Deborah Mason
debmason1@aol.com
https://www.youtube.com/user/debmason1/videosDeborah Mason
Deborah has written opera, choral, chamber and vocal music. Her opera/cantata “Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock” was selected by New York City Opera for its Opera Reading Program, and its conductor, Robert Bass went on to commission her for a choral work for his virtuoso Collegiate Chorale, which was performed at the Museum of Art and Design in New York City.
Her setting of Alexander Pope’s “mock heroic” epic poem recounts the tale of how a young English Baron seized a lock of hair against the will of a young English lady. With plenty of references to Homer’s epics on the Iliad and Odyssey, and an unfailing sense of irony and wisdom, Pope created a sparkling poem that is both immensely touching and amusing in superbly elegant Heroic Couplets. A literary hit in its time, it speaks to us today of the victimized young woman who ascends to a superior level and overcomes a looming tragedy before her by using elegance, grace and humor.
The Rape of the Lock was produced in a semi-staged production at Roulette in 2016 with the help of several grants. She has since then produced vocal works in choral and chamber forms.
"Odi et Amo: Poems of Catullus" for Baritone and Piano
Year: 2024
Duration (in minutes): 4.5 minutes
Difficulty: Medium (college/community)
Category: solo voice(s) with piano
Instruments: baritone voice
Publisher: Deborah Mason
Score PDF: Odi-et-Amo-Poems-of-Catullus.pdf
Description: The classic "Tormented Lover" poems from 5 B.C.
Come, let us live and love, my Lesbia.
Who cares if old men gossip with delight?
Suns will rise and set, but, when our light goes out,
We will sleep forever.
So, give me a thousand kisses, then two hundred.
Another thousand, another hundred - until we kiss
More often than jealous, evil people curse us -
Uncountable, untouched.
Poor Catullus, no woman was ever loved
The way you loved your Lesbia,
Most faithful, most indulgent,
Most careful to be kind.
Yet she has shunned you and your fancy gifts
That once she willingly enjoyed ...
Don't be a fool and chase what runs away.
Now I will be a real man, as hard as stone.
But you'll be sorry when you're all alone, you bitch!
Who will be kissing you? ...
Whose lips will you nibble? ...
Catullus, get a grip!
I hate and I love,
Why? you ask, I do not know,
but tortured, only feel that it is so.
From Catullus V, VIII, LXXXV and LXXXVII
Roman Poet 84-52 BC
Scenario for Baritone and Mosquito (for Baritone and Piano Trio)
Year: 2023
Duration (in minutes): 10
Difficulty: High (professional)
Category: piano trio (vln, vc, pno), solo voice(s) with chamber ensemble
Instruments: baritone voice, cello, piano, violin
Publisher: debmason1@aol.com
Score PDF: Scenario-for-Baritone-and-Mosquito-Score.pdf
Description: Two poems by D.H. Lawrence, only one interrupts the other. The poet undoubtedly entertained his listeners with reading the elaborate, poetic insults and expletives in "The Mosquito", who is played by the violin.
Aware D.H. Lawrence 1885-1930
Slowly the moon is rising out of the ruddy haze,
Divesting herself of her golden shift, and so
Emerging white and exquisite; and I in amaze
See in the sky before me, a woman I did not know
I loved, but there she goes and her beauty hurts my heart;
I follow her down the night, begging her not to depart.
The Mosquito (excerpts) BY D. H. LAWRENCE
When did you start your tricks
Monsieur?
What do you stand on such high legs for?
You exaltation?
I heard a woman call you the Winged Victory
In sluggish Venice.
You turn your head towards your tail, and smile.
How can you put so much devilry
Into that phantom shred of a frail corpus?
But I know your game now,
streaky sorcerer.
How you stalk and prowl the air
In circles and evasions, enveloping me,
Ghoul on wings
Winged Victory.
It is your high, hateful bugle in my ear.
That sounds so amazingly like a slogan
A yell of triumph as you snatch my scalp.
