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STEPHEN CRANE SONGS 

Instrumentation: voice and piano

Poems by: Stephen Crane

Duration: 7 minutes

Composed: 2015

Commissioned by: SubCulture Arts Underground, New York

Premiere: April 28, 2015 by Matthew Worth (baritone), Adriana Zabala (mezzo-soprano), and Gregg Kallor at SubCulture New York

Discovering Stephen Crane’s poems felt to me a bit like finding hidden treasure; the vivid imagery gleams and sparkles, and his keen observational insight is priceless. Reading the poems made me laugh, and then reflect. It’s a great storyteller who can draw us in with a sense of immediacy, and deliver a resonant message that lingers.

The four Crane poems that I’ve set to music in this group of songs paint scenes in which the narrator experiences something shocking, then reflects, and responds – with empathy, and calm swagger. For performers, this is a fantastic opportunity to both participate in the story and to comment on it, inhabiting two different characters interacting with each other. The interactions are brief (each song lasts about ninety seconds), but potent.

Crane's writing is cool and somewhat casual on the surface; underneath it’s biting, ironic, caustic, funny, and ultimately very humane.

Crane Songs:

  1. A man said to the universe

  2. In the desert

  3. I saw a man pursuing the horizon

  4. Think as I think

Recordings of Crane Songs: