The classical-music world loves to milk composers' anniversaries (birthdays or funerals do equally well), and 2009 contains a bonanza: Tuesday marked the bicentennial of Felix Mendelssohn, while Haydn died 200 years ago this May. But at least one significant non-musical anniversary has made a dent on symphony programs this season: the birth of Abraham Lincoln on February 12, 1809.

Adding to the recent crop of biographies and exhibits is a new work for the concert hall commissioned by the Spokane Symphony: Letters from Lincoln by Michael Daugherty.

While other orchestras are making do with trotting out that familiar Copland homage, Lincoln Portrait, the Spokane Symphony is taking a bold step by commissioning a piece of contemporary music by a significant American composer. Daugherty is an eclectic maverick, Charles Ives-style, who is fascinated by the mythology of pop culture. His best-known works include the Metropolis Symphony (inspired by the Superman comics), Dead Elvis (which the Northwest Sinfonietta performed earlier in the season), and the opera Jackie O.

Spokane Symphony music director Eckart Preu says he chose Daugherty for the Lincoln tribute since "his music is rich with cultural and political allusions and bears the stamp of classic modernism, with colliding tonalities and blocks of sound; at the same time, his melodies can be eloquent and stirring." Preu stipulated that he wanted a piece involving words, to pay homage to Lincoln's genius as an orator.

Letters from Lincoln draws from both his public and private writings to express, as the composer puts it, "a musical portrait of a man who expressed his vision with eloquence, and with hope that the human spirit could overcome prejudice and differences of opinion in order to create a better world." He was especially concerned to find "ways to bring his historic greatness into the present." There's also something appropriate in the use of voice, since Lincoln himself was an avowed fan of opera (for his second inauguration, as Washington Post critic Anne Midgette notes, he requested a staging of Friedrich von Flotow's opera Martha).

Daugherty composed Letters for Lincoln for Thomas Hampson, who grew up in Spokane. The famous baritone will be on hand to perform the world premiere on February 28, culminating a city-wide Lincoln Festival that is currently under way.