Take Pity (from 'Are Women People?'), by Lori Laitman

This week marked the official centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, so it seems only appropriate that we feature music from Lori Laitman’s song cycle Are Women People? on this edition of The Art Song Fix.

The text from the third movement, Take Pity, is excerpted from an 1894 speech delivered by Susan B. Anthony:
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Now, women, if you haven’t any self-respect for yourselves, you should at least take pity on the men associated with you in your good works.

​The singers perform a cappella without the support of piano accompaniment, perhaps a reflection of the lack of support early suffragettes may have felt for their cause.​

Ironically the men sing the first notes of the song but thereafter echo the words uttered by the women, as if they immediately assume they have all of the answers but in reality only repeat the ideas of their female counterparts.  The bass makes one final plea for pity at the end of the song, a humorous take on men finding a way to make women’s suffrage all about them.

You can hear the final movement of Are Women People? on our July 3 Art Song Fix, a setting of the text of the 19th Amendment itself.

​Fourth Coast recorded the full song cycle in studio in January 2020, and we can’t wait to share the record with you upon its official release.

Credit: Elliot Mandel Photography

Author

Bass-baritone David Govertsen joined Fourth Coast Ensemble in 2017.  He has been active as a professional singer and educator for nearly twenty years, portraying a wide variety of opera’s low-voiced heroes, villains, and buffoons.  He discovered Schubert’s magical marriage of text and music as an undergraduate and has been hooked on art song ever since.