Ballad and March for Organ (*world premiere*)
Transcribed for solo organ from Plain Truths, a song cycle for baritone and string quartet or piano. “Annie Lisle” is No. 2 of that set. It was a popular song whose tune became the melody for dozens of college alma maters, but this movement, although in the mold of a 19th-century American salon piece, is an original tune. The final song of Plain Truths, No. 7, is “Spirit of Freedom.” The abolitionist Wm. Lloyd Garrison wrote the following in his paper The Liberator, immediately after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which ended slavery.
March: Spirit
of Freedom
Spirit of
Freedom! on—
Oh! pause not
in thy flight
Till every
clime is won
To worship in
thy light:
Speed on thy
glorious way,
And wake the
sleeping lands!
Millions are watching
for the ray,
And lift to
thee their hands.
Still Onward!
be thy cry—
Thy banner on
the blast;
And, like a
tempest, as thou rushest by,
Despots shall
shrink aghast.
On! till thy
name is known
Throughout the
peopled earth;
On! till thou
reign’st alone,
Man’s heritage
by birth;
On! till from
every vale,
And where the
mountains rise,
The beacon
lights of Liberty Shall kindle to
the skies!
—Wm. Lloyd Garrison, from The Liberator, 1865
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