No Song is Safe From Us

No Song Is Safe From Us - The NYFOS Blog
 |  Miles Mykkanen

I can’t curate a week of Song of the Day posts without featuring my favorite composer, Stephen Sondheim, the musical theatre’s most prolific living writer. I suspect most of you know Sondheim and George Furth’s 1970 musical Company, but in case this song slipped off the playlist the last time you were at a Midtown sing-along piano bar I’ll provide a little context.




 |  Miles Mykkanen

We begin our week with a horror story in the Black Forest. One of my favorite things about the study of poetry and music is opening my imagination to the world in which these magnificent compositions were birthed. Take a journey with me now to Stuttgart in the 1820s where we meet a twenty-something year old named Eduard Mörike who was studying to be a clergyman but along the way found a passion for writing.




 |  Miles Mykkanen

From my very first coaching with Maestro Blier, I brought in a new American Songbook song every week. I think it’s something we both look forward to; we work on my repertoire for the first fifty minutes of the coaching and in the remaining few moments of our time together I whip out my binder of torch songs.




 |  Miles Mykkanen

Born in Parma in 1880, Ildebrando Pizzetti had a career as musicologist, teacher and composer of music ranging from concerti to film scores. In this beautiful poem by Gabriele D’Annunzio, the narrator fondly remembers his days as a shepherd and the journey his crew would take every fall from the mountains down to the Adriatic Coast.




 |  Miles Mykkanen

When I was invited to write this week’s Song of the Day blog, I knew I wanted to include something from Hamilton, but I’ve been struggling with what to feature. I waited to listen to the soundtrack until I saw the show because I wanted to experience Hamilton the first time like a piece of theatre. Therefore, I’m not going to feature a song today that pertains to the main plot of the show (I’m saving those surprises for you!)




 |  Miles Mykkanen

Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Sunday In the Park with George opened on Broadway in 1984 starring Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters. Act One centers around Georges Seurat as he paints his pointillistic masterpiece, Un dimanche après-midi à l’Île de la Grande Jatte, which was unveiled exactly one-hundred years before the musical premiered.




 |  Miles Mykkanen

To start off my week of blogs, I wanted to feature the first song I ever sang for Maestro Blier. This somber poem by Johann Mayrhofer asks the prettiest star in the sky why it stays secluded, not joining the other stars around him. The star replies that it is because all the other stars don’t want the kind of love he has to offer and, no matter how hard he tries, they will never accept him.