Hampson is an all-American

A case can be made that America’s real “art songs’’ are by Gershwin, Cole Porter, Strayhorn and Ellington, Kern, Rodgers, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and the anonymous creators of Spirituals (black and white), the blues, and folk songs of the prairie, the rivers, railroads, and canals. In this writer’s opinion, they have more emotional depth and range - and tell more of the country’s story - than Foster, Copland, Ives, Beach, and others, generally Europhile composers writing for the upper middle class parlor.

The point seemed to be underlined by the last two pieces on the program, sung as encores: “Shenandoah,’’ and “The Boatman’s Dance,’’ Copland’s arrangement of an old minstrel song for the first set of his “Old American Songs.’’ These were the most moving of all, and Hampson sang them in an honest, open-throated, swaggering, style, with delicate half-voice at times, and in a frank, unfussy American accent. The audience was quietly mmmm-ing and hanging on every syllable.

But Hampson - whose new “Song of America’’ project was launched this summer in collaboration with the Library of Congress, with website and CD - is an explorer, and the program included some pleasant discoveries. The first half was a highly personal assortment of mostly little-known songs by 11 composers (one each). These were led off by “My Days Have Been So Wondrous Free,’’ a charming piece written in 1759 by a young Francis Hopkinson of Philadelphia, a gifted amateur musician who became a signer of the Declaration of Independence. (The song, lightly ornamented and owing something to Thomas Arne, is billed as “the first song written by an ‘American.’ ’’ Which only begs the question, what about the unwritten ones?)

Other powerful songs were Arthur Farwell’s “Song of the Deathless Voice,’’ the magnificent funeral song of an Omaha warrior, and one of Leonard Bernstein’s better songs in a serious vein, “To What You Said,’’ to Whitman’s confession of his love for men.