Libretto Excerpts

The Knickerbocker Chamber Orchestra's contribution to the national celebration of the 250th anniversary year, aka the Semiquincentennial, of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, will be a concert April 10, 2026 at the historic Battery Maritime Building, the centerpiece of which will be a new composition by KCO Music Director Gary S. Fagin entitled Each and All addressing the challenges to democracy we're experiencing today that draws on texts by Plato, Alexis de Tocqueville, Henry Longfellow, Walt Whitman, and Abraham Lincoln, texts that read astonishingly as descriptions of current events.

Here are some excerpts from the libretto:

Plato: The Republic, Book 6 (350 B.C.)

Picture a shipmaster, in strength surpassing all others on the ship, but who is slightly deaf and of impaired vision, and whose knowledge of navigation is on par with his sight and hearing. Conceive sailors wrangling for control of the helm, each claiming that it is his right to steer, though none have ever learned the art.

They take command of the ship, and make such a voyage of it as is to be expected, as they have no suspicion that a true pilot must have knowledge of the time of the year, the seasons, the sky, the winds, the stars. Sailors in ships managed after this fashion call the real pilot a star-gazer, a useless fellow; they see not his abilities, and know not how to make use of them.

This is the exact counterpart of the relation of the state to philosophers; philosophers are thought to be of no service to the multitude, and in fact are castigated for their uselessness. You will not be wide of the mark in comparing the politicians who are ruling now to the sailors described earlier, and those whom they refer to as useless and as star-gazers as the true helmsmen.

Alexis de Tocqueville: De la Démocratie en América (1831)

The greatness of America lies not in its being more enlightened than any other nation, but in her ability to repair her faults. If her free institutions are destroyed, it will be due to the unlimited authority of the majority through the tyranny of the Executive power.

The sovereign tyrant extends his arms over the entire society, after having taken each individual into his powerful hands, and molded him as he pleases. He covers the surface of society with a network of rules.

He does not break wills, he softens them, bends them, directs them. He hinders, represses, enervates, extinguishes, stupefies.

He reduces a nation to nothing more than a flock of timid, industrious animals, of which he alone is the shepherd. This very servitude, regulated, peaceful, is established in the very shadow of the sovereignty of the people.

Abraham Lincoln: Speech to the Citizens of Cleveland (1861)

Frequent allusion is made to the excitement at present existing in our national politics, a time when the bravest and wisest look with doubt and awe upon the aspect presented ny our national affairs. I shall do all in my power to promote a settlement of all our difficulties. I shall endeavor to take the ground I deem most just to the North, the East, the West, the South, and the whole country. I take it with no malice toward any section.

I trust I may have your assistance in piloting the ship of State through this voyage, surrounded by perils as it is, for if all do not join now to save the good old ship of the Union on this voyage, nobody will have a chance to pilot her on another voyage.

Walt Whitman: Democratic Vistas (1871)

We sail a dangerous sea of seething currents. Never was there more hollowness at heart than at present here in the United States. The spectacle is appalling; we live in an atmosphere of hypocrisy throughout; scornful superciliousness rules.

The Almighty has spread before this nation a human aggregate of cankerous imperfection, saying, lo!

I will be empire of empires, overshadowing all else, past and present, putting the history of old-world dynasties behind me, making a new history. Thought you greatness was to ripen for you like a pear? If you would have greatness, you must pay for it; the struggle, the wily person in office, the surfeit of prosperity, the demonism of greed, the hell of passion, the decay of faith, prophets, thunderstorms, deaths, births.

America must promulgate her own new standard, a hitherto unoccupied platform broad enough for all, the female equally with the male, realizing the mortal life is most important with reference to the immortal, the unknown, the spiritual, the only permanently real, which as the ocean waits for and receives the rivers, waits for us each and all.