So Sweet Is She, 1916. Patty Stair, 1869-1926. Music Division, Library of Congress. Call number: M1590.S
So Sweet Is She was composed in 1916, rather late in Patty Stair's career. Written for four-part men's voices, this piece is somewhat unique for Stair, who was better known for composing women's choral pieces such as Minuet and Little Dutch Lullaby. Stair was active with several women's music organizations in Cleveland, including the Rubenstein Club and the Women's Music Teachers Club.
This madrigal would have been apt for the large number of men's glee clubs gaining popularity at the turn of the twentieth century, especially in collegiate settings. Its often-set text is the closing stanza of The Triumph of Charis, a poem by Benjamin Johnson (1572-1637), an English Renaissance dramatist, poet, actor, and contemporary of William Shakespeare. It is a love song that likens the author's lover to the softness of the lily, the pelt of a beaver, the down of a swan, or the bud of a brier.
Stair sets the text in a chordal style with the melody nearly always in the first tenor voice. It is in three verses—each verse more developed harmonically—and a coda that recalls the final words of each verse: "so white, so soft, so sweet is she." Though it is set with close voicing, Stair avoids any use of "barbershop harmonies," opting instead for sonorities reminiscent of those employed by Johannes Brahms in his part-song settings.