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I'm Afraid It's You (text: Wendy Cope)

song cycle for tenor (or soprano) and piano; 13' (2014)
(commissioned by Brian Thorsett and the Virginia Tech School of the Performing Arts)

1. Valentine
2. Loss
3. After the Lunch
4. The Orange
5. Variation on a Lennon and McCartney Song
6. A Vow

performed by tenor Brian Thorsett and pianist Tracy Cowden:

​buy the score from Classical Vocal Reprints:
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composer’s note: When I first encountered Wendy Cope’s poetry, I was immediately struck by what a brilliant humorist she is, and by how many times I laughed out loud while reading. But the more I read her books, the more I found a surprising tenderness beneath the humor. So, in choosing the poetry for “I’m Afraid It’s You,” I wanted to explore that feeling, to write a song cycle that was funny and light-hearted on the surface but at its core was a set of earnest love songs.

An old axiom of dramatic literature says that it’s easy to go from a funny tone to a serious one, but nearly impossible to go the other way around. I chose to take that difficult path and see where it would lead. Nowhere is this as obvious as in the last two songs, where I first rip a classic love ballad to shreds, and then follow it up immediately with an intensely earnest & heartfelt love song, “A Vow.”

sample page:

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