U -M hosts Bolcom’s massive ‘Songs of Innocence’ in April

ANN ARBOR—”Songs of Innocence and Experience”, the epic work of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and University of Michigan professor of composition William Bolcom, will be presented April 8 in Hill Auditorium. The little-performed but much acclaimed song cycle is based on the poetry of William Blake.

The performance, in collaboration with the U-M School of Music and the University Musical Society (UMS), will be conducted by Leonard Slatkin. About 450 musicians   from the University Symphony Orchestra, the Contemporary Directions Ensemble, U-M Choirs (University Choir, Chamber Choir, and Orpheus Singers), the UMS Choral Union, the Michigan State University Children’s Choir, and more than a dozen soloists from the classical, pop, folk, country, and operatic realms will perform on an extended stage.

The work will also be recorded in Ann Arbor for release on the Naxos label, the first commercial recording ever to be made of the gargantuan work.   

The performance will occur nearly 20 years to the date after Hill Auditorium served as the venue for its U.S. premiere, and concludes the reopening celebration of the historic venue after an 18-month, $40 million restoration.

Bolcom’s love affair with the works of poet William Blake led him to decide when he was 17 years old that he would eventually set these 46 poems to music. He began as a teenager, but put the project on hold for many years to pursue his education and further develop the compositional vocabulary he felt he needed to do the project justice. Most of the work was completed between 1973 and 1982 after Bolcom joined the faculty of U-M where he was finally able to devote the attention needed.

Bolcom used a stylistic approach similar to Blake’s. As Bolcom noted in the program notes for the U.S. premiere of the piece in April 1984, “At every point Blake used his whole culture, past and present, high-flown and vernacular, as sources for his many poetic styles