Merkin Hall is a beautiful venue, warm in both temperature and acoustics. On Nov. 2, Tracy K. Smith, the former Poet Laureate of the United States, filled the performance space with the voices of African American troops who fought in the Civil War, people who were “quintessential to this country,” she said in a pre-concert talk. Smith shared that when she was asked to write poems about the Civil War, her reaction was “a kind of clinching that I often feel when I find myself in or near an argument about whether the Civil War was or was not about slavery.” So, instead, she proposed highlighting those who fought a battle that was not entirely designed to make them free, and listening to their version of the story. Her poetry was true to that intention at the premiere of I Will Tell You the Truth About This, I Will Tell You All About It, a 50-minute oratorio written in collaboration with composer Aaron Siegel.
After a brief musical overture, Smith read the 10 commissioned poems in their entirety, which allowed the audience to hear these stories and understand what was at stake. Smith’s pure and direct handling of the text evokes clear imagery and provides searing commentary, especially in her use of letters from soldiers to President Abraham Lincoln — a bold, yet necessary choice.
Tracy K. Smith reads the 10 commissioned poems of “I Will Tell You the Truth About This, I Will Tell You All About It” — Photo by Hunter Canning
A chamber choir led by Michele Kennedy was attuned to the gravity of the mission. Soloists Veronica Chapman Smith, Wayne Arthur, Gregório Taniguchi, Andrew Fuchs, Dana Whiteside, and AnnMarie Sandy each brought a sense of sacredness to the performance, honoring the words they were singing. The chamber trio Longleash (violinist Pala Garcia, cellist John Popham, and pianist Julia Den Boer) understood the mission, as well. Their playing was acute and filled with the spirit of these souls long forgotten. Garcia’s opening solo pulled and stretched, reaching into an intensity that crashed into double stops. Her musicality was sincere — worthy.
Music doesn’t have to be complex to depict complex stories, but it must be intentional. There are a handful of glorious moments in the oratorio where Siegel’s score meets the depth of Smith’s text, but much of the music lacks the necessary tension to properly reflect the subject matter. In some instances, the text setting doesn’t match the cadence of the poetic meter and ends up obscuring the nuance of the storytelling. For example, “I take the pleasure of writing you” dices each word into syllabic staccatos, performed in rhythmic unison between voices and instruments. But what begins as a sense of electricity and urgency becomes stale by the end of the movement.
Pala Garcia and John Popham in “I Will Tell You the Truth About This, I Will Tell You All About It” — Photo by Hunter Canning
Other moments of the score don’t push promising ideas far enough. In “Excellent Sir,” a soldier writes that he would willingly sacrifice his son for the cause of freedom and humanity. The tenors sing only shades apart, and the rest of the voices bloom in this dissonant harmony. But rather than growing into the tension of heartbreaking words, the voices move into imitative counterpoint with the cello.
The moments that break from conventional forms and harmonies are the most successful. The third movement, “Dear Wife,” is dance-like, allowing the cello to float over a hitch in the looped phrases — a syncopation that helps to illustrate the political unrest captured in the text. The looped instrumental phrases are neither meditative nor hypnotic — they are repetitive, like someone pleading for their “dear wife.” The instruments eventually drop out, leaving just the voices, making it clear that the events of the poem, and of real life, weren’t something beautiful.
Aaron Siegel introduces “I Will Tell You the Truth About This, I Will Tell You All About It” — Photo by Hunter Canning
The final movement, “I am 60 Odd Years of Age,” has a gorgeous and lush opening, each scattered voice entering separately before converging into the moment of a former slave claiming his name: “My correct name is…” The sopranos gleamed as slivers of light over a contrasting low range in tenor and bass voices.
Throughout the performance, the blend was spectacular, the acoustics were warm, and the storytelling was compelling, even if the composition was passive. In “We are Free,” the choir produced dark and harrowing resonances of a letter written to the President asking if they were free, even as the chord progressions steered clear of true dissonance. It is difficult to communicate the complexity of a story when the accompanying music doesn’t seem to match, but the singers managed to do so — a testament to their skills and sensitivities. But I left the performance wondering if the emotion of the singers and instrumentalists was enough to honor those Black voices of the Civil War that were silenced. As more contemporary works seek to harness untold stories, composers must be cautious about how they set them.
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