Music, Voice, and the Sound of Henry James

Abstract

Abstract:In 2006-2007, Lawrence Kramer composed a song cycle for baritone Michael Halliwell based on prose passages from Henry James. As far as the singer and composer could determine, this cycle, Six Songs and an Epilogue to The Wings of the Dove, was the first of its kind, even though James had inspired numerous operas (the subject of Halliwell's Opera and the Novel). Looking back in 2019, Kramer observed that the cycle's essential theme was voice and that it offered a hermeneutic window into what setting James's prose could reveal both about the sound of his never-recorded voice and about voice in general.