Why do you do it? Surely it is bad policy.
I behold you stand for a second enspasmed in oblivion,
Obscenely ecstasied
Sucking live blood
My blood.
Such gorging,
Such obscenity of trespass.
You stagger, as well as you may, you winged blood-drop.
You speck! (smashes it)
What a big stain my sucked blood makes
Beside the infinitesimal faint smear of you!
Ars Poetica
Year: 2021
Duration (in minutes): 12
Difficulty: High (professional)
Category: solo voice(s) with piano
Instruments: baritone voice, piano, soprano
Publisher: debmason1@aol.com
Youtube Links: https://www.youtube.com/user/debmason1/videos
Score PDF: Ars-Poetica.pdf
Description: I noticed the famous poem "The Idea of Order at Key West' by Wallace Stevens years ago, and during the pandemic
I went back to it as an expression of the need of the artist to create and the way
that the Arts impact the listeners in new ways that they can now use as invisible guidelines
like latitude and longitude lines to structure their own way forward in life.
However, there are no words in that poem for the singer who so inspires the Poet, and
so after a great search for a poem in a different language so the two poems could be
experienced simultaneously but on different planes, I discovered the poem "Pacaypalla" by Pablo
Neruda which is corresponding on so many levels I could hardly believe it. Both
poets are Pulitzer Prize winners, and both poems are narrated on the shore, speak
of the effect of the Arts on us all, with singing as the metaphor, and refer to the Artist
as creating a new way forward to experience life on a higher plane.
- Deborah Mason November, 2021
Alexander Pope's 'The Rape of the Lock' Opera - Cantata
Year: 2016
Duration (in minutes): 90
Difficulty: High (professional)
Category: opera
Publisher: Deborah Mason
Publisher website: debmason1@aol.com
Youtube Links: https://www.youtube.com/user/debmason1/videos
Description: Semi-staged Opera-Cantata for SSAATTBB and standard orchestra. As part of New York City Opera's New Opera Readings, it garnered notice from the New York Times. Its conductor, Robert Bass of the Collegiate Chorale commissioned a choral piece directly afterwards, and the opera was produced by a joint production at Roulette, funded by private grants and donations. A shorter version is in progress, with chamber orchestra.
Soprano solo from "The Rape of the Lock"
Year: 2016
Duration (in minutes): 8.5 minutes
Difficulty: High (professional)
Category: solo voice(s) with piano
Instruments: soprano
Publisher: Deborah Mason
Youtube Links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyQMauHuWTI
Score PDF: Eloisa.pdf
Description: Pope's poem, "Eloisa to Abelard" was famous in its day, depicting a well-known tragic love story. Eloisa, violently separated from her husband by her disapproving family has become a nun, but receives a letter from him and is tormented by both love, desire and religious anguish.
Fantasia After Alberto Ginastera
Year: 2014
Duration (in minutes): 12
Difficulty: High (professional)
Category: solo string with piano
Instruments: contrabass, piano
Publisher: debmason1@aol.com
Youtube Links: https://www.youtube.com/user/debmason1/videos
Score PDF: Ginastera-2014.pdf
Description: Written for my husband, Stephen Sas, Doublebassist after hearing him play the haunting and beautiful theme by Ginastera in "Variacciones Concertantes".
"Whitman Interlude: A Noiseless, Patient Spider"
Year: 2009
Duration (in minutes): 6 minutes
Difficulty: High (professional)
Category: choral, solo voice(s) a cappella
Publisher: Deborah Mason
Youtube Links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyfWUyiZg5Y
Score PDF: Whitman-Interlude.pdf
Description: A NOISELESS, patient spider,
I mark'd, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark'd how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them-ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, -seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form'd -till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.
