College of Liberal Arts – Battlefields and Homefronts: World War I and Modern Life
“Arthur Nevin and the Singing Soldiers of Camp Grant: An American Composer’s Service during World War I”
Aaron Ziegel (Department of Music)
Wednesday, October 12, 12:15-1:15, LA 2317
In October 1917, Arthur Nevin arrived at Camp Grant to take up the duties of camp song leader. Army leadership, motivated by the success of the community singing movement, decided that “a singing army is a fighting army,” and thus a new element was added to the training regimen of all soldiers-to-be. Although little-known today, Nevin was at the time internationally recognized as an opera composer, for Poia (Berlin, 1910) and the forthcoming A Daughter of the Forest (Chicago, 1918), making him one of the Army’s highest profile song leaders. At Camp Grant, Nevin found himself charged with the task of transforming upwards of 40,000 soldiers into an effective mass choir. This talk will explore the specifics of Nevin’s pedagogy and logistics, including a reconstruction of the repertory he used to train his singing soldiers. Nevin’s efforts on behalf of the U. S. Army are juxtaposed against the very personal losses suffered by his family during the war. Drawing upon archival sources at the Library of Congress, period sheet music collections, and an extensive array of contemporaneous reports in newspapers and magazines, World War I army camp singing culture will be brought back to life, as we recreate the camp music soundworld with assistance from members of the TU Men’s Chorus.
