Subtitled “A Cycle of American Poems for Six Singers and Orchestra,” Songfest was originally commissioned for the American Bicentennial Year (1976). It wasn’t finished in time, so the world premiere took place on October 11, 1977, at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Bernstein conducted the National Symphony Orchestra, with soloists Clamma Dale, soprano; Rosalind Elias, mezzo-soprano; Nancy Williams, mezzo-soprano; Neil Rosenshein, tenor; John Reardon, bass; and Donald Gramm, bass-baritone.

During the two years of its composition, Bernstein had considered a number of titles before settling on Songfest for the premiere. These included An American Songfest, Six Characters in Search of an Opera, Notes Toward an American Opera, The Glorious Fourth, Mortal Melodies, A Secular Service and Ballet for Voices, among others. 

In his program note on the Bernstein website, Jack Gottlieb wrote that Bernstein’s purpose was “to draw a comprehensive picture of America’s artistic past, as seen in 1976 through the eyes of a contemporary artist. The composer has envisioned this picture through the words of 13 po-ets embracing 300 years of the country’s history. The subject matter of their poetry is the American artist’s experience as it relates to his or her creativity, loves, marriages, or minority problems (blacks, women, homosexuals, expatriates) within a fundamentally Puritan society.

“The strongest binding musical force in the Cycle is that of unabashed eclecticism, freely reflecting the pluralistic nature of our most eclectic country. The composer believes that with the ever-increasing evidence of this unfettered approach to writing new music, typical of many other composers to-day, we are moving closer to defining ‘American music’. In a musical world that is becoming ever more international, the American composer—to the extent that his music can be differentiated as ‘American’—inevitably draws from his own in-ner sources, however diverse and numerous they may be.”