2014 Program Notes, Book 10 37
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Selected Cabaret Songs
William Bolcom (born in 1938)
Bolcom’s Cabaret Songs are scored for single winds and brass, timpani, percussion,
harp, piano and strings. This is the first performances of these songs by the Grant
Park Orchestra.
Playwright, poet and Columbia faculty member Arnold Weinstein collaborated
with William Bolcom on
Cabaret Songs
, as well as the “actor’s opera”
Dynamite
Tonight!
, the music theater piece
Casino Paradise
, two full-scale works for Lyric
Opera of Chicago (
McTeague
[1992] and
View from the Bridge
[1999]) and four
sets of
Cabaret Songs
. In a preface to the
Cabaret Songs
, Weinstein wrote,
“Norse‑American William Bolcom the composer studied with Roethke the poet,
and before that, his feet barely hitting the pedals, Bill had played for the vaudeville
shows passing through Seattle with such songs in the repertory as
Best Damn Thing
Am Lamb Lamb Lamb
. Milhaud found Bill and brought him back alive to highbrow
music, though he never lost his lowbrow soul (neither did Milhaud). Operas later, we
wrote these songs as a cabaret in themselves, no production ‘values’ to worry about.
The scene is the piano, the cast is the singer.”
Surprise
Surprise! Her twenty-fifth year at the office!
They threw her a surprise party!
Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!
And were they surprised
when she tried to drink iodine
from the paper cup at the water cooler
of cool spring water.
The Actor
A man I know to keep alive,
dies for a living.
To survive to keep alive,
dies for a living.
Stands upon a stage each night —
matinees from two to five —
to keep the show alive,
dies for a living.
I’ve taken the position — do or die —
not to survive for
nor keep alive for
not to die for a living.
Song of Black Max
(As Told by the de Kooning Boys)
He was always dressed in black,
long black jacket, broad black hat,
sometimes a cape,
and as thin as rubber tape: Black Max.
He would raise that big black hat
to the big-shots of the town
who raised their hats right back,
never knew they were bowing to Black Max.
I’m talking about night in Rotterdam
when the right night people of all the town
would find what they could
in the night neighborhood of Black Max.
There were women in the windows
with bodies for sale
dressed in curls like little girls
in little dollhouse jails.
When the women walked the street
with the beds upon their backs,
who was lifting up his brim to them? Black
Max!
And there were looks for sale,
the art of the smile —
(only certain people walked that mystery
mile;
artists, charlatans, vaudevillians,
men of mathematics, acrobatics, and civil-
ians).
There was knitting-needle music
from a lady organ-grinder
with all her sons behind her,
Marco, Vito, Benno
(Was he strong! though he walked like a
