered the bright awning
At the outdoor café,
I was breakfasting on croissants
And café au lait
Under greenery like scenery,
Rue François-Premier.
They were hosing the hot pavement
With a dash of flashing spray
And a smell like summer showers
When the dust is drenched away.

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Under greenery like scenery,
Rue François-Premier,
I was twenty and a lover
And in Paradise to stay,
Very early in the morning
Of a lovely summer day.

From SUBURB BY THE SEA by Robert Hillyer, copyright 1952 by Robert Hillyer & renewed 1980 by
Francesca P. Hillyer and Elizabeth V. Hillyer. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random
House, Inc.

There Will Be Stars

(Sara Teasdale)

There will be stars over the place forever;

Though the house we loved and the street we loved are lost,
Every time the earth circles her orbit
On the night the autumn equinox is crossed,
Two stars we knew, poised on the peak of midnight
Will reach their zenith; stillness will be deep;
There will be stars over the place forever,
There will be stars forever, while we sleep.

Reprinted with the permission of Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., from THE COLLECTED
POEMS OF SARA TEASDALE by Sara Teasdale. Copyright © 1926 by Macmillan Publishing Company,
copyright renewed © 1954 by Mamie T. Wheless.

Good morning, Midnight

(Emily Dickinson)

Good Morning – Midnight –

I’m coming Home –
Day – got tired of Me –
How could I – of Him?

Sunshine was a sweet place –

I liked to stay –
But Morn – didn’t want me – now –
So – Goodnight – Day!

I can look – can’t I –

When the East is Red?
The Hills – have a way – then –
That puts the Heart – abroad –

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You – are not so fair – Midnight –
I chose – Day –
But – please take a little Girl –
He turned away!

Heart! We will forget him!

(Emily Dickinson)

Heart! We will forget him!

You and I – tonight!
You may forget the warmth he gave –
I will forget the light!

When you have done, pray tell me

That I may straight begin!
Haste! lest while you’re lagging
I remember him!

Let down the bars, Oh Death

(Emily Dickinson)

Let down the Bars, Oh Death –

The tired Flocks come in
Whose bleating ceases to repeat
Whose wandering is done –

Thine is the stillest night

Thine the securest Fold
Too near Thou art for seeking Thee
Too tender, to be told.

Bee! I’m expecting you!

(Emily Dickinson)

Bee! I’m expecting you!

Was saying Yesterday
To Somebody you know
That you were due –

The Frogs got Home last Week –

Are settled, and at work –
Birds, mostly back –
The Clover warm and thick –

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You’ll get my Letter by
The seventeenth; Reply
Or better, be with me –
Yours, Fly.

The Bird
(Elinor Wylie)

O clear and musical,

Sing again! Sing again!
Hear the rain fall
Through the long night.
Bring me your song again,
O dear delight!

O dear and comforting,

Mine again! Mine again!
Hear the rain sing
And the dark rejoice!
Shine like a spark again,
O clearest voice!

Little Elegy
(Elinor Wylie)

Withouten you
No rose can grow;
No leaf be green
If never seen
Your sweetest face;
No bird have grace
Or power to sing;
Or anything
Be kind, or fair,
And you nowhere.

All Music, All Delight

(Richard Nickson)

We were lone wanderers

Passing by
A wide wood under
A wider sky.

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Over us twilight
Loomed as still
As the tall cedar
On the dark hill.

We saw no other
Thing at all
Than deepening shadows
At nightfall.

We heard no other
Sound than this:
Two soft murmurs,
One light kiss.

No more we wandered
Then that night,
Who found all music,
All delight

Wound in the silence

Where we stood,
Hushed as the shadows,
Still as the wood.

Used by permission of the author.

She’s Somewhere in the Sunlight Strong

[Poem titled “Song”]
(Richard Le Gallienne)

She’s somewhere in the sunlight strong,

Her tears are in the falling rain,
She calls me in the wind’s soft song,
And with the flowers she comes again.

Yon bird is but her messenger,

The moon is but her silver car;
Yea! sun and moon are sent by her,
And every wistful waiting star.

