For low voice with piano accompaniment
Musical Settings of Poems on the Death of Abraham Lincoln
by American Poet Walt Whitman

Each in this set of four songs based on poems by Walt Whitman represent four perspectives of tributes to the assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. The first is short, and the last is a brief elegiac testimony. The second is a poem of moderate length, while the third is an abridged and adapted reduction (made by the composer) of a very long poem of complex imagery.

Although the poet never personally met President Lincoln, he was a great admirer and, as his poems reveal, deeply injured in his soul with news of the assassination.

Whitman wrote the first three poems in close proximity to each other in 1865. The final poem, This Dust Was Once a Man, came in 1871.

I am not sure why I began to set these four poems to music, but it came after my new setting of the sea poems Sea-Fever by John Masefield and The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I had been doing some basic research on them and happened upon some links to other poems and poets until I stumbled upon Hush’d Be the Camps To-day.

All but the third in the set of four I found to be relatively straight-forward. However, When Lilacs Last at the Dooryard Blum’d proved to be a formidable challenge on multiple fronts. First is the extreme length of the poem; then trying to grasp the complex imagery throughout; and then my feeble attempt to abridge and adapt the extensive poem down to a more manageable form.

After examining and finding examples in the efforts made by other composers, I feel my reduction is faithful to the intent of the original, while curtailing my interpretation to the original text as much as possible. What once was nine pages of a standard word processing document and in 16 numbered sections, became just a little more than one page with 9 remaining verses. Poetically, the original poem has 206 lines.

Of special interest to me is the poem’s references to the funeral train that carried Lincoln’s coffin 1,654 miles, passing through seven states for ultimate burial in Springfield, Illinois. The train moved at a respectably slow speed, not exceeding 20mph, to allow people to offer respects to the passing president. References to the train are clear beginning in verse 6, “Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,” and musically is referenced at the very beginning and then throughout as an undertow.

My family’s lore includes stories of one of my great-grandfathers who served in the Civil War for the North. He was too young to fight, so he was assigned to help with train movement for men and supplies in Springfield, Illinois during the war. In part because of his experience and his demeanor, when the funeral train reached its destination in Springfield, he was assigned to guide the mournful tours of the throngs of people in groups of eight passing by the casket of the assassinated President Lincoln, and later to stand over it in the State’s capitol rotunda. The family history also speaks of his assignment to the burial unit of the President.

From what I have been able to ascertain from family documents, the above is true. These stories and my personal admiration of this great president provided the inspiration and motivation to begin the compositional process.

The complete set of four songs totals about 20 minutes for performance time, with the third song taking just over 10 minutes.

In some way, I sometimes think of this set of songs as a triptych, and as such recycle some material from the first section into the last, as part of an arch pattern; with this setting, the fourth song becomes an epilogue.

When Lilacs Last at the Dooryard Blum’d is generally considered one of the poet’s greatest works; perhaps someone might wish to commission me to compose a complete version—with all 16 sections—in the near future. It would be a substantial work, very long by necessity (performance time likely would be close to 90 minutes), and might call for a vocal quartet, chorus, and orchestra. It would be a worthy endeavour.

July 2024
Vanessa McClintock,
Composer

  

Each of the links at the top of this page will take you to a page with links to the full score viewable on screen and downloadable PDFs, and audio recordings of the work.

The full/complete downloadable score includes cover, notes, and narratives for each section/movement.

Parts will be made available upon confirmation of concert programming. 
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