One text. Four composers. A public conversation.

About WordSong

Founded in 2008 by composers Howard Frazin and Tom Schnauber, WordSong is Boston’s premier interactive concert organization. WordSong has created a new concert format focused on public conversation around intuitive musical understanding, aspiring to reconnect musicians and audiences through shared, active, artistic experiences. In its 16-year history, WordSong has produced 15 forum series and various other programs based on texts as diverse as Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” and Langston Hughes’s “Harlem.” More than 100 performances, including more than 70 new works by living composers, have been presented throughout New England, as well as in New York, Minneapolis, and Washington, DC, and as far away as Vancouver and Bulgaria.

How WordSong Works

First, we all read a given poem and listeners give their reactions. Then performers play composers’s settings of the poem; and then listeners, composers, and performers have an open conversation about what we all just heard and felt: a dialogue reflecting various points of view and what they all have in common. In the course of the discussion, each of the pieces is played again. A WordSong Forum is all about communal reflection on multiplicity: multiple settings, multiple hearings, multiple meanings. Together, we discover how a single, familiar text can inspire a variety of thoughts and feelings; we explore our perspectives and yours and how they are represented in the various meldings of words, ideas, and music. We hope you will join us in this exploration of multiplicity, this interaction between the familiar and the unfamiliar, this new way to experience new music!

“The Second Coming” at Harvard

Wednesday, May 7, 2025, at 7:00pm
Holden Chapel, Harvard University

Krista River, mezzo-soprano
Arneis Quartet

In May 2025, WordSong presented William Butler Yeats’s “The Second Coming” at Harvard University’s Mahindra Humanities Center. The forum, co-sponsored by Arts and Humanities Dean Sean Kelly, marked the premiere of three settings by composers Elena Ruehr, Tom Schnauber, and Howard Frazin, with performances by mezzo-soprano Krista River and the Arneis Quartet.

Read more at The Harvard Gazette

Special thanks to Sean Kelly, Dean of Arts and Humanities at Harvard University.

Listen

Scores and Materials

WordSong History

Forums

  •  The Tyger (William Blake)
  • Harlem (Langston Hughes)
  • in Just- (E.E. Cummings)
  • My Papa’s Waltz (Theodore Roethke)
  • Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock (Wallace Stevens)
  • I Like to Play with Him (Stevie Smith)
  • Dona nobis pacem
  • Laughing Together (Rebecca Blevins Faery)
  • Song (Thomas Lovell Beddoes)
  • Humming (sculpture by Jaume Plensa)
  • Silent Film (Daniel Williams)
  • Dawn (Sowohl Kim)
  • No Texting Please (works inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata)
  • Recuerdo (Edna St. Vincent Millay)
  • The Second Coming (William Butler Yeats)

Composers

Armando Bayolo, Samuel Beebe, Martin Bresnick, Stan Charkey, Peter Child, Nell Shaw Cohen, Edmar Colón, Tim Dusenbury, Howard Frazin, Herschel Garfein, Heather Gilligan, Christoper Hossfeld, Paul Keefe, Binna Kim, Mark Bolan Konigsmark, Robert Kyr, Libby Larsen, John McDonald, Robert Merfeld, Scott J. Ordway, Benjamin Pesetsky, Elena Ruehr, Felicia Sandler, Eric Sawyer, Tom Schnauber, Adam Simon, Donald St. Pierre, Bert Van Herck, Nick Vines, Andy Vores, Tianyi Wang, Dalit Warshaw, Ian Wiese, Matthew Woodard, Yanchen Ye

Performers

Voice: Tyler Bouque, Kendra Colton, Ilana Davidson, Aaron Engebreth, Christina English, Dongwon Kim, David Kravits, Thea Lobo, Michela Macfarlane, Sarah Pelletier, Keith Phares, Krista River, Sumner Thompson, Kristen Watson

Piano: Donald Berman, Alison D’Amato, Brett Hodgdon, Shiela Kibbe, John McDonald, Robert Merfeld, Bethany Pietroniro, Alex Ruvinstein, Donald St. Pierre, Thomas Stumpf

Instrumentalists: Brandon Ilaw, marimba; Robert Schulz, marimba; Rafael Popper-Keizer, cello

Ensembles: Arneis Quartet, Classical Jam, First Church Boston Choir, Florestan Recital Project, Lorelei Ensemble, Sheffield Chamber Players, Words&Music

Public Presenters

Arts at the Armory (Somerville, MA), Arts on the Edge Wolfeboro (NH), Classical Café (New York), Club Oberon, DeCordova Museum, First Church Boston, Goethe Institute Boston, Grolier Poetry Bookshop, Harvard Musical Association, Korean Cultural Society of Boston, Longy School of Music, Lyceum (Alexandria, VA), MIT, Monadnock Music Festival, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Music on Norway Pond, Rockporrt Music, Source Song Festival, Somerville Arts Council, St. Botolph Club, WGBH All-Classical Festival, Words&Music

Educational Presenters

American University in Bulgaria, Amherst College, Boston Arts Academy, Boston Preparatory Charter Public School, Eastman School of Music, Emmanuel College, Fresno State Summer Arts Festival, New England Conservatory, Portland Conservatory of Music, Rivers School Conservatory Annual Seminar on Contemporary Music, Rockport (MA) Public Schools, Roxbury Latin School, Showa Boston Institute, Trinity School (VA), Tufts University, Vancouver International Song Institute