Short answer: It’s not the destination but the journey. (You’ve read that on a poster somewhere, haven’t you?)
First some information on Norman Dello Joio (whom I was at first confusing with Ola Gjello). Dello Joio had a fascinating life and career. He was descended from an Italian family known for producing church organists, and he himself became one at age fourteen at the St. Mary Star of the Sea church in the Bronx. (Isn’t that a cool name for church? If you’d like to read an explanation of why Mary would be associated with this title, go to my post here.) His father was a teacher and performer, and his childhood was full of music and also musical glamour, as some of his father’s voice students were from the Metropolitan Opera and would arrive for their lessons in their Rolls Royces. Dello Joio was given a scholarship to Julliard and then went on to graduate studies there, ultimately deciding that he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life in church organ lofts. Instead he pursued a career as a composer, studying composition in 1941 with the great German composer Paul Hindemith at Yale. (Hindemith had emigrated to the US from Germany in 1940.) Hindemith encouraged Dello Joio to remember that his (that is, DJ’s) music was “lyrical by nature.” Dello Joio said that he hadn’t understood Hindemith’s statement at the time but realized later that he meant, “Don’t sacrifice necessarily to a system, go to yourself, what you hear. If it’s valid, and it’s good, put it down in your mind. Don’t say I have to do this because the system tells me to. No, that’s a mistake.” (This information is from the Dello Joio official website; you can read more about his life by going here.) Dello Joio went on to have an extremely successful career as a composer, with his latest work dating to 2003, five years before his death, when he was ninety.
Well! Quite a career. Now for the selection itself, which takes its title from a Walt Whitman poem. Of Dello Joio’s thirty-two choral works, one-fourth are settings of Whitman texts. It would be interesting to know why he felt particularly drawn to these works. Alas, there is no full-scale biography of him that could give us some information on the sources of his inspiration. It may have been something as simple as DJ’s reading Whitman in high school (in between organ gigs) and thinking, “That would sound great set to music.” Dello Joio did not feel any need to keep the poetry in its original form; he “treats the poetry freely, adapting it by deleting verses and rearranging lines to increase dramatic impact.” (from Choral Repertoire by Dennis Shrock). When I tried to do a side-by-side comparison of the original and the Della Joio text I could see how much adaptation he had done.
The text overall is an invitation to the reader to “travel with me.” The repeated use of “hello!” sets the tone of friendly challenge. “Leave your daily life, your old surroundings, and go on an adventure with me!” There’s no end point given; the point of going is to go.
Dello Joio begins his adapted text with a reference to the sea; he’s not describing a calm sailing trip but rather something quite violent and dangerous: “pathless and wild seas” where “waves dash and winds blow.” Then he switches to journeying by land, to the open road. He and his companion will be healthy and free, experiencing what it is to be “loved by strangers.” Don’t you find when you get back from a trip that your most lasting memories are of the people you met, even if briefly, and especially if they showed you a kindness? Meanwhile the “long path” is stretching out, going wherever the traveler chooses. We don’t have much of that feeling in our modern world, do we? Setting out with a walking staff and a rucksack, with only your two feet to propel you, won’t get you very far these days.
But Whitman/Dello Joio goes on to make the literal road into an image of life itself. Getting out on the open road is to be free: “I ordain myself loosed from imaginary limits/From this hour I shall live as my own master.” But there are those who would try to keep the traveler back. The “test of wisdom” is to be aware of “those who would hold you.” I’ve tried to figure out what on earth it means that the men who would try to do this are “bat-eyed.” Try googling that term and see where it gets you! My first thought on reading it was to think of someone who is squinty-eyed or glaring, the expression of someone who says, “You want to do what?” But the expression may refer to the common idea that bats are blind (they’re really not) and so these men are unable to see the attractions of the open road and that’s why they’re mocking the traveler. Who knows? Whatever it is to be bat-eyed, it ain’t good!
Two very interesting lines are ”Gather the minds of men out of their brains,/Gather love out of men’s hearts.” As the traveler goes on his way he wants to learn from others’ knowledge (their minds, as opposed to their physical brains) and feel their love (as opposed to their physical hearts). The universe itself becomes an endless path.
There is one final image evoked before the conclusion, one that is appropriate for Whitman to use since he served as a battlefield medic during the Civil War: battle. “Going with me you must go well armed,” he says, however figurative that language may be.
The last section would be completely appropriate for a wedding: “I give you my hand, I give you my love, I give you myself, will you give me yourself? Will you travel with me?” It’s a call for companionship, for venturing forth together in life, wherever that life will take us.
It’ll be a great journey!
Hello! Hello! Whoever you are,
Come travel with me.
We will sail pathless and wild seas,
We will go where waves dash and winds blow.
Come on! Come on!
Wherever you are, Look around!
You will find what never tires,
Come on! Come on, and join hands,
Know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers.
Take to the open road, healthy and free,
Take the long path leading wherever I choose,
I travel with the wide world before me,
The earth expanding, the music sounding.
Come on! Come on, Whoever you are,
Join hands and travel with me.
I ordain myself loosed from imaginary limits.
From this hour I shall live as my own master,
Searching and listening,
Breaking the bonds that would hold me.
Sing a song of the open road,
for here is space and here a great deed has room.
Sing a song of the highway I travel,
for here is the test of a wisdom that is of the soul.
Take warning of those who would hold you.
The mocking and bat-eyed men.
Take your love on the road with you.
Gather the minds of men out of their brains,
Gather love out of men’s hearts,
The universe is a path that is endless,
the universe itself is a road.
Come forth, my call is the call of battle.
Going with me you must go well armed.
Come forth, and travel with me.
I give you my hand,
Oh! Hello! Hello!
I give you my love.I give you myself.
Will you give me yourself?
Will you travel with me?
The road is before us.
I give you my hand.
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?
Whoever you are,
Wherever you are.
Hello! Hello! Come on and travel with me.
Never being one to let well enough alone, I can’t resist adding a reference to The Lord of the Rings here with its own song about the open road:
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
© Debi Simons
