Since his memorial service I’ve been desperately longing to hear William Duckworth’s Simple Songs about Sex and War, but I couldn’t find my old tape of it. (There’s a commercial CD, but the performance is weird and too disappointing to listen to.) Finally I ran across an mp3 on a hard drive – he and Nora must have given it to me last time I visited – and for all those similarly susceptible I post it here. Based on poems written for Bill by Hayden Carruth, it is the perfect postclassical song cycle, sung by the incomparable Barbara Noska (a Relache member when it was written) in a consummate postclassical vocal style, and with lovely synth accompaniment by John Dulik. Anybody who could write this deserved far more acclaim than the Pulitzer hacks.
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
