Hush'd be the Camps Today
Douglas Townsend
About this work:
Commissioned and world premiered by the Knickerbocker Chamber Players, Boris Koutzen conducting, David Allen narrating, at the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on February 13, 1955. (NYTimes 2/13/55, 2/14/55) (NYHeraldTribune 2/13/55) (Villager 11/11/54) The piece was intended as an in memoriam tribute to Abraham Lincoln, with a reading, accompanied by Townsend's music, of Walt Whitman's two famous poems on the nation's response to Lincoln's death, "Hush'd be the Camps Today," and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." The piece was performed for a live broadcast on WNYC on Feb. 27, 1955, by the New Chamber Music Society, Paul Wolfe, director, David Allen, narrator. (NYTimes 2/27/55) The piece has a wonderful funeral march (5 mins). Only for professional level musicians and narrator.
Year composed: 1955
Duration: 00:20:00
Ensemble type: Voice, Solo or With Chamber or Jazz Ensemble:Voice with Chamber/Jazz Ensemble, 2-5 Players
Instrumentation: 1 Clarinet, 1 Violin, 1 Viola, 1 Cello, 1 Narrator
Instrumentation notes: The narrator reads from the poetry of Walt Whitman about the death of Lincoln.