No Song is Safe From Us

No Song Is Safe From Us - The NYFOS Blog
 |  Justine Aronson

In 1925, Kentucky explorer and caver Floyd Collins lost his footing at the end of an expedition. His left leg pinned underneath a 16-pound rock, Collins was trapped in a narrow tunnel, unable to move, and after 17 days (13 of which were without food or water) he left this earthly realm.

Composer and lyricist Adam Guettel imagines Collins’ last moments, his ideations of what the next life might be like in “How Glory Goes,” the gut-wrenching final song in the 1996 musical Floyd Collins. Audra McDonald sings the tune in here in a version that I deeply treasure.




 |  Justine Aronson

We are lying on a hillside in springtime. Wolf dreamily can’t settle on a key in Möricke’s quietly desirous meditation on the uncertain longings of spring, and the voice and piano slither around like the disconnected thoughts of the narrator. In long-spun sinuous melody lines, we stand with our hearts open wie die Sonnenblümen, like sunflowers, hear the buzz of the bee in our ears, and wonder when our longing will be stilled, when we will be with our one and only love. Massive and Romantic sighed are sighed.




 |  Justine Aronson

In the spring of 2012, I got a real bad case of The Blues. I had just finished grad school and felt like I was supposed to be “done” – a perfect, polished adult, with a budding singing career. Objectively, things weren’t too bad. I was living in a nice apartment in Princeton, New Jersey. I had friends, I had a few jobs, and I had the tendency to drink a little too much on occasion, partially owing to the potent combination of mounting internal pressure and the black hole of uncertainty that is the making of a career in singing. On more than one occasion during this period of time, I listened to Sir Elton John’s “I guess that’s why they call it the blues” on repeat at 2 in the morning.




 |  Justine Aronson

I love a song that will always make me cry. One of my most tried and true waterworks wranglers is Charles Ives’ simple ode to two little girls in his life, “Two little flowers (and dedicated to them)” (1921), performed here by the excellent Bill Sharp and our beloved Steve Blier.




 |  Justine Aronson

I love a song that will make me cry, without fail. I love a song that just INSISTS upon repetition. One hearing is never enough, and neither is five or ten or even fifty. My first offering as guest blogger for the esteemed NYFOS SOTD blog falls squarely in that second category—a song whose first hearing blasted its way onto my “repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat” list.