A Birthday
Item
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Score title
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A Birthday
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Composer
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Kari Cruver Medina
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Program note
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A Birthday (1857) was written by the remarkable Victorian Poet, Christina Rossetti, and published in her collection of poetry, Goblin Market and other Poems (1862). language of "A Birthday" is lush, infused with sumptuous and evocative imagery of Britain's Pre-Raphaelite Movement. (Christina's brother, painter and poet, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, founded this mid-19th century arts collective, and she was both an early literary contributor and a model for some of her brother's most renowned paintings.) I greatly encourage singers to survey the luxurious romanticism of the paintings of this era to help visualize the artistic world the Rossetti family inhabited. In translating the poem to art song, I embraced " A Birthday " as a breathless, passionate, and unabashed celebration of young love. this intoxicating feeling of adrenaline and excitement is expressed in the light arpeggiated movement in the piano, with trilling appoggiaturas that mimic both birdsong and the fluttering of the heart. The corresponding vocal melody is soaring and light-hearted, full of anticipation. This is a song of pure effervescence and joy.
