Lincoln Portrait
14 min
Recording
- Lincoln PortraitCarl Sandburg, narrator; New York Philharmonic; André Kostelanetz13:58
Carl Sandburg, Lincoln’s biographer, is the narrator in Copland’s Lincoln Portrait, and André Kostelanetz, who commissioned the piece, conducts. Before the narration begins, the orchestra plays two nineteenth-century tunes in a slow opening section and a faster middle section.
Listening notes
- Slow opening section
The slow opening, the first of the work’s three sections, is played by the orchestra before the narrator speaks. In his note for the Boston Symphony’s 1943 performance, Copland described this part as a portrait of Lincoln’s fatality and gentleness.
- Commission and first performance, 1942
André Kostelanetz, the conductor of this recording, commissioned the work during the Second World War. He also conducted its first performance, with the narrator William Adams and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, on 14 May 1942.
- Quick middle section
In his 1943 programme note Copland described the quick middle section as a sketch of Lincoln’s times. He used Camptown Races and the ballad Springfield Mountain in the piece and treated both tunes freely.
- Final section with narrator
In the final section a narrator speaks over the orchestra. In his note for the Boston Symphony’s 1943 performance, Copland called the orchestra’s task “a simple but impressive frame about the words of Lincoln himself”. On the Columbia recording the narrator is Carl Sandburg.
- Carl Sandburg, Columbia LP
Carl Sandburg was a poet and a biographer of Lincoln. Columbia printed his name beside the work’s title on this LP, with Kostelanetz conducting the New York Philharmonic.
- Lincoln’s speeches and writings
Copland gives the final section to a speaking voice, with passages drawn from Lincoln’s speeches and writings.