No Song is Safe From Us

In my mind, J. S. Bach is the greatest composer who ever lived. I know that he never wrote an opera, but my first musical love was choral music, and by extension, sacred music. Even removed from the specific religious context it was written for, there is something sacred and timeless about his music. I […]

The only other “art song” on the list this week, Mahler’s “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” from Rückert Lieder is another song that always brings me to tears. This is especially true when sung by the peerless Dame Janet Baker (though Dieskau or Anne Sofie von Otter also have gorgeous renditions). Her pianissimi in […]

I chose this song both because it’s a wonderful song from a great show, but also to highlight Jerry Herman and Marin Mazzie, two giants who each died in the last few years. I feel that even though Jerry Herman won two Tony awards, he may be somewhat overlooked as a songwriter. And it’s hard […]

I chose this song because I wanted to highlight what is, without question in my mind, the greatest performance ever given at the Tony awards. Jennifer Holliday is only 21 in this performance!! How is that even possible?? She sings with so much power and feeling and commitment. Her sound is so raw and emotional, […]

I wasn’t sure how to start this week of posts, so I decided to begin with my favorite Lied sung by probably my favorite Lieder singer. Is it cliché to share a recording of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Gerald Moore? Probably. Do I care? No!  It’s hard to put into words why I love this song […]

When does a song stop being a song? And now we are here at the end of the week and the final installment of this series of posts I was asked to write for No Song Is Safe From Us. To paraphrase Frank Loesser, it’s been a long week, but I’ve really enjoyed writing these posts […]

Song Form Unformed and Reformed I pondered yesterday that the blame for the current use of the word “song” to describe every kind of musical composition, which I think trivializes the art of songwriting, is possibly traceable to some jazz musicians who call whatever they play songs. But while this is a more plausible theory than it being […]

Who is the auteur, the composer, the lyricist, the singer, or the arranger?  For the first installment of this series, I wrote primarily about songs by all kinds of singer-songwriters who not only created both the words and the music but were also the songs’ performers (most of the time playing the instrumental accompaniment in addition […]

Marrying Words to Music  I began this series for the No Song is Safe From Us blog with an attempt to define what a song is at a time when the word is widely used in everyday speech to connote all music and also to attempt to try to understand what it is about songs that make them so […]

Can Song Be Explained in a World Where Everything’s a Song? Having become a huge fan of NYFOS only somewhat recently (within the last four seasons), I was thrilled to be asked to contribute a week of posts to No Song is Safe from Us. But I must confess to feeling quite challenged by the task […]