The genre of the lyrical song for voice and piano holds a central place in the work of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco: roughly a quarter of his catalog of numbered compositions is devoted to this format. It was only in 1936, with I Saw in Louisiana, Leaves of Grass, and Ocean, that Castelnuovo-Tedesco first approached American poetry. The poetic texts that form the basis of these three works, in particular, were drawn from one of the books that did the most to shape the cultural identity of the Unite...