Luigi Dallapiccola’s Cinque Frammenti di Saffo (1942) is a song cycle for soprano and chamber orchestra setting Italian texts by Salvatore Quasimodo after five poems of Sappho. Though built on a twelve-tone row—his first work to foreground...

Gerald Finzi’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Op. 35, is a choral work composed in 1950 for a two-part chorus and chamber orchestra. The text is taken from the biblical book Ecclesiasticus (Sirach 44), a passage that honors great figures from...

REPRINT SERIES Two short poems by the Russian symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont are set here. In both songs can be heard the combination of ‘diatonic’ and ‘octatonic’ procedures typical of Stravinsky at this time, which he...

Poulenc's cantata Le Bal Masqué (for Baritone or Mezzo-Soprano and Chamber Orchestra) is written to texts by the poet Max Jacob, whose work can be seen as closely approaching surrealism; it dates from 1932. The instrumentation is strongly...