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Contents

Texts
Program Notes
Festival Orchestra Personnel
Choir Personnel & Festival Staff

Texts

Song of Faith
John Alden Carpenter (1876-1951), text and music

Come now, hear our song!
Song of Freedom, comrades, swell the throng!
Hear that ancient story told again, of the father of fathers!
Hear our song!
As a growing river flowing to the sea,
As the springing branches of a mighty tree,
So his faith abounds,
So his strong heart led us, made us free.
We, his children’s children, raise our eyes,
You the hills and the mountains in the skies.

Now comes to town young Doodle Dandy!
On his crown a feather fine!
Rides a pony, calls him Macaroni, O!
Sounds the throb of the drumbeat,
Sound the cries of the redmen,
Through the years intervening,
As they rang in the days of our fathers!
Sounds a sweet lullaby,
Sounds and an old song my mother knew.
Sound again, gentle cry,
Sooth a young heart, like falling dew,
Bring to me rest again,
Sing to me low, 
There where my head has lain,
Well do I know.
Lead me to sleep where the still waters flow.
So sings my motherland,
So yields her love to light my day,
Guides me with gentle hand
On to a bright and shining way,
To a shining day.

Now comes to town young Doodle Dandy, comes to town!
Can you hear, far away, can you hear?
That band (Hear the band! What a band!) that Yankee band!
From the hills and the plains they come, on their way,
From hill and plain, swing out again!
Here they come, 
With a jump and a run,
With a tune on the fife
And a ripple on the drum.
Here they come along strong
With a good old song,
And a rum-a-tum
On the big bass drum,
With a song in their hearts and smile in their eyes.
From hill and plain, swing out again!
Oh, hear the call!
Come one, come all!
Now hear the word, his heart revealing!
Now hear the very voice of the father!

WASHINGTON NARRATION

Comes a bright and shining day,
By our Father’s faith let us pray.
May the hand of God be our stay,
And our guiding star light our way!
Come all sons of Freedom, hear our song!

The American Flag, op. 102
Joseph Rodman Drake (1795-1820), text
Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904), music

When Freedom from her mountain height
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,
And set the stars of glory there.
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes
The milky baldric of the skies,
And striped its pure celestial white,
With streakings of the morning light;
Then from his mansion in the sun
She called her eagle bearer down,
And gave into his mighty hand,
The symbol of her chosen land.

Majestic monarch of the cloud,
Who rear’st aloft thy regal form,
To hear the tempest trumpings loud
And see the lightning lances driven,
When strive the warriors of the storm,
And rolls the thunder-drum of heaven,
Child of the sun! to thee ’tis given
To guard the banner of the free,
To hover in the sulphur smoke,
To ward away the battle stroke,
And bid its blendings shine afar,
Like rainbows on the cloud of war,
The harbingers of victory!

Flag of the brave! thy folds shall fly,
The sign of hope and triumph high,
When speaks the signal trumpet tone,
And the long line comes gleaming on.
Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet,
Has dimm’d the glistening bayonet,
Each soldier eye shall brightly turn
To where thy sky-born glories burn;
And as his springing steps advance,
Catch war and vengeance from the glance.
And when the cannon-mouthings loud
Heave in wild wreaths the battle shroud,
And gory sabres rise and fall
Like shoots of flame on midnight’s pall;
Then shall thy meteor glances glow,
And cowering foes shall shrink beneath
Each gallant arm that strikes below
That lovely messenger of death.

Flag of the seas! on ocean wave
Thy stars shall glitter o’er the brave;
When death, careering on the gale,
Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail,
And frighted waves rush wildly back
Before the broadside’s reeling rack,
Each dying wanderer of the sea
Shall look at once to heaven and thee,
And smile to see thy splendours fly
In triumph o’er his closing eye.

Flag of the free heart’s hope and home!
By angel hands to valour given;
The stars have lit the welkin dome,
And all thy hues were born in heaven.
And, fixed as yonder orb divine
That saw thy banners blaze unfurled,
Shall thy proud stars resplendent shine,
The guard and glory of the world!

Program Notes

John Alden Carpenter (1876-1951)
Song of Faith

2026 marks the sesquicentennial of composer John Alden Carpenter. Although not a household name, Carpenter stands somewhat uniquely as a bridge between 19th and early- 20th century American classical music. American classical music is a precarious idea. 19th century composers like MacDowell, Parker, and Paine took their cues from European music of the same period and failed to leave an essential American mark on the repertoire. When Antonín Dvořák came to the United States in the 1890s he suggested that young American composers take cues from vernacular models. Dvořák’s wishes were sown in the early decades of the 20th century, but no sooner did the seeds of Copland, and Gershwin sprout, modernism sprang up, asserting cold, angular, objectivity to new American style. Carpenter was not immune to these trends but because he was somewhat older than the others, he managed to imbue modernism with more grace, humanity, and tradition.

Carpenter was born in Park Ridge, Illinois, February 28, 1876. After graduating from Harvard in 1897, he returned to Chicago to work for his wealthy industrialist father. Like his contemporary, Charles Ives (1876-1954), who made his money selling insurance, Carpenter composed in his spare hours. As a man of means, he promoted his own works and the works of other composers and artists. His initial fame came as a composer of art song. But among his best-known works are his ballets Krazy Kat, and Skyscrapers, and his delightful Piano Concertino. His string quartet is performed this weekend. His style is infused with early jazz and popular song melodies, with experiments in modernism, and the sensitive colors of Debussy’s impressionism.

