Quirky songs to bring you a smile.
Dr. Ylona Hartford, soprano with Dr. Joshua Tanis, piano
Saturday June 6, 2026 at 2:00 p.m. at Bethlehem UCC in Ann Arbor, Michigan
Program:
I’m full of happiness from Albert Herring by Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Promiscuity by Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
The Monk and His Cat by Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
The Green Dog by Herbert Kingsley (1882-1961)
Lime Jello Marshmallow Cottage Cheese Surprise by William Bolcom (b. 1938)
A Green Lowland of Pianos by Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
I’m full of happiness – Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten was a British composer, pianist, and conductor and is considered one of the central figures in 20th century British music. He was born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, England on November 22, 1913 as the youngest child of Edith and Robert Britten. As an infant, Britten suffered from an almost fatal bout of pneumonia that left his heart damaged. Doctors did not think he would lead a normal life. He had other plans. Britten is considered one of the last composers brought up exclusively on live music because his father did not enjoy music and refused to have a gramophone or radio in their home.
Britten wrote of himself in a sleeve note:
“Once upon a time there was a prep-school boy. … He was quite an ordinary little boy … he loved cricket, only quite liked football (although he kicked a pretty “corner”); he adored mathematics, got on all right with history, was scared by Latin Unseen; he behaved fairly well, only ragged the recognised amount, so that his contacts with the cane or the slipper were happily rare (although one nocturnal expedition to stalk ghosts left its marks behind); he worked his way up the school slowly and steadily, until at the age of thirteen he reached that pinnacle of importance and grandeur, never to be quite equalled in later days: the head of the Sixth, head-prefect, and Victor Ludorum. But – there was one curious thing about this boy: he wrote music. His friends bore with it, his enemies kicked a bit but not for long (he was quite tough), the staff couldn’t object if his work and games didn’t suffer. He wrote lots of it, reams and reams of it.” (Britten, Benjamin. Notes to Decca LP LW 5162 (1956), reproduced in Britten 1991, p. 9.)
Britten was a prolific composer penning almost one hundred works including 14 operas (several of which are still performed regularly), chamber and instrumental music, choral works, vocal pieces, ballets, and even church parables. On December 4, 1976, Britten died from heart failure thought to have been a side effect of undiagnosed syphilis.
Albert Herring is based on Guy de Maupassant’s novella Le Rosier de Madame Husson, and the libretto was written by Eric Crozier. It was composed from the winter of 1946 to the spring of 1947. Set in the fictional town of Loxford around 1900, Benjamin Britten’s comic opera Albert Herring follows the stifled son of a greengrocer who is unexpectedly crowned “May King” after the local authorities fail to find a single virtuous girl in town. During his coronation feast, Albert’s friend Sid spikes his lemonade with rum, emboldening the shy youth to rebel against his overbearing mother and the town’s Victorian moralism. Albert disappears for a night of wild carousing, leading the panicked townspeople to mourn his presumed death, only for him to return disheveled but transformed. Ultimately, Albert rejects the rigid expectations of the high-society committee, choosing independence over the suffocating “purity” that had previously defined his life. Lady Billows, whose aria I am singing, is the formidable, self-appointed moral guardian of Loxford whose rigid obsession with Victorian “purity” drives the opera’s plot. She is a comedic caricature of the overbearing aristocracy.
| Libretto by Eric Crozier | |
| I’m full of happiness to be here in your midst on such a day as this. As honoured guest and patroness of the Loxford Urban District Mayday Feast! Seated upon my right is Albert Herring. A young man chosen, marked out, set apart for honest work and purity of heart. You see that in the costume he is wearing—virgin white and orange blossom crown. Dear children: you, you, the rising generation. Never forget the meaning of this day. Treasure it’s example! Think oh think of Albert! Scorn the sweetmeats of temptation seducing you from straight and narrow ways: carnal indulgence, gambling, playing cards, irreligion! patriotism is not enough! | And drink, the havoc wrought by gin! Oh, never start that dreadful habit or you’re lost forever. King and country! Cleanliness is next to God for England and saint. Keep your powder dry and leave the rest to nature! Brittons rule the deep! Albert, arise! Stand to receive this purse of otterskin. My father shot the brute in ’56 on Christmas Eve. With five and twenty sovereigns inside. Take it, my boy, take it with joyful pride. All this is yours, and you deserve the lot! |
Promiscuity – Samuel Barber
Samuel Osmond Barber II was born on March 9, 1910 in West Chester, Pennsylvania to Marguerite and Samuel Barber. His father was a physician and his mother was a pianist. Barber was considered a prodigy and began studying piano at six. By seven, he had composed his first work and by 10, he had composed his first operetta. Barber knew at a young age he wasn’t meant for the sports his family wanted him to play and wrote this to his mom:
Dear Mother: I have written this to tell you my worrying secret. Now don’t cry when you read it because it is neither yours nor my fault. I suppose I will have to tell it now without any nonsense. To begin with, I was not meant to be an athlet [sic]. I was meant to be a composer, and will be I’m sure. I’ll ask you one more thing.—Don’t ask me to try to forget this unpleasant thing and go play football.—Please—Sometimes I’ve been worrying about this so much that it makes me mad (not very). (Gorman, Robert F. (2008). Great Lives From History: The 20th Century. Pasadena, California: Salem Press. p. 230. ISBN 9781587653452.)
