AT LAST – LILACS HAVE BLOOM’D IN SPRINGFIELD
A Review of the Springfield Choral Society’s Concert,
“Lilacs in the Dooryard”
by James L. Seay

Near the dooryard fronting an old farm-house, near the white-washed palings,
Stands the lilac-bush, tall-growing, with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom rising, delicate, with the perfume strong I love.

Walt Whitman (1865)

Here, in Springfield, Illinois, on the 200^th anniversary of the birth of its favorite son, many tributes, plays, concerts and kindred events have been staged to honor our 16^th President, Abraham Lincoln. Yet, until last night at the Westminister Presbyterian Church, none have included what is, perhaps, the most moving eulogy ever written for the fallen President, Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.”

Those of you who are readers of my theatre reviews will recall that I have decried this omission in my reviews of both Our American Cousin and The Spirit of Lincoln, both performed earlier this season at the Hoogland Center for the Arts. Consequently, I was delighted when I learned that the Springfield Choral Society had commissioned composer Carol Barnett to set Whitman’s poem to music. Setting free-verse poetry to music is a most difficult task, as, by its nature, free verse does not conform to usual poetic meters and rhythms. It has been accomplished on rare occasions; the one which immediately comes to mind is Carl Sandburg’s “Mill Doors.” However, “Mill Doors” is a fairly brief poem, while “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” is anything but brief. The poem consists of 203 lines in 20 verses – far too large to be included in a five-and-a-half minute choral piece for mixed a capella voices.

Barnett’s piece, however, is not the first attempt to set Whitman’s poem to music. Conductor Robert Shaw commissioned Paul Hindemith, during his wartime exile in the United States, to set the text of "Lilacs" to music in his Requiem for those we love (1946). There is also a cantata by Roger Sessions setting this poem, written in 1971. David Conte extracted text from the poem for use in his "Invocation & Dance" (1989). George Crumb composed Apparition in 1979, using the text of "Lilacs", mostly from the "Death Carol" section of the poem. Kurt Weill uses the third stanza in his musical Street Scene.

Consequently, one of Barnett’s task was to distill Whitman’s poem, to quote the Conductor’s Notes in the concert’s programme, into “the [poem’s] most poignant sections, ones which would both express the emotion and the intention of the poem and still lend themselves to a shorter choral piece.” For the most part, Barnett accomplished this task well. In a recent telephone interview with The State Journal-Register, Barnett said she spent a lot of time working with the text of Whitman’s poem before composing the musical adaptation. “I love working with texts because it gives us, as composers, all sorts of ideas about where to go,” she was quoted as saying.

“I really believe that the process of listening to music – music itself – is a nostalgia-based language,” she continued. Whitman, who also wrote “I Hear America Singing,” would have probably agreed.

The Choral Society’s performance of the world premiere of “Lilacs,” under the baton of Music Director and Conductor Marion van der Loo, did both Whitman and Barnett proud. The presentation showed beautiful vocal technique tempered by excellent discipline. The blending of the voices carried the minor chords of the musical composition which fit well with the mood of Whitman’s eulogy, resulting in a stirring tribute to Lincoln in his home town, marking the 200^th anniversary of his birth in Kentucky and the 144^th anniversary of his death (April 14^th, Good Friday) in Washington, D.C.

Although the premiere of Barnett’s “Lilacs” was the focal point of the evening, the Choral Society presented other works, all having a relationship to Lincoln, to round out the evening. Opening was a beautiful arrangement (arr. David Zaninelli) of “The Star-Spangled Banner” which brought chills to this old soldier in listening to it. For some reason, though, the audience (at least, from what I could see, the majority of them) failed to give the proper salute usually afforded the National Anthem. I saw few hands-over-the-heart, and fewer still military salutes, now given, by act of Congress, to all active duty military personnel and military veterans, whether in uniform or not. I found this sad.

The Anthem was followed by the little-known Illinois Anthem, the words to which I learned in elementary school, but are seldom known to the current generation of Illinoisans

Bernadette Farrell’s “O Lord You Search Me and You Know Me” was dedicated to the memory of Martina Kocher, the Director of Villa Maria Retreat Center, who died last May. This was followed by Randall Thompson’s “Twelve Canticles” which seem to reflect Lincoln’s life and death, the eleventh containing the lines, “Finally, brethren, farewell,” an appropriate introduction to “Lilacs,” which followed.

After a brief intermission, the Choral Society continued with Robert Shaw/Alice Parker’s “Garden Hymn,” particularly appropriate when one remembers that it was Shaw who commissioned Paul Hindemith to set the words of Whitman’s poem to music in his “Requiem” in 1946. This was followed by a cluster of spirituals, again very appropriate for a tribute to the Great Emancipator, arranged by Shaw and Parker, along with Barnett and African-American composer, Harry T. Burleigh as well as Jack Halloran.

The evening concluded with one of the finest arrangements of Katherine Lee Bates’s “America, The Beautiful” that I have ever heard. The arrangement was by Marvin Gaspard of Houston, and, in the words of Conductor van der Loo, was “an inspiring, truly all-American version, worthy of fireworks and flag waving.”

Lilacs in the Dooryard will be presented again tonight at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, 700 East Spruce Street in Chatham, Illinois at 7:00 p.m. For those of you who missed it last night, I certainly hope you can make it tonight. The Springfield Choral Society’s collection of 40 plus highly disciplined and extremely talented amateur and semi-professional voices offers an evening of sound that is hard to resist.