Art Song
The following titles are representative works from a substantial catalog of art song by Frederick Frahm. For a list of additional works, please contact the composer. Click on a link below to see sample pages or to hear an MP3 clip. To order your own copy of any title, click on the order music link. You will be directed to the composer by e-mail, or to a retailer website for published editions.
Pieta (voice and piano)
An extended solo song in three sections for high voice and piano. The text is from a poem by Eric Pankey entitled 'Detail from The Lamentation Over the Dead Christ' (The Late Romances, 1997). Of this setting, the poet has said "...this is lovely and the mood seems perfect for the poem. I am honored and delighted."
3 Songs (voice & piano)
A short set of art songs on texts by 20th century American Women poets Sara Teasdale, Elinor Wylie, and Adelaide Crapsey. The cycle meditates on love lost and a preoccupation with death. The poems set in the collection include 'After Love' (Teasdale), 'Little Elegy' (Wylie), and 'Shroud Song' (Crapsey). The music is scored for high voice and piano.
Rialto Beach Psalms (voice, cello & piano)
A song cycle based on poems by American Poet Robinson Jeffers which is scored for mezzo soprano , cello, and piano. The settings were premiered by Susan Frahm (for whom the cycle was composed) and Eric Walters, with Frederick Frahm as pianist in 2008 in New Mexico. The poems are drawn from Jeffers works which iclude 'Distant Rainfall' and Life From the Lifeless (Solstice and other poems, 1935, and 'Evening Ebb' (Dear Judas, 1928). The cycle as a whole requires a 12 minute performance time.
How Lovely Are Your Dwellings (voice, oboe & organ)
A larger setting of the New Zealand Prayer Book adaptation of Psalm 84. The music for soprano solo, oboe, and organ, was commissioned as an anniversary gift for a couple celebrating 68 years of marriage. The music is expansive and reminiscent of an English Cathedral anthem. The first performance of this music was given on Maundy Thursday 2011 at St. Luke Lutheran Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
4 Songs (voice & piano)
A collection of songs for tenor solo and piano pondering humanity and mortality. The cycle includes settings of poems by Geoffrey Hill (Assisi Fragments), Witter Bynner (Voices in the staircase), Robinson Jeffers (Life from the Lifeless), and Archibald MacLeish (The Wind and the Sea).