The Last Invocation

Songs of the Poet is a song cycle, not in the sense of telling a narrative, but rather in depicting some of the major themes set forth by Walt Whitman—albeit set with a dramatic arc. The composer chose a rather traditional tonal framework for the songs because he felt that this best conveyed the intense passions portrayed in the poetry. The cycle begins on an ambiguous D-major-minor tonal center but ends triumphantly in D major. In all of Mathews’s songs the piano plays an equal role with the singer. His grouping of Whitman poems deals with the essentiality of love to the human spirit and its redeeming qualities, even when unrequited; the enormous importance of music and nature to Whitman’s writing; how the artist’s work mirrors the essence of his being; and the transcendence of the soul. The title for the cycle was chosen because of the inordinate number of instances in which Whitman refers to his poems as songs.



“The Last Invocation” evokes through sumptuous melody the transcendence of the soul as it frees itself from its bodily prison. This song won Mathews the Recognition of Excellence award at the Fifth Diana Barnhart American Art Song Competition in 2003 (adjudicators were John Harbison, composer of the opera The Great Gatsby, and tenor Paul Sperry). The song is suitable in both secular contexts and as part of a sacred service.