An early review of Song of Faith calls the work “impressive…by its spacious dignity and poise…an aristocrat among choral compositions.” Song of Faith for chorus, narrator and orchestra was commissioned in commemoration of the George Washington bicentennial in 1932. The choral text is by Carpenter himself, while the narration is assembled from Washington’s writings. The narration suggests Copland’s Lincoln Portrait (1942). Song of Faith obviously influenced Copland’s later and better-known work. Yet unlike Lincoln Portrait, which amounts to something of a secular tall tale, Song of Faith is a dedication to a Christian leader and visionary. The choir text, which hints at Washington, but never names him, echos Biblical language (“lead me to sleep where the still waters flow”) and covenantal naming (“father’s father,” “children’s children,” “father of our fathers”). Carpenter describes the blossoming of American liberty reminiscent of Ezekiel’s vision: the widening river winding its way to the ocean. The mustard seed is invoked in the expanse of a great and mighty tree.

Carpenter says the impetus for Song of Faith came not from Washington’s military genius or his contribution to the arts of government, but on the selfless integrity of his character. It is from that character that we inherit the great American dream…which in this very moment we must strive in deepest sincerity to recapture.

Carpenter composed Song of Faith during the Great Depression. The “dreaminess” of Carpenter’s text (he revised the work at least twice but left the text untouched) begins with Washington’s solitary voice, to which others join and blend. As the work continues, Carpenter snaps brief photos (or impressions) of American life in montage. The music is reminiscent of a medley. The total effect of his capricious text and the sometimes catchy, sometimes sweet, sometimes serious music, suggests the theater. The Washington monologue is bookended by a Greek-styled chorus that at times bursts into snatches of showtunes. Carpenter never composed for Broadway, but Song of Faith is an offhanded contribution to musical theater.

Nostalgia and memory are central to Carpenter’s purpose–even when those memories fail. Isn’t “Macaroni” Yankee Doodle’s feathered fashion statement, not the name of the pony he rides? Why has Carpenter “got it wrong”? Who is ‘Doodle Dandy’? Is he Washington himself, or some other image from the American past? Is he emblematic of the American everyman? What is clear to Carpenter is that America lives in the trajectory set by its faithful father. With God as our sure reliance, Washington’s star is a reference point our nation fixes upon in the ongoing pursuit of the American Dream.

Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904)
The American Flag, op. 102

“The text is ridiculous and the inclusion of a polka is ludicrous,” writes one scholar of Dvořák’s cantata The American Flag. Laying aside polka preferences (and paranoia), the author of this statement appears unacquainted with ancient literature and myth. Joseph Rodman Drake’s text, an ode to our national emblem, reflects both on the flag’s regal appearance and its ability to inspire valor and hope in those that look on it. Symbols are greater than the sum of their assembled parts, suggesting noble and transcendent realities. The poem begins with nothing short of a divine creation account of the flag. Betsy Ross, nowhere in sight, the goddess Freedom stitches her banner from heavenly materials. First tearing a scrap from the starry host, she sows to this fragment, the white “baldric of the skies”, and completes her task with the rosy fingers of dawn.

Drake published his poem May 1819 in the New York Evening Post. As a patriotic, flag poem it is counterpart to Francis Scott Key’s earlier “Star-Spangled Banner,” which Key penned during the War of 1812. Drake was in Washington Irving’s Knickerbocker Group, which Irving created to help promote young American writers. Knickerbockers included others like James Fenimore Cooper and William Cullen Bryant. Drake’s writing accomplishments were cut short. He died the next year of tuberculosis, age 25. Drake’s “ridiculous” text aligns with other experiments of 19th-century American authors. Irving himself presents folklore as fact in such stories as “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Longfellow’s epics such as The Song of Hiawatha and The Courtship of Miles Standish are historical accounts retrofitted with a mythical backbone. Myth is what makes history real and ever relevant. 

Jeanette Thurber tasked the Bohemian composer Dvořák with setting Drake’s poem in 1892. Thurber opened the National Conservatory of the Music of America during the 1880s in New York City. The conservatory trained American musicians with the additional goal of producing thoroughgoing American composers. She asked Dvořák to serve as director of the conservatory. The American Flag was to fulfill the dual purpose of inaugurating Dvořák’s American post, and to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage. He didn’t complete the cantata in 1892. It seems his Te Deum occupied his attention and may have served as the fulfillment of Thurber’s commission. The American Flag saw its first performance only in 1895 after Dvořák had returned home to Bohemia. He never heard the work performed.

This cantata is in four movements that loosely map onto the stanzas of the poem. The archaic term “apostrophe,” is a figure of speech addressing a person not present, first the American eagle, then to flag itself. The power of the flag is demonstrated in how the flag inspires a soldier, a cavalry man, and a sailor at the most perilous of times. Often dramatic and unsettled, the writing is overall tuneful and the melodies memorable.

The inception of The American Flag likely predates Dvořák’s famous American pieces and thus it overall lacks the crisp folksiness of those other works. It showcases Dvořák’s versatility as a composer, for in comparison to his Czech and American pieces, it is based less on national materials and more on “international.” Bits of it reference the works of Beethoven and Mozart. The “polka” (it’s actually a march) is somewhat reminiscent of Dvořák’s own Carnival Overture. Nevertheless, the bluesy banjo tune that sets the text “Flag of the brave! thy folds shall fly” likely came to Dvořák strolling the New York streets.

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