When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd: A Requiem for those we love(An American Requiem)[1] is a 1946 oratorio by composer Paul Hindemith, based on the poem of the same name by Walt Whitman. It is the first musical work to include the entirety of Whitman's 1865 poem.[2] Conductor Robert Shaw and the Robert Shaw Chorale commissioned the work after the 1945 death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It received its world premiere on May 14, 1946, at New York City Center, with the Collegiate Chorale conducted by Shaw and soloists Mona Paulee, contralto, and George Burnson, baritone.[3] Paulee performed the work again with bass-baritone Chester Watson and the CBS Symphony Orchestra for the work's first recorded broadcast on CBS Radio on June 30, 1946.[4]
David Neumeyer and others regard the Lilacs Requiem as Hindemith's "only profoundly American work."[5]Paul Hume said, "I doubt if we shall ever mourn Abraham Lincoln's untimely death more eloquently than in the words of Walt Whitman set to the music of Paul Hindemith; it is a work of genius and the presence of the genius presiding over its performance brought us splendor and profound and moving glory."[6]
The work is scored for mezzo-soprano and baritone soloists, SATB chorus, and full orchestra. After an unnumbered orchestral introduction, the text of the poem is divided into 11 movements:
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd (baritone and chorus)
Arioso. In the swamp (mezzo-soprano)
March. Over the breast of spring
O western orb (baritone and chorus)
Arioso. Sing on, there in the swamp
Song. O how shall I warble
Introduction and Fugue. Lo! body and soul
Sing on! you gray-brown bird
Death Carol. Come, lovely and soothing Death (chorus)
To the tally of my soul
Finale. Passing the visions (mezzo-soprano, baritone, and chorus)
Hindemith was drawn to Whitman's poem through its theme of nobility, fate and death. Written in memory of Abraham Lincoln, Whitman's poem fitted the theme of the country at this time of mourning. Subtitling his work, "An American Requiem",[7]Hindemith broke into the scene of American musical culture which was out of character for the German-based composer.[8] Along with introducing himself to the American soundscape, Hindemith also used his requiem to begin deviating from the Romantic style of music. Rather than composing in dense sonority, he now introduced the new use of polyphony - giving each instrument their own individual and important parts, using dissonance to ensure each part stood out against the others. Tonal functional harmony no longer existed as part of Hindemith's arsenal of compositional procedures.[9] Through all of Hindemith's many works, he had established a sound regarded by critics as "Hindemithian". This piece in particular combined this sound with a surprising reflection of American culture.[10]
Perception
Because Hindemith was German-born, the idea of his composing a work dedicated to an American president troubled a portion of the country. Though Hindemith had become an American citizen, he was not yet regarded as an American composer. His identity as a composer raised many questions, one of the biggest being his decision to translate the poem into German.[11]
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-born American composer active from the 1920s in his native country, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht. With Brecht, he developed productions such as his best-known work, The Threepenny Opera, which included the ballad "Mack the Knife". Weill held the ideal of writing music that served a socially useful purpose, Gebrauchsmusik. He also wrote several works for the concert hall and a number of works on Jewish themes. He became a United States citizen in 1943.
Paul Hindemith was a German and American composer, music theorist, teacher, violist and conductor. He founded the Amar Quartet in 1921, touring extensively in Europe. As a composer, he became a major advocate of the Neue Sachlichkeit style of music in the 1920s, with compositions such as Kammermusik, including works with viola and viola d'amore as solo instruments in a neo-Bachian spirit. Other notable compositions include his song cycle Das Marienleben (1923), Der Schwanendreher for viola and orchestra (1935), the opera Mathis der Maler (1938), the Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber (1943), and the oratorio When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd (1946), a requiem based on Walt Whitman's poem. Hindemith and his wife emigrated to Switzerland and the United States ahead of World War II, after worsening difficulties with the Nazi German regime. In his later years, he conducted and recorded much of his own music.
The War Requiem, Op. 66, is a British choral and orchestral composition by Benjamin Britten, composed mostly in 1961 and completed in January 1962. The War Requiem was performed for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, which was built after the original fourteenth-century structure was destroyed in a World War II bombing raid. The traditional Latin texts are interspersed, in telling juxtaposition, with extra-liturgical poems by Wilfred Owen, written during World War I.
