Sidney Homer

I knew next to nothing about Sidney Homer before I read around a bit. He was a contemporary of Charles Ives, more or less. But unlike Ives he made his career as a musician: as a professor at the New England Conservatory and as a composer, mostly of songs. His compositions were popularly successful in an era when sheet music purchases were an index of popularity and people still entertained themselves by making music in their parlors.

Wikipedia doesn’t carry much information beyond this wonderful picture. There’s more about him at this PBS site. He was Samuel Barber’s uncle, and the kinship shows in Barber’s songs, I think. Homer was married to the Philadelphia contralto, Louise Beatty, a Metropolitan Opera star for many years during the company’s golden age. Beatty recorded Homer’s “Requiem,” in 1912. You can hear just a fragment here. In the 1950s, when I was entering the Texas Interscholastic League singing competitions, this song was a staple, and Homer’s reputation as a composer remained sturdy. That changed over the next few decades, and Homer is all but forgotten now. Baritone Jeffrey Snider, chair of the vocal studies program at the University of North Texas, performs a number of Homer songs and at one time had some on his website. I wish him success in reviving interest in Homer.

I thought I remembered that John Charles Thomas had recorded Homer’s “Requiem” but failed to find it at YouTube. I had decided that my memory must have been faulty or that nobody had yet posted the song, when my son, Julian, sent me a link to this Thomas performance of “Under the Wide Starry Sky.” It would be interesting to know if Homer did the orchestration and choral background—it’s a little cheesy but somehow right, as my son said when he sent me the link. I think I still like the song better with voice and piano, but there’s no denying the authenticity of Thomas’s performance. This was his kind of song.