San Francisco Songs

San Francisco Songs is the result of an extraordinary year-and-a-half-long collaboration with poet Jane Barnes. The Songs were conceived in the summer of 1998, when I asked Jane if she would be interested in writing the words for a large-scale orchestral song cycle about San Francisco. Rather than a "tourist" piece all about pretty scenery and cable cars, I was interested in the psychology of the landscape, how the city might be seen, and felt, through the eyes of a young gay man. Jane immediately rose to the challenge and we began uncovering a spiritual and emotional map of the city. In fog we discovered paralyzing fear, safety and sensuality; on a bridge we found hopelessness (as well as a means of getting to the other side); in an earthquake we saw erotic love. As a whole cycle, the songs chart the difficult journey from innocence to experience, from pain to joy and back to pain, from desperation to acceptance.

The texts are unusual, and almost shocking in this art-song context, because of their pared-down, almost speech-like quality. This is something which was surprisingly difficult to achieve. The texts went through countless, countless revisions and took over a year to complete. Jane is a brilliant poet; still, I was a very demanding collaborator. She would often write a spectacular line or stanza -- or even an entire poem -- which I found I could not set to music because it was "too poetic." In my composing process, too, I found I had to discard some ideas which were "too musical." Eventually we came upon the notion of "not-poems" and "not-music"– a middle ground where neither the text nor the music need be "pure" in and of themselves, but give and take from each other. The result here, I believe, is a complete work of art where music and word are inseparable. In the process of creating these songs, I believe my music has acquired an element of Jane's poetry, and her poetry has acquired a bit of my music.

© 2001 Gordon Beeferman. All rights reserved.