Hamlin premieres new song cycle

On March 13 the Mahaney Center for the Arts featured soprano vocalist Susanne Peck, accompanied by pianist Cynthia Huard, oboist Daniel Frostman and Deborah Sharpe-Lunstead on the viola de gamba, in an eclectic program titled “Sacred to Satire.” Highlights included works from such varied composers as Bach, Boismortier, Vaughan Williams and the premiere of “Abstinence Education,” a song-cycle by Music Department Chairman Professor Peter Hamlin.

The diverse offerings spanned multiple eras from Baroque to Hamlin’s work, a quintessentially self-aware modern take on political scandal. The extensive range allowed Peck to showcase her own talents as a performer, as she shifted easily from an aria by Boismortier — one verse, translated from French, begins “Away you savage Faun, flee you grim satyr, Diana spurns your amorous advances.” – to a 20th century piece based on poems by Robert Frost. Her accompanists displayed similar range, with Huard playing both harpsichord and pianto.

Indeed, Hamlin had Peck’s theatricality in mind when he composed his piece.

“Susanne is brilliant — I think with each varied style we in the audience felt, ‘Wow, this kind of music is just perfect for her,’ Hamlin said. “She’s quite versatile. She has a gorgeous vocal sound and hits just the right tone in terms of the expression of the music. For my piece, it was important that the pieces not just be funny, but also musically beautiful and expressive, so I was really thrilled with the performance.”

Hamlin’s work certainly achieves this. The series of four songs chronicles various sexual gaffes in America’s public life. The first takes its lyrics from e-mails written by Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina to his mistress; the second from a police report on ex-Senator Larry Craig’s lewd conduct in the Minneapolis Airport bathroom; the third from a letter from Senators David Vitter and Jim Bunning on the virtues of abstinence education to the U.S. Finance Committee; and the fourth adopts the form of a patter song on Newt Gingrich’s indecorous ramble through three failed marriages.

This last song fully realizes Hamlin’s satirical look at “Abstinence Education” and the ironies present in political scandal, with a refrain that includes the lines, “There was an old coot and his name was Newt/ He had pretty gray hair a three piece suit/ His moral views were strict and true/ He liked the old and he hated the new. And as to marriage, there’s just one plan/ The sacred union of a woman and a man.”

“I heard Newt Gingrich make the comment about marriage being a sacred union of ‘one woman and one man,’” Hamlin said. “The statement had a sort of poetic ring to it, and of course, I thought it was pretty funny that Gingrich, of all people, was giving this particular sermon. I like writing doggerel verse — and I’ve done it since I was a little kid — so I basically turned Gingrich’s personal biography into a patter-song poem and set it to music.”

The results were brilliantly brought to life by Peck, who abandoned her earlier operatic styling for a stab at musical theatre replete with parody and whimsical turns — including, but certainly not limited to, a cigar, feather boa and bow tie at various stages of the performance. As we ended on the final refrain, it was obvious the program had indeed transitioned from Bach’s ornate cantatas in God’s honor to a satirical take on modern American public life.