Four years ago, in his capacity as music director at the Episcopal Church of the Advent in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, Wilson Gault Somers programmed a concert to celebrate Black History Month. Part of the concert featured two students from the Church Farm School in Exton, one Black and one white. Their contribution moved him to write a new work.
“They read the Gettysburg Address in tandem at the two lecterns," he says. "And then they came together two-thirds of the way through and then read it in unison. And it was just so powerful - that's what sparked the project.”
With Lincoln’s words resonating in his mind, Somers embarked on a deep dive into the life of the 16th president.
“And then after that initial concert of spirituals, I just started digging into biographies of Lincoln. I read probably 12 of them," he says."
As he read, he also began writing a massive five movement work for orchestra, chorus, and narrator - Lincoln Legacy. It pays tribute to Lincoln the leader, and Lincoln, the person.
“There's so much in his character," Somers says. "I don't think we've had anyone in that position in leadership who knows the human condition as eloquently and as deeply as Lincoln.”
This is not Somers’s first foray into writing large-scale works. In 1997, he premiered his Mass for the Homeless, written in partnership with his wife Joan Somers. In 2012, he premiered his second large work, the Requiem for 9/11.
For this work, though, Somers says he ventured into somewhat uncharted territory.
"Setting text or writing song, if you will, is very deliberate because you have the words in front of you and then you start to envision where they go and then you write, you sketch them out and et cetera. But this particular work is more symphonic than the others," he notes.
Lincoln Legacy begins before, then during, the Battle of Gettysburg. The second movement looks at the battle’s aftermath and Lincoln’s most famous speech.
“In which the first third of it, the orchestra stops and the narrator reads the Gettysburg Address. So you get it right up at the beginning of the project," Somers says.
The third movement weaves in a thread of faith.
“The third movement is called ‘The Sacrifice of the Faithful.’ These people, south and north, they both believed in the same God. They both read from the same Bible," Somers explains.
The fourth movement moves the listener forward in time a century and honors another key historical figure.
“The 4th movement honors the witness of Dr. Martin Luther King and his historic marches across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama during March 1965," Somers says.
The work finishes in the present day, with a call for cooler heads in a sharply-divided America.
“Here we are, again, needing to listen to President Lincoln's words today in this divided country," Somers explains. "So the last movement is ‘Forgiveness, Reconciliation, and Renewal.’”
He is clear that the work is not about espousing any political belief, however.
“This is not about politics. Politics are down here. All the projects that I've been involved with in Music with a Mission, they're up here. They're mirrors for us to look into and hopefully become a better people.”
Delaware Public Media's arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
