Letters Home

Program Note:

Tonight’s concert presents the world premiere of Letters Home by Zachary Wadsworth using texts by American poet Alan Seeger. Seeger, the brother of musicologist Charles Seeger and uncle of folk singer Pete Seeger, died fighting for the French in World War I before his country even joined the war. Driven by a love of Paris to enlist in the French Foreign Legion, Seeger served from August 1914 until his death from machine gun fire on the Fourth of July, 1916. Wadsworth’s piece provides glimpses of Seeger’s wartime experiences, combining excerpts from his letters home with music played by an oboist and on a prerecorded track. Wadsworth notes:

Wartime letters were necessarily vague. To make it past censors, they often omitted or obscured meaningful information about troop movements and locations. They were also intended to soothe: Seeger regularly reassured his mother that he was safe, and that even if he were to die, it would be a valorous death. But sometimes his brave façade cracked, particularly after he witnessed the brutal death of a friend. Seeger was a Romantic in his poetry and in his outlook on war. But where he was looking for chivalry, honor, and valor, he was met with the arbitrary brutality of mechanized violence. This piece explores the tragedy of a promising, deeply emotional life subjected to (and ended by) such an impersonal process as war.

(c) Jason Stell and Zachary Wadsworth