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Bells in the Rain
(Elinor Wylie)

Sleep falls, with limpid drops of rain,

Upon the steep cliffs of the town.
Sleep falls; men are at peace again
While the small drops fall softly down.

The bright drops ring like bells of glass

Thinned by the wind, and lightly blown;
Sleep cannot fall on peaceful grass
So softly as it falls on stone.

Peace falls unheeded on the dead

Asleep; they have had peace to drink;
Upon a live man’s bloody head
It falls most tenderly, I think.

Penguin Geometry
(Donald Wheelock)

For weeks and weeks I traveled south

as far as I could go
until I met a penguin pair
standing in the snow.

“I’m heading south,” I said to one.

“You’re there,” he said to me,
“you’re at the bottom of the earth,
as south as you can be.”

“Then kindly point me to the east

and I’ll go there instead.”
“There’s no such thing as east from here,”
the second penguin said.

“Preposterous,” I cried, “I won’t

believe you in the least.
Direct me to the west and I’ll
walk backward to the east.”

She looked at me with penguin eyes

that never shed a tear
and winking at my anger said,
”There is no west from here.”

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“I cannot travel south,” I said,
“there’s no more left to find,
and if there is no east or west
then north comes next to mind.”

“How right you are,” her partner said,

“I’m glad we all agree.”
I added, “won’t you be so kind
to point north out to me!”

“No need,” said they, “no need at all,

it’s there and there and there,
for at this point upon the earth
the north is everywhere.”

Used by permission of the author.

O, it was out by Donnycarney

(James Joyce)

O, it was out by Donnycarney

When the bat flew from tree to tree
My love and I did walk together;
And sweet were the words she said to me.

Along with us the summer wind

Went murmuring—O, happily!—
But softer than the breath of summer
Was the kiss she gave to me.

“Chamber Music XXXI ‘O, it was out by Donnycarney’ ” from COLLECTED POEMS by James Joyce,
copyright 1918 by B. W. Huebsch, Inc., 1927, 1936 by James Joyce, 1946 by Nora Joyce. Used by permission
of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.

Aubade
(Richard Nickson)

Wake! for the world of evening

And all its dreams have fled:
By murmurous morn your slumber
Softly is visited.

So blue is the sky, beloved,

So bright is the break of dawn,
A thrush at your open window
Shouts and is gone.

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The sun streaks through the valley,
The winds blow where they will,
And clouds like huge white oxen
Are cropping the green hill.

Used by permission of the author.

I can’t be talkin’ of love

(Esther Matthews)

I can’t be talkin’ of love, dear,

I can’t be talkin’ of love.
If there be one thing I can’t talk of,
That one thing do be love.

But, that’s not sayin’ that I’m not lovin’,

Still water, you know, runs deep,
and I do be lovin’ so deep, dear,
I be lovin’ you in my sleep.

But, I can’t be talkin’ of love, dear,

I can’t be talkin’ of love.
If there be one thing I can’t talk of,
That one thing do be love.

Walking in the Rain+

(Mark Van Doren)

Walking in the rain

By myself all alone,
Without anybody here
To notice where I go,
Without any worry
Over when to start home,

Walking in the rain

With the cool coming at me
Like an old friend, softly,
Like—maybe—a lover
Whispering to me, “Hush,
Be still, breathe deep,”

Walking in the rain

By myself all alone
Is having all the warm world
Secretly inside me
All the cool while,

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All, all the wet way.
Merry-go-round+
(Mark Van Doren)

Horses in front of me,

Horses behind,
But mine is the best one,
He never looks down.
He rises and falls
As if there were waves,
But he never goes under,
Oh, music, oh, mine.

He is steady and strong,

And he knows I am here,
He says he is glad
That I picked him to ride.
But he hasn’t a name.
I told him my own,
And he only went faster,
Oh, music, oh, mine.

Around and around,

And the people out there
Don’t notice how happy
I am, I am.
The others are too,
But I am the most,
The most, the most,
Oh, music, oh, mine.

