“Though every beginner in composition tries his hand at it before anything else, it has always seemed to me that the art song is the most subtle, sophisticated, and difficult of musical genres. Out of all the possible ways of reading and interpreting a poem, the musical setting fixes just one, and it must do so in the most spontaneous and authentic way, without seeming to encroach upon the prerogatives of the poet and the listener. Not only must it seem right, and seem so at once without also seeming coercive and demanding, but it must go beyond this and enhance and elucidate the words — otherwise why bother to put music to them at all? But then, what about the music itself, which has its own logic, its ownproportions, its own kind of coherence? And what about the problem of combining two such uniquely characteristic and individual means of musical expression as voice and piano in such a way that the special personality of each is realized, and even heightened by contrast and association with the other?

“Obviously, my concept of what an art song should be was formed by the achievements of the great German composers of Lieder in the 19th century, so it is not surprising that I should have chosen, for my first songs, composed in 1941, German verses that evoke, in their simplicity, immediacy, and self-contained lyricism, the world of the Lied — poems of the sort that inspired the early Romantic composers, though their author, Rainer Maria Rilke, was a very late Romantic. When Bethany Beardslee asked me to write some songs for her I again decided that what I wanted to write were Lieder, but in my own language, rather than in German. Many months passed before I found the verses that could lead my musical thoughts in the direction that I had decided upon — the English Romantic poets didn't work for me at all in this respect. The Dickinson Songs, commissioned for Bethany Beardslee by the National Endowment for the Arts, were composed in 1977-78 and were first performed by Ms. Beardslee and Ms. Rib at the Fifth Annual Arts Song Festival of the Westminster Choir College in Princeton on June 19, 1978. The two song cycles on this recording are my total output in the genre.”

— George Perle