In the twentieth century, Johan Wagenaar and Bernard Zweers were among the most prominent figures of the generation. Verlaine's poem is moody and mysterious, befitting the poem's light-hearted mockery.
Het was slechts een zonnige glimlach’, 1931–1932
The Wild Arum' also offers the freest prosody, though nothing melismatic: a feature of all Overman's songs (ex. 8).
Kleengedichtje’
Die geen taal heft’
Snee’
De zonne gaat op’
De zonne gaat op' opens in the manner of Grieg: 'bright in tone' as the composer directs, with a well-springed rhythm for the voice indicating a folk influence, but the melody beautifully harmonized to pursue the metaphysical. , aphoristic poem. The first group is in a symmetrical 2+2 arrangement: the melody curves up through the sharp side on the dominant, falls through the flat side most surprisingly through B11(9) and E7(5), repeated she climbs over the dominant and hangs briefly on B7, median relations are again to the fore. Reflecting the unknowability of the mystery of daily renewal, and by implication Redemption, an undulating chain of parallel sevenths with flattened fifths moves in semitone steps back to B7, given unexpected prominence by its repetition at phrase ends ( Ex. 12). .
Komt en’n beidt niet meer’
Gezelle's use of dialect speech, and of straight rhythms is matched by a Volkstümlichkeit in musical rhythm and phrase structure, as already mentioned. The authoritative brevity of the verses is maintained in terse music, enlivened by a peculiar and intelligent use of chromatic harmony and discreetly animated propulsive rhythm in the piano. Although songs are by no means the majority in Overman's catalog (Thorpe), it is nonetheless interesting that a promising young composer with a developing style that incorporates elements of Gebrauchsmusik, neoclassicism and French harmonic language should use songs as a medium at this time pursue
The Song, with the exception of the concentrated miniature of Webern, had by this time become more of an orchestral medium. So there are elements in Overman's musical language from similar sources to her predecessors and contemporaries, which through Diepenbrock perhaps gave them the discernment and encouragement to explore and adapt what they heard and read. As an avid and intelligent listener, in pre-war Rotterdam she had ample opportunity to hear and learn from a range of composers.
Mature Songs Composed in the Netherlands
Das Gebet’
Der Schaukelstuhl (auf der verlassene Terasse)’
It must be said that the song wears its new structural authority lightly: the aural effect is lovingly grotesque, the limited range of piano figures drawing attention to the lyrics and the effective prosody. The setting of the text is again almost exclusively syllabic, with keywords extended in duration, and this appropriate folk melodic form such as the Lied is subjected to a sophisticated tension with the underlying harmony.
Der Tanz’
Der Seufzer’
The transparent 'Der Seufzer' [The Sigh] consists of filigree strings of a scale in the high treble of the piano, whizzing around a longer thread of vocal melody based on a peculiar scale of his own design. The singer suggests a pitch center of G that we feel rather than define, since G is the lowest note on the scale, but by bar 10 we have a clearer idea. As the piano scales begin to descend again, the voice gradually begins to rise as well.
A few bars of piano scales try to fly: they are now too low in the piano, too wet and heavy for the wind to carry, and the ice melts under the sigh. The pedal tones descend E–D–C, part of the piano scale, but now at the imaginary bottom of the water. As the strands disappear, the sigh drops to low middle C: the final notes of the scale sound more like the bubbles of a drowning sigh.
Galgenberg’
Both the piano and voice scales have an augmented second, which places them outside of classification in normal modes or octatonic scales (Example 20). Meanwhile, the voice utters a long dramatic high A, while the final parts of the scale are rarely repeated. The effect is a gleefully comic grotesque morality tale, and the means are again strikingly streamlined (Example 21).
Overman’s Australian Songs
And yet there's a lingering sense that Overman has achieved her own voice in the song, allowing her to find the most appropriate response to Morgenstern's mix of naivete and metaphysics. Overman's first songs for voice and piano composed in Australia were Two Songs to lyrics by Peter Krÿger. They have their essential qualities as poems, and one might speculate that their use of her native language and themes of hope and redemption appealed to the lonely composer.
