Come Back to Me

Lyricist. Milton Goldsmith

Publisher. G. Schirmer

Date. 1917

Key/Range. E♭ Major (d♭' -- d♯")

COMMENTARY

Tours set more lyrics by Edward Teschemacher than any other poet during this period. While he could have easily found another text by Teschemacher to go with the first two (and set several lyrics by him during this period), his choice of this poem by Milton Goldsmith suggests that the songs were gathered after they were composed. Unlike the other two songs in this set, this one is about loss of love through a breakup, as the hope of renewing their “troth” indicates. The uneasiness of sleep is illustrated by the chromatic line and dissonant pedal harmonies in the second half of the first section. Tours manages to match the intensity of the outburst “’Tis misery!” by expanding the same musical materials from measures 7 and 8 dynamically and in the accompaniment to fashion them into a musical climax. The versatility of his musical ideas as well as the naturalness of the musical scansion of the lyrics suggest that there was a high degree of compositional planning in these songs.