Sowash: Three American Perennials for woodwind quintet,  including “Old Dan Tucker,” “Camptown Races” and “Simple Gifts.”

In the 1958 film “The Last Hurrah,” Spencer Tracey, as Mayor Frank Skeffington, poses a question to Jeffrey Hunter, who plays the Mayor's nephew.

“Now tell me this.  What would you consider to be the greatest spectator sport in the country today?  Would you say it’s basketball?  baseball?  football?  It’s politics.  That’s right, politics.  Millions and millions of people, following it every day … They know the names and the numbers of all the players.”

He’s right!  What a spectacle!  Never boring.  And so much more at stake than with mere ball games.  Of what consequence is a sports victory, after all?  How will our lives be any different after “the big game,” win or lose?  Contrariwise, the consequences of American elections are global.

The perennial presidential election process is a dizzying whirl of sweeping promises, comic blunders, shrewd calculations, mis-calculations that “seemed like a good idea at the time,” the bartering of cash for influence (this time around, we hear the boast: “I don’t need their cash!”), sign-making, flag-waving, door-to-dooring, ringing endorsements, bombastic trumpeting, the glorification of buffoonery.

Every election cycle we are assured that, this time, its “a battle for the very heart and soul of the country.”  Oh yes, it's a stark choice between the abyss if their candidate wins and paradise-on-earth if our candidate wins.  Afterwards, neither is realized.  The must now be RE-elected because:  “We’ve come a long way,” we’re told, “but we have a long way to go!”

Think of it!  The thing steams on for almost two years before the actual vote, picking up momentum, accelerando e crescendo poco a poco.

Sporting matches, by contrast, last a couple of hours, tops.

The zaniness of American political life springs from — what else? — the frenetic energy of our intense, outspoken, multiloquent populace.

We the People bubble and rumble with joy and disgust, hope and despair, laughter and bitterness.  What sports fan emotes as deeply as the impassioned politico?

American political life would be insufferable if it weren’t so fascinating.

How to express, musically, this tumble-jumble of immense assurances and petty connivings?

Way back in 1974, during the doomed presidency of Richard Nixon, I took a shot at it in the first of my Three American Perennials for woodwind quintet, a salmagundi of original folk-like tunes set alongside authentic folk-tunes including “Old Dan Tucker,” “Camptown Races” and, at the very end, ironically, “Simple Gifts.”

Why "ironically?”  Because that Shaker tune gets touted as being somehow emblematic of America.  In a way it is, sure.  We love that tune and what Aaron Copland did with it in Appalachian Spring.

But while this American life — particularly our political life -- gifts us with constant, peppery, dangerous entertainment, it is anything but simple.

Once only in my composing career, in writing this exuberant, chaotic first movement, have I tried to convey an aural image of political complexity energized to the edge of insanity.  Accordingly, the music is acrid, almost sinister, a little harsh but somehow good-hearted.  Then and now, especially during presidential campaigns, that's how our society seems to me.

Almost at the end, at 3:33, you’ll hear the French horn ripping out six glissandos.  Think of those the trumpetings of the Republican elephant.  Are they a shrill heralding of victory?  or shrieks of despair at the realization that, for the coming term, while the losing side is mired in the Slough of Despond, the victors will hold the office that was so hotly contested?  I couldn’t say.  Music doesn’t take sides.

Right after the last horn glissando the movement abruptly ends with a snatch of “Simple Gifts.”

Simple?  America?  "AS IF!"

Give a listen to HarmoniaV, a Connecticut wind quintet, giving a spirited, witty and extraordinarily precise rendition -- these guys are really good! -- of the first movement by clicking here: http://www.sowash.com/recordings/mp3/Amer_Per_I.mp3

Click here to see a PDF of the score:
http://www.sowash.com/recordings/mp3/Amer_Per_I.pdf