premiered by the Choral Arts Society of Washington, May 16th, 8 PM, Kennedy Center, Washington, DC

  read 5/22/03 Washington Times review of premier performance

SUCH WAS THE WAR

choral symphony

for Baritone, Chorus, and Orchestra

based on the poetry, prose, and correspondence of
WALT WHITMAN

PROGRAM NOTES
TEXTS

In the summer of 2001, I was delighted and honored when Norman Scribner asked me to compose a new work for baritone solo, chorus and orchestra to be premiered by the Choral Arts Society in May of 2003.  After considering a variety of poets and writers (primarily American Transcendentalists and writers of English mystical poetry), I chose to design a text around the works of Walt Whitman.

As I read about Whitman and explored his many writings—the poetry of Leaves of Grass, the prose of Specimen Days, Democratic Vistas and other essays, and the extensive trove of correspondence that has been saved and catalogued—a compelling story emerged of Whitman’s Civil War years, when he worked as a volunteer nurse in the Union Army, both in hospital and on the battlefield.  After dog-earing literally hundreds of pages of text—eye-witness journal accounts of pitched battles, affectionate letters to family and friends and to wounded soldiers he had nursed to health, poems of electric love and chaotic war—I began the task of fine-tuning a collection of these writings that, when braided together, would present a deeply human portrait of this larger-than-life philosopher/poet. Such Was The War celebrates Whitman the man—the expansive poet, the tireless nurse, the ardent suitor—through his own words.

Central to Whitman’s experience of the Civil War was his relationship with the young wounded soldiers, his “dear, darling comrades,” from whom he absorbed as much attention and affection as he himself radiated to them.  In addition to dressing wounds, assisting in surgeries, writing letters home for the soldiers and burying the dead, Walt (as he insisted everyone call him) appeared daily in the hospital as an ebullient presence, striding down the aisles of the wards, handing out to the wounded soldiers tobacco, jellies and jams, sweets and other treats paid for out of his own meager funds or from money he had raised specifically for the young men: “The doctors tell me I provide the patients with a medicine which all their drugs and bottles and powders are helpless to yield,” he wrote.  By the end of the Civil War, Whitman and his medicine of loving companionship had tended to the needs of several hundred thousand wounded soldiers from both the North and the South.

While I have taken the liberty, for compositional purposes, of “editing out” excessive wordiness in Whitman’s prose and letters, the texts of his poetry remain pure and are taken from the so-called Deathbed edition of Leaves of Grass (1891-92).

Such Was The War is presented in three movements.  Following a brief prologue, Movement I marches headlong into battle.  Movement II finds Whitman in the hospitals, among “these ranks of sick and dying young men.”  A disturbing midnight dream in  Movement III recounts the aftermath of battle on a moonlit field, “where we dig the trenches and gather the heaps.”  Throughout the 50-minute piece, Walt’s brave young soldiers—some helpless, some hale—are never far from his thoughts and heart.

A note of thanks…

Many generous people assisted and supported this project as it developed over the past year.  Among them I especially thank: writers and educators Beth Hochholzer, Marty Galvin, Barbara Ganley, and Prof. Tom Reed, along with William Roper, composer James Romig, Gale Siegfried and Elizabeth Siegfried for their insightful comments and editing skills that helped fashion the final collection of texts; baritone soloist David Arnold, who sings this music with expressive grace and consummate artistry, as though he has known it all his life; and Norman Scribner, whose intelligence, humanity, insight, and passion for art and music are a gift to us all.  Finally, I thank Elizabeth Siegfried, herself an artist, whose twice daily calls from Toronto served as welcome ballast on the frequently stormy seas of composition.

When your orchestra and chorus performs Such Was The War . . .
     A $50 donation to Seeds of Peace, a non-profit, non-political organization that helps teenagers from regions of conflict learn the skills of making peace, will be made in your orchestra's name for each performance given for which I receive a royalty from A.S.C.A.P. (the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers).  To ensure that A.S.C.A.P. has a record of your performance(s), please return to my website and fill out the online Performance Notification form linked to my home page (this notification costs you nothing).

Instrumentation:
3.3.3.3/4.3.3.1/timp+3/3.hndbl.rngrs/hrp/bar.solo.SATB/strings

Also available in piano reduction (contact James Grant).

SUCH WAS THE WAR
texts
based on the writings of
WALT WHITMAN

— I —

SOLO

I cannot give up my hospitals.  I never before had my feelings so absorbed, to the very roots, as by these huge swarms of wounded, sick, dying boys—I get very much attached, and many have come to depend on seeing me, and having me sit a few minutes, as if for their lives.

— To his brother Jeff—Washington, March 6, 1863

O the sad scenes I witness—scenes of death, anguish, the fevers, amputations, friendlessness, of hungering and thirsting young hearts, for some loving presence.  I confess to you, I find myself in my element among these scenes—

— To Hugo Fritsch—Washington, October 8, 1863

The doctors tell me I supply the patients with a medicine which all their drugs & bottles & powders are helpless to yield.

— To James Redpath (?)—Washington, August 6, 1863

These thousands, tens and twenties of thousands of American young men, open a new world, giving me closer insights, exploring deeper mines, showing our humanity.

— To Nathaniel Bloom and John F. S. Gray—Washington, March 19 and 20, 1863

O what a sweet love — My brave young American soldiers, so faint and lonesome.

