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The Soul of the City - Nicholas White

The Soul of the City Music: Nicholas White (2024) Poetry: Preludes by T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) Danielle Talamantes, soprano Clara Osowski, mezzo Aaron Crouch, tenor Jesse Blumberg, baritone Laura Ward, piano. 1. EVENING: The burnt-out ends of smoky days (Baritone) 00:18 2. MORNING: In a thousand furnished room (Tenor) 03:32 3. NIGHT: When all the world came back (Mezzo) 05:26 4. AFTERNOON: Gathering fuel in vacant lots (Soprano) 09:15 “The Soul of the City” is a cycle of four songs for soprano, mezzo, tenor, and baritone soloists, with piano accompaniment. The piece was commissioned by Lyric Fest, Philadelphia, for their concerts on February 22nd and 23rd, 2025. This song cycle sets the four short poems of T. S. Eliot entitled “Preludes.” "Preludes" was written between 1908 and 1912, when Eliot was in his early 20s. They were later collected in Eliot's debut Prufrock and Other Observations in 1917. Broadly speaking, "Preludes" is about the drudgery, waste, and isolation of modern urban life. The unnamed city in which the poem is set is a grimy, dingy place, in which people unthinkingly partake in monotonous daily routines. Each of the four poems takes place at a different time of day and, in this musical setting, is sung by a different singer. The baritone starts the cycle in the early evening, conjuring an atmospheric partnering with the piano to bring about “the burnt-out ends of smoky days.” The Gregorian chant Urbs beata (Blessed City) is also part of the melodic material for this opening song. The tenor takes the second lyric for the morning, as the piano summons the day with a fanfare, and the singer projects a more disjointed melody than the baritone, and the piano gives rhythmic impetus throughout. There is nothing fresh and clean about this morning, as the tenor paints a picture of yet another day dawning in the dirty city for its inhabitants, as they raise the window shades in “a thousand furnished rooms.” It is now night-time as the mezzo spins a gorgeous love-song. She laments the fact that the dream of the night is shattered “when all the world came back” and she leaves the listener hanging on the final phrase “as the street hardly understands” unresolved and emotionally spent. The business of the afternoon returns with musical material reminiscent of the early evening as the soprano sings to a four-measure ostinato in the piano. A bleak, monotonous picture is painted in the first section of the song, and then the soprano moves from introversion to an extroverted crescendo of spirit as we are encouraged to laugh, as the old women merely continue the grind of “gathering fuel in ancient lots.” With this dose of reality, the song comes to a gentle conclusion in the piano in exactly the same way as evening began in the first song. Indeed, the cycle could go around again, and again, just as each day comes around within the soul of the city.