It's Persichetti time again! I previously covered Vincent Persichetti in my review of one of his piano Poems, and that piece got a lot of detail and originality into a mere 20 bars. Today's piece, All Alone from his Two Chinese Songs, op. 29, has a much smaller toolbox to work with.
Persichetti was remarkably skilled in nearly every instrumental combination and every performing level, and All Alone might be the simplest piece he ever wrote. The piano never plays more than one note at a time, a mere drone to support the singer's Dorian lament. The voice part is little more than the Dorian scale with a couple of turns, expanding in expression with each repetition. As the voice's passion increases, you'll notice that the repeated una corda B-flat in the piano becomes shorter and shorter in length, heightening the song's urgency, ultimately whole-stepping up to make a perfect fifth with the voice. The song's poignancy is secured by never breaching piano, those hairpins confined to sotto voce and a reduced vocal span. I heard that Persichetti would sometimes compose while driving by taping staff paper to his steering wheel, and this is the first time I've believed that tidbit. The poem is an anonymous children's song as translated by Arthur Waley in his 170 Chinese Poems, and it needs little amplification to speak its mind. Persichetti has left it as simply as it came, the voice earnest and human, the drone a bell at the far end of a silent lake. The two Chinese Songs could be seen as warm-ups for his seminal (and distressingly unrecorded) haiku cycle A Net of Fireflies, but they need no introduction or explanation - just ears.
~PNK
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