From “Battle Pieces”
(Albany Records, 2003, $16.99; Ph: (518)
436-8814 www.albany/records.com)
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“Not Kenesaw high-arching,
Nor Allatoona's glen—
Though there the graves lie parching—
Stayed Sherman's miles of men;
From charred Atlanta marching
They launched the sword again
The columns streamed like rivers
Which in their course agree,
And they streamed until their flashing
Met the flashing of the sea:
It was glorious glad marching,
That marching to the sea. … “
(opening stanza)
Except for “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” American
culture offers almost no popular, lyrical celebrations of the victory
of the Unionists over the secessionists. As a result, Herman Melville's
powerful Civil War poems are little known.
The composer Warren Michel Swenson set 12 of Melville's Civil War
poems to music. On this Albany Records CD, they are performed by
the internationally acclaimed operatic tenor George Shirley, the
Joseph Edgar Maddy Distinguished Professor of Music. His accompanist
is the renowned composer and pianist William Bolcom, the Ross Lee
Finney Distinguished Professor of Music.
Melville celebrates Sherman's famous March
to the Sea—which is often
cast as an atrocity—as both a “glorious glad marching” and a painful
consequence of the Union's noble goals of freedom and justice. The
song ends with an expression of stern sensitivity for those devastated
by the march, and with the poet's judgment that their suffering was
retribution for a treasonous and ignoble cause:
“For behind they left a wailing,
A terror and a ban,
And blazing cinders sailing,
And houseless households wan,
Wide zones of counties paling.
And towns where maniacs ran,
Was it Treason's retribution—
Necessity the plea?
They will long remember Sherman
And his streaming columns free—
They will long remember Sherman
Marching to the sea.”
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