Cantos Desiertos

According to the composer, \Mountain Songs is a cycle of eight songs based largely on American folk music. Of the four tunes presented on this recording, as reflected by their titles, three are lyric ballads from the southern mountains of Appalachia while Cindy is a minstrel fiddle song." Mountain Songs was commissioned by Paula Robison and Eliot Fisk. It was composed between July and November 1984 in New York and Rome and was given it's world premiere in April 1985 by the Robison/Fisk duo at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The composer provides the following detailed notes of the four songs recorded here: "In Barbara Allen pride keeps the heroine from saving her lover from his tragic end. "Sweet William, " dying for love of Barbara, expires as she spurns him on his deathbed. The House Carpenter explores the guilt-ridden fantasies of escaping from one's lot. A woman's former lover appears after a prolonged absence; he tempts her to leave the house carpenter she has since married and come away with him to a place "where the grass grows green/To the lands on the banks of the sea". Unable to resist his call, she agrees, and they sail off together. But soon she begins to weep for her abandoned child; and finally, in penance and guilt, she and her lover spring a leak in their ship and sink to the cold sea floor. He's Gone Away mixes elements of sorrow with hope: "He's gone away for to stay a little while/ But he's coming back if he goes ten thousand miles.../Look away, look away over Yandro!" Here the stanzasare separated by an upbeat, dance-like interlude. The frolic tune Cindy bubbles with minstrel-song spirit."

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