From the Valley

Lyricist. Elsie Janis

Publisher. Oliver Ditson Company

Date. 1911

Key/Range. D♭ Major (d♭' -- f")

COMMENTARY

The lyric by Elsie Janis, one the finest eccentric comediennes on the Broadway stage during the 1910s, is one of unusual spiritual and poetic depth for a Tours song. The phrase “Valley of Discontent” seems to conflate two significant literary images: the “valley of the shadow of death” from Psalm 23 and the “winter of our discontent” from Shakespeare’s Richard III. There is another historical literary allusion in the line “Gather the flower while you may,” which echoes the first line of Robert Herrick’s “To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time” (“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying”). The form of Tours’ setting is A-B-A’, but the return of the A material is repeated twice, once at the beginning of A’ and once as a bookend codetta. The A section has two six-measure melodic periods, which is uncommon and a welcome change from his standard four-measure phrases. The B section begins with an abrupt modulation to F Major (III) and winds through a more distant C Major (VII), illustrating with its cascades of thirds and blurred harmony the dreamy atmosphere of the poet’s memory, when she “lingered at the stream of bliss.”