Album Notes

"Bravo!" exclaims the Whittier scholar and well-known author and biographer Brenda Wineapple about this first-ever recording of John Greenleaf Whittier's masterpiece,"Snow-Bound."

Whittier's poetic remembrance, told as an old man, of the great blizzard that entombed his family and his family's guests in their Haverhill, Massachusetts farmhouse in the early 19th century, has waited more than 150 years for its first recording.

A hundred years ago, Whittier was America's favorite poet. Abolitionist, free-thinker, great American...and, most importantly, the man who captured best the soul and sprit of 19th century America. "Snow-Bound" is a beautiful, narrative poem of one family's experience at being cut off from the outside world for three days: long before the days of electronic communications, they entertained each other through the telling of stories, which Whittier lovingly remembers and which enliven and illuminate the personalities of the family members and take us back to what it was like in 19th century America.

This recording features a complete copy of the text, and is set to the music of Charles Ives's piano masterpiece "The Concord Sonata."

Read by musician, actor, and filmmaker Michael Maglaras...this is Volume One in the Whittier Bicentennial Recording Project, honoring the 200th anniversary (in 2007) of John Greenleaf Whittier's birth.