Hermit Songs

"Hermit Songs" is a cycle of ten songs for voice and piano by Samuel Barber. Written in 1953 on a grant from the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation, it takes as its basis a collection of anonymous poems written by Irish monks and scholars from the 8th to the 13th centuries, in translations by W. H. Auden, Chester Kallman, Howard Mumford Jones, Kenneth Jackson and Sean O'Faolain. The "Hermit Songs" received their premiere in 1953 at the Library of Congress, with soprano Leontyne Price and Barber himself as accompanist. [cite journal | url=http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0090-7790(197323)1%3A2%3C107%3AMOAMC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Q | last=Allen | first=William Duncan | title=Musings of a Music Columnist| journal=The Black Perspective in Music | volume=1 | issue=2 | pages=107–114 | date=Autumn 1973 | accessdate=2008-03-29 | doi=10.2307/1214445]

The ten songs of the cycle and the respective translators of each poem are as follows:
* "At St Patrick’s Purgatory" (translated by Seán Ó Faoláin)
* "Church Bell at Night" (translated by Howard Mumford Jones)
* "St Ita’s Vision" (translated by Chester Kallman)
* "The Heavenly Banquet" (translated by Seán Ó Faoláin)
* "The Crucifixion" (translated by Howard Mumford Jones)
* "Sea Snatch" (translated by Kenneth Jackson)
* "Promiscuity" (translated by Kenneth Jackson)
* "The Monk and his Cat" (translated by W.H. Auden)
* "The Praises of God" (translated by W.H. Auden)
* "The Desire for Hermitage" (translated by Seán Ó Faoláin)

References

ee also

Masterworks Portrait, "Samuel Barber: Knoxville: Summer of 1915; Dover Beach; Hermit Songs; Andromache's Farewell". Various artists.