HAPPY THANKSGIVING
posted by James Reel
Two thoughts about Thanksgiving: It’s a holiday that flirts with unconstitutionality, and there’s no good music for it.
OK, so “unconstitutional” is way too strong a word for it, but Thanksgiving, while not in the least establishing a state religion, does ignore the separation of church and state that was, if you’ll pardon the expression, an article of faith in American government until the very end of the 20th century. Thanksgiving is a state-created religious holiday, fabricated anew, rather than a recognition of some existing religious observance like Christmas.
Thanksgiving first became official, though intended as a one-time celebration, in 1863. This was in the depths of the Civil War, during a century when it was assumed that all Americans worshipped the same god. So it was not at all remarkable when, in early October of 1863, Abraham Lincoln declared it was time for the broken nation to thank the Great Overseer who, “while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.” What we forget now is that Lincoln thought it should be a day for us to take account of those sins of ours, too:
I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the imposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purpose, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union.Strife and national perverseness remain topics of the day, and we are well advised to turn our thoughts to such matters rather than merely preparing our burnt offerings to the god Butterball.
But what music to accompany these activities? Oddly, there is almost no classical music written especially for the American Thanksgiving holiday. MUSIClassical offers 102 suggested pieces for the day, but about a dozen of them mistakenly hit the list twice and most are “Thanks Be to God” choral pieces for generic occasions of praise, as well as compositions that happen to have certain keywords in their titles. Wagner’s “Pilgrims’ Chorus”? Wrong pilgrims!
The only authentic Thanksgiving music I know (beyond elementary-school ditties) is the hymn-laced “Thanksgiving” movement that closes Charles Ives’ “Holidays” Symphony. But that’s hardly ever played because, well, it’s Ives. (There are only four recorded performances on the market, and we don’t have any of them in the KUAT library.)
Why haven’t other leading American composers written significant Thanksgiving music? One problem, perhaps, is that it’s a rather vague holiday, a religious observance with no backstory like Christmas or Easter or the Jewish High Holy Days. Another is that it’s not really much of a religious observance at all anymore; it’s a day of watching parades and football on television, then gorging on an early meal of dishes most of us never touch under normal circumstances (turkey, cranberry sauce, candied yams).
Who, among living composers, might write a good Thanksgiving piece? A couple of years ago I might have suggested John Adams, but no longer; I, seemingly alone in America, was appalled by his manipulative, not very musical 9/11 Pulitzer bait, so to hell with him. Last night I heard for the first time the exciting new Telarc recording of The Here and Now, an exuberant new setting for chorus and orchstra of poems by Rumi by the youngish Christopher Theofanidis. Perhaps Theofanidis could come up with a Thanksgiving cantata that wouldn’t be overcome by treacly piety. Maybe Ned Rorem could write a good song cycle on the subject, if he could find properly unsentimental texts. But other composers who come to mind just don’t seem right for the project. Poor Thanksgiving: a holiday in search of a composer.
