Champagne & Cornbread

After the sunburn of the day handling a pitchfork at a hayrack,

After the eggs and biscuits and coffee,

The pearl-grey haystacks in the gloaming

Are cool prayers to the harvest hands. . .

Oh prairie mother, I am one of your boys. . . .

To a 17-year-old boy from Germany, these folksy, windy lines from Carl Sandburg's Corn Huskers looked 100% American. Five years ago, Composer Lukas Foss, a German-born boy with prodigious energy and an engaging grin, set to work putting Sandburg's verses to music. It was a labor of love for the adopted country he yearned to understand and be a part of. Last week Composer Foss proudly heard his first big cantata, The Prairie, performed in Manhattan's Carnegie Hall by four competent singers, the Westminster Choir and Artur Rodzinski's Philharmonic-Symphony. It was the glossiest performance his work ever had.

Composer Foss is now 22, and well on his way. Pianist for the Boston Symphony, he has already won a Manhattan Music Critics' citation and a $1,500 Pulitzer fellowship. Last summer, he conducted a Stadium performance of the Philharmonic. He says that he wants people to forget his German birth, his French music-student days. Says he: "I want to be considered an American composer. I want to be one of the boys."

But Lukas Foss's music is far from Sandburg's prairie: it is modern, glittering, sophisticated, plainly rooted in Europe. Critics were somewhat baffled last week by the cantata which mixed Foss champagne with Sandburg cornbread, but gently pronounced Composer Foss a promising young man.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.