Three Songs

Four Arms, Two Necks is a setting of a 17th-century anonymous poem. The timelessness of the words in the love poem struck me and I set it to music, later dedicating the song to two friends, Anda and Bill Winters, in celebration of a wedding anniversary.

Orpheus is from William Shakespeare’s play The Life of King Henry VIII. Between 1996-2000, I composed and produced the music for audio recordings of all 38 Shakespeare plays in the Complete Arkangel Shakespeare collection. This song from the play was originally written for lute accompaniment and I later arranged the lute part for piano.

Agua, Dónde Vas? is a setting of a poem by Federico García Lorca. In 1998, I visited Barcelona to renew with a dear friend, Lucia from an illustrious family of flamenco musicians and dancers. We had met in 1985 when I first visited Granada and was hanging out in the flamenco tablao’s of the Albaicin and Granada proper. Through Lucia I got a glimpse of a world in which Lorca’s poetry vibrated daily and as casually as the music, songs and rhythms that peppered and punctuated conversations, discussions, exchanges of opinions, mealtimes in homes and bars and the precious moments of just hanging out.

© 2023 Dominique Le Gendre