Alan Seeger: Instrument of Destiny

MUSIC: Patrick Zimmerli

Libretto: Mirabelle Ordinaire

Based on the Diary, Letters, and Last Poems by Alan Seeger

Tenor: Alex Richardson

Piano: Thomas Enhco

Percussion: David Rozenblatt

Cathedral Choir of St John the Divine

Conductor: Kent Tritle

American Premiere:

Cathedral Saint John the Divine
New York City, NY
November 20, 2019, 7.30pm

FRENCH PREMIERE:

CATHÉDRALE SAINT LOUIS DES INVALIDES

PARIS, FRANCE

JUNE 7, 2017, 8pm

Alan Seeger in World War I

A century ago, the United States played a decisive role in bringing a victorious end to World War One. But a few young American men had not waited for their homeland to officially enter the war. Out of admiration for French culture and a deep-seated belief in the ideal of liberty, some fifty American men had joined the fight in the first days of the war. Among them was the poet Alan Seeger.

Born on June 22, 1888, in New York City, Alan Seeger graduated from Harvard in 1910. After two years in the artistic milieu of New York's Greenwich Village, and two more years spent among the American expatriate bohemian circles in Paris, he volunteered in the French Army's Foreign Legion in August 1914. For the 26-year old idealist, fighting for the cause of freedom and dying in war was the highest destiny a human being could achieve.

During his two years of service in Champagne, on the Aisne, and in Alsace, he wrote some of his most beautiful poems, as well as letters and a journal, both detailed and lucid on the atrocities of the war, and passionately exalted regarding the ideals it defended. Seeger was killed in action during the first days of the Battle of the Somme, on July 4, 1916, America’s Independence Day.

Audio

A Dynamic Cross-Cultural Oratorio

Seeger's destiny bridges the Old and the New World both politically and artistically. In this spirit, Alan Seeger, Instrument of Destiny brings together French and American artists for an evening-length oratorio blending the two worlds' most emblematic musical traditions: European opera and American jazz.

Conceived by French director Mirabelle Ordinaire, with music by American jazz/classical composer Patrick Zimmerli, the piece features a selection of Seeger’s war poems set to music, as well as excerpts from his letters and diary entries. For this American premiere, American tenor Alex Richardson stars as Alan Seeger, along with the choir of the Cathedral Saint John the Divine, conducted by Kent Tritle. The singers are accompanied by the French rising-star jazz pianist Thomas Enhco and the stylistic polyglot percussionist David Rozenblatt.

The oratorio is structured to follow the stages of Alan Seeger's experiences of World War I, and is divided into six sections:

1. Off to War

2. In the Trenches

3. Champagne

4. Friends and Foes

5. Reprieve

6. Rendezvous with Death

On July 4, 1916, Seeger made the "Rendezvous with Death," that he predicted with such foresight in his famous poem of the same name. After the acclaimed 2017 creation of the oratorio at the Invalides in Paris, and performances at the Flâneries musicales de Reims and at the Fondation Boghossian in Brussels, the American premiere of this eminently Franco-American project took place in November, 2019. We continue to celebrate the life and work of this most unjustly neglected artist, this most unregenerate moralist, who sacrificed his life for the freedom of future generations.