Until his death in 2018 Fetler was Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota. His diverse background includes living as a child in Latvia, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland. He served in the US Army as a Russian interpreter during WWII as was deeply influenced by Russian culture. While in the army, he was a student of the celebrated conductor, Celibidache, and conducted one of his early works with the Berlin Philharmonic. An exponent of what he described as “progressive lyricism,” he received his musical education at Northwestern and Yale universities, as well as at Minnesota and the Berlin Academy of Music. He was a widely successful composer, composing over 150 works, and was the recipient of several national awards. His self-professed goal as an artist was to “. . . reach out to people. My goal is the merger of listener and music.”
Until his death in 2018 Fetler was Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota. His diverse background includes living as a child in Latvia, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland. He served in the US Army as a Russian interpreter during WWII as was deeply influenced by Russian culture. While in the army, he was a student of the celebrated conductor, Celibidache, and conducted one of his early works with the Berlin Philharmonic. An exponent of what he described as “progressive lyricism,” he received his musical education at Northwestern and Yale universities, as well as at Minnesota and the Berlin Academy of Music. He was a widely successful composer, composing over 150 works, and was the recipient of several national awards. His self-professed goal as an artist was to “. . . reach out to people. My goal is the merger of listener and music.”
His Three Poems of Walt Whitman, written in commemoration of the American bicentennial in 1976, sensitively combines music as an evocative, collaborative partner with the drama of poetic declamation. And whose poetry better to celebrate American literature than its eternal poet laureate, Walt Whitman? The poems are from his most celebrated collection, Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855, but subject to significant revision and expansion for decades. Whitman’s influential legacy was one that redefined poetry, while probing deeply into the broad context of our country–and what it means to live through its variegated, exuberant, but challenging history.
The combination of spoken voice and music is a challenging one, and the bar has been set high by perhaps the best of the genre: Lincoln Portrait by Aaron Copland. Fetler succeeds by adroitly avoiding music that parrots each word, on the one hand, or simply writing “mood” music, on the other. Rather, he skillfully weaves the two approaches, as suggested by the poems. In each setting his mastery of orchestra and keen ear for instrumental color is the foundation in his remarkable, nuanced partnership with Whitman’s words.
In “I Am He That Walks With the Tender and Growing Night,” from “Song of Myself,” Fetler conjures up a romantic, lush atmosphere to complement Whitman’s evocative celebration of earth, night, nature, and the cosmos. The poet seems to abandon his human form and simply melds into the nocturnal earth first evoked by bassoons. The second poem is the well known “Beat! Beat! Drums!” that evokes the disaster of war. Fetler serves up an aptly cacophonous and delirious setting of the crushing effects of war penetrating into every public and private as aspects of society.
The concluding poem, “Ah, from a Little Child,” from “Proud Music of the Storm,” quietly and reflectively celebrates all delightful natural sounds as music—divine, universal music played by a cosmic orchestra. As the movement ends, the child’s innocence is poignantly pictured by Fetler’s use of a toy piano.
–Wm. E. Runyan
© 2026 William E. Runyan