The texts in "War Scenes," composed by Ned Rorem during the Vietnam War, are drawn from "Specimen Days"—Walt Whitman’s personal memoir chronicling his service as a Civil War hospital volunteer. These selections offer intimate, compassionate reflections on the wounded and dying soldiers he encountered, bearing witness to the human cost of war.
Whitman’s journey to this work began in December 1862, when he traveled to Virginia in search of his brother George, who had been injured at the Battle of Fredericksburg. This visit marked a turning point: Whitman relocated to Washington, D.C., where he spent years tending to both Union and Confederate soldiers in military hospitals. His writings—blending grief, resilience, and quiet transcendence—reframe the hospital ward as a powerful metaphor for a nation in crisis.
In this concert, Rorem’s setting of Whitman’s words is joined with Keith Lee’s choreography and projected emblems of a divided country—faded banners of 1862 that linger like memory, reminding us that the real war lives not only in history, but in the human stories it leaves behind.
Choreography & Set Design: Keith Lee (Premiere)
Music: Selections from “War Scenes” (1971) by Ned Rorem, text by Walt Whitman from Specimen Days (1882)
Origins of Chaos (Movement 4)
The Long Goodbye (Movement 5)
Projections: Keith Lee with Emily Hartka
Historic flag images courtesy of the American Civil War Museum
and the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
Vocalist: Allen Adair
Piano: Thomas Getty
Costumes: Ty Cooper Grace
Dancer in the role of “The Presenter”: Isaac Lee
Ned Rorem (1923-2022) was one of America’s most celebrated composers, especially renowned for his art songs and vocal music. Trained at the Curtis Institute of Music and in France, Rorem composed more than 500 works, including symphonies, concertos, chamber music, operas, and over 300 songs that are central to the American repertoire. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1976 for "Air Music: Ten Etudes for Orchestra," as well as a Grammy Award and numerous other honors. Deeply committed to setting literary texts to music, he frequently drew inspiration from American poets and writers, helping to shape a distinctly American concert tradition. His music is admired for its clarity, emotional directness, and expressive elegance, and continues to be performed widely across the United States and beyond.
Walt Whitman (1819–1892) is considered one of America’s most influential literary figures, best known for his groundbreaking poetry collection Leaves of Grass. But beyond poetry, Whitman was also a journalist, essayist, and humanitarian whose life was inextricably tied to the upheavals of the 19th century. During the Civil War, upon hearing that his brother had been wounded, Whitman traveled to Virginia and soon began working in military hospitals in Washington, D.C., visiting as many as 100,000 soldiers over the course of the conflict.
From these experiences came Specimen Days (1882), a hybrid memoir composed of diary entries, meditations, and reminiscences that remains one of the most powerful literary records of the war. Far from glorifying battle, Whitman’s account focuses on the hospital as the central metaphor of the war—a place of pain, care, and human connection. He wrote of holding the hands of dying men, reading letters from home, and witnessing the deep emotional and spiritual wounds of both Union and Confederate soldiers.
Though not a Virginian by birth, Whitman spent considerable time in the Commonwealth during the war, particularly near Fredericksburg and along the Rappahannock River, and his reflections on place and nationhood resonate deeply with the landscape and legacy of Virginia. His writing fuses personal memory with national identity, weaving his life story into the broader American experience. As he aged and his health declined—partly due to the physical and emotional toll of war—Whitman crafted Specimen Days as both a personal reckoning and a democratic testament, placing his voice in harmony with the vast, complex chorus of American life.
More to Explore: American Civil War
 |  |  |
Libretto for “War Scenes,” inspired by the prose of Walt Whitman
4. INAUGURATION BALL
Tonight, beautiful women, perfumes, the violins’ sweetness, the polka, and the waltz;
then the amputation, the blue face, the groan, the glassy eye of the dying, the clotted rag, the odor of blood,
and many a mothers’ son amid strangers, passing away untended there.
5. THE REAL WAR WILL NEVER GET IN THE BOOKS
And so goodbye to the war.
I know not how it may have been to others. To me, the main interest was in the rank and file of the armies, both sides, and even the dead on the field.
The points illustrating the latent character of the American young were of more significance than the political interests involved.
Future years will never know the seething hell of countless minor scenes.
The real war will never get in the books, perhaps must not and should not be.
The whole land, North and South was one vast hospital, greater (like life’s) than the few distortions ever told.
Think how much, and of importance, will be, has already been buried in the grave.