Writing our Songs

Wikipedia defines a folk song as a song that is composed in a simple style that is learned informally by ear. Timbre Trio may be stretching this definition with our program for this concert, but we have chosen to lean in to some of the features we commonly associate with folk songs. The simplicity of the song is often so that the story can be primary. The theme of our program is tied to the story that every song tells. Tammy described in last week’s Musing our special focus on women’s stories. These stories have impacted not only our song selection for this concert but have also inspired us to arrange and compose over half of those songs.

I was excited when Tammy invited me to join this group. Almost immediately I felt drawn to the challenge of writing and arranging songs for us, which I had never even done before. I don’t know why that inspiration came to mind so quickly, but once I opened myself to the possibility, the songs came.

Farewell to Tarwathie is something I remember hearing Judy Collins sing when I was a child, set as a haunting protest against whaling. For my first foray into arranging music, I stuck with the original seafaring version of this song. Yet, Collins’ version is so prominent in my memory, I hear the protest even in my simple arrangement. Sometimes songs come to mean more than they say through our personal history with them. 

I next tried writing some songs with a friend’s lyrics. It felt like the songs were there all the time, just waiting for me to find and refine them. Soon after, a personal difficulty inspired me to write my own lyrics. My song Wrong is about the shifting emotions one experiences during a fragile time, in this case a break-up. This song was always paired in my mind with Dolly Parton’s Light of a Clear Blue Morning, also on our program.

Once I had crossed the hurdle of writing lyrics, I started having other ideas. When I listened to Shakespeare Opera Theatre’s version of Macbeth last July, I began to think about how the three witches are both an integral part of the story and the Greek chorus that’s explaining the story. Each witch had a unique voice but was also inseparable from the whole, just like any vocal trio. I wondered if it was possible to let them tell the whole story. This became my song Three Witches.

My most recent composition for this program is based on a poem by Langston Hughes. Hughes’ poem Tired is such a universal lament that I felt emboldened to take it on. We have been moved by the poem while rehearsing this, and I have come to feel that the important point is really about bringing something to life so the story can be heard again and again.

-Robin