I Hate Music (song cycle)

I Hate Music
Song cycle by Leonard Bernstein
Portrait of Leonard Bernstein LCCN2004662600.jpg
The composer in 1944
TextFive kid songs by Bernstein
LanguageEnglish
Composed1943 (1943)
DedicationEdys Merril
PerformedAugust 24, 1943 (1943-08-24) Lenox Public Library in Lenox, Massachusetts
Duration7 min.
Scoring
  • soprano
  • piano

I Hate Music: A cycle of Five Kid Songs for Soprano and Piano is a 1943 song cycle by Leonard Bernstein.

A complete performance of the piece takes about 7 minutes. The piece received its premiere at the Lenox Public Library in Lenox, Massachusetts on 24 August 1943. Bernstein performed the piece at its premiere with the soprano Jennie Tourel. Bernstein and Tourel performed the piece again on 13 November 1943 at Tourel's New York City debut at The Town Hall.

The song cycle is dedicated by Bernstein to his friend Edys Merril, who was his flatmate at the time of the composition. Merrill reputedly uttered the phrase "I hate music" due to her exasperation with Bernstein's constant piano playing and coaching of singers.

The critic Virgil Thomson described it as "witty, alive and adroitly fashioned" in the New York Herald Tribune.

In notes for the piece Bernstein writes that when performing the songs "...coyness is to be assiduously avoided. The natural, unforced sweetness of child expressions can never be successfully gilded; rather will it come through the music in proportion to the dignity and sophisticated understanding of the singer". The piece is written for the character of a 10-year-old girl.

In 1946 Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano Blanche Thebom programed the work for recital performance in Kansas City, Missouri. She went on to record the work with Bernstein at the piano; a recording which was not released until decades later when Sony Classical included it on the 1997 album Leonard Bernstein The Early Years, Volume 4.

The title song opened Highbrow/Lowbrow: An American Sampler, a 1991 concert at Merkin Hall in Manhattan. New York magazine described it as "deftly summing up this country's long standing bifurcated attitude towards the arts in general: a desperate yearning for high culture on the one hand and a deep-rooted suspicion of it on the other".

The soprano Barbara Bonney performed I Hate Music at a 1994 recital at the Wigmore Hall in London. Musical Opinion described the piece as "irresistibly witty". Bonney included the piece on her 2005 Onyx Records album, My Name is Barbara. The album was named after the first song of I Hate Music. Several other artists have recorded the work including, Harolyn Blackwell (1996, in Blackwell Sings Bernstein, a Simple Song), Lyne Comtoi (1998, in Songs of the Americas), Judith Vindevogel (1997, in The Nursery), and Roberta Alexander (2014, in Leonard Bernstein Songs).

Songs

  1. "My Name Is Barbara"
  2. "Jupiter Has Seven Moons"
  3. "I Hate Music!"
  4. "A Big Indian and a Little Indian"
  5. "I'm a Person Too"

This page was last updated at 2021-11-09 01:46 UTC. Update now. View original page.

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