One Life Stand

Cheryl Frances-Hoad's One Life Stand for Mezzo-Soprano with Piano accompaninment sets a text by Sophie Hannah.

'The idea for One Life Stand originated from adiscussion over lunch in Cambridge with my friend Jennifer Johnston. She was bemoaning the fact that, although she loved to sing Schumann’s Frauen-Liebe und Leben (Women’s Lives and Loves), and was alwaysbeing asked to do so, she did find Chamisso’s words rather outdated and suggested I write an updated version. I jumped at the chance, and by pudding we were already thinking about whose poetry I might set.

A fewweekslater, during a meeting with Chris Gribble, (Chief Executive of Writers’ Centre Norwich) he told us that the crime writer and poet Sophie Hannah had recently moved to Cambridge and had many suitable poems. Itwasn’t long before we all met up for lunch and began discussing the contenders for a series of poems that might portray a modern woman’s life and loves. To begin with I had a list of about twenty five poems that Iwould have liked to set, taken from four of Sophie’s poetry collections (The Hero and the Girl Next Door (1995), Hotels like Houses (1996), First of the Last Chances (2003)and Pessimism for Beginners (2007: all published by Carcanet Press), but the final eight in my view come together to form a narrative that is clear yet open to interpretation, and contains the whole gamut of complexemotions (both serious and humorous) that made the poems such a dream to set to music.

Although the idea for the work originated as a reaction to Chamisso’s poetry, in the course of composing the cycle I found muchinspiration from Schumann’s song cycle, and many of the songs in my work are based very closely on either the harmony and/or the motivic material of what in my view is the “corresponding” song in Frauen-Liebeund Leben.' - Cheryl Frances-Hoad