Songs from a Life: Kesselman’s Were that Loving were Enough

In the first collection of the music of the American composer Lee Kesselman, Were that Loving Were Enough, Haven (voice, clarinet, piano trio) showcases his music from 1920s pop to Japanese-influenced haiku settings. Kesselman’s musical and literary influences extend from a Handel opera to lyrics by Shakespeare, inspiration from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story of horror fiction, The Yellow Wallpaper, to that Gershwin Brothers’ showstopper from An American in Paris: ‘I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise’.

As works of chamber music, Kesselman’s variety of interests provide an interesting mix of styles and genres, some more successful than others. The album opens with ‘Sakura’, that haunting pentatonic folksong about the cherry blossom and their spring appearance. It’s an odd piece to open with since it’s such a standard Japanese folk melody.

Kesselman’s song cycle, Ashes and Dreams, sets two different types of Japanese poetry: haiku, a three-line poem with 17 syllables, set 5 /7/5 and waka, a more generic term for Japanese poetry; like haiku, waka poems have 5- and 7-syllable lines. If haiku are about nature or philosophy, waka are about emotions. Kesselman alternates haiku and waka poems. His settings are interesting because of the instrumental accompaniment, which is less straight accompaniment than textual commentary.

Lee Kesselman: Ashes and Dreams – No. 4. Kagiri naki

Handel’s opera seria Giulio Cesare in Egitto (Julius Ceasar in Egypt) was one of his most popular operas, starting with its first performance in 1624. In her Act 3 Aria, Cleopatria laments about losing a fight with her brother Tolomeo and her belief that Julius Ceasar has been killed fleeing Tolomeo’s army. In the recitative, she muses, ‘And so thus in a single day | Do I lose splendour and grandeur?’ before the aria where she says, ‘I shall weep for my fate…’. Kesselman’s setting of the recitative is much more expansive than Handel’s, with a wider vocal range. In the ensemble, the clarinet has been replaced by a cello. For the Aria, the Handel’s original music is reset for the smaller ensemble. Unfortunately, the singer is not quite up to the delicacies of Baroque opera arias and the deliberate placement of text and pitches and tends towards swooping up to pitches.

Viola’s speech from Twelfth Night, ‘Make me a Willow Cabin’ asks Olivia for a willow cabin so that her sponsor, Count Orsino, can be at Olivia’s door, writing poetry about his love. Olivia, ignoring Count Orsino’s wooing, falls in love with the messenger instead. Kesselman’s setting emphasises the text: ‘sing … loud’ so that the hills ‘reverberate’ and make the very air cry out ‘Olivia!’.

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, a writer who has been ill is confined by her doctor husband to a single attic room…where she descends into madness with no stimulus beyond the sickly yellow wallpaper, seeing a figure creeping behind the paper. In the end, her husband finds her mad, thinking that she is the figure behind the paper. The song ‘How I hate this room’ is part of an opera-in-progress by Kesselman and librettist James Tucker. The two collaborated on two earlier operas for children: The Bremen Town Musicians and The Emperor’s New Clothes.

Tracking the author’s slow descent into madness is well handled in this selection.

Lee Kesselman: How I Hate this Room

The title piece of the album, Were that Loving Were Enough, is a 4-song cycle that details the life of a relationship: a conversation about their sensual appreciation of wine, lying in bed together, finding out that loving is not enough, and then the separation, the last done as a movie set, starting with ‘that’s a wrap’ and ending with ‘cut. print.’

Lee Kesselman: Would That Loving were Enough – No. 3. I wish that loving were enough

The album closes with Kesselman’s arrangement of I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise. It was originally written by Ira Gershwin and Buddy DeSylva, with music by George Gershwin, in 1922 for George White’s Scandals. The ‘new steps’ that will build that stairway are dance steps – learn six or seven, the song says, and you’ll be in Paradise. In An American in Paris, Georges Guétary memorably performs it on a stairway that lights up with each step he takes while showgirls flounce down to surround him. Kesselman’s setting emphasises the jazz elements of the song, with the clarinet taking a blues line not in the original.

Kesselman’s work is quite interesting, and it would be good to hear it in other hands, particularly with a more skilled and experienced singer. Haven (Lindsay Kesselman, soprano; Kimberly Cole Luevano, clarinet; and Midori Koga, piano) are augmented on two tracks by cellist Allison Rich.