Saroni: Complete Songs, 1844–1889
Series: American Music Publisher: A-R Editions
Complete Songs, 1844–1889
Edited by Lars Helgert
A091 Saroni: Complete Songs, 1844–1889
978-1-9872-0848-1
Full Score (2023)
9x12, xli + 197 pp.
$425.00
In stock
SKU
A091
Performance Parts (Available Separately)
A091P
This volume includes all of the surviving songs by German-American composer, performer, critic, and businessman Herrman S. Saroni (1823/24–1900), who is now most remembered as the owner and editor of Saroni’s Musical Times (one of America’s first significant music magazines). The entire date range of these songs is 1844–89, but the vast majority appeared in the 1840s and early 1850s. Saroni was among the first composers in America to combine aspects of German lieder and various features associated with popular song, and these works fuse accessibility to amateurs with sophisticated compositional techniques. Despite several indicators of success in his era, Saroni’s songs are almost completely unknown today. These works deserve reconsideration and modern performance both for their historical significance and for their aesthetic value. Most of the songs in this edition were published in Saroni’s lifetime, but an appendix includes a transcription of an unpublished holograph manuscript song, the original of which is also shown in two plate images.
1. The Child’s First Grief
2. ’Tis Best to Be Free
3. The Pequot Brave
4. The Merry Sleigh / Jingle, Jingle, Clear the Way!
5. Fratel del mio cor!
6. I’ve Thought of Thee, Dearest!
7. Oh! Say Not: Sing a Careless Lay!
8. To My Friend
9. Strike Soft the Lute!
10. Echo Song: I Know a Noble Heart!
11. Let Me Perish in the Early Spring!
12. My Cynosure
13. O’er the Wildly Heaving Sea
14. Slumber, Infant! Slumber
15. Thou Art Welcome Dearest Sister
16. Sweet Island Home
17. Music from Afar
18. The Gipsy of the North
19. Weep for the Love That Fate Forbids
20. Angel Whose Bright Image
21. The Heart’s Despair
22. Nay Weep No More My Lov’d One
23. Bingen on the Rhine
24. Speed Away!
25. Memory of the Past
26. The Silent Tear
27a. The Lonely Tear
27b. The Lonely Tear: Arranged for the Spanish Guitar
28. Our Childhood’s Home
29. The Awakening of Italy
30. The Saw Mill
31. They Tell Me Thou Art Gay Once More!, Op. 103
32. Unroll the Broad Banner: A Patriotic Song
33. The Remembered Song
34. I Wandered in the Woodland
35. Oh! My Heart Is Weary Waiting! or Summer Longings
36. The Orphans
37a. Winter Flowers (1850 and 1851)
37b. Winter Flowers (1869)
38. Full Many Years Ago
39. Anna Is the One I Love
40. Thou’rt Weeping Still
41. Camp Troubles! Hark, the Bugle Resounds
42. Lullaby
Appendix
Leave It with Him
Lars Helgert holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Catholic University. His work has appeared in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, the Journal of the Society for American Music, American Music, and several other outlets. He currently teaches undergraduate and graduate music history courses at the University of Maryland.
"In a world of scholarship in which many question the existence or necessity of the canon, this volume brings into relief a living working musician who engaged in the daily economic necessities of the culture and profession with which he aligned. History is richer when we look beyond the well-known names in Europe and the United States to understand musical culture. Helgert brings Saroni’s representation of life as a musician-composer in the mid-nineteenth century into bold relief through his biographical detail, industry information, and song repertory exposition." Petra Meyer-Frazier, Nineteenth-Century Music Review 2024 https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479409824000053