Blue Mountain Ballads
(1946)- Music by Paul Bowles
Paul Bowles may have been better known as a literary figure than as a composer, but he distinguished himself in both fields. Blue Mountain Ballads is his cycle of songs for piano and voice based on poems by his friend and mentor, the playwright Tennessee Williams.
In the audio player: Thomas Hampson, baritone, and Wolfram Rieger, piano, perform Paul Bowles Blue Mountain Ballads. The recordings are from the 2001 Salzburg performance I Hear America Singing. To listen to a track, click on the track name itself.
The four poems, grouped under the same title given to the song cycle, and printed in the same order, appear in a book of Williams’s poetry called In the Winter of Cities (1956). Throughout the cycle, Bowles incorporates flowing melodies with accompaniments that are infused with jazz and rag rhythms typically associated with southern music.
--Stephanie Poxon, Ph.D.
SONGS:
- 1. Heavenly Grass
- Text:
- Tennessee Williams
- 2. Lonesome Man
- Text:
- Tennessee Williams
- 3. Cabin
- Text:
- Tennessee Williams
- 4. Sugar in the Cane
- Text:
- Tennessee Williams
