# Walt Whitman



## Operadowney (Apr 4, 2012)

Whitman's poetry has been the source of many musical settings, and I'm interested to know what are some of TC's favorites.
My personal favorite is Charles Ives song called Walt Whitman...37 seconds of brilliance!
How about you guys?


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

The John Adams piece 'The Wound-Dresser' is quite moving - Whitman's text is based on his own experiences as an orderly during the ACW.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Whitman's work seems to lend itself to Impressionistic music. Anyone know of any Impressionistic pieces based on, say, "Leaves of Grass"?


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I don't know how far the Impressionistic shadow falls on Vaughan Williams (he did study for a while with Ravel), but he does a nice job with parts of Leaves of Grass in A Sea Symphony.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Manxfeeder said:


> I don't know how far the Impressionistic shadow falls on Vaughan Williams (he did study for a while with Ravel), but he does a nice job with parts of Leaves of Grass in A Sea Symphony.


Oh, well thanks. That was quite helpful. Williams, peculiarly, hasn't come under my radar very much.


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## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

Lukecash12 said:


> Whitman's work seems to lend itself to Impressionistic music. Anyone know of any Impressionistic pieces based on, say, "Leaves of Grass"?


Well, Hindemith set _When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd_ as _A Requiem for those we love_ (1946), though, like VW's music, you couldn't accuse it of impressionism.


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## Il_Penseroso (Nov 20, 2010)

Manxfeeder said:


> I don't know how far the Impressionistic shadow falls on Vaughan Williams (he did study for a while with Ravel), but he does a nice job with parts of Leaves of Grass in A Sea Symphony.


and that's one of my favorite works, too ...

for those people who like historical recordings, here's Whitman's own voice on wax cylinder, 1889 or 90 :

http://www.whitmanarchive.org/multimedia/index.html


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Il_Penseroso said:


> for those people who like historical recordings, here's Whitman's own voice on wax cylinder, 1889 or 90 :


Wow, that's not how I thought he would sound. Thanks!


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## Operadowney (Apr 4, 2012)

elgars ghost said:


> The John Adams piece 'The Wound-Dresser' is quite moving - Whitman's text is based on his own experiences as an orderly during the ACW.


This piece is incredible. I learned part of it for a concerto competition audition (concerted work where it relates to the voice) and it's really quite exquisite!


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I just pulled out Vaughan Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem and noticed it includes three Walt Whitman poems.


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## adrian allan (May 31, 2008)

This is my treatment of Walt Whitman- I'd be interested in your opinions

Poem: facing west

PDF file
https://www.box.com/shared/83zpjejyte

Mp3 - what it sounds like
https://www.box.com/files#/files/0/f/0/1/f_2369029510


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## maestro267 (Jul 25, 2009)

I've literally just come onto this forum to start a topic on this very subject, then I found this one! Having recently got hold of a disc with Delius' work Sea Drift, I finally got round to printing the text to follow along. My introduction to the poetry of Whitman was through Vaughan Williams' A Sea Symphony. A short time earlier, RVW set Whitman in Toward the Unknown Region, both of which are favourites of mine.

Having run through sections of Leaves of Grass, I'd like to see a choral-orchestral setting of Patroling Barnegat, the penultimate section of Sea-Drift.


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## swiss (Jun 27, 2012)

Bernstein wrote a beautifully simple, yet poignant baritone solo setting of Whitman's poem "To what you said." It appears as the fourth song in Bernstein's _Songfest_.

Thomas Hampson wrote about the piece in an article that ran in the _Walt Whitman Quarterly Review_.


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## NightHawk (Nov 3, 2011)

other composers who have set WWhitman's poetry to music:

Kurt Weill, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Frederick Delius, Paul Hindemith, Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Benjamin Britten, Leonard Bernstein, Ned Rorem, Ronald Corp, George Crumb, Roger Sessions and John Adams.


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## Romantic Geek (Dec 25, 2009)

My settings of some of his works


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