It has no other programme.
FANTASY, "THE MYSTIC TRUMPETER": Op. 19
This work was composed in 1903-04. The poem by Whitman which has served the composer as his poetic point of departure is contained in the section of Leaves of Grass called "From Noon to Starry Night." The music is intended as an expression of the emotional and poetic substance of the poem. "I wished," the composer has said, "to use the elemental phases of the poem: mystery and peace; love; war or struggle; humiliation; and finally joy. So I divided the poem into five parts, and my music follows this division. Each section is introduced, or, rather, tied to the preceding one, by characteristic phrases for trumpet."
For each of these five connected divisions into which the music naturally falls, some dominant thought of the poet may be held to suggest the keynote. As in Whitman's strange phantasmagoria, there is set before us the spectacle of the human soul undergoing some of its universal and most vital experiences. After an introduction in which the Trumpeter's "liquid prelude" persuades one to turn from "the fretting world," and whose song "expands the numb'd, embonded spirit," we witness our typical human experiencing the transports of love, the perils and vicissitudes of war, the cankering perplexities and despairs that afflict the spirit in its moments of reaction; and, finally, the assured and confident joy that comes with the attainment of an ultimate poise and self-mastery.
For the five connected sections into which the music, upon the authority of the composer, may be divided, analogies are to be found in Whitman's poem. Those portions of the poem which correspond with the successive mood-pictures in the music may be indicated as follows (only the opening lines of each section are quoted):
[I. "MYSTERY AND PEACE">[
"Hark! some wild trumpeter, some strange musician,
Hovering unseen in air, vibrates capricious tunes to-night.
I hear thee, trumpeter—listening, alert, I catch thy notes,
Now pouring, whirling like a tempest round me,