About this podcast
Join music theorist Stephen Rodgers as he explores how composers transform words into songs. Each episode discusses one poem and one musical setting of it. The music is diverse—covering a variety of styles and time periods, and focusing on composers from underrepresented groups—and the tone is accessible and personal. If you love poetry and song, no matter your background and expertise, this show is for you. Episodes are 20-40 minutes long and air every couple of months.
Episodes
The newest 20 of 28 episodes
- Gretchen am Spinnrade (Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel): Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Marie Franz · 25 min · Season 4 Episode 9In Goethe’s Faust, Gretchen sits alone at her spinning wheel, unable to stop thinking about Faust. Her thoughts circle obsessively around his absence, then intensify into…
- Die gute Nacht, die ich dir sage (The Good Night That I Bid You): Friedrich Rückert and Clara Schumann · 23 min · Season 4 Episode 8In Friedrich Rückert’s “Die gute Nacht, die ich dir sage,” two people separated at night exchange greetings through an angel who travels between them. In this episode, I explore…
- Evensong: Constance Morgan and Liza Lehmann · 22 min · Season 4 Episode 7Constance Morgan’s “Evensong” is a quiet nighttime poem in which a speaker asks the angels to fold their wings around her and “hush me to sleep.” But sleep in the poem carries a…
- They bore him barefaced on the bier: William Shakespeare and Cheryl Frances-Hoad · 32 min · Season 4 Episode 6In Act 4, Scene 5 of Hamlet, the grieving Ophelia moves in and out of song, singing fragments about death and loss. In this episode, I explore Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s setting of…
- hyacinth, songs of the minotaur, no. 5: Duncan McFarlane and Cecilia Livingston · 35 min · Season 4 Episode 5The Minotaur is a half man/half bull from Greek mythology that is often viewed as a monster. Cecilia Livingston and Duncan McFarlane's song cycle hyacinth reimagines the Minotaur…
- Das Blatt im Buche (The Leaf in the Book): Anastasius Grün and Pauline Decker · 30 min · Season 4 Episode 4This episode explores the first song in a cycle I assembled from stand-alone songs by Pauline Decker—using curation as a form of advocacy. It features a world-premiere recording…
- Labor Day: Lainie Fefferman and Jascha Narveson · 34 min · Season 4 Episode 3I head back to university teaching tomorrow—and I know many teachers and students who are already back at it. In honor of this back-to-school season, here's an episode on a wild…
- Frosty in Desire: William Shakespeare and Rodrigo Ruiz · 30 min · Season 4 Episode 2On September 27, 2024, Signum Records will release a recording of Rodrigo Ruiz's cycle of seventeen songs, Venus & Adonis, based on William Shakespeare's poem of the same name…
- Alleluia: Nathaniel Bellows and Sarah Kirkland Snider · 39 min · Season 4 Episode 1The Mass for the Endangered, by Nathaniel Bellows and Sarah Kirkland Snider, appeals not to God but to nature itself and (in Snider's words) takes the "musical modes of spiritual…
- You're the One: Rhiannon Giddens · 31 min · Season 3 Episode 3The title track from Rhiannon Giddens's recent album You're the One—which was just released by Nonesuch Records—is a love song, but not one about two adults; it's about a moment…
- Songe (Dream): Maurice Bouchor and Mel Bonis · 34 min · Season 3 Episode 2Have you ever felt as though a single moment—gazing into someone's eyes, listening to a passage of music, looking at a landscape—transports you to another realm? Maurice…
- In Fountain Court: Arthur Symons and Elizabeth Maconchy · 29 min · Season 3 Episode 1Arthur Symons's poem captures a lazy June afternoon, with a fountain burbling and the moon hanging in the sky, waiting for the coming of night. Elizabeth Maconchy transforms the…
- Resevwa Li (Receive Them): A Haitian Hymn Reimagined by Nathalie Joachim · 34 min · Season 2 Episode 6The Haitian-American composer Nathalie Joachim transforms a Haitian hymn, and in so doing creates a multi-layered tapestry of sound that evokes the many voices of Haiti—past…
- One by One: Connie Converse · 38 min · Season 2 Episode 5Connie Converse was one of the first singer-songwriters, an uncommon talent who predated Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. But she was barely known in her day, and after making a handful…
- Letzter Wunsch (Last Wish): Julius Sturm and Marie von Kehler · 28 min · Season 2 Episode 4We know very little about the German composer Marie von Kehler (1822–1882), who served as a "lady in waiting" to a princess and seems to have been acquainted with Johannes…
- Firmament: Carolyn Forché and Caroline Shaw · 36 min · Season 2 Episode 3Carolyn Forché's 46-page poem "On Earth" forms the basis for a song cycle called The Blue Hour, which was composed by five women—Caroline Shaw, Shara Nova, Rachel Grimes…
- Nous nous aimerons tant (We Will Love Each Other So Much): Francis Jammes and Lili Boulanger · 34 min · Season 2 Episode 2Francis Jammes's poem depicts two lovers who sit on a bench, alone together under the shade of overhanging branches. But it's not clear if the scene is real or imaginary. In her…
- Afterglow: Thomas Walsh and Mary Turner Salter · 21 min · Season 2 Episode 1Thomas Walsh's poem and Mary Turner Salter's setting of it capture the moment between day and night—and the desire to linger in that moment as long as possible. The episode…
- The River: Nathaniel Bellows and Sarah Kirkland Snider · 29 min · Season 1 Episode 9Nathaniel Bellows’ poem and Sarah Kirkland Snider's haunting setting of it—from her song cycle Unremembered—revisit the site of a childhood trauma and meditate on innocence and…
- Room in Brooklyn/A Gradual Dazzle: Anne Carson and Caroline Shaw · 29 min · Season 1 Episode 8Anne Carson's poem and Caroline Shaw's mesmerizing setting of it meditate on the feeling of being in and out of time. The recording of the song, which appears on the album Let…
