Enraptured by the Senses

VOICES Chorale performs ‘Lyrics by Whitman.’

By: Hank Kalet

"image"
Guest conductor Jay Kawarsky and Music Director Lynne Ransom take a break during a dress rehearsal for the program based on Leaves of Grass.


   Walt Whitman believed that the greatest poet was a seer.
   And Whitman was that. With the publication of Leaves of Grass in 1855, in the words of the critic Calvin Bedient, Whitman "self-consciously and cockily and grandly (became) the first American poet" and also considered himself "the first truly universal poet."
   "He voiced not only the present but the future," Mr. Bedient wrote in an essay in Helen Vendler’s Voices and Visions: The Poet in America. "He heralded for all human beings — and ants and leaves of grass — their ultimate ‘rendezvous with God.’"
   So it should come as no surprise that Whitman’s poems have been adapted for what conductor J.A. Kawarsky calls "serious music."
   Mr. Kawarsky, who teaches at Westminster Choir College in Princeton and is a former conductor with the New Jersey Gay Men’s Chorus, will be conducting a choral presentation of several of those adaptations. "Lyrics by Whitman," a celebration of the 150th anniversary of Leaves of Grass, will be performed by VOICES Chorale May 21 at the Princeton United Methodist Church in Princeton and May 22 at Shir Ami Synagogue in Newtown, Pa.
   VOICES was founded 18 years ago and initially focused on educational programs and performances by a 12-member ensemble. In 1992, however, VOICES Chorale debuted with a performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s "St. John Passion" from the balconies of Richardson Auditorium at Princeton University. Since its inception, the chorus has grown to about 60 singers. The smaller Sotto Voce (which means quiet or small voice) group has been formed to present chamber music in concert.
   Whitman, Mr. Kawarsky says, offers a wealth of opportunities for composers.
   "One thing about Whitman’s work, about setting it, I think, there can be two different interpretations of what the text means," he says. "It’s like Shakespeare — you can see ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ a thousand different times and you can see a thousand different interpretations."
   The Whitman celebration features adaptations by Howard Hanson, Gregg Smith, William Schuman and David Conte of major and minor works by the poet. They range from upbeat, jazzy compositions to slower, darker movements.
   Mr. Smith’s "Two Whitman Songs" — a setting of "Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun" and "Give Me Faces and Street," which comes from the Civil War poem "Drum Taps" — is a movement in three parts, with the opening two focusing on nature and the countryside. The third is a "jazzy, ragtime piece that extols the excitement of the streets of New York," Mr. Kawarsky says.
   By comparison, Mr. Kawarsky points to William Schuman’s "Carols of Death" — adaptations of "The Last Invocation," "The Unknown Region" and "To All, To Each" written in 1959.
   "The outer two pieces, ‘The Last Invocation’ and ‘To All, To Each,’ they sound rather morose," he says. "The middle piece is a very fast, rhythmic piece — a very exciting piece."
   The chorale also will be performing David Conte’s "Invocation and Dance," based on "When Lilacs Last At the Dooryard Bloom’d," Whitman’s elegy to Abraham Lincoln, and Howard Hanson’s "Song of Democracy."
   According to the critic Thomas Hampson writing on the PBS Web site (www.pbs.org), there have been more than 1,200 settings of Whitman’s poems. The earliest, he writes, appeared in the 1880s, during the last decade of the poet’s life, though "the first major surge of compositional activity coincided with the 1919 centennial of Whitman’s birth" and included adaptations into German, Italian, French, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Russian and other languages.
   Whitman’s revolutionary poetic form and his thematic commitment to democracy were a wellspring for composers over the years, according to Hampson.
   His use of long, breathy lines opens the poems to exploration in a way that rhymed poems sometimes do not, Mr. Kawarsky says.
   "Quite often rhyming texts are harder to set than non-rhyming texts because they set up a repetitive pattern that can become simplistic," he says.
   Mr. Kawarsky says that composers over the last 150 years have been attracted to the universal nature of the poetry.
   "Much of his texts are not aimed at a religious setting," he says. "There is more of a universalism about them."
VOICES Chorale will perform Lyrics by Whitman at Princeton United Methodist Church, 7 Vanderventer Ave., Princeton, May 21, 8 p.m., and at Shir Ami Synagogue, 101 Richboro Road, Newtown, Pa., May 22, 4 p.m. Tickets cost $18, $15 seniors/students, $8 under age 13; $42 family pass. For information, call (609) 637-9383. On the Web: www.voiceschorale.org