Paul Creston was an Italian American composer of classical music.
Robert Lawson Shaw was an American conductor most famous for his work with his namesake Chorale, with the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. He was known for drawing public attention to choral music through his wide-ranging influence and mentoring of younger conductors, the high standard of his recordings, his support for racial integration in his choruses, and his support for modern music, winning many awards throughout his career.
"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" is a long poem written by American poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892) as an elegy to President Abraham Lincoln. It was written in the summer of 1865 during a period of profound national mourning in the aftermath of the president's assassination on 14 April of that year.
Dona nobis pacem is a cantata written by Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1936 and first performed on 2 October of that year. The work was commissioned to mark the centenary of the Huddersfield Choral Society. Vaughan Williams produced his plea for peace by referring to recent wars during the growing fears of a new one. His texts were taken from the Mass, three poems by Walt Whitman, a political speech, and sections of the Bible. A.V. Butcher has analysed Vaughan Williams' use of the Whitman poems in this composition.
Antonín Dvořák's Requiem in B♭ minor, Op. 89, B. 165, is a funeral Mass scored for soloists, choir and orchestra. It was composed in 1890 and performed for the first time on 9 October 1891, in Birmingham, England, with the composer conducting.
Songfest: A Cycle of American Poems for Six Singers and Orchestra is a 1977 song cycle by Leonard Bernstein. The cycle consists of 12 settings of 13 American poems, performed by six singers in solos, duets, a trio, and three sextets.
The First Symphony of the German composer Karl Amadeus Hartmann was completed in 1955.
Lilacs for voice and orchestra is a musical composition by George T. Walker Jr. (1922–2018) that was awarded the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Music. The work, scored for soprano soloist and orchestra, was the unanimous choice of the Pulitzer prize jury. Walker was the first African-American composer to be awarded the prize.
Curtis Curtis-Smith, better known as C. Curtis-Smith or C.C. Smith, was a modernist American composer and pianist.
Sequel to Drum-Taps: When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd and other poems is a collection of eighteen poems written and published by American poet Walt Whitman in 1865.
Elegiac Ode, Op. 21, is a musical composition by British composer Charles Villiers Stanford (1852–1924) written and first performed in 1884. It is a four-movement work scored for baritone and soprano soloists, chorus and orchestra, Stanford's composition is a setting of Walt Whitman's 1865 elegy, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", mourning the death of American president Abraham Lincoln. According to musicologist Jack Sullivan, Stanford's Elegiac Ode likely had reached a wider audience during Whitman's lifetime than his poems.
Ode to Death, H. 144, Op. 38, is a musical composition for chorus and orchestra written by English composer Gustav Holst (1874–1934) in 1919. It is a setting of a passage from Walt Whitman's 1865 elegy When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, which was written to mourn the death of American president Abraham Lincoln.
Dooryard Bloom is a composition for solo baritone and orchestra by the American composer Jennifer Higdon. The work was commissioned by the Brooklyn Philharmonic in 2004 and was premiered on April 16, 2005, by the baritone Nmon Ford and the Brooklyn Philharmonic under the conductor Michael Christie. The piece is adapted from the poem "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" by the American author Walt Whitman.
Charles Clement Fussell is an American composer and conductor of contemporary classical music. He has composed six symphonies and three operas. His symphony Wilde for solo baritone and orchestra, based on the life of Oscar Wilde and premiered by the Newton Symphony Orchestra and the baritone Sanford Sylvan in 1990, was a finalist for the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Music. He received a citation and award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1992.
Sankt-Bach-Passion is an oratorio composed by Mauricio Kagel in 1985 for the tricentenary of the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach. It follows the model of Bach's Passions, but the topic is not biblical, rather refers to Bach's biography. The text includes documents such as Bach's letters to patrons, and excerpts from contemporary biographies. The work is an extended oratorio for soloists, choir, and orchestra. It was premiered in Berlin in 1985, conducted by the composer, and recorded shortly afterwards by the same performers.
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