+ “Walking in the Rain,” “Water that Falls and Runs Away,” and “Merry-Go-Round” from GOOD MORNING
by Mark Van Doren. Copyright © 1973 by the Estate of Mark Van Doren. Used by permission of Hill and
Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

American soprano Lauralyn Kolb holds degrees from Occidental College, where singing with
Howard Swan taught her how to get to the heart of a piece of music, and Smith College, where as a
student of Adrienne Auerswald, she was trained in the bel canto tradition as passed down from
Marcella Sembrich through Queena Mario and Anna Hamlin. While at Smith, she met Ms.
Auerswald’s long-time colleague and performing partner John Duke, thus beginning a friendship of
several years during which Mr. Duke coached her in his songs and performed a number of them with
her. Ms. Kolb has also studied with Helen Boatwright. She has appeared throughout the United States
as a recitalist and oratorio singer. She has recorded Lieder by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel with pianist
Arlene Shrut (Centaur Records) and Songs by Clara Schumann, Poldowski, and Amy Beach with
pianist Don McMahon (Albany Records). A committed teacher, Ms. Kolb has taught voice at Hamilton
College and Colgate University for twenty years, has given master classes on both coasts, has served
as the New York State Governor for the National Association of Teachers of Singing, and co-founded,

16
with pianist Tina Toglia, the Young Artists Institute for High School Singers and Pianists at Hamilton
College.

Pianist Tina Toglia received her doctorate in piano performance from the State University of New
York at Stony Brook where she studied piano with Gilbert Kalish and harpsichord with Arthur Haas.
Her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in piano are from Temple University, where she was a pupil of
Alexander Fiorillo. Ms. Toglia has a diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music in collaborative piano
as a student of Dr. Vladimir Sokoloff. She has given numerous premiere performances of new music at
Merkin Hall, the 92nd Street Y, and Princeton University, and has been the recipient of fellowships
from the Yale Summer School of Music, the Bach Aria Festival, and the Tanglewood Music Festival.
As co-founder of the Young Artists Institute for High School Singers and Pianists at Hamilton College,
she encourages gifted high school musicians to explore the collaborative aspect of performing art-song
literature. Ms. Toglia is the coordinator of the Music on Higby Hill concert series at the Moravian
Church in New Hartford, New York, where she is organist and choir director. She has taught piano,
music history, and theory at SUNY Stony Brook, State University College at Oneonta, SUNY Institute
of Technology, and Utica College.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY
But Yesterday Is Not Today: The American Art Song 1927–1972. New World 80243-2.
More Than Music: Songs by John Duke. Donald Boothman, baritone; John Duke, piano. AFKA SK
505.
The Art song in America. John Kennedy Hanks, tenor; Ruth Friedberg, piano. Duke University Press
ISBN 0822320517.
Songs of John Duke. Carole Bogard, soprano; John Duke, piano. Cambridge Records CRS 2776. (LP)

Other available New World recordings of American art song:

Henry Herford. The Cloisters. New World 80327-2.
William Parker. The Listeners. New World 80475-2.
William Parker. An Old Song Re-Sung. New World 80463-2.
William Sharp. Songs by Paul Bowles, Lee Hoiby, Richard Hundley, Eric Klein, John Musto, and
Virgil Thomson. New World 80369-2.
Voices of Elysium. New World 80543-2.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Compton, E. A Singer’s Guide to the Songs of John Duke. (diss., U. of Rochester, 1974)
Friedberg, R. “The Songs of John Duke.” NATS Bulletin, xix/4 (1963), 8
Friedberg, R. “The Recent Songs of John Duke.” NATS Bulletin, xxxvi/1 (1979), 31 [incl. complete list
of songs to 1978]
Friedberg, R. American Art Song and American Poetry, ii (Metuchen, NJ, 1984)
Kresh, P. “Songs by John Duke.” Stereo Review, xliv/4 (1980), 131 [review]

PRODUCTION CREDITS:
Producer: Adam Abeshouse
Engineer and Digital mastering: Adam Abeshouse
Recorded June 1998 in the Carol Woodhouse Wellin Hall of the Schambach Center for Music and the
Performing Arts at Hamilton College, Clinton, New York.
Piano technician: Bob Lee
Cover art, including size, gallery credit, date, format of art (pastel, etc):

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Photograph:
Cover design: Bob Defrin Design, Inc., NYC

This recording was made possible with grants from Smith College, Hamilton College, Colgate
University, the Society of Friends of John Duke, the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trust, and
the New York State Council on the Arts.

