Many composers who have set texts to music mouth platitudes about the process of finding music to suit the mood of the text, and then compose music in the same idiom they have used in other works. Irving Fine's setting of six love poems by Ben Jonson, collectively titled The Hour-Glass after the last of these, goes a bit further, actually using many elements of the madrigal style prevalent when these poems were written. These settings are diatonic, written without much melisma, full of witty word-painting, and outwardly communicative. Yet this is definitely Fine's music, and the lyrical sensibility and refinement of these settings are both typical of Fine and crucial to this music's success. The first song showcases Fine's lyricism and wit; its opening line, "O know to end as to begin," recurs with such frequency, and eventually force, that the setting recapitulates the poem:. lines which were earlier set casually acquire force, almost as if the music has convinced itself of the poem's meaning. Fine also draws unusual contrasts between soloists and full chorus here. This technique arises again in the third song, "O do not wanton with those eyes," which alternates between solo and choral textures. The fourth song, "Against Jealousy," contrasts the opening and closing unison condemnations of jealousy with more intricate, convoluted solo and choral material for the middle of the poem, mirroring the poem's argumentative structure. Yet the simpler settings are in some ways more effective. The second song, "Have you seen the white lily grow," and the fifth, "Lament," both reach impressive emotional heights with direct lyricism and effective word-painting (a winding descent for "the fall of the snow" for the former, thin textures for "withered daffodil" in the latter). The cycle comes to a satisfying conclusion with "The Hour-Glass", another of the simpler settings, with luminous harmonies that yet seem a bit unsettled for much of the song. The final words, "no rest," serve as material for the coda, whose final chord barely makes it back to the tonic. Every moment in "The Hour-Glass" seems to bring another imaginative response to the text, and the work as a whole is quite stimulating.

© Andrew Lindemann Malone, Rovi