Resounding Verse
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.
Resounding Verse
To My Little Son: Julia Johnson Davis and Florence Price
In Julia Johnson Davis's poem "To My Little Son," a mother imagines what her baby boy will look like when he's twenty-one years old, and wonders whether, when he's grown up, she'll see glimmers of the boy in the man. Thinking of her own son, Florence Price turned to Davis's poem and created a song that is nuanced, affecting, and deeply personal.
The recording of “To My Little Son” is by soprano Arwen Myers and pianist Monica Ohuchi.
Learn more about Price's songs, access scores, and hear video performances of her songs by bass-baritone Justin Hopkins and pianist Jeanne-Minette Cilliers, and countertenor Darryl Taylor and pianist Deborah Hollist on Art Song Augmented, my website devoted to art songs by underrepresented composers.
To My Little Son
by Julia Johnson Davis
In your face I sometimes see
Shadowings of the man to be,
And eager, dream of what my son
Shall be in twenty years and one.
But when you are to manhood grown,
And all your manhood ways are known,
Then shall I, wistful, try to trace
The child you once were in your face.