# Music to Poems by Walt Whitman



## gustavdimitri (Nov 7, 2017)

Following an earlier post about Whitman, here are all the known compositions on poems by Walt Whitman:









Do you know of more compositions???

Please mention them here!


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Off the top of my head:

_Dirge for Two Veterans_ (Holst)
_Songs of Farewell_ (Delius)
_Idyll: Once I Passed Through a Populous City_ (Delius)
_Toward the Unknown Region_ (Vaughan Willams)


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## Azol (Jan 25, 2015)

_The Mystic Trumpeter _(Holst)


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Just remembered that Ned Rorem also set numerous Whitman texts in his songs but I wouldn't know how many have actually been recorded.


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## gustavdimitri (Nov 7, 2017)

elgars ghost said:


> Off the top of my head:
> 
> _Dirge for Two Veterans_ (Holst)
> _Songs of Farewell_ (Delius)
> ...


Thanks ghost! Much appreciated!


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## gustavdimitri (Nov 7, 2017)

Cool, thanks Azol!


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## gustavdimitri (Nov 7, 2017)

Thanks, I' ll go and search!


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## gustavdimitri (Nov 7, 2017)

I found an original musical score of the Elegiac Ode by Slanford 





















It can be freely downloaded here:

https://ia800306.us.archive.org/22/items/elegiacode00stan/elegiacode00stan.pdf


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## jenspen (Apr 25, 2015)

One of the settings of Whitman listed on the teeny tiny image you posted - "Dona Nobis Pacem" - was the first big choral work I ever sang in. I still hear the settings of Whitman's words decades later. I think Whitman was writing about the American Civil War. Vaughn Williams was a survivor of the trenches and had become an ardent opponent of war. 

"For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead."


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

Howard Hanson composed several, including:

_Song of Democracy_
_Seventh Symphony_
He also did a setting of the _The Mystic Trumpeter_
_Songs from "Drum Taps"_


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## alan davis (Oct 16, 2013)

The Dirge for Two Veterans was used by Ralph Vaughan Williams in his Dona Nobis Pacem. Don't know of a setting of this poem by Holst.

_Dirge for Two Veterans_ (Holst)
_Songs of Farewell_ (Delius)
_Idyll: Once I Passed Through a Populous City_ (Delius)
_Toward the Unknown Region_ (Vaughan Willams)[/QUOTE]


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

alan davis said:


> The Dirge for Two Veterans was used by Ralph Vaughan Williams in his Dona Nobis Pacem. Don't know of a setting of this poem by Holst.


Holst set it in 1914 but it wasn't given an opus number like his more famous Whitman setting _Ode to Death_ from 1919. Whether this means he never had it published in his lifetime I don't know. There is a recording of it on the Chandos label with other Holst choral works.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Kurt Weill:
Four Walt Whitman Songs (1942)

1. Oh Captain! My Captain Text: Walt Whitman
2. Beat! Beat! Drums! Text: Walt Whitman
3. Dirge For Two Veterans Text: Walt Whitman
4. Come Up From the Fields, Father Text: Walt Whitman


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

^
^

That surprised me - I thought Kurt Weill was only composing stage works by then. I'll have to seek these out.


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## cougarjuno (Jul 1, 2012)

Ned Rorem: Five Songs to Poems of Walt Whitman (1957)

1. As Adam, Early in the Morning
2. Oh You Whom I Often and Silently Come
3. To You
4. Look Down fair Moon
5. Gliding O'er All


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## pkoi (Jun 10, 2017)

Not Vocal music, but the Canadian composer Matthew Whittall has 12 piano preludes set to the poems of Whitman. Beautiful music.


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## archimago (Nov 30, 2017)

Paul Creston has a few Whitman-inspired pieces:

_A Song of Joys_, Op. 63 (for voice and piano)
_The Celestial Vision_ for male chorus a cappella, Op. 60, which includes lines from Whitman 
_Leaves of Grass_ for mixed chorus and piano, Op. 100
_Calamus_ for baritone, mixed chorus, brass ensemble, timpani and percussion, Op. 104
_Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking_, an orchestral piece inspired by Whitman

I'd thought that Samuel Barber had produced a Whitman setting or two, but that doesn't appear to be the case, which somewhat surprises me.


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## Biffo (Mar 7, 2016)

*Ned Rorem and Walt Whitman*



cougarjuno said:


> Ned Rorem: Five Songs to Poems of Walt Whitman (1957)
> 
> 1. As Adam, Early in the Morning
> 2. Oh You Whom I Often and Silently Come
> ...


Ned Rorem also set 'An incident' as part of 'War Scenes'. This has been recorded by Simon Keenlyside in an album called 'Songs of War' It also contains two of the Kurt Weill settings - 'Beat! Beat! Drums!' and 'Dirge for Two Veterans' - mentioned above.


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## Boston Charlie (Dec 6, 2017)

Paul Hindemith and Roger Sessions each composed a full-scale work for choir, soloists and orchestra based upon "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd". I have the Hindemith by Robert Shaw, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & friends, and the Sessions by Seiji Ozawa, the Boston Symphony Orchestra & friends. While Hindemith is known for his thorny academic style, his "Lilacs" by comparison is "Americana" next to Sessions whose "Lilacs" is "serial" and consequently very challenging to the average listener.


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