Text Discussion #11: Reconciliation - Drum Taps

Reconciliation

Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, 
          and ever again, this soil'd world;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin--I draw near,
Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

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Making the Cut

Putting this program together has sometimes been a little difficult (as I outlined an earlier post, my original idea for a layout failed).  My next task was to put the poems and songs I had chosen into an order where they told a story or where there was some semblance of one poem leading to the next.  The sets where the composer had already made that choice for me was easy, although I'm still wondering if the Rorem is a good place to start.  My decision there is more musical than textual, but I haven't quite decided for sure.  What has happened in the first half is that I've tried to take a journey though the different scenes of the war beginning Whitman's prose and mostly first hand accounts, followed by his poetry that is mostly a re-telling of experiences had by the soldiers.  After that, I move to the assassination of Lincoln with a song that incorporates two poems Whitman wrote for that historical moment and one of the "Drum Taps" poems that the composer uses for a different purpose, a poetic funeral march for the dead President.  I'll talk more about that when it comes up in the series on musical discussions.

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Themes and Variations

I hate themed recitals.  To me, the singer is saying that he doesn't feel like the music can stand on its own.  Now, a lot of people don't agree with me, and honestly, that's okay.  Differences like that keep our business vibrant.  After reading that, you might look at the title of this blog and think, "Well, gee, this is a blog about a themed recital."  True, to a point.  It was a challenge I thought a lot about, however, the poetry won out in the end.

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