Lincoln Portrait

In 1942, as World War II raged on in Europe, Aaron Copland was asked to write a musical portrait of an eminent American, embodying the “magnificent spirit of our country”. Seeking a suitably inspiring figure, Copland eventually settled on Abraham Lincoln, US President during the traumatic Civil War period. Lincoln Portrait is scored for orchestra and narrator, and lasts 15 minutes. The spoken narration was compiled by Copland himself from Lincoln’s political utterances, including the famous Gettysburg Address of 1863. The opening section, for orchestra only, is slow and ruminative, suggesting “something of the mysterious sense of fatality that surrounds Lincoln’s personality”, as Copland put it. A more vigorous central section depicts the bustling, turbulent period Lincoln lived in, before a dramatic gong smash and brass fanfares herald the finale. There, Copland wrote, “my sole purpose was to draw a simple but impressive frame about the words of Lincoln himself.”