Fiddling with Abe

Feb 26, 2009

Author: Michael Bowen

Position: staff reporter

Source: The Inlander

Two trumpets —”separated in stereo” on opposite sides of the stage — play mournful, complementary tunes. In “Lincoln’s Funeral Train” — the opening movement of Michael Daugherty’s Letters From Lincoln — the two trumpets represent the heartfelt tribute of the North, the grudging respect of the South.

In 1865, the train spent nearly three weeks winding its way from our nation’s capital to Springfield, Illinois. In creating his biographical series of songs about Lincoln — which will receive its world premiere in Spokane this weekend — Daugherty decided to begin at the end. “It’s like in the movies,” he says, “when you’ve shot 30 hours of film and you need to cut it down to two.”

Daugherty is an inspired choice for Spokane’s Lincoln commission, on several counts: His works are among the most frequently performed of living American composers. As someone who has composed works focused on pop culture (Superman, UFOs, Liberace), he was a good bet to explore Lincoln the man and not just Lincoln the icon. And he has written music about other political figures: J. Edgar Hoover, Rosa Parks, Jackie Kennedy Onassis.

In the second (of seven) movements in Letters From Lincoln, “Autobiography,” Lincoln looks back from age 50 and recounts some of the basic facts about his life. (Daugherty made the decision early on to use Lincoln’s own words exclusively and to draw on texts from throughout Lincoln’s life, not just his presidency.)

“Abraham Lincoln Is My Name” is a self-mocking little ditty that Lincoln wrote about himself when he was a teenager. It’ll be accompanied by “country fiddle music,” Daugherty says.

For the fourth movement, Daugherty has orchestrated a poetic passage from the First Inaugural Address (“the mystic chords of memory”) with harp and strings.

Next comes the famous letter to Mrs. Bixby, written to a mother whose five sons had been killed on Civil War battlefields (supposedly — the facts are somewhat different, despite the letter’s having been quoted in Saving Private Ryan). Here, Daugherty employs a bluegrass fiddle and quotes J.S. Bach’s “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded” as Lincoln writes his sad letter. Daugherty heard the hymn, which is addressed to the crucified Christ, at a church service, “and it struck me as a perfect text” to accompany the Bixby letter. As he notes, “Lincoln was shot in the head, of course, and he was considered to be a martyr at that time.”

The next-to-last movement in Letters, “Mrs. Lincoln’s Music Box,” is based on an 1863 telegram that the president sent after having a premonition of his son Tad’s death. (Tad lived until 1871, but Willie, just 11, had died a year before the telegram.)

The concluding movement of Letters sets the entire text of the Gettysburg Address — a daunting task that encapsulates the challenge that Daugherty faced when the Spokane Symphony Orchestra commissioned him to write a work for the Lincoln bicentennial in the first place. For one thing, Lincoln is the Great Secular Saint of American Democracy. For another, a great American composer had already backed Lincoln’s words with an orchestra: Aaron Copland, in Lincoln Portrait (1942).

He plunged into the project, poring over Lincoln’s multi-volume collected works, then retracing the 16th president’s steps by journeying to Lincoln’s homes in Indiana and Illinois and on to Springfield, Gettysburg and Washington, D.C.

Speaking at the Fox last week via a video link from New York, Thomas Hampson — the Spokane native and internationally renowned baritone who will sing Lincoln’s words — complimented Daugherty’s “lyricism, which just jumps out of his music.” Moreover, by having chosen to set texts taken from throughout Lincoln’s life, Daugherty has created a contrast, Hampson says, “between the chatty stuff and the big, lyrical stuff.”

Back in the 1860s, the “big stuff” had tremendous healing power. “You know, the Gettysburg Address was addressed to soldiers of both the North and the South,” Daugherty says. “When the South lost, some called for all their generals to be hung or put in prison. But Lincoln was dead against that.”

Rising above partisan politics is one of Lincoln’s greatest legacies — and after a rehearsal last week in New York with Hampson and his pianist, Daugherty says, “I was totally blown away … hearing him sing the Gettysburg Address sent a chill up my spine.”

Thomas Hampson and the Spokane Symphony will perform the world premiere of Letters From Lincoln (along with music of Weinberger, Webern and Ellington) at the Fox on Saturday, Feb. 28, at 8 pm. Tickets: $30-$52. Also on Sunday, March 1, at 3 pm. Tickets: $26-$49. Call 624-1200 or 325-SEAT.