• for high male voice and piano

• Duration: 3' 30"
• In 1 movement
• Composed in 2008
• Commissioned by George D Bishop
• Dedicated to Chan Chow Wah
• First performance: 17.01.09 Wilson Goh (tenor) and R Casteels (piano) Private residence of George D Bishop
• ISMN: 979-0-9016504-0-4
• Parts: To purchase the score, please email <rc@robertcasteels.com>
• Downloadable scores for inspection:
  road7.sib

This song for high male voice and piano was commissioned in 2008 by George D Bishop as a gift to Chan Chow Wah to be performed at their wedding dinner in Singapore following their marriage in San Francisco just prior to the passage of California’s Proposition 8. Bishop selected 21 out of the 231 verses that comprise the poem, Song of the Open Road, which is part of a larger collection of poems entitled Leaves of Grass, the magnum opus of American poet Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892). Song of the Open Road is an invitation to embark on a journey of shared joy. In it Whitman describes the virtues of the open road and the joy that awaits those who travel it.  Although Whitman ends the poem with the question, “Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?”, given the occasion this last line has been repeated in the affirmative both to affirm the joy of the relationship and emphasize that no law can take this relationship away.  Musically, the poem’s protagonists (“you”, “I” and “we”), distinctive words (“road” and “Soul”) as well as positive and negative expressions are each associated with a distinctive feature such as a single pitch, an interval, a chord or a rhythm.