Counterpoint - Legacy Live

The Legacy Live CD is a retrospective of some of the music Robert De Cormier has either composed or arranged over six decades. 'Sing Everyone, Sing Me' was commissioned by the South Burlington Chorus and has a text written by Louise Dobbs, De Cormier's wife. A short work, 'All the Pogroms All the Wars' is set to the text of a poem by De Cormier's father-in-law, John M. Dobbs. 'Four Sonnets to Orpheus' are settings of the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. For the Legacy concerts and the Legacy Live CD De Cormier invited nine instrumentalists to participate, most of whom he has worked with when conducting the Vermont Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. He extended a special invitation to his friend and erstwhile student, banjo player Eric Weissberg, best known to most audiences for 'Dueling Banjos' from the film 'Deliverance'. Eric was a student of De Cormier's in the 7th grade and De Cormier says that even at age 12 everything he touched turned to music. 'Legacy', for chorus and orchestra and commissioned by the New York Choral Society, premiered at Carnegie Hall in 1981. De Cormier chose four of John Dobbs's poems for this work which he dedicated to the memory of his son Christopher who died in 1977 shortly after his 23rd birthday. A recurring theme in the final movement matches his initials, C-D-E-C. The key of each movement reiterates this concept: 'Reminder' in C, 'The Formula' in D minor, 'Harlequinade - Act lll' in E minor and 'Legacy', again in C. Dobbs wrote the poem 'Legacy' about his own mortality but could just as well have written it for his grandson. Also on the recording are eight of De Cormier's favorites out of the hundreds of folksong arrangments he has made in his career.