Written for the Cory Band to conclude their performance at Brass in Concert 2008, An American Tale is a musical tribute to the American Civil war.
The work includes : The Battle Hymn of the Republic, The Girl I Left Behind, Kingdom Come, Yankee Doodle Dandy, The Soldiers Return, Turkey in the Straw and concludes with Amazing Grace, a song synonymous with slavery and selected to conclude the work as a reflection of the war’s primary goal. Each of the songs is scored in a psuedo-compositional style of an American composer including; John Philip Sousa, Aaron Copland, Charles Ives and Leonard Bernstein. The American Civil War (1861—1865)
Following his presidential election in 1860, Abraham Lincoln began a campaign against the expansion of slavery beyond the American states in which it already existed. Even before the republican victory in that election, seven of the southern states, led by Jefferson Davis, declared their secession from the government (the Union) and formed the Confederate States of America (The Confederacy). Both the incoming and outgoing US administrations rejected the secession, regarding it as rebellion. Hostilities began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces attacked a U.S. military installation at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. Lincoln responded by calling for a volunteer army from each state. This led to four more southern slave states seceding. In September 1862, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation made the end of slavery in the South the main aim of the war, and dissuaded the British from intervening. The war is the deadliest in American history and caused in the region of 700,000 soldier deaths and an undetermined number of civilian casualties. The war also achieved its goal, ended slavery, restored the Union and strengthened the role of the federal government. The social, political, economic and racial issues of the war decisively shaped the reconstruction era which continues into the 21st century.
