The American Book of Psalms
Leaves of Grass and the American DReam
A fundamental problem in the current American sociopolitical climate is that we no longer seem to possess a shared cultural language. While living in a pluralistic society has extraordinary benefits, it also prompts a difficult question: What do we actually have in common?
Stare at the Sun will explore and commission choral music using poetry from Leaves of Grass— Walt Whitman’s monolithic celebration of what he considered to be the most vital characteristics of American culture: democracy; the value of the individual, regardless of race, sex, or status; a love of nature; reverence for the unexplained mysteries of the universe; and sexual liberation. Whitman's perspective transcends the left-right political spectrum, focusing on our shared humanity rather than our petty differences. His poetry, which saw our country through its adolescence, coming of age, and its most tribalized time of all—The Civil War—may open our hearts, expand our perspective, and remind us what it means not only to be truly American, but truly human.
His development of these specific ideas, along with his co-opting of the poetic forms found in millennia-old religious texts, resulted in the creation of a sort of secular, American book of psalms. The choral repertoire is comprised largely of settings of biblical texts, including an enormous number of motets based on excerpts from the Psalms — the original “hymnal” of the Judeo-Christian tradition. It’s time for a new psalm repertoire — one that reminds us of our shared, American values.