PERSPECTIVE — A celebration wouldn’t be a celebration without music. So it’s hardly surprising that American composers both well-established and up-and-coming have been commissioned to write works to mark the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
“As a composer living in 2026, I feel it’s my duty to express what it means to be human in the 21st century, and part of that is being American, and part of that is asking what that means,” said Kian Ravaei, who has written a string quartet for the occasion titled A Free People.
The 27-year-old New York composer brings a distinctive perspective as the son of parents who fled the Iranian Revolution in the late 1970s and moved to the United States. He was still working on the piece when the current war broke out with the country of his heritage.
Rather than simply serving as patriotic odes, many of these pieces raise questions about the deep socio-political divisions in today’s America and how well the country has done in fulfilling the ideals of its founders.
Philadelphia resident Leigha Amick, who has written an orchestral work titled O Beautiful Unity for a consortium of commissioners in her home state of Colorado, is glad that composers with diverse backgrounds and viewpoints have stepped up to be heard.
“Now is such a complicated time,” she said, “and there are so many things that we can say about it that the more voices that we have in that conversation the better. I’m happy to just be one voice in a big conversation and to recognize what a complicated time it is to celebrate.”
These new works will be heard across the country this summer and later in the year as music festivals, concert halls, and other presenters do their part to mark this milestone in the history of the United States.
Here’s a look at six of the semiquincentennial commissions and where and when they will be performed this summer:
+ Leigha Amick, O Beautiful Unity, July 30 and 31, Colorado Music Festival (Boulder), Peter Oundjian, conductor; July 31, Music in the Mountains (Durango, Colo.), Andrew Litton, conductor; and Aug. 1, National Repertory Orchestra (Breckenridge, Colo.), Michael Stern, conductor.
This up-and-coming composer was commissioned in 2024 to write a work marking the 25th anniversary of the mass shooting at Columbine High School. Titled Not Staying Long, it was performed by the Denver Young Artists Orchestra, Columbine High School Choir, and St. Martin’s Chamber Choir.
That work helped gain the 28-year-old Colorado native the notice of the artistic leadership of the Colorado Music Festival, which teamed with two other summer series in the state to commission what would become O Beautiful Unity. Amick began writing the five-minute work in November and put the finishing touches on it in early May.
It contains two primary sets of musical materials. One is a lyrical, eight-note melody that looks back at the early 20th-century orchestral sound of Aaron Copland and his contemporaries. The other draws on “America, the Beautiful,” the song based on Katharine Lee Bates’ 1895 poem evoking the vistas across the Great Plains from Pikes Peak.
At first, listeners only hear fragments of the tune, and then part way into the work, the lowest-register instruments of the orchestra begin to play the full song. “But they start very slowly,” Amick said, “and you’ll just hear it as bass notes, but then over time it will gradually speed up. So, if you are listening to the lowest voices, you will start to hear the actual melody.”
+ Vivian Fung, America the Beautiful?, July 31, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music (Santa Cruz, Calif.), Cristian Măcelaru, conductor.
Fung, 51, grew up in Edmonton, Alberta, where her Chinese-born parents sought to preserve as much of their Asian heritage as possible while also striving to assimilate into Canadian society. She later moved to the United States as a student and became a dual citizen in 2015.
Three previous works by the Kensington, Calif., resident have been performed at the Cabrillo Festival, where she has a good relationship with its artistic leadership and orchestra musicians. “I think it’s a natural fit,” she said, “because I’m also a resident of California and I’ve gotten to know the Cabrillo Festival as part of my family, so to speak.”
Festival leaders invited her to write an orchestral piece to mark the 250th using “The Star-Spangled Banner” as a starting point. The resulting creation, which she finished in mid-May, contains a raucous mix of recognizable quotations from the American national anthem as well as those of China and Canada — a reflection of her mixed heritage.
