music.wikisort.org - Composition

I Hate Music: A cycle of Five Kid Songs for Soprano and Piano is a 1943 song cycle by Leonard Bernstein.[1]

I Hate Music
Song cycle by Leonard Bernstein
The composer in 1944
Text	Five kid songs by Bernstein
Language	English
Composed	1943 (1943)
Dedication	Edys Merril
Performed	August 24, 1943 (1943-08-24) Lenox Public Library in Lenox, Massachusetts
Duration	7 min.
Scoring	soprano piano

A complete performance of the piece takes about 7 minutes.[1] The piece received its premiere at the Lenox Public Library in Lenox, Massachusetts on 24 August 1943. Bernstein performed the piece at its premiere with the soprano Jennie Tourel.[1] Bernstein and Tourel performed the piece again on 13 November 1943 at Tourel's New York City debut at The Town Hall.[2]

The song cycle is dedicated by Bernstein to his friend Edys Merril, who was his flatmate at the time of the composition.[1] Merrill reputedly uttered the phrase "I hate music" due to her exasperation with Bernstein's constant piano playing and coaching of singers.[1]

The critic Virgil Thomson described it as "witty, alive and adroitly fashioned" in the New York Herald Tribune.[1]

In notes for the piece Bernstein writes that when performing the songs "...coyness is to be assiduously avoided. The natural, unforced sweetness of child expressions can never be successfully gilded; rather will it come through the music in proportion to the dignity and sophisticated understanding of the singer".[1] The piece is written for the character of a 10-year-old girl.[2]

In 1946 Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano Blanche Thebom programmed the work for recital performance in Kansas City, Missouri.[3] She went on to record the work with Bernstein at the piano; a recording which was not released until decades later when Sony Classical included it on the 1997 album Leonard Bernstein The Early Years, Volume 4.[4]

The title song opened Highbrow/Lowbrow: An American Sampler, a 1991 concert at Merkin Hall in Manhattan. New York magazine described it as "deftly summing up this country's long standing bifurcated attitude towards the arts in general: a desperate yearning for high culture on the one hand and a deep-rooted suspicion of it on the other".[5]

The soprano Barbara Bonney performed I Hate Music at a 1994 recital at the Wigmore Hall in London. Musical Opinion described the piece as "irresistibly witty".[6] Bonney included the piece on her 2005 Onyx Records album, My Name is Barbara. The album was named after the first song of I Hate Music.[7] Several other artists have recorded the work including, Harolyn Blackwell (1996, in Blackwell Sings Bernstein, a Simple Song[8]), Lyne Comtoi (1998, in Songs of the Americas[8]), Judith Vindevogel (1997, in The Nursery[8]), and Roberta Alexander (2014, in Leonard Bernstein Songs[8]).

Songs

1. "My Name Is Barbara"
2. "Jupiter Has Seven Moons"
3. "I Hate Music!"
4. "A Big Indian and a Little Indian"
5. "I'm a Person Too"

References

External links

• I Hate Music, Boosey & Hawkes
• I Hate Music at Song of America

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