Musical Parody in John Greer's A Sarah Binks Songbook
2009; Routledge; Volume: 66; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2769-4046
Autores Tópico(s)Canadian Identity and History
ResumoONE OF THE PRIVATE VOICE STUDIO TEACHER'S most important tasks is to select appropriate repertoire for students' study and performance needs. Singers at every level need specific repertoire for recital performances, performance engagements, auditions, and competitions. John Greer's Binks Songbook (1988) for soprano and piano is a delightful repertoire addition for the adult soprano with a flair for acting. A collection of six songs, each may be successfully extracted as a solo selection since each is a masterpiece of vocal writing and would therefore be appropriate for any of the above requirements. Sarah, more than most poets, seizes upon the trivial ... as an occasion for a lyrical outburst of pulsating beauty.1 This statement in the author's introduction to Paul Hiebert's Binks provides the key to Sarah's humor and trivia, which she has in greater supply than many poets. humor arises from the incongruity of linking the trivial and the lyrical-and if the lyrical is not truly lyrical, the more obtrusive the incongruity and the greater the humor.2 Known to Canadian culture as the Songstress of Saskatchewan, was the creation of Paul Gerhardt Hiebert (1892-1987), professor and poet. Professor of Chemistry at the University of Manitoba, he was also the author of the parodic poetry of Binks, The Sweet Songstress of Saskatchewan, first published in 1947 in a entitled Binks. Sarah writes deliberately awful poetry that nonetheless offers a nostalgic view of the pre-Depression prairie West in which so many Canadians grew up. Though fictitious, she became one of the best known poets in Saskatchewan after her first appearance in Hiebert's biography. This masterpiece of satire won the 1947 Stephen Leacock Medal for humor and remains in print as a much quoted satiric classic of Canadian literature. Hiebert became known for reading the poems and discussing Sarah's life on CBC Radio, so that to many fans she came to be remembered as a living poet. Paul Hiebert's critical biography of the wholly mythic but irrepressible and irresistible Binks, who gave her life to poetry and died a martyr to the muse, is a hilarious analysis of her career and influences, along with a memorable selection of the poet's most tender and most inspiring writings. Composer John Greer is a well known Canadian vocal coach, accompanist, conductor, and arranger. He is currently the Director of Opera Studies and Collaborative Piano at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. Primarily a composer for voice, he is known worldwide for his numerous vocal and choral works, including his enormously successful children's opera Snow Queen. Along with a large repertoire of compositions and arrangements based on folk material, commissions, and performances of his highly entertaining song cycles, he has worked in recital with many of the most talented young Canadian singers of his generation. His original compositions include ten song cycles, as well as numerous works based on Canadian folk songs. As a composer, Greer was amused by the character Binks in Paul Hiebert's mock biography and found Sarahs spectacularly bad poems very funny. He loved the idea of how Hiebert was parodying German poets and wanted to divert these poems into songs that would be distinctly Canadian. As a result, his musical response to Binks and the poems created by Paul Hiebert is the charming song cycle, A Binks Songbook, Opus 9, 1988, for Soprano and Piano, a tour de force of musical parody in its six songs: 1. Reflections while translating Heine (Fantasia on a Theme of R. Schumann) 2. Hi, Sooky, Ho, Sooky (Valse Serenata) 3. Ode to a Star (Arioso di Camera) 4. Song of the Chore (Canzone Rustica) 5. Elegy to a Calf (Lamento Pastorello) 6. Square Dance (Hoe-down) In 1988, John Greer was asked by Martha Collins, a versatile singer and actress, to write a light, energetic piece for a concert series at the St. …
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