Songs from Women of Pan America: Selections from Florals-5 Songs for Soprano and Piano

0:10 The Daisy: a hypnotic miniature
1:27 Flowering: a tango of betrayal
4:17 Fire-Flowers: grief and joyous rebirth

Martha Hill Duncan (b. 1955) (Canada) is a composer that Velarde has programmed regularly on recitals. After encountering Duncan’s work at the 2010 NATS National Conference, Velarde communicated with the composer and received the pieces included on this recital directly from Duncan. These pieces were originally programmed on Velarde’s 2011 doctoral degree recital, Singing in the Twenty-first Century.
Martha Hill Duncan began piano lessons at the age of eight and started experimenting with composing and improvising soon after. She was a member of the first graduating class of the Houston High School for Performing and Visual Arts, receiving a diploma in Vocal Music, and she earned a Degree in Composition from the University of Texas at Austin, with piano as her principal instrument. In 1982, Duncan moved to Canada with her husband, astrophysicist Dr. Martin Duncan. In appreciation of her adopted country, many of Duncan’s vocal and choral works are set to Canadian texts.
Duncan loves working with and writing for singers. Vocal works include Florals, written for soprano Elizabeth McDonald and Porch Songs for baritone Gregory Brookes and tenor Darrell Bryan. Her most recent art song collections with Canadian poetry are Maple Dust and other delicacies and How Will the Rain Fall?
An ongoing interest and recognition of her adopted country, Canada, has culminated in several song cycles and collections for the developing voice, including Singing in the Northland: A Celebration of Canadian Poetry in Song. Another art song collection, Summer, is set to the poetry of Linda Jacques, inspired by Jacques’ childhood on Georgian Bay.

More about Martha Hill Duncan: https://www.marthahillduncan.com/page...
Score source: Duncan, Martha Hill. Florals. https://www.marthahillduncan.com/prod.... Accessed December 27, 2021.

The Daisy by James Rennell Rodd

With little white leaves in the grasses,
Spread wide for the smile of the sun,
It waits till the daylight passes
And closes them one by one.

I have asked why it closed at even,
And I know what it wished to say:
There are stars all night in the heaven,
And I am the star of day.


Flowering by Carla Hartsfield
The night we parted my drink caught on fire;
news of your betrayal lit the blackness.
Before long, the whole garden exploded.
My roses were the first to go,
thorns popping and smelling like a witch-hunt.

I stood beneath the fallout,
letting the snaking cinders sting my arms.
This was catharsis to rid myself of your jealousy
to rid myself of your control.

Flowering is never predictable,
These small deaths have nothing
to do with the heart.


Fire-flowers by Emily Pauline Johnson
And only where the forest fires have sped,
Scorching relentlessly the cool north lands,
A sweet wildflower lifts its purple head,
And, like some gentle spirit sorrow-fed,
It hides the scars with almost human hands.

And only to the heart that knows of grief,
Of desolating fire, of human pain,
There comes some purifying sweet belief,
Some fellow-feeling beautiful, if brief.
And life revives, and blossoms once again.