Washington & Lincoln in Music: Forgotten Gems

Washington & Lincoln in Music: Forgotten Gems

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One never told a lie. The other gave everything to keep us united. We’ve come a long way, baby.


Hard to believe, but Virgil’s Thomson’s George Washington ballet “Parson Weems and the Cherry Tree” (a Bicentennial commission) doesn’t seem to be posted anywhere online in the version for chamber orchestra. I did, however, find it for piano. You just have to let it play through, from tracks 10-21.

Concert overture “McKonkey’s Ferry (Washington at Trenton)” by Trenton’s own George Antheil. Curious that a local boy would spell McConkey with two k’s!

John Lampkin, “George Washington Slept Here”

Roy Harris’ setting of Vachel Lindsay’s “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight.” (The poem is posted below the video.)

Florence Price’s setting of the same poem

From “Abraham Lincoln: A Likeness in Symphony Form,” by Robert Russell Bennett

More Lincoln music under my post for Lincoln’s birthday on February 12

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