"A Strange Courage"
Year: 2003
Duration (in minutes): 9.5 minutes
Difficulty: High (professional)
Category: choral
Publisher: Deborah Mason
Youtube Links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E3ydzSpeXs
Score PDF: Strange-Courage.pdf
Description: SSAATTBB and Piano
Text : "NUANCES OF A THEME BY WILLIAMS"
by Wallace Stevens
expanding on four lines by William Carlos Williams
by pemission of Alfred A. Knopf, publisher
It’s a strange courage
you give me, ancient star:
Shine alone in the sunrise
toward which you lend no part!
I
Shine alone, shine nakedly, shine like bronze,
that reflects neither my face nor any inner part
of my being, shine like fire, that mirrors nothing.
II
Lend no part to any humanity that suffuses
you in its own light.
Be not chimera of morning,
Half-man, half-star.
Be not an intelligence,
Like a widow’s bird
Or an old horse.
Three Poems by D.H. Lawrence for Soprano and Piano
Year: 2000
Duration (in minutes): 10 minutes
Difficulty: Medium (college/community)
Category: solo voice(s) with piano
Instruments: piano, soprano
Publisher: Deborah Mason
Score PDF: Three-Poems-by-D.H.-Lawrence.pdf
Description: "Running Barefoot"
When the white feet of the baby beat accross the grass
The little white feet nod like white flowers in the wind,
They poise, and run like puffs of wind that pass
Over water where the weeds are thinned.
And the sight of their white playing in the grass
Is winsome as a robin's song, so fluttering;
Or like two butterflies that settle on a glass
Cup for a moment, soft little wing-beats uttering.
And I wish that the baby would tack across here to me
Like a wind-shadow running on a pond, so she could stand
With two little bare white feet upon my knee
And I could feel her feet in either hand
Cool as syringa buds in morning hours,
Or firm and silken as young peony flowers.
"Silence"
Since I lost you, I am silence-haunted;
Sounds wave their little wings
A moment, then in weariness settle
on the flood that soundless swings.
Whether the people in the street
Like pattering ripples go by,
Or whether the theatre sighs and sighs
With a loud hoarse sigh:
Or the wind shakes a ravel of light
Over the dead-black river,
Or last night's echoings
Make the daybreak shiver:
I feel the silence waiting
To sip them all up again,
In its last completeness drinking
Down the noise of men.
"Moonrise"
And who has seen the moon, who has not seen
Her rise from out the chamber of the deep,
Flushed and grand and naked, as from the chamber
Of finished bridegroom, seen her rise and throw
Confession of delight upon the wave,
Littering the waves with her own superscription
Of bliss, till all her lambent beauty shakes towards us
Spread out and known at last, and we are sure
That beauty is a thing beyond the grave,
That perfect bright experience never falls
To nothingness, and time will dim the moon
Sooner than our full consummation here
In this odd life will tarnish or pass away.
An exciting type of event in the Art Song universe is emerging and started right here in Brooklyn!
Come and vote for your favorite! (We are Team #14 – hint hint hint)
The Sparks & Wiry Cries songSLAM is a unique and energizing community event for composer/performer teams to premiere new art songs and compete for cash prizes. Fashioned after poetry slams and storytelling events, teams of composers and performers compete for $2,000 in audience-awarded cash prizes with new art song premieres.
On February 7th, each team will present a new song of no more than 5 minutes for voice and piano, in any language, for the LIVE voting audience, who—in the poetry slam tradition—will then vote on their favorite and award $2,000 in prize money as follows:
$1,000 for first place
$600 for second place
$400 for third place
The virtual component of the NYC songSLAM – a 50/50 fundraiser – will also open on February 7th at 10pm ET and will remain open through February 17th, 5.00pm ET. As in the last three years, there will be a “text-to-donate” function on the Sparks & Wiry Cries website via Give Lively for as little as $1. Each team will have a unique text code linked to their account. The funds that each team raises during the virtual event will be split 50/50 with the respective team members and Sparks & Wiry Cries, who will use their portion to reinvest into larger commissions, future competitions, and new art song initiatives. On February 17th, we will announce total funds raised, along with our prize winner for the 2025 songSLAM commission prize, on our website and social media platforms.
