Con Dolcezza (with Sweetness)

I. Art Song

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Unbelievable, unbelievable news… Ah!
There will be a very, very, very, very big uproar
In the near future
But they don’t tell us when
And they don’t tell us where
And they don’t tell us who
And they don’t tell us how… Ah!
…ah…

from remarks to The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (the 9/11 Commission), Washington, DC, April 8, 2004

II. Gospel Song

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As some of you know
I play the piano at church
I don’t play gospel very well
I play Brahms
I had no idea what I was doing
So I called my mother
She said Honey just play in C
And they’ll come back to you
And it’s true
And it’s true
If you play in C
The foundational key
People will come back
Perhaps God, perhaps God plays in C
And that’s why we
Always seem
To find our way back to Him
That’s why we
Always seem
To find our way back to Him

from remarks at a Sunday school class at the National Presbyterian Church, Washington, DC, August 4, 2002
(The original transcript is no longer available online. Here is a similar set of remarks.)

III. Patriotic Song

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American slaves used to sing
“Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen
Glory glory glory glory Hallelujah”
Growing up I would often wonder
At the seeming contradiction contained in this line:
“Glory glory glory Hallelujah”
But as I grew older I came to learn
That there is no contradiction at all
No contradiction, no contradiction at all
Personal achievement without struggle
Somehow feels incomplete and hollow
September Eleventh
Reminded us
Reminded us of our heritage as a tolerant nation
One that welcomes people of any faith
Or no faith at all
No faith at all
No faith at all

from “Let Us Once Again Recommit Ourselves to Those Values Which Define Us” by Condoleezza Rice, published April 2003 by The National Center for Public Policy Research

IV. Worker’s Song

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Granddaddy Rice was a poor sharecropper’s son
From Eutaw, Alabama
That’s E U T A W, Alabama
One day he decided he was goin’ to get book learnin’
But where does a colored man
A colored man go to college
Go to college
There was this school called Stillman College
Stillman College
So Granddaddy Rice, he saved up his tuition
He saved up his cotton
And went off to school
And went off to school
Granddaddy Rice finished up
Finished up his first year
And they said That’s very good
But how, how are you going to pay for your second year
And Granddaddy said
Well, I’m fresh out, I’m fresh out of cotton
And they responded
Well then you’ll have to leave
You’ll have to leave
When our Founding Fathers
Said, we the people
We the people
They didn’t mean me
They didn’t mean me
They didn’t mean me
They didn’t mean me
They didn’t mean me
They didn’t mean me

from two speeches — remarks at the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting, June 14, 2006; and keynote address at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, Secretary Condoleezza Rice Davos, Switzerland, January 23, 2008

Contact

For broadcast-quality audio files, or to request a score for performance: condisongs@automaticheartbreak.com

To contact the composer Corey Dargel: corey@automaticheartbreak.com

To contact the ensemble Two Sides Sounding: info@twosidessounding.com

Composer

Corey Dargel has been called a "baroquely unclassifiable" composer of "ingenious nouveau art songs" by the New Yorker magazine. Salon praises his songs’ “rococo ingenuity” and “sustained bursts of lyrical brilliance.” His music has been profiled by Alison Stewart on NPR's Weekend Edition, Kurt Andersen on PRI's Studio 360, and David Garland on WNYC's Spinning On Air. His most recent album, Someone Will Take Care of Me (2010), is a double-CD set of art-pop love songs about hypochondria and voluntary amputation.

follow Corey on

Performers

Two Sides Sounding performs innovative song programs with roots in the classical salon tradition. The duo--Eleanor Taylor, soprano, and Jocelyn Dueck, piano--brings this intimate art form into the 21st century with a solid commitment to working with living composers and presenting new music in a wide variety of venues. TSS’s recent appearances include concerts with Nautilus Music-Theater (St. Paul, MN), the Brooklyn New Music Collective, and Friends and Enemies of New Music (NYC). The ensemble has premiered songs by composers Louis Durey, Christopher Gable, Gilda Lyons, and Sam Piperato, and is commissioning a song-cycle from Edie Hill to premiere in 2010.

Press

Many thanks to The Rachel Maddow Show for calling attention to these songs on Twitter.

The Onion AV Club asked the New Yorker magazine's classical music writer, Alex Ross: Is there a lot of overtly political classical music now? It would seem to be less hesitant than other genres about taking itself seriously.

Ross responds: Yeah. And in a way, there's more freedom to be political when you're working in a non-commercial marketplace. There's no record label telling you what might not be such a good topic, what might come across as pretentious, etc. The fear is that it's getting up on a soapbox and ranting, but it can definitely be done artfully. I'm thinking of the composer Corey Dargel, who takes speeches of Condoleezza Rice and makes these very beautiful, elegant art-songs out of them. They're wonderful, because you're not sure where the irony is. Something very heartfelt comes out of her speeches. [Laughs.] And yet there's also something satirical at work. It's hard to classify.

Read the full article here.