—To James Redpath (?) —Washington, August 6, 1863

Can you wonder at my getting so attached to such men, with such love, especially when they show it to me—some of them on their dying beds, in the very hour of death?

— To his mother—Washington, September 15, 1863

CHORUS

— Look Down Fair Moon

SOLO

It was largely in the woods.  At times the moon shining out full and clear, all Nature so calm in itself, early summer grass so rich, [and] foliage of the trees—yet there the battle raging, many good fellows lying helpless, amid the rattle of muskets and crash of cannon, the red life-blood oozing out from heads or trunks or limbs upon that green and dew-cool grass.

— from “A Night Battle, Over A Week Since,” from Specimen Days

CHORUS

— stanza 1, Beat! Beat! Drums!

SOLO

Patches of the woods take fire, several wounded, unable to move, are consumed—large spaces are swept over, burning the dead… the immense roar—the light nearly bright enough for each side to see the other—the crashing, tramping of men—the yelling—

— from “A Night Battle, Over A Week Since,” from Specimen Days

CHORUS

— stanza 2, Beat! Beat! Drums!

SOLO

—hand to hand conflicts, each side stands up to it, brave, determin’d as demons, they often charge upon us— and still the woods on fire—too many, unable to move, are burn’d to death.

— from “A Night Battle, Over A Week Since,” from Specimen Days

CHORUS

— stanza 3, Beat! Beat! Drums!

SOLO

Then the camps of the wounded—O heavens, what scene is this? —the odor of blood, mixed with the fresh scent of the night – that slaughter-house! Some have their legs blown off — horrid wounds in the face or head, all mutilated, sickening, torn, gouged out—some mere boys— Such is the camp of the wounded, while over all the clear, large moon comes out at times softly, quietly shining.  

— from “A Night Battle, Over A Week Since,” from Specimen Days

CHORUS

— II —

SOLO

I find the best expression of American character here in these ranks of sick and dying young men. I find the masses fully justified by closest contact, never vulgar, ever calm — responding electric and without fail to affection.

— To Ralph Waldo Emerson—Washington, January 17, 1863

I am sitting by the side of a soldier I do not expect to last many hours… flat on his back, hands clasp’d across his breast, dozing, breathing hard, every breath a spasm—it looks so cruel.  A noble youngster, past all hope.

— To his mother—Washington, July 28, 1863

CHORUS

— from To You

SOLO

Tom, I thought I would write you a few words, hoping they might reach you. Dear comrade, you must not forget me, for I never shall you.  My love you have in life or death forever… my soul could never be entirely happy, even in the world to come, without you, dear comrade.  It is the wish of my heart to have your friendship, and also that if you should come safe out of this war, we should come together and be true comrades, never separated while life lasts—if it is God’s will, I hope we shall yet meet— if [it] is destined that we shall not, you have my love none the less, whatever should keep you from me, no matter how many years.  God bless you, Tom, and preserve you through the perils of the fight.

— To Thomas P. Sawyer, a soldier—Washington, April 21, 1863

CHORUS

— O you whom I often and silently come

SOLO

Poor boys, you have no idea how they cling to one, and how strong the tie that forms between us.

— To his brother Jeff—Washington, March 18, 1863

Lewy, I was very glad to get your letter of the 5^th—I want you to tell Oscar Cunningham in your ward that I sent him my love & he must keep up good courage while confined there with his wound.  Lewy, I want you to give my love to Charley Cate & all the boys in Ward K…. [Lewy] go in Ward B and tell a young cavalry man, his first name is Edwin, wounded in the right arm, that I sent him my love, & on the opposite side a young man named Charley wounded in the left hand, & Jennings, & also a young man I love that lays by the door above Jennings, that I sent them all my love.

Lewy, every sick & wounded soldier is dear to me as a son or brother, every man that wears the uniform & sticks to it like a man, is to me a dear comrade.

— To Lewis K. Brown, a soldier—Brooklyn, November 8 and 9, 1863

I feel so engrossed with my soldiers.

— To his brother Jeff—Washington, March 18 1863

CHORUS

COME closer to me, 
Push close my lovers and take the best I possess, 
Yield closer and closer and give me the best you possess. 

— from 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass

SOLO

In the hospitals among these American young men, I could not describe what mutual attachments & how passing deep & tender these boys—some have died, but the love for them lives as long as I draw breath—those soldiers know how to love too when once they have the right person & the right love offered them.  It is wonderful.

— To Abby M. Price—Washington, October 11-15, 1863

— III—

SOLO

And so goodbye to the war. Future years will never know the seething hell, the black infernal background on countless minor scenes and interiors of the war; it is best they should not.   I have at night watch’d by the side of a sick man, one who could not live many hours.  I have seen his eyes flash and burn as he raised himself and recurr’s to the cruelties on his surrender’d brother, and mutilations of the corpse afterward. Such was the war.  It was not a quadrille in a ball-room.

— from “The Real War Will Never Get In The Books,” Specimen Days

CHORUS

—Stanza 1 from Old War-Dreams

— from The Wound-Dresser

CHORUS

—Stanza 2 from Old War-Dreams

SOLO

— from The Wound-Dresser

CHORUS

…I dream, I dream, I dream.

SOLO

I never before had my feelings so absorbed, to the very roots…

— To his brother Jeff—Washington, March 6,  1863

My brave, young American soldiers.

—To James Redpath (?)—Washington, August 6, 1863

- FIN -

PROGRAM NOTES

 contact James Grant 

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