A CARL SANDBURG READER (score & parts)

I remember seeing Carl Sandburg being interviewed on the Today program sometime in the 1950's. He was an old man, still physically alert, with a keen mind and a ready sense of humor. It must have been amazing, and a good laugh for him, a person born in the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, to be interviewed on TV. To me, who had grown up with his poetry as a schoolchild, he knew so much about America that he seemed the embodiment of it. And yet he was the child of immigrants and spoke Swedish at homeas I was the grandchild of immigrants, though kept from the Polish language in order to be made into an American. It took me many years to break out of the immigrant mentality of us against everybody, and to realize that America was mine, deeply and completely mine. Carl Sandburg, with his poetry and his other writings, especially the monumental Lincoln biography, has been a life- long companion as I have searched for my own American roots.

In A Carl Sandburg Reader I have tried to let Sandburg's voice tell his own take on the human condition the masses, the poor, war, cynicism, faith, hope, acceptance and to tell the story as well with his beloved folk songs. For this auspicious occasion of the 150th anniversary of the founding of Illinois State University I wanted a musical celebration, using the words of a native son of the Illinois prairie, that would speak deeply to our past, our present, and our future.

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