Music, the Civil War, and American Memory

Music, the Civil War, and American Memory is a Fordham conference and concert celebrating the 150th anniversary of the end of the American Civil War and the landmark reissue of Walt Whitman’s Drum-Taps.

10am Elizabeth Morgan, “War on the Home Front: Battle Pieces for Piano from the American Civil War”

11am Robynn Stilwell, “Reconstructing the Sounds of the Civil War”

12-1:30pm Lunch break

1:30-2:30pm David Lang, “Battle Hymns” (Lang’s choral-choreographic composition)

2:30-3:30pm Richard Leppert, “Song, Sentiment, Grief, and Remembrance”

3:30-4:30pm Daneen Wardrop, “Body, Comity, and the Civil War Band: Thoughts on Music and Poetry”

4:30-5pm Reception

5-6:30/7pm Poetry reading and concert. Readings will include poems from Drum-Taps as well as a poem composed by the other Poets Out Loud prizewinner, Terrence Chiusano, collaged from the titles of the poems in Whitman’s volume. The concert, for tenor and piano, will feature a setting of four Wardrop poems by Lawrence Kramer; settings of Whitman by Fordham student composers and also by Kurt Weill; and a group of Stephen Foster songs connected to both Wardrop’s and Lang’s work. The tenor is the internationally renowned Rufus Muller, accompanied by distinguished pianist Julia Hsu.

The conference will be held in the 12th floor lounge of the E. Gerald Corrigan Conference Center,  113 W. 60th St.

For more information about the conference and concert, visit the Fordham University event page here.