To Music – Canadian Song Cycles

A few Canadian composers became familiar with the European concept of song cycle through their studies in Leipzig or Paris during the late 19th century. Only in the 20th century, though, do substantial works in this form, a setting of poems by the same author that may relate a story, emerge. Among the previously unrecorded cycles chosen for this recording a variety of musical styles can be heard ranging from the romantic to neo-romantic, the atonal, the evocative or atmospheric, and using musical quotation as well as including references to minimalism and exoticism.

HEALEY WILLAN

1-3. To Music

GENA BRANSCOMBE

4-9. Love in a Life

EDWARD B. MANNING

10-12. Limericks

ROBERT FLEMING

13-15. Secrets

JOHN WEINZWEIG

16-18. Of Time and the World

JEANNE LANDRY

19-26. Amour comme un oiseau captif