“I’m an American citizen and I’m proudly so,” Fung said, “but it also comes with a lot of conflict. I wish to air that conflict in the piece. So, at the end of the day, I want to leave this idea of hope, but there is a question mark, because this time is so fraught now. So, this piece is really going to be charged with a lot of the questions about this experiment that is called the United States.”
If that sounds like a lot for a five-minute piece, Fung agrees. “That’s the challenge,” she said.
+ Philip Glass, Symphony No. 15 (Lincoln), July 5, Tanglewood Music Festival (Lenox, Mass.), Boston Symphony Orchestra, Karen Kamensek, conductor, and July 31, Cabrillo Festival, Măcelaru, conductor.
At 89, Philip Glass reigns as one of the éminences grises and one of the most celebrated figures in American classical music — a composer of a vast array of works, including five operas and myriad film scores.
The National Symphony Orchestra and Kennedy Center commissioned him to write a work honoring Abraham Lincoln and the 50th anniversary of the Washington, D.C., arts venue. But in January, a month after Donald Trump’s name was added to the center’s name, Glass announced the cancellation of its delayed June 2026 premiere. Instead, the piece is scheduled to receive its premiere by the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood as part of a four-day celebration of America’s 250th anniversary.
The 40-minute symphony, which is scored for solo baritone and orchestra, is inspired by Lincoln’s 1838 Lyceum Address, one of his earliest published speeches, as well as some of his later orations, including his 1861 Farewell Address, when he left Springfield, Ill., for Washington.
In a statement posted on the Tanglewood website, Glass wrote, “For over a century and a half, the figure of Abraham Lincoln, a person who held the country together at its worst moment, remains at the center of the debate of who we are as Americans. The performance of this new symphony falls into the current discussion about our national identity and values.”
+ Arturo O’Farrill, Liberty, July 1, David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center, New York City, Pianist Lara Downes and American Composers Orchestra, Eric Jacobsen, conductor.
As part of The Declaration Project, a multimedia undertaking that includes music, personal narrative, and video, pianist Lara Downes invited three composers to write works based on the central themes of America’s founding document: Life (Valerie Coleman), Liberty (O’Farrill), and Pursuit of Happiness (Christopher Tin).
O’Farrill, 65, a jazz pianist and artistic director of the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, met Downes several years ago when he wrote a piece for her 2024 solo recording, This Land, and they have collaborated off and on since. A commission based on the idea of liberty deeply resonated with him because of his own history. “These are really tenuous times for immigrants,” he said. “I was born in Mexico of Cuban and Mexican heritage, and, ostensibly, my parents came here to find liberty, to find a better life, and it’s difficult now.”
In his 12-minute work for orchestra and piano with improvisatory elements, the composer has tried to musically illustrate the notion of liberty by merging jazz, classical, and Latin music in what he calls a “backwards lesson” in jazz history. “For me, this is what America is about, the intermingling of all these influences,” he said.
+ Kian Ravaei, A Free People, July 3, Mimir Chamber Music Festival, Fort Worth, Texas, and July 9, Seattle Chamber Music Society.
Among the New York composer’s most frequently performed works are two earlier string quartets, Family Photos and The Little Things, the latter a commission from the Seattle Chamber Music Society. The organization wanted a new work for the 250th anniversary and reached out to him again, co-commissioning this piece with the Mimir Festival and the Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival, where it will be performed in September.
Ravaei was asked to write a piece for string quartet and narrator, and, after much discussion between him and the commissioners about the text, it was decided to use excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, particularly its opening and closing words.
The four-movement, 20-minute work includes a second movement titled “Indictment” about the colonists’ complaints against King George III. Here, Ravaei quotes drum and fife music from the Revolutionary War as well as “The Star Spangled Banner” in counterpoint with the British patriotic song “Rule Brittania.”
The unnarrated third movement, “Of Bondage and Freedom,” confronts the legacy of the historic document in the present day. “To me,” Ravaei said, “this piece is less about celebrating the birth of our country and more about questioning how we have lived up to the ideals of the Declaration in the last 250 years.”