Outside Link for entire post: https://www.sparksandwirycries.org/songslam-events/2025/2/7/songslam-nyc
Featured Image: 
Her setting of Alexander Pope’s “mock heroic” epic poem recounts the tale of how a young English Baron seized a lock of hair against the will of a young English lady. With plenty of references to Homer’s epics on the Iliad and Odyssey, and an unfailing sense of irony and wisdom, Pope created a sparkling poem that is both immensely touching and amusing in superbly elegant Heroic Couplets. A literary hit in its time, it speaks to us today of the victimized young woman who ascends to a superior level and overcomes a looming tragedy before her by using elegance, grace and humor.
The Rape of the Lock was produced in a semi-staged production at Roulette in 2016 with the help of several grants. She has since then produced vocal works in choral and chamber forms.
"Odi et Amo: Poems of Catullus" for Baritone and Piano
Year: 2024
Duration (in minutes): 4.5 minutes
Difficulty: Medium (college/community)
Category: solo voice(s) with piano
Instruments: baritone voice
Publisher: Deborah Mason
Score PDF: Odi-et-Amo-Poems-of-Catullus.pdf
Description: The classic "Tormented Lover" poems from 5 B.C.
Come, let us live and love, my Lesbia.
Who cares if old men gossip with delight?
Suns will rise and set, but, when our light goes out,
We will sleep forever.
So, give me a thousand kisses, then two hundred.
Another thousand, another hundred - until we kiss
More often than jealous, evil people curse us -
Uncountable, untouched.
Poor Catullus, no woman was ever loved
The way you loved your Lesbia,
Most faithful, most indulgent,
Most careful to be kind.
Yet she has shunned you and your fancy gifts
That once she willingly enjoyed ...
Don't be a fool and chase what runs away.
Now I will be a real man, as hard as stone.
But you'll be sorry when you're all alone, you bitch!
Who will be kissing you? ...
Whose lips will you nibble? ...
Catullus, get a grip!
I hate and I love,
Why? you ask, I do not know,
but tortured, only feel that it is so.
From Catullus V, VIII, LXXXV and LXXXVII
Roman Poet 84-52 BC
Scenario for Baritone and Mosquito (for Baritone and Piano Trio)
Year: 2023
Duration (in minutes): 10
Difficulty: High (professional)
Category: piano trio (vln, vc, pno), solo voice(s) with chamber ensemble
Instruments: baritone voice, cello, piano, violin
Publisher: debmason1@aol.com
Score PDF: Scenario-for-Baritone-and-Mosquito-Score.pdf
Description: Two poems by D.H. Lawrence, only one interrupts the other. The poet undoubtedly entertained his listeners with reading the elaborate, poetic insults and expletives in "The Mosquito", who is played by the violin.
Aware D.H. Lawrence 1885-1930
Slowly the moon is rising out of the ruddy haze,
Divesting herself of her golden shift, and so
Emerging white and exquisite; and I in amaze
See in the sky before me, a woman I did not know
I loved, but there she goes and her beauty hurts my heart;
I follow her down the night, begging her not to depart.
The Mosquito (excerpts) BY D. H. LAWRENCE
When did you start your tricks
Monsieur?
What do you stand on such high legs for?
You exaltation?
I heard a woman call you the Winged Victory
In sluggish Venice.
You turn your head towards your tail, and smile.
How can you put so much devilry
Into that phantom shred of a frail corpus?
But I know your game now,
streaky sorcerer.
How you stalk and prowl the air
In circles and evasions, enveloping me,
Ghoul on wings
Winged Victory.
It is your high, hateful bugle in my ear.
That sounds so amazingly like a slogan
A yell of triumph as you snatch my scalp.
Why do you do it? Surely it is bad policy.
I behold you stand for a second enspasmed in oblivion,
Obscenely ecstasied
Sucking live blood
My blood.
Such gorging,
Such obscenity of trespass.
