Margaret Bonds

6 Songs on Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edited by John Michael Cooper.

Those who know the composer from the melodic richness and emotional intensity of her works 'Troubled Water', 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers', and 'Three Dream Portraits' will recognize her voice in the present songs. The Millay settings are remarkable for their symphonic textures and sense of drama. Bonds' music renders the compelling and occasionally heart-wrenchingly painful beauty of feminist thinking and female sexuality in tones as profoundly moving as Millay's poems themselves - a feat rarely matched by other composers who have set these iconic poetic utterances to music. Now published for the first time, these settings are poised to assume their rightful position as milestones in twentieth-century art song and feminist song generally.