Kirke Mechem: Songs of My Old Age

The current issue of Choral Journal features an article on composer Kirke Mechem, who turned 91 earlier this year. Mechem has been called the “dean of American choral composers” and is still an active composer, adding to his impressive catalogue of over 250 works. This article provides readers with a compositional history for eight choral works that Mechem himself calls the “songs of my old age.” They are, he says, “one way or another, about singing…and I either wrote the texts myself or translated, edited, adapted, or juxtaposed parts of public-domain texts.”

As the article states: “One of the most compelling characteristic about Mechem’s vocal music is his meticulous attention to text and its marriage to music… From the start, Mechem and dramatic interpretation of text expression were inseparable: storytelling was always at the fore. Personally selecting a text with which he could tell a story was also inextricably linked to music creation. He rarely accepted commissions for which he could not have a part in text selection.”

One unique feature of this article is that it includes links to audio clips of Kirke Mechem dramatically interpreting the text from eight choral works. (Musical examples are included in the article but due to copyright are not shown in this post.)

Here is one example: We Can Sing That (2012) – Op. 79, no. 2 (SSAA) and Op. 79, no. 3 (SATB), unaccompanied.

“Mechem fashioned this original poem when conductor Eliza Rubenstein and he could not come to an agreement on a commission text for her Orange County Women’s Chorus.” Listen to Mechem reading his poem by clicking here.

You can read the full article online in PDF format by clicking here. (Note: You must be logged into the acda.org site as a member in order to access the Choral Journal online. If you are not already a member of ACDA, join today!)