By the age of 12, Barber was the organist at a local church, and at 14, he attended Curtis Institute for Music. He had a stellar career for the first part of his life. Barber struggled with depression after a harsh rejection of his opera Antony and Cleopatra in 1966; however, he did compose some wonderful pieces during this time as well as had some works premiered. Barber passed away on January 23, 1981. At his passing, music critic Donal Henahan wrote “probably no other American composer has ever enjoyed such early, such persistent and such long-lasting acclaim.”
Hermit Songs is a cycle of ten songs composed for voice and piano in 1953. They use the translated words from a collection of anonymous poems written by Irish monks and scholars from the 8th to the 13th centuries. The words were translated by W. H. Auden, Chester Kallman, Howard Mumford Jones, Kenneth H. Jackson, and Seán Ó Faoláin. Barber himself, as pianist, premiered these with soprano Leontyne Price in 1953. Both Promiscuity and The Monk and His Cat are from this cycle.
| Translation by Kenneth H. Jackson |
| I do not know with whom Aiden will sleep, but I do know that fair Aiden will not sleep alone. |
The Monk and His Cat – Samuel Barber
| Translation by W. H. Auden |
| Pangur, white Pangur, how happy we are. Alone together, Scholar and cat. Each has his own work to do daily; For you it is hunting, for me study. Your shining eye watches the wall; my feeble eye is fixed on a book. You rejoice when your claws entrap a mouse; I rejoice when my mind fathoms a problem. Pleased with his own art neither hinders the other; thus we live ever without tedium and envy. Pangur, white Pangur, how happy we are alone together, Scholar and cat. |
The Green Dog – Herbert Kingsley
Herbert Kingsley is an interesting composer. There is some real confusion about his background. In fact, it took some digging to confirm when he was born! There are some entries that say he lived during 1858-1937 and others that say 1882-1961. Quite the conundrum! However, I was excited to find something that really seems to narrow down the dates to the latter as there was a mention of an event in The Billboard magazine of a composer-pianist named Herbert Kingsley performing in 1944 (Petrill Readying Nitery Under “Doghouse” Title. (Nov. 4, 1944). The Billboard.). Assuming there was only one composer-pianist named Herbert Kingsley, this seems to verify his dates.
As to other works he composed, there are a few including some musical theatre, ballet, and a handful of other art songs. Kingsley’s music is often described as neoclassical and humorous. He had a knack for taking simple, sometimes surreal poems (like the text for “The Green Dog”) and setting them to music that is rhythmically precise and slightly ironic. The poem and music were both composed by Kingsley.
| Poem by Herbert Kingsley |
| If my dog were green I never would be seen without a sea-green bonnet with an enormous feather upon it. Shoes of leaf-green, hose of tea-green, coat of apple-green, gloves of bottle-green, in fact, I never would be seen except in green if my dog were green. But, alas! no matter what you’ve heard, the facts are consistently absurd, for my dog isn’t green, and, what sets the matter even more agog -I haven’t any dog! |
Lime Jello Marshmallow Cottage Cheese Surprise – William Bolcom
William Bolcom, born May 26, 1938, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer and pianist celebrated for bridging the gap between “serious” classical music and popular genres like ragtime, jazz, and cabaret. He is a longtime professor at the University of Michigan. Lime Jello Marshmallow Cottage Cheese Surprise is a charming song that is mostly spoken rhythmically with accompaniment. It was composed in 1980 and is often performed by Bolcom and his wife, Joan Morris. There are several charming recordings of them performing it on YouTube. Bolcom wrote the lyrics, and as it is spoken, I am not including them. Dr. Tanis has worked with Bolcom in the past as well!
A Green Lowland of Pianos – Samuel Barber
Composed in 1972 as part of Three Songs, Op.45, this piece was from a Polish poem by Jerzy Harasymowicz translated by Czesław Miłosz. It is a charmingly surreal and whimsical art song that serves as the final movement of Three Songs. The piece depicts a pastoral fantasy where pianos “go to pasture” in the evening, wandering through the grass like elegant, musical cattle. Barber captures this playful imagery through a lively, rhythmic piano accompaniment that mimics both the synchronized movement of a herd and the literal sound of the instrument it describes. The vocal line is nimble and conversational, shifting between a sense of awe and a lighthearted wit that reflects Barber’s late-career mastery of blending sophisticated modernism with accessible, vivid storytelling. It stands as a delightful departure from his more characteristic melancholy, offering instead a lush, verdant dreamscape where high art and nature playfully collide.
| Poem by Jerzy Harasymowicz; translated by Czesław Miłosz |
| In the evening as far as the eye can see herds of black pianos up to their knees in the mire they listen to the frogs. They gurgle in water with chords of rapture. They are entranced by froggish, moonish spontaneity. After the vacation, they cause scandals in a concert hall during the artistic milking. Suddenly, they lie down like cows looking with indifference at the white flowers of the audience; at the gesticulating of the ushers. Black pianos. |