Scott Good

The Sleepers - 2019

50min

​

(Solo Baritone, Choir, Orchestra (2222/221/P/H/Strings)

 

While living in Vancouver, in 2010, I discovered Walt Whitman's The Sleepers.  Inspired by friend and artistic director of the Vancouver Peace Choir Tim Corlis, I was researching a text appropriate for the mission of the choir - to promote peace, a subject dear to my heart. 

 

Searching for the right text is always an interesting experience.  One thing has been constant with this task - I know immediately when I have found “the one”, and this was the case upon reading of The Sleepers.

 

The poem begins:

 

“I wander all night in my vision.”

 

The perfect start for a musical experience - there is action, and places to go - a journey of mind and imagination.

 

It continues:

 

“Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and stopping,

Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers”

 

and,

 

“How solemn they look there, stretch’d and still,

How quiet they breathe, the little children in their cradles.”

 

These words combine movement with tenderness and intimacy - delicate gestures that encourage melody, and a soft pulse - a gentle andante, with melancholic harmony.

 

Whitman then moves into darker territory:

 

“The wretched features of ennuyes, the white features of corpses”

 

Such contrast - consonance against dissonance.  Lightness to heaviness.  I hear these words sung by a choir, like role of the chorus in a Greek tragedy.  They reflect, comment, and give deeper meaning and context.

 

The wandering that ensues is epic in scope and sentiment.  Through 8 sections, Whitman weaves a tapestry of experiences and emotions to reveal our common vulnerability - that we all sleep, that we all die.  There are various aphorisms along the journey - one of my favorites is one of gratitude:

 

“It seems to me that every thing in the light and air ought to be happy,

Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave let him know he has enough”

 

In two instances, Whitman references actual events of history.  In one, he becomes Washington at the battle of Brooklyn - defeated and solemn. The other a story from his mother who was deeply affected by a chance meeting with an indigenous woman.  I was moved by the words, and the powerful place they sit in the scope of the poem, to find source material from the time - music that I felt unable to compose authentically.  For the scene with Washington I choose The Balad of General Wolfe, which was a song sung by the soldiers of the time, and has the most solemn of melodies.   And a traditional Cherokee morning song guides the music for the dramatic encounter, with words (I am of the Great Spirit - it is so) and melody evoke perfectly the mood and meaning of the poem.

 

As the journey nears its end, Whitman brings his most poignant and emphatic points to the fore:

 

“I swear they are averaged now—one is no better than the other,”

 

and,

 

“I swear they are all beautiful, Every one that sleeps is beautiful, every thing in the dim light is beautiful. The wildest and bloodiest is over, and all is peace. ”

 

In this wandering world of vision, of sleeping, all become beautiful.  But this averaging must be understood as a multiplicity - a community of individuals:

 

“The diverse shall be no less diverse, but they shall flow and unite—they unite now.”

 

These words have a deep impact on me and are what most inspired me to share this poem through music.  In our time, Whitman's words still resonate for us as Canadians and as global citizens. He calls on us over the generations to embrace and celebrate our diversity, but flow through our common humanity - of a common dignity - and united.