You stagger, as well as you may, you winged blood-drop.
You speck! (smashes it)
What a big stain my sucked blood makes
Beside the infinitesimal faint smear of you!
Ars Poetica
Year: 2021
Duration (in minutes): 12
Difficulty: High (professional)
Category: solo voice(s) with piano
Instruments: baritone voice, piano, soprano
Publisher: debmason1@aol.com
Youtube Links: https://www.youtube.com/user/debmason1/videos
Score PDF: Ars-Poetica.pdf
Description: I noticed the famous poem "The Idea of Order at Key West' by Wallace Stevens years ago, and during the pandemic
I went back to it as an expression of the need of the artist to create and the way
that the Arts impact the listeners in new ways that they can now use as invisible guidelines
like latitude and longitude lines to structure their own way forward in life.
However, there are no words in that poem for the singer who so inspires the Poet, and
so after a great search for a poem in a different language so the two poems could be
experienced simultaneously but on different planes, I discovered the poem "Pacaypalla" by Pablo
Neruda which is corresponding on so many levels I could hardly believe it. Both
poets are Pulitzer Prize winners, and both poems are narrated on the shore, speak
of the effect of the Arts on us all, with singing as the metaphor, and refer to the Artist
as creating a new way forward to experience life on a higher plane.
- Deborah Mason November, 2021
Alexander Pope's 'The Rape of the Lock' Opera - Cantata
Year: 2016
Duration (in minutes): 90
Difficulty: High (professional)
Category: opera
Publisher: Deborah Mason
Publisher website: debmason1@aol.com
Youtube Links: https://www.youtube.com/user/debmason1/videos
Description: Semi-staged Opera-Cantata for SSAATTBB and standard orchestra. As part of New York City Opera's New Opera Readings, it garnered notice from the New York Times. Its conductor, Robert Bass of the Collegiate Chorale commissioned a choral piece directly afterwards, and the opera was produced by a joint production at Roulette, funded by private grants and donations. A shorter version is in progress, with chamber orchestra.
Soprano solo from "The Rape of the Lock"
Year: 2016
Duration (in minutes): 8.5 minutes
Difficulty: High (professional)
Category: solo voice(s) with piano
Instruments: soprano
Publisher: Deborah Mason
Youtube Links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyQMauHuWTI
Score PDF: Eloisa.pdf
Description: Pope's poem, "Eloisa to Abelard" was famous in its day, depicting a well-known tragic love story. Eloisa, violently separated from her husband by her disapproving family has become a nun, but receives a letter from him and is tormented by both love, desire and religious anguish.
Fantasia After Alberto Ginastera
Year: 2014
Duration (in minutes): 12
Difficulty: High (professional)
Category: solo string with piano
Instruments: contrabass, piano
Publisher: debmason1@aol.com
Youtube Links: https://www.youtube.com/user/debmason1/videos
Score PDF: Ginastera-2014.pdf
Description: Written for my husband, Stephen Sas, Doublebassist after hearing him play the haunting and beautiful theme by Ginastera in "Variacciones Concertantes".
"Whitman Interlude: A Noiseless, Patient Spider"
Year: 2009
Duration (in minutes): 6 minutes
Difficulty: High (professional)
Category: choral, solo voice(s) a cappella
Publisher: Deborah Mason
Youtube Links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyfWUyiZg5Y
Score PDF: Whitman-Interlude.pdf
Description: A NOISELESS, patient spider,
I mark'd, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark'd how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them-ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, -seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form'd -till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.
"A Strange Courage"
Year: 2003
Duration (in minutes): 9.5 minutes
Difficulty: High (professional)
Category: choral
Publisher: Deborah Mason
Youtube Links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E3ydzSpeXs
Score PDF: Strange-Courage.pdf
Description: SSAATTBB and Piano
Text : "NUANCES OF A THEME BY WILLIAMS"
by Wallace Stevens
expanding on four lines by William Carlos Williams
by pemission of Alfred A. Knopf, publisher
It’s a strange courage
you give me, ancient star:
Shine alone in the sunrise
toward which you lend no part!
