Seymour Barab's "Songs of Perfect Propriety, Volumes I and II": The relationship between Barab's music and words by Dorothy Parker.

Abstract

With Songs of Perfect Propriety, Seymour Barab has offered singers, especially female ones, a chance to express themselves more personally through his music and the words of Dorothy Parker, an opportunity not often given in modern American art song.

Seymour Barab's Songs of Perfect Propriety, Volumes I and II , hold the position of being the first published song cycle which sets various light verses by Dorothy Parker from The Portable Dorothy Parker. Because it was uncustomary for feministic literature to be set to music by male or female composers in the first half of the twentieth century, including the 1950s, Songs of Perfect Propriety, composed in the 1950s, is a significant work for singers of the modern art song repertoire. Barab's decision to set Parker's verse to music was almost unprecedented. He unwittingly set an example by choosing words written by a woman who had been courageously outspoken about many aspects of the female experience, including her own, which were not commonly addressed in public. In doing so, Barab also set an example for composers of the modern age, an example of how to create a balance between music and words. Seymour Barab appreciated the humor with which Parker was able to convey the truth, followed by brilliant punch lines. Barab therefore paralled this creative method of Parker's by using humor, rather than drama, in his settings, through music parodies, cabaret timbres and burlesque imitations. The poetic verses of the eight songs selected for the musical study in this document are not full of complaints about men as much as they are complaining about women: women's vulnerability and the fact that all their life some women wait around for "some damn man".