TEXTS & TRANSLATION

Battle-Flags

Text by Walt Whitman (1819-1892) from When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d (1865)

To the tally of my soul,
Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird,
With pure deliberate notes spreading filling the night.

Loud in the pines and cedars dim,
Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume,
And I with my comrades there in the night.

I saw askant the armies,
I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags,
Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierc’d with missiles I saw them,
And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody,
And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs, (and all in silence,)
And the staffs all splinter’d and broken.

I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,
I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war,
But I saw they were not as was thought,
They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer’d not,
The living remained and suffer’d, the mother suffer’d,
And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer’d,
And the armies that remain’d suffer’d.

Ein deutsches Requiem – Text from Bible

Fire-Flowers

Text by Emily Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) (1861-1913) from Canadian Born (1903) republished in Flint and Feather (1912 and 1917)

And only where the forest fires have sped,
Scorching relentlessly the cool north lands,
A sweet wild flower lifts its purple head,
And, like some gentle spirit sorrow-fed,
It hides the scars with almost human hands.

And only to the heart that knows of grief,
Of desolating fire, of human pain,
There comes some purifying sweet belief,
Some fellow-feeling beautiful, if brief.
And life revives, and blossoms once again.

PROGRAM NOTES

Battle-Flags and Fire-Flowers notes by Zachary Wadsworth

Battle-Flags

Commissioned by the Choral Arts Society of Washington, Scott Tucker, Artistic Director, in memory of Norman Scribner. Original version (for chorus and string orchestra) completed in August, 2015.

As a Union army nurse during the Civil War, Walt Whitman witnessed horrible death, as well as the profound sorrow felt by families and comrades of the lost. He explored the resonance of this sorrow in his extended poem Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d, in which the dead have found rest, but those still living carry the burden of grief. How do we, the living, continue to express this grief? One way is by singing the Requiem; by joining together in prayer and song, we console ourselves that beauty and life continue, even in the face of great loss. Another is by composing our own, new expressions of grief.

Battle-Flags is an expression of sorrow, written as a prelude to Brahms’ German Requiem. It opens with rustling and bright music in the orchestra and chorus, painting placid scenes of nature at night. Without warning, Whitman’s nightmare scenes of the dead rush in with explosive musical violence. Then a contemplative a cappella section leads into strangely familiar, consoling music in the orchestra, evocative of Brahms. The choir’s final statements about suffering trail off unreconciled.

Fire-Flowers

This orchestral version was commissioned by, and is dedicated to, Chorus Inspira, its artistic director Timothy Shantz, and the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra.

Originally commissioned by Luminous Voices and dedicated with admiration to Luminous Voices and Timothy Shantz, who, with soprano Laura Brandt, baritone Jonathan Adams, and pianists Cheryl Emery & Leanne Regehr, performed its premiere on November 14, 2021.
Completed in October, 2021.

We live in a time of conflagrations, both literal and metaphorical. Forests burn, ice melts, and a pandemic strips away every once-comforting ritual (a conversation, a handshake, a concert). Now, grief and mourning are constant; the Requiem starts over with every new, permanent loss. But what of hope?

When I first read E. Pauline Johnson’s poem, Fire-Flowers, I felt that unfamiliar feeling, that tingle of hope. In ten short lines, Johnson performs impossible alchemy. Yes, she says, the forest will burn. Then, new growth will follow. Yes, people will die. Then, others will grow closer together in their memory. After reading this poem, I felt hope that we can come back together in ways that honour the dead, celebrate the very idea of living, and help to make the world more just, more sustainable, and more human.

In my musical setting of this beautiful poem, the orchestra begins by kindling a horrible fire. This fire returns throughout the piece, but each time, it clears the way for rituals of grieving, of healing, and of growing again.

Notes by Timothy Shantz

Ein deutsches Requiem by Johannes Brahms was referred to as a ‘human’ Requiem by the composer. This heartfelt work endures as a musical treasure.

Long-time Luminous Voices collaborator, Zachary Wadsworth, composed Battle-Flags as a prologue to the German Requiem for the Choral Arts Society of Washington. The 2015 composition both connects with, and reflects on, Brahms’ Requiem. During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic I approached Zach about composing an epilogue as a kind of musical bookend. The resulting composition forms a symmetrical and contemporary reflection,  fitting of Brahms’ own musical architecture. E. Pauline Johnson’s Fire-Flowers provides a creative spark for Zach, with its melancholic yet hopeful words on death and renewal. It is our hope that the words and music of these artists provide solace and comfort to the listener.

Thanks to Zachary Wadsworth who expertly weaves his humanity, intelligence, soul, life experiences and artistry into his music.