The Things Our Fathers Loved - Jan DeGaetani

Jan DeGaetani was someone whose voice I heard periodically through my undergraduate music days. She was featured on several recordings on the required listening lists. What I found so incredible was how lovely her voice was while she was singing all these wacky crazy contemporary pieces. She made several recordings still admired today of contemporary work, including the recording of George Crumb's masterpiece Ancient Voices of Children and Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire.

As I researched a bit more about her, I was surprised to learn that not only was she a Julliard graduate, but her students include some of the most notable voices in music of recent years, including Dawn Upshaw, Renee Fleming, and Karen Holvik.

She passed away back in 1989 from Leukemia at the age of 56, but I find her recordings to be amazingly sensitive and timeless.  This is a recording of the Charles Ives song, "The Things Our Fathers Loved."  The text is as follows:


I think there must be a place in the soul
all made of tunes, of tunes of long ago;
I hear the organ on the Main Street corner,
Aunt Sarah humming Gospels; Summer evenings,
The village cornet band, playing in the square.
The town's Red, White and Blue,
all Red, White and Blue; Now! Hear the words
But they sing in my soul of the things our Fathers loved.


Jan DeGaetani and Gilbert Kalish – The Things Our Fathers Loved