Liberty Song

Paul Creston's Liberty Song '76 for Band.

Liberty Song '76 is based on three principle songs of the Revolutionary period: 'The Liberty Song,' the first American patriotic ballad,written by John Dickinson to the tune of 'Hearts of Oak'by William Boyce; 'Enraptured I gaze' by Francis Hopkinson, the earliest American composer of secular music and a signer of the Declaration of Independance; and theubiquitous 'Yankee Doodle,' the only true tune which Ulysses S. Grant could identify, ('I only know two tunes' Grant said, 'one is Yankee Doodle, and the other isn't').

The eleven-measure introduction presents the threethemes in fragmentary suggestion, and affirms the emotional basis of the piece. Each tune is first presented in its original form, and then harmonised and developed in 1976 style. 'Yankee Doodle' is in the unorthodox fugal style,and the concluding measures of the fugue combines all three tunes is a quasi-stretto.

Liberty Song '76 was commissioned by Ithaca College for the Walter Beeler Series memorialising his many contributions tothe Band World. The first performance of the work was by the Ithaca College Band conducted by the composer on February 9, 1976.