THE MYSTIC TRUMPETER

THE MYSTIC TRUMPETER
Setting for Soprano, Mezzo-Soprano, or Tenor and Piano
based on the Poem by Walt Whitman

Publisher
E. C. Schirmer Music Company

Catalog Number
9260

Order : Print
E. C. Schirmer Music Company
Ficks Music
J. W. Pepper
Music Room
Music Shop Europe
Pender’s Music Co.
Presto Music
Sheet Music Plus
Stanton’s Sheet Music
Theodore Front Music

Order : Download
E. C. Schirmer Music Company
J. W. Pepper
Sheet Music Plus
Stanton’s Sheet Music

Order : Subscription
This work is not available as a subscription.

Description
THE MYSTIC TRUMPETER was published in 1872 in Kansas Magazine, an early literary periodical, and the poem became a favorite of audiences attending Whitman’s numerous poetry readings. The poem opens with a “prelude” of sorts that acknowledges the past and closes with a nod to the future. Along the way, the poem traverses the themes of love and war and intermingles images of day and night, light and dark, sun and stars. The text of Hall’s setting is based on the original Kansas Magazine version of this large eight-part poem, but for this composition the original poem has been carefully edited to reduce the size of the text for musical purposes, while taking pains to maintain Whitman’s original concepts, ideas, style, and colors.

Vocal Range
E-flat 4  :  A 5

Duration
18′ 00″

Vocal Tessitura
G 4  :  D 5

Year of Composition
2021

First Performance
August 10, 2023
Source Song Festival
Minneapolis, Minnesota

First Performers
Anthony Dean Griffey, tenor
Warren Jones, piano

Review
 
“When singers perform art song recitals, German and French repertoire tend to dominate programming. On Friday night, tenor Anthony Dean Griffey and pianist Warren Jones made a refreshing departure to that pattern by presenting a concert of songs by American and British composers at UM Gusman Concert Hall in Coral Gables, presented by Frost Music Live . . . A concert and opera veteran, Griffey has sung on major stages from the Met to the Paris Opera and currently is a faculty member at the Eastman School of Music. Jones has long been known as a top vocal accompanist. Both artists fully lived up to their reputations . . . Juliana Hall is an American composer who wrote her setting of Walt Whitman’s poem The Mystic Trumpeter for Griffey in 2021. Hall’s imaginative, seven part cycle abounds in surprising effects. The opening lines of “Hark! Some wild trumpeter” require the singer to proclaim like a trumpet which Griffey carried off with striking skill. Wild, agitated piano figures abound in “Blow again trumpeter-conjure war’s wild alarums.” The role of Britten’s Peter Grimes was Griffey’s operatic calling card and Hall’s jarring musical portrait of war found the tenor on similar terrain, both charismatic and frightening . . . His sound could turn soft and dreamy for “Blow again trumpeter! And fore thy theme, Love.” In the concluding “Now trumpeter, sing to my soul,” Hall almost matches the eloquence of Whitman’s words in a portrait of hope for a better world. With his timbre nearly that of a heldentenor, Griffey’s lustrous rendition was well matched to Hall’s varied palette which ranges from lyrical to more astringent writing.”

– Lawrence Budmen,
   South Florida Classical Review