FROM THE MUSIC DIRECTOR

Dear friends,

This concert is a love affair with words. I have long loved Walt Whitman's poetry. His verse is
deeply embedded in the American cultural fabric, woven throughout our words, our music,
and our art. He was a commentator on his time, and his words have remained relevant ever
since because they are intrinsically tied to times of great change and challenge in America.

Over 500 composers have set the words of Walt Whitman, from the smaller, more intimate
works you will hear today to the grand settings of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s A Sea
Symphony and Dona nobis pacem and Paul Hindemith’s miraculous When Lilacs Last in the
Dooryard Bloom’d. His poetry is musical and the many settings are a testament to that music
inherent in his words. Movies and plays have referenced Whitman since his time, as well. As
a kid growing up in the eighties and nineties, it was impossible to miss Dead Poets Society
with all the tragedy of youth and difficulty of growing up. Yet, Whitman’s words in this movie
and in so many references seek to uplift, to speak to possibility, and to point towards a future
brighter and better than the present.

Whitman lived through most of the 19th century in America. He was born on Long Island, NY
in 1819, ministered to the wounded during the Civil War in Washington, D.C., and died in
Camden, NJ in 1892. During his lifetime, America experienced the transformation from an
agrarian society to a rapidly industrialized nation with continental influence and power. It was
a nation torn apart by Civil War. It was a nation beset by the assassination of Lincoln. It was a
time of religious revival, deepening philosophical skepticism, and a casting about for the
direction of a nation rocketing towards becoming the world power we are today.

Whitman’s words are in response to all these things. They teem with possibility, with
optimism, and with an admonition to celebrate the present while remaining open to a limitless
future. He is a snapshot of his time, and yet, I feel his presence in the present moment. The
daunting challenges of the times did not dim his optimism for the American democratic
experiment, but rather in those challenges he saw potential for growth and betterment. For
me, this helps in the current moment. I long for the optimism of the future and strive to remain
solidly in the present.

Whitman's words from Leaves of Grass help me with that:

Long, too long America,
Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and prosperity only,
But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and
recoiling not,
And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are…

Fondly,

George Case