Production of this recording was supported in part by a grant from the Non-Print Publications
Fund of the Society for American Music.

Special thanks to Smith College for the use of biographical materials from the Smith College Archives.

FOR NEW WORLD RECORDS:

Herman E. Krawitz, President; Paul Marotta, Managing Director; Paul M. Tai, Director of Artists and
Repertory; Lisa Kahlden, Director of Information Technology; Virginia Hayward, Administrative
Associate; Mojisola Oké, Bookkeeper.

RECORDED ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN MUSIC, INC., BOARD OF TRUSTEES:

Milton Babbitt; Emanuel Gerard; Adolph Green; David Hamilton; Rita Hauser; Herman E. Krawitz;
Arthur Moorhead; Elizabeth Ostrow; Don Roberts; Marilyn Shapiro; Patrick Smith; Frank Stanton.

Francis Goelet (1926–1998), Chairman

! 2001 © 2001 Recorded Anthology of American Music, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A.

JUST-SPRING
ART SONGS OF JOHN DUKE (1899–1984)
LAURALYN KOLB, soprano; TINA TOGLIA, piano
80576-2

1. Just-Spring (1949) 1:43

(E. E. Cummings)
(publ. by Carl Fischer)

2. Acquainted With the Night (1950) 4:02

(Robert Frost)
(publ. by Peer Southern)

3. Water that Falls and Runs Away (1974) 1:45

(Mark Van Doren)
(publ. by Southern Music Co.)

4. i carry your heart (1960) 2:25

(E. E. Cummings)
(publ. by G. Schirmer)

5. The Mountains Are Dancing (1955) 2:16

(E. E. Cummings)

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(publ. by Carl Fischer)

6. April Elegy (1950) 3:17

(Alfred Young Fisher)
(publ. by G. Schirmer)

7. Morning in Paris (1953) 1:25

(Robert Hillyer)
(publ. by Carl Fischer)

8. There Will Be Stars (1951) 2:01

(Sara Teasdale)
(publ. by Boosey & Hawkes Inc.)

9. Good morning, Midnight (1968) 2:28

(Emily Dickinson)
(publ. by Peer Southern)

10. Heart! We will forget him! (1968) :59

(Emily Dickinson)
(publ. by Peer Southern)

11. Let Down the bars, Oh Death (1968) 2:11

(Emily Dickinson)
(publ. by Peer Southern)

12. Bee! I’m expecting you! (1968) 1:02

(Emily Dickinson)
(publ. by Peer Southern)

13. The Bird (1946) 2:41

(Elinor Wylie)
(publ. by G. Schirmer)

14. Little Elegy (1946) 1:37

(Elinor Wylie)
(publ. by G. Schirmer)

15. All Music, All Delight (1982) 2:56

(Richard Nickson)
(publ. by Southern Music Co.)

16. She’s Somewhere in the

Sunlight Strong (1984) 1:32
(Richard Le Gallienne)
(publ. by Southern Music Co.)

17. Bells in the Rain (1945) 2:56

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(Elinor Wylie)
(publ. by Carl Fischer)

18. Penguin Geometry (1980) 2:36

(Donald Wheelock)
(publ. by Southern Music Co.)

19. O, it was out by Donnycarney (1953) 1:31

(James Joyce)
(publ. by Southern Music Co.)

20. Aubade (1982) 1:23

(Richard Nickson)
(publ. by Southern Music Co.)

21. I can’t be talkin’ of love (1947) 1:34

(Esther Matthews)
(publ. by G. Schirmer)

22. Walking in the Rain (1974) 2:48

(Mark Van Doren)
(publ. by Southern Music Co.)

23. Merry-go-round (1974) 1:42

(Mark Van Doren)
(publ. by Southern Music Co.)

NO PART OF THIS RECORDING MAY BE COPIED OR REPRODUCED

WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION OF R.A.A.M., INC.

NEW WORLD RECORDS

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email: info@newworldrecords.org

LINER NOTES  Recorded Anthology of American Music, Inc.

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