I
Shine alone, shine nakedly, shine like bronze,
that reflects neither my face nor any inner part
of my being, shine like fire, that mirrors nothing.
II
Lend no part to any humanity that suffuses
you in its own light.
Be not chimera of morning,
Half-man, half-star.
Be not an intelligence,
Like a widow’s bird
Or an old horse.
Three Poems by D.H. Lawrence for Soprano and Piano
Year: 2000
Duration (in minutes): 10 minutes
Difficulty: Medium (college/community)
Category: solo voice(s) with piano
Instruments: piano, soprano
Publisher: Deborah Mason
Score PDF: Three-Poems-by-D.H.-Lawrence.pdf
Description: "Running Barefoot"
When the white feet of the baby beat accross the grass
The little white feet nod like white flowers in the wind,
They poise, and run like puffs of wind that pass
Over water where the weeds are thinned.
And the sight of their white playing in the grass
Is winsome as a robin's song, so fluttering;
Or like two butterflies that settle on a glass
Cup for a moment, soft little wing-beats uttering.
And I wish that the baby would tack across here to me
Like a wind-shadow running on a pond, so she could stand
With two little bare white feet upon my knee
And I could feel her feet in either hand
Cool as syringa buds in morning hours,
Or firm and silken as young peony flowers.
"Silence"
Since I lost you, I am silence-haunted;
Sounds wave their little wings
A moment, then in weariness settle
on the flood that soundless swings.
Whether the people in the street
Like pattering ripples go by,
Or whether the theatre sighs and sighs
With a loud hoarse sigh:
Or the wind shakes a ravel of light
Over the dead-black river,
Or last night's echoings
Make the daybreak shiver:
I feel the silence waiting
To sip them all up again,
In its last completeness drinking
Down the noise of men.
"Moonrise"
And who has seen the moon, who has not seen
Her rise from out the chamber of the deep,
Flushed and grand and naked, as from the chamber
Of finished bridegroom, seen her rise and throw
Confession of delight upon the wave,
Littering the waves with her own superscription
Of bliss, till all her lambent beauty shakes towards us
Spread out and known at last, and we are sure
That beauty is a thing beyond the grave,
That perfect bright experience never falls
To nothingness, and time will dim the moon
Sooner than our full consummation here
In this odd life will tarnish or pass away.
Post Content:
An exciting type of event in the Art Song universe is emerging and started right here in Brooklyn!
Come and vote for your favorite! (We are Team #14 – hint hint hint)
The Sparks & Wiry Cries songSLAM is a unique and energizing community event for composer/performer teams to premiere new art songs and compete for cash prizes. Fashioned after poetry slams and storytelling events, teams of composers and performers compete for $2,000 in audience-awarded cash prizes with new art song premieres.
On February 7th, each team will present a new song of no more than 5 minutes for voice and piano, in any language, for the LIVE voting audience, who—in the poetry slam tradition—will then vote on their favorite and award $2,000 in prize money as follows:
$1,000 for first place
$600 for second place
$400 for third place
The virtual component of the NYC songSLAM – a 50/50 fundraiser – will also open on February 7th at 10pm ET and will remain open through February 17th, 5.00pm ET. As in the last three years, there will be a “text-to-donate” function on the Sparks & Wiry Cries website via Give Lively for as little as $1. Each team will have a unique text code linked to their account. The funds that each team raises during the virtual event will be split 50/50 with the respective team members and Sparks & Wiry Cries, who will use their portion to reinvest into larger commissions, future competitions, and new art song initiatives. On February 17th, we will announce total funds raised, along with our prize winner for the 2025 songSLAM commission prize, on our website and social media platforms.
Outside Link for entire post: https://www.sparksandwirycries.org/songslam-events/2025/2/7/songslam-nyc
Featured Image: