Spanish Johnny - (2009)

Willa Cather
for
mezzo soprano and piano
The
old West, the old time,
The old wind singing through
The red, red grass a thousand miles --
And Spanish Johnny, you!
He'd sit beside the water ditch
When all his herd was in,
And never mind a child, but sing
To his mandolin.
The big stars, the blue night,
The moon-enchanted lane;
The olive man who never spoke,
But sang the songs of Spain.
His speech with men was wicked talk --
To hear it was a sin;
But those were golden things he said
To his mandolin.
The gold songs, the gold stars,
The world so golden then;
And the hand so tender to a child --
Had killed so many men.
He died a hard death long ago
Before the Road came in --
The night before he swung, he sang
To his mandolin.
[ 4
pages, circa 3' 25" ]

Willa Cather
Willa Cather (1876 - 1947) was a Virginia-born fiction writer, poet and
journalist, best known for her depictions of frontier life centered on the
Great Plains states, in novels such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia,
and The Song of the Lark. While still a child, her family moved to
Nebraska. She attended the University of Nebraska and became a regular
contributor to the Nebraska State Journal. She worked in Pittsburgh for
Home Monthly, and then in New York for McClure's Magazine which
serialized her novel, Alexander's Bridge. In 1923 she was awarded the
Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours, published in 1922, and received many
similar honors throughout a long career.

The
three verses of the poem are treated in like manner by the setting,
alterations as germane and necessary to the sense. This is a musing about a
man, whose identity is slowly revealed as the text progresses. The
accompaniment at times evidences gestures like unto the mandolin of the text
-- a plucked instrument, but the larger gestures reference a sense of rural
Americana, and the tessitura lies generally in the lower octave of the vocal
range until the outcry at the men Johnny had killed.

The
marked "holding back" is a piacere for the performers, to make as
much of the revelation of the violent nature of this otherwise lovingly
remembered man. The contrast between "tender to a child" and "killed so many
men" should seem a rupture between these facets of one man, is if
inexplicable. Indeed the more pleasant remembrances continue, for the text
informs that all of these images are from "long ago," and therefore we must
conclude that the more pleasant memories offset the execution and even that
crime for which death was the penalty.

The score for
Spanish Johnny is available as a free PDF download, though any major
commercial performance or recording of the work is prohibited without prior
arrangement with the composer. Click on the graphic below for this
piano-vocal score.

Spanish Johnny
