We reflect on the Battle of Gettysburg’s 150th Anniversary on Now Is the Time, Sunday, July 7th at 10 pm. Warren Swenson sets the Civil War poetry of Moby-Dick author Herman Melville in Battle Pieces. Infused with the musical accents of the time and with riveting word pictures, Battle Pieces honors, in Lincoln’s undying phrase, “the last full measure of devotion” given at Gettysburg.
Dedications of other sorts round out the program. In the short brass piece Numbering the Stars, Rodney Rogers quotes the 19th-century hymn “Wondrous Love.” Sarah Meneely Kyder sets a poem of her sister’s, using text from their father in World War II, in Letter from Italy, 1944. With Zoë Cansdale of Hartburn, Dick Hensold remembers the life of a young woman taken too soon, in music for pipes that is both poignant and uplifting.
PROGRAM:
Warren M. Swenson: Battle Pieces
Rodney Rogers: Numbering the Stars
Sarah Meneely Kyder: Letter from Italy, 1944
Dick Hensold: Zoë Cansdale of Hartburn
Every Sunday night at 10, Kile Smith brings you Now Is the Time, all styles of contemporary concert music by living American composers on WRTI-HD2 and the all-classical stream at wrti.org. Here are the recording details and complete schedule.