Aaron Copland's "A Lincoln Portrait"

This piece of music speaks volumes to me. Lincoln has been a lifelong hero of mine because he held this country together at a time of great peril and division. His call to unity and healing in the Gettysburg Address is one of this nation's most masterful speeches.

Copland's tribute to Lincoln would be the perfect way to end a playlist of music for 9/11. It is uplifting and you can't help but feel proud to be an American after hearing this piece of music. Fauré's Requiem Mass is another piece of music that, while somber and mournful, ends with the uplifting and ethereal "In Paradisum" movement and should be included in the playlist. I would also include Dvorak's 9th Symphony "From the New World" because it is a hopeful vision of America from a foreigner come to our shores. This would speak of the hope of immigrants coming to our land and seeing what is best about us. Mozart's Requiem Mass should be in there somewhere because it is properly somber and mournful. Perhaps you might open with this piece to remind people of the sorrow we experienced on that dreadful day. It is also in a minor key so that sets the proper somber tone to start things out. Then you should play music that speaks to more positive and uplifting themes and end with Copland's "A Lincoln Portrait" that ends with a segment of his "Gettysburg Address": "For on the battlefield at Gettysburg, this is what he said. He said, '....that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth'." What better way to end a playlist than to remind us of who we are and why we exist as a country!

Sally Burnell