Michael Daugherty: Mount Rushmore

It looms over the Black Hills of South Dakota: a massive sculpture carved into the face of Mount Rushmore, which stands a massive 60 feet (18m) high. The heads of four presidents, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, look out over the rest of America.

Mount Rushmore, closeup, 2017 (National Parks Service)

The original idea came from Doane Robinson, a historian for the state of South Dakota. His original idea was to memorialise the great members of the Lewis and Clark expedition and other figures important to the development of the American West: Lewis and Clark, their expedition guide Sacagawea, Oglala Lakota chief Red Cloud, Buffalo Bill Cody, and Oglala Lakota chief Crazy Horse. The sculptor John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum (1867–1941), better known as Gutzon Borglum, chose 4 American presidents instead, representing a larger vision of America’s birth, growth, development, and preservation.

Gutzon Borglum

Borglum’s education was international and included Mark Hopkins Institute of Art (now known as the San Francisco Art Institute), the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris (where he became a close friend of Auguste Rodin), and the California School of Design. As an artist, he sculpted figures of saints and apostles for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in 1901 and five years later, a group sculpture was purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the first sculpture by a living American that the museum had purchased.

Borglum was active in American art life. He was one of the organisers of the New York Armory Show of 1913, which is credited with bringing modernism to American art. Borglum quit the organising committee before the opening, feeling that the emphasis on avant-garde works made traditional artists such as himself appear old-fashioned.

He was fascinated with art on a gigantic scale. In 1908, he created a head of Abraham Lincoln from a six-ton block of marble that was exhibited in the White House when Theodore Roosevelt was president.

Borglum: Abraham Lincoln bust, 1908 (United States Capitol Crypt)

Rather than working in the usual way of creating the bust in clay and then making a plaster cast and using that as his working model, Borglum worked directly in marble so that he could better capture Lincoln’s character and personality. The right and left sides are finished differently. The right side gives a more developed impression, whereas the left side is more impressionistically carved, with the ear barely defined. For Borglum, the right side represented ‘the forcefulness of his character, his common sense, his executive capacity, his reasonableness, that is, his intellectual qualities’. The left side, however, was shown on his more spiritual left side, ‘his gentleness, his tenderness, his bigness and warmth of heart’. It was displayed in the capital Rotunda until 1979, when it, along with other Rotunda sculptures, was moved to the Crypt.

Work on Mount Rushmore started in 1927 and ended in 1941. Borglum chose the site because it is southwest-facing, which best catches the sun.

Mount Rushmore (Six Grandfathers) before construction started, ca 1905 (National Park Service)

The original construction started with Thomas Jefferson as the leftmost figure, but unstable rock meant they had to start over, and Washington became the first figure.

Original sculpture with Jefferson on the left

Borglum’s original design included not only busts but also bodies and clothes for Washington and Lincoln. The hands of three presidents are shown, each indicative of their goals.

Borglum’s model for the completed sculpture, ca. 1936 (Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division, cph.3c05079)

Finances and Borglum’s early death precluded doing any more than the heads. His assistant in his last years was his son, Lincoln, who left the monument largely in the state of completion it had attained at his father’s death. Borglum died in 1941, age 73, from an embolism following surgery.

Gutzon Borglum and supt. inspecting work on face [nose] of Washington, Mt. Rushmore, S.D., (Library of Congress, cph 3b11262)

American composer Michael Daugherty (b. 1954) created his 2010 work, Mount Rushmore, on commission by the Pacific Symphony and VocalEssence; the premiere was given by the Pacific Symphony and Pacific Chorale on 4 February 2010.

Michael Daughtery at Mount Rushmore, 2009

For his first movement, George Washington, the composer divides the chorus into two groups, one to represent Washington leading the Revolutionary War and the other to reflect his time as the first President. Williams Billing’s anthem Chester is sung by the chorus in the thin, bright tones normally used in the period. After a bit of Yankee Doodle, another popular Revolutionary War song, it closes with a quotation from Washington’s retirement letter: ‘I will move gently down the stream of life until I sleep with my Fathers.’

Michael Daugherty: Mount Rushmore – I. George Washington (Pacific Chorale; Pacific Symphony Orchestra; Carl St. Clair, cond.)

Thomas Jefferson, the third President of America, was known not only for his politics and political writing but also for his violin playing. While in Paris as the American Minister to France (1785–1789), Jefferson met the musician and composer Maria Cosway. This movement combines a love song that Cosway wrote for Jefferson, Ogni dolce aura, with a letter that the besotted Jefferson sent Cosway (Dialogue of the Head vs. the Heart) and fragments from the Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. The music includes the French national anthem.

Michael Daugherty: Mount Rushmore – II. Thomas Jefferson (Pacific Chorale; Pacific Symphony Orchestra; Carl St. Clair, cond.)

The third movement, Theodore Roosevelt, memorialises the President known for his outdoor life. Roosevelt was a friend of Borglum’s. One of Roosevelt’s most important creations was the National Park Service, which protected millions of acres of land from commercial developers. The lyrics come from a speech Roosevelt gave at the Grand Canyon in 1903 and from a book on hunting in Africa he wrote in 1910. The text closes with something we should all remember: ‘Keep it for your children. Leave it as it is’. The hymn Rock of Ages is also used.

Michael Daugherty: Mount Rushmore – III. Theodore Roosevelt (Pacific Chorale; Pacific Symphony Orchestra; Carl St. Clair, cond.)

It’s clear from his life and creations that Abraham Lincoln was important to Borglum; he even named one of his sons in his honour. Daugherty uses Lincoln’s most important and powerful speech for his text: the entire Gettysburg Address, delivered at Gettysburg on 19 November 1863. The occasion was the dedication of the Soldier’s National Cemetery (not the Gettysburg National Cemetery). The Union Armies had defeated the Confederates at the Bottle of Gettysburg only four months earlier. Lincoln’s speech, regarded as the most notable in American history, came to be regarded as ‘one of the greatest and most influential statements on the American national purpose’. In a mere 10 sentences and 2 minutes, Lincoln said more than the official speaker at the dedication had said in 2 hours. The music references include Dixie, written by a northerner but a favourite song in the South during the Civil War.

Daughtery’s triumphant ending is rather like Borglum’s sculpture: encompassing in a few bars or images the entirety of the belief of a nation.

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Michael Daugherty: Mount Rushmore – IV. Abraham Lincoln (Pacific Chorale; Pacific Symphony Orchestra; Carl St. Clair, cond.)