American Musical Settings of “In Flanders Fields” and the Great War

Abstract

In 1915 Canadian physician John McCrae published “In Flanders Fields,” a poem that drew on his experience at the Belgian front during World War I. A touching depiction of sorrow, but also a rousing call to arms, the poem quickly became one of the best-known poems of the War, prominently used in various American media. By 1920 at least fifty-five composers across the United States had set the poem to music, including Arthur Foote, Charles Ives, and John Philip Sousa. The poem provided composers with a means of thinking about and encapsulating the emotions of the War experience.