Classical Event Details

“Music and Words” with David Rockefeller, Kathryn Knight, and Joel Sachs

Bargemusic in NYC and New York metro | Saturday, September 26, 2026 at 2:00 PM EDT

When

Saturday, September 26, 2026 at 2:00 PM EDT

Where

Bargemusic
New York City, New York Metro

Address

1 Water Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201

Music and Words David Rockefeller, Jr., narrator Kathryn Knight, mezzo-soprano Joel Sachs, piano Richard Strauss (1864-1969) Melodrama: Das Schloss am Meere (The Castle by the Sea) (1899) Text: After a poem by Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862); new English rendering by Joel Sachs Franz Liszt (1811-1886 ) Lenore (158, rev. 1860) Ballade (1733), by Gottfried August Bürger (1747-1794) with melodramatic accompaniment by Franz Liszt. Translator unknown. Charles Ives (1974-1952) Autumn (1908); Text: Harmony T. Ives The Housatonic at Stockbridge (Text: Robert Underwood Johnson), 1921, after the orchestra piece of the same name) The New River (1921, after an instrumental piece, 1912); Text by Ives Tom Sails Away (1917 ); Text by Ives Nov. 2, 1920 (1921): Text by Ives Charles Ives: Two movements from Piano sonata No. 2, “Concord, Mass., 1840-1860” Revised edition ca. 1940-47 Preceded by excerpts from Ives’s “Essays before a Sonata” read by David Rockefeller Jr. III The Alcotts (1915) IV Thoreau (1915) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Today’s program, highlighting the interaction between music and the written word, originated in the desire of David and me, college friends, to work together, and gradually expanded to include our English friend Kathryn. Having David read from Ives’s own brilliant essays about his sonata honoring the literary stars of Concord, Massachusetts, seemed like an improvement on the traditional program note, and having him read the texts of a group of Ives’s songs seemed appropriate to Ives’s careful fusions of words and music. It remains to say a word about the centuries-old tradition of “melodrama,” a genre fusing the spoken word with music. The most enduring example is Schoenberg’s masterpiece for actress and ensemble, Pierrot Lunaire, but the idea of fusing spoken poetry with musical accompaniment had originated in the 18 th- century German-speaking world and probably stemmed from operatic recitative. (Actually, reciting the Greek dramas with musical accompaniment goes back at least 3000 years.) The idea of melodrama is unfortunately obscured by the related adjective “melodramatic,” with connotations of cheesy sentimentality. Since Franz Liszt and Richard Strauss were among the finest composers of the late period of melodrama, we chose one by each. They were not peripheral compositions: Strauss built his early reputation on extensive touring that featured his first melodrama, “Enoch Arden,” a huge piece whose text