JULIANA HALL | AMERICAN ART SONG COMPOSER

LOVE’S PILGRIMAGE

LOVE’S PILGRIMAGE
5 Songs for Baritone and Piano

on Sonnets by William Shakespeare

Publisher
in manuscript

Availability
planned for publication in 2024

Description
LOVE’S PILGRIMAGE is a large song cycle setting some of Shakespeare’s most well-known sonnets. The subject is love and, as the name of the cycle implies, this piece outlines a journey from light and effervescent love through more difficult aspects of love and finally to love that transcends death. This is similar in both subject matter and progression to Hall’s countertenor cycle, “O Mistress Mine,” but both the texts and the baritone voice are deeper and darker in quality than the countertenor piece, bringing a sense of depth and gravitas to the experience.

Text
1 – Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
2 – Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day
3 – Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
4 – When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
5 – Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,

Vocal Range
A-flat 2  :  G 4

Duration
32′ 00″

Vocal Tessitura
E 3  :  E 4

Year of Composition
2000

First Performance
April 29, 2001
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
Hartford, Connecticut


First Performers
Richard Lalli, baritone
Juliana Hall, piano

Listen
Richard Lalli, baritone
Juliana Hall, piano

1 – Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

2 – Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day

3 – Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,

4 – When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

5 – Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,