A Dallas orchestra reimagines LBJ's duel wars

A haunted tenor voice will sing out in Dallas on Thursday. It will lament that a terrible war was based on a hollow threat, and that millions might have died because of a"mistake."

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra wanted a grand piece of music to commemorate Lyndon B. Johnson, born 100 years ago, and it may have gotten more than it bargained for: a 70-minute oratorio with implicit reverberations about another war propelled by faulty intelligence, prosecuted by another Texan.

The work,"August 4, 1964," composed by Steven Stucky to a libretto by Gene Scheer, is based on a single day in Johnson's presidency, and it joins a genre of classical music rife with worthy intentions and inherent risks: compositions that address current or recent events.

On that date Johnson told the American people that North Vietnamese forces had attacked a U.S. ship in the Tonkin Gulf, prompting retaliation and precipitating the resolution used to justify the Vietnam War. The report turned out to have been false - a result of mangled and probably falsified intelligence relayed to the president - although an actual attack had occurred two days earlier....