ABSTRACT
Jennifer Higdon’s Civil Words (2014) is a tightly knit song cycle of five movements that reflects Higdon’s tendency to fashion novel sounds out of familiar musical materials. In her cycle, Higdon constructs melody, form, and rhythm upon clear musical precedents, recasting familiar musical practices or ideas in her own stylistic idioms. Specifically, she evokes various melodic styles of the theater, regularly reprises material, and draws upon patterns of everyday speech, reshaping conventions of opera and song to fit within her musical language.
Textually, Higdon’s sources are diverse, in terms of both content and author backgrounds. The texts address a variety of human emotions, from anxiety and sorrow to elation and joy. Though the poetic and prose sources all speak about aspects of the Civil War, none exhibit divisiveness or exclusiveness. The writing is universal, dealing with the war in ways that invite all readers to participate without degrading Union or Confederate soldiers. The words are civil, suggesting that Higdon may be making a larger point about diversity and the civility of discourse in our modern times.
