By Kayla Capone ’17, staff writer
Performing for two hours straight is no easy feat.
Dr. Rebecca Lister, Associate Professor of Music and Dr. Eric Fung, Associate Professor of Music, know this first-hand. The pair performed a recital of 30 songs composed by Professor Emeritus of Music Dr. Scott Eggert in late September.
Eggert retired from LVC in 2013. He has spent much of his spare time since then composing new music. “Peacock Pie” is a song cycle set from the book of poems, “Peacock Pie” written by Walter de la Mare. Eggert began his composition when he was getting his doctorate in 1982 but did not finish until recently.
“This is exceptional because there was this long, long break,” Eggert said. “I got to eight [songs] before the semester ended and also before the summer that we needed to move here for my new job at LVC. I stopped then at that point. And then, I can’t exactly say why, but I didn’t go back to it.”
As a new professor at LVC, the demands were intense. Eggert had limited time for his own writing. He did not write the final 21 songs until a few years into his recent retirement.
“I did write a big piece of music every summer for the 30 years I taught here,” Eggert said. “I don’t think I ever missed one. Not even one year. I only wrote during the summers, in other words, about three months of writing time and maybe I always did have it in my mind that “Peacock Pie” would take longer and be bigger than that.”
And it was big. The recital was two hours long and the pieces were each unique, intricate, challenging and beautiful. Dr. Lister memorized the entire work.
“I spent a lot of time over the summer practicing them,” Lister said. “I would say probably an hour a day. That was something I have never done in my career. I have never sung for two straight hours of anything. That was a huge milestone for me because I’ve never done anything like that. Not just vocally, but focus-wise. That’s a long time to stay focused on just one thing.”
Fung faced his own challenges with the piece.
“We received the music in March or April,” Fung said. “During the semester it was difficult for me to learn this new set of pieces. I waited until summer, and it so happened that I had a last minute invitation from Spain to play a recital in July, so I was panicking because I knew I had this set of music to learn, and I had to pick out a recital program. The day after I played my recital in Spain I went to a pianist’s house and just hid there and practiced all day and got to really look at the pieces.”
Eggert could not have been more pleased with the performance of his work.
“It seemed to me that it just came together,” Eggert said. “Rebecca was just at her best. She was both singing beautifully and so persuasively communicating the text that I felt an intensity of people around me. People seemed really focused on what was going on. It was so vibrantly coming to life. A very rich thing, really, to hear performers of that caliber play your music and bring it to life that way. It’s just great.”
The performance of the pieces was moving and evoked emotion in the attendees, including former LVC President Stephen MacDonald and former music department chair Dr. Mark Mecham. It resulted in a long standing ovation from all audience members.
Lister noted the difficulty of the music and accomplishing something she didn’t think she could do.
“When I do music like this, this, I know, is hard, and I, in my entire career, I’ve never been interested in doing what’s easy,” Lister said. “But music that is hard and that is intricate like this, but that’s still beautiful and lyrical, I want to do it because it’s beautiful and hard. And that’s what Scott’s music is. It is incredibly complex but it is still lovely and full of beautiful harmonies, just lovely word painting in the accompaniment. I can feel proud of that. Together, we did that.”
And it was an accomplished feat with a lovely result.