Poems of Sidney Lanier / Sidney Lanier [electronic text]

NOTE TO THE CANTATA.

The annotated musical directions which here accompany The Cantata, arranged for the composer's use, were first sent with the newly-completed text in a private letter to Mr. Gibson Peacock, of Philadelphia.

I am enabled to give these annotations and the author's own introduction to his work through the kindness of Mr. Peacock: the friend who, while yet an entire stranger, awakened and led the public recognition of Mr. Lanier's place in the world of art. M.D.L.

"BALTIMORE, January 18, 1876.

"...The enclosed will show you partly what I have been doing.... The Centennial Commission has invited me to write a poem which shall serve as the text for a Cantata (the music to be by Dudley Buck, of New York), to be sung at the opening of the Exhibition, under Thomas' direction.... I've written the enclosed. Necessarily I had to think out the musical conceptions as well as the poem, and I have briefly indicated these along the margin of each movement. I have tried to make the whole as simple and as candid as a melody of Beethoven's: at the same time expressing the largest

ideas possible, and expressing them in such a way as could not be offensive to any modern soul. I particularly hope you'll like the Angel's song, where I have endeavored to convey, in one line each, the philosophies of Art, of Science, of Power, of Government, of Faith, and of Social Life. Of course I shall not expect that this will instantly appeal to tastes peppered and salted by [certain of our contemporary writers]; but one cannot forget Beethoven, and somehow all my inspiration came in these large and artless forms, in simple Saxon words, in unpretentious and purely intellectual conceptions, while nevertheless I felt, all through, the necessity of making a genuine song—and not a rhymed set of good adages—out of it. I adopted the trochees of the first movement because they compel a measured, sober, and meditative movement of the mind; and because, too, they are not the genius of our language. When the troubles cease, and the land emerges as a distinct unity, then I fall into our native iambics...."

"BALTIMORE, January 25, 1876.

"MY DEAR FRIEND:—Your praise, and your wife's, give me a world of comfort. I really do not believe anything was ever written under an equal number of limitations; and when I first came to know all the conditions of the poem I was for a moment inclined to think that no genuine work could be produced under them.

"As for the friend who was the cause of the compliment, it was, directly, Mr. Taylor.... Indirectly, you are largely concerned in it.... I fancy [all] this must have been owing much to the reputation which you set a-rolling so recently....

"So, God bless you both.

"Your friend, S.L."