Forward thinking seems embodied in the choice of texts for other vocal works of the time: Animal Stories for Children for Voice and Harp (1952) and Nursery Rhymes for the same combination two years later. Krÿger's poems are "Bethlehem" and "Jerusalem": clearly "beginning" and "end", not forgetting a troubled journey to Bethlehem and a journey of life to Jerusalem and apotheosis. Overman could hardly have appreciated the analogy with her long journey with her young child, and she must have hoped for a career fulfillment in her adopted country.
Bethlehem’
There is an impeccable sense of direction and prosody with no wasted musical element: everything is confidently understated, deftly controlled and at the service of the text.
Jeruzalem’
I believe Perth will soon have an arts life and activity that will be the envy of the Commonwealth. The choral music written in Albany, Twee liederen and Psyche, seems to have made an impression on the insightful Australian modernist, who was also a prolific songwriter. Coming from one of Australia's most vibrant and original (if inconsistent) musical voices from the 1950s to the 1980s, Penberthy's vindication of Overman, despite its lack of commercial and even critical success, is as important to us as it must have been to her.
Overman leads the score with a charming Anglo-Dutch note that 'These songs are based on life in the Figi Islands'. Just from the handling of the score, it is clear that these are longer than all her previous songs, and unlike the works written in Holland, they are in the first person and on a more repetitive, less abstract level than the Krÿger songs. Jones himself lived briefly in Fiji, a place he held in great affection, according to Margaret Dylan Jones (Jones 2017), and this personal dimension is felt in the musical response.
Deep, Deep Blue Water’
Farewell’
In bar 9, E is immediately presented as the center of a variant dotted figure, which seems quite distant from A due to the approach by C# and the subsequent introduction of A and B. With a set of voices bounded by strong edges, F seems to become central in bar 15, an impression reinforced by the voice's sustained C above it, but a final repetition of the syncopated figure returns to E, explaining F as an extended appoggiatura. A whole-tone scale unison between the voice and both hands of the piano accompanies the instruction to bow only to your King and God, a device we heard in "Der Seufzer" suggesting the unknowability of the Creator.
One might speculate that this relationship is not coincidental, since the pairing of the tonally aimless whole-tone scale is intuitive or conscious. With the first appearance of the falling triplet figure, a ritual libation takes place in bar 44, on a full scale, which reinforces the feeling for Overman that it represents the otherworldly. For example, the E–B open fifth that spans both staves of the piano from bar 51 is softened and enriched to E–B and G–D, Em7, in bar 59, in tacit acknowledgment of one's birthright. is shifted to an instruction to actively do something with it, in this case 'cherish the good and destroy the evil'.
Lullaby’
There is a sureness and lightness of touch such that, despite the analysis offered above, the key remains more felt than defined for the listener, and the overlapping phrases and varying lengths maintain a sublime vivacity through the song. Here, most importantly, she was a central part of a vibrant musical community (Thorpe something which, despite Penberthy's enthusiasm, she never felt in Perth. Margaret Sutherland and Dorian Le Gallienne were among the most important of the circle hers and both among the best.Australian singer-songwriters, not to mention their other achievements in various genres.
Thorpe further describes how Hyner's role as curator of the Grainger Museum (and Overman's own very close involvement) was equally revitalizing.
Morning prayer’, 1960
Overman perhaps suggests that the soul is not really one's own, but is shared with one's God (Ex. 40).
Conclusion
They are lyrical in their focus on the music of the text itself without being guided by the melody: the vocal line is often one more thread in the web of lines that make up the harmony. The piano parts are nimble and colorful, not technically challenging except in the detailed pursuit of tone and proper touch. Hyner was appointed curator of the Grainger Museum, at the University of Melbourne's Department of Music, from 1966-1969.
All the song manuscripts are fortunately beautiful, suggesting that they were probably copied for performance, or at least for the expectation of performance. Whatever the good opinions of the aforementioned composers, there is no suggestion that they imitated any particular technique in Overman's music, although her warm humanity and spirituality and critical perceptive skills fostered deep friendships. In today's age, with so much music of various eras and origins available to us, this should not be seen as a failure or evidence of a lack of quality, as it might have been a century or more ago, where chains of influence were part of a belief in relentless progress and improvement.
ABSTRACT
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