John Adams’s The Wound-Dresser takes as its text Walt Whitman’s poem of the same title from a collection of poems about the Civil War, published in 1865. During the war, Whitman assumed the task of visiting the sick and wounded soldiers crowding the hospitals. “The Wound-Dresser,” says Adams, “is the most intimate, most graphic, and most profoundly affecting evocation of the act of nursing the sick and dying that I know of. ” In this Memorial Day weekend episode, we listen to John Adams’s setting of The Wound-Dresser and other works that respond to a time of war.
The Wound-Dresser and Other Works in Response to War
Scene showing deserted camp and wounded soldier. Mathew Benjamin Brady, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Playlist
Gerald Finzi: Farewell to Arms, Op. 9
James Gilchrist, tenor
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
David Hill, conductor
John Adams: The Wound-Dresser
Nathan Gunn, baritone
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
Marin Alsop, conductor
Edward Elgar arr. John Cameron: “Lux Aeterna” after “Nimrod” from Enigma Variations
VOCES8
Benjamin Britten: Ballad of Heroes, Op. 14
Martyn Hill, tenor
London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra
Richard Hickox, conductor
