The
enclosed
will show you partly what I have been doing.
Sidney Lanier
"
<Full chorus: jubilation and welcome. >
O Music, from this height of time my Word unfold:
In thy large signals all men's hearts Man's heart behold:
Mid-heaven unroll thy chords as friendly flags unfurled,
And wave the world's best lover's welcome to the world.
Note to the Cantata.
The annotated musical directions which here accompany `The Cantata',
arranged for the composer's use, were first sent with the newly-completed text
in a private letter to Mr. Gibson Peacock, of Philadelphia.
I am enabled to give these annotations and the author's own introduction
to his work through the kindness of Mr. Peacock: the friend who,
while yet an entire stranger, awakened and led the public recognition
of Mr. Lanier's place in the world of art. M. D. L.
"Baltimore, January 18, 1876.
" . . .
The enclosed will show you partly what I have been doing. . . .
The Centennial Commission has invited me to write a poem
which shall serve as the text for a Cantata (the music to be by Dudley Buck,
of New York), to be sung at the opening of the Exhibition,
under Thomas' direction. . . . I've written the enclosed.
Necessarily I had to think out the musical conceptions as well as the poem,
and I have briefly indicated these along the margin of each movement.
I have tried to make the whole as simple and as candid
as a melody of Beethoven's: at the same time expressing
the largest ideas possible, and expressing them in such a way
as could not be offensive to any modern soul. I particularly hope
you'll like the Angel's song, where I have endeavored to convey,
in one line each, the philosophies of Art, of Science, of Power,
of Government, of Faith, and of Social Life. Of course I shall not expect
that this will instantly appeal to tastes peppered and salted
by [certain of our contemporary writers]; but one cannot forget Beethoven,
and somehow all my inspiration came in these large and artless forms,
in simple Saxon words, in unpretentious and purely intellectual conceptions,
while nevertheless I felt, all through, the necessity of making
a genuine song -- and not a rhymed set of good adages -- out of it.
I adopted the trochees of the first movement because they COMPEL
a measured, sober, and meditative movement of the mind;
and because, too, they are not the genius of our language.
When the troubles cease, and the land emerges as a distinct unity,
then I fall into our native iambics. .
<Full chorus: jubilation and welcome. >
O Music, from this height of time my Word unfold:
In thy large signals all men's hearts Man's heart behold:
Mid-heaven unroll thy chords as friendly flags unfurled,
And wave the world's best lover's welcome to the world.
Note to the Cantata.
The annotated musical directions which here accompany `The Cantata',
arranged for the composer's use, were first sent with the newly-completed text
in a private letter to Mr. Gibson Peacock, of Philadelphia.
I am enabled to give these annotations and the author's own introduction
to his work through the kindness of Mr. Peacock: the friend who,
while yet an entire stranger, awakened and led the public recognition
of Mr. Lanier's place in the world of art. M. D. L.
"Baltimore, January 18, 1876.
" . . .
The enclosed will show you partly what I have been doing. . . .
The Centennial Commission has invited me to write a poem
which shall serve as the text for a Cantata (the music to be by Dudley Buck,
of New York), to be sung at the opening of the Exhibition,
under Thomas' direction. . . . I've written the enclosed.
Necessarily I had to think out the musical conceptions as well as the poem,
and I have briefly indicated these along the margin of each movement.
I have tried to make the whole as simple and as candid
as a melody of Beethoven's: at the same time expressing
the largest ideas possible, and expressing them in such a way
as could not be offensive to any modern soul. I particularly hope
you'll like the Angel's song, where I have endeavored to convey,
in one line each, the philosophies of Art, of Science, of Power,
of Government, of Faith, and of Social Life. Of course I shall not expect
that this will instantly appeal to tastes peppered and salted
by [certain of our contemporary writers]; but one cannot forget Beethoven,
and somehow all my inspiration came in these large and artless forms,
in simple Saxon words, in unpretentious and purely intellectual conceptions,
while nevertheless I felt, all through, the necessity of making
a genuine song -- and not a rhymed set of good adages -- out of it.
I adopted the trochees of the first movement because they COMPEL
a measured, sober, and meditative movement of the mind;
and because, too, they are not the genius of our language.
When the troubles cease, and the land emerges as a distinct unity,
then I fall into our native iambics. .
