Undelivered

SATB and percussion (glock and chimes)

On November 22, 1963, the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, was on his way to the Dallas Trade Mart to give a speech when he was assassinated in broad daylight.  Because the words he was set to deliver were never spoken to the American public, the speech has become President Kennedy’s de facto final words.  Though it was set against the backdrop of the escalating Cold War tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union—the Cuban Missile Crisis (the closest the world has ever come to nuclear war) had occurred less than a year before—its core theme is the inseparable link between learning and altruistic leadership.

However, what feels astonishingly relevant today—and what stopped me in my tracks when I first read it—are the thoughts JFK was going to offer on domestic extremism, misinformation, and the dangers of embracing rhetoric disconnected from reality.  At the time, President Kennedy was referring to Edwin Walker, a former World War II general who had fomented riots at the University of Mississippi when that school integrated in 1962 and had described civil rights demonstrations as “Pro-Kennedy, pro-communist, and pro-socialist.”  Walker had also accused Kennedy—famously a Catholic—of appointing “anti-Christians” to federal office.

To translate the speech into a musical work, I landed on a simple concept.  President Kennedy was never able to read these words to his intended audience, so perhaps the choir could simply do the thing he was never able to: deliver the speech.  Having arrived at that idea, I also wanted to add something to fill the silences–to make the work “hover” a bit during the breaths–but also to represent the listening audience as well; hence, the unseen percussion.  Due to the speech’s focus on the future as a result of the past and present, I placed an anonymous poem which I felt was connected to JFK’s sentiments at its conclusion and set it to the school song the young Jack Kennedy would have heard sung many times during his student days at Harvard (in this case accompanied by church bells ringing far off somewhere in Cambridge).

Undelivered was commissioned by the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy (a Harvard alum from the class of 1940).  It was premiered by that ensemble in Sanders Theater on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts on November 4, 2023 under the steady baton of Dr. Andrew Clark.

The Text

By John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), with four lines from an anonymous poet

In a world of complex and continuing problems, full of frustrations and irritations, [we] must be guided by the lights of learning and reason—or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain the popular ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every problem.

There will always be dissident voices heard in the land, expressing opposition without alternatives, finding fault but never favor, perceiving gloom on every side and seeking influence without responsibility. Those voices are inevitable.

But today other voices are heard in the land—voices preaching doctrines wholly unrelated to reality…which assume that [bitter and abusive language] is as good as victory…or that strength is but a matter of slogans.

Words alone are not enough.  [We are] a peaceful nation. And where our strength and determination are clear, our words need merely to convey conviction, not belligerence.

But…freedom can be lost…by ballots as well as bullets. [Our success] is dependent upon…a clearer recognition of the virtues of freedom as well as the evils of tyranny.

Only a nation which practices what it preaches about equal rights and social justice will be respected. Only a nation which has fully educated its citizens is fully capable of tackling the complex problems and perceiving the hidden dangers of the world in which we live.  Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.

We in this country…are…the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our…responsibility—that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint.

The future is an open door.
Let us not stand in our own way.
For we are the ones to explore
The world that lies beyond today.

Clip from coaching session with The Crossing and the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum. Starts at “Words alone…”

Premiere performance below.

Performed by the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum
(Dr. Andrew Clark, conductor")