This is a Symphonic Poem, based on the poetic elegy by Walt Whitman, this is the first movement of a projected work based on several key periods in the poet’s life: this first being his account of the origin of his poetic spirit, awakened in childhood to the reality of love and loss. I began this work in the late 70s, only bringing it to completion this year of 2020... so I may never complete the project! But here is what I have to offer; the video provides a sing-along to the poem in a vocal part suitable to a lyric baritone or dramatic tenor.
The music reflects my influences, from John Cage (in some of the aleatory involved in creating the thematic and harmonic material) to Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss (in shaping the harmomics along chromatic lines), with a nod to Richard Wagner — both in terms of how the leitmotifs were evolved (in this case from a pair of 12=tone rows) and applied, and with a specific brief quotation of a phrase from Tristan and Isolde: this Whitman poem being the American poet’s Love-Death meditation.
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