The Sake Of You

Commissioned for the album "In This Short Life" (2025), Jake Landau's "The Sake Of You" recasts an Appalachian folk lyric into a contemporary artsong.

The lyric, collected by Jean Ritchie, features the narrator confronting their decision to leave everything behind "for the sake of you", a lover who would only disappear "like the morning dew".

Featuring entirely new music by Landau for mezzo, drone, and piano, the artsong pairs the folk with classical; the strophic with the progressive; and diverse performance practices all in concentrated service of a singular expression.