“ ‘But for opera I would never have written Leaves of Grass,’ the poet Walt Whitman once said,” writes Terry Blain in Sunday’s (8/4) Star Tribune (Minneapolis). “The precise nature of Whitman’s relationship to classical music is examined at the Source Song Festival in Minneapolis this week, in a Walt Whitman Wednesday marking the 200th anniversary of the poet’s birth…. Ed Folsom, co-director of the online Walt Whitman Archive, … will give the keynote lecture at the all-day event.… He estimated that well over 500 composers have published songs or vocal works to texts by Whitman…. Twin Cities-based composer Libby Larsen’s … 2007 choral piece ‘Whitman’s America’ sets lines from the poem ‘Song of the Open Road,’ and she will share her experience of composing it Wednesday at the Source Festival…. ‘Some of the most powerful Whitman-inspired music emerges out of his Civil War poetry,’ Folsom said—Paul Hindemith’s Lincoln requiem ‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,’ for instance…. [Festival co-director Mark Bilyeu] said, ‘The two most distinctive settings I can think of are George Crumb’s “Apparition” for voice and amplified piano, and jazz pianist Fred Hersch’s album “Leaves of Grass,” both of which should be heard more frequently.’ ”
Posted August 6, 2019
