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And a patriotic medley that follows, featuring “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” and “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” is as blandly perfunctory as a middling college halftime show.

“Whenever the song ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ was played in grade school, I would start crying,” Belmont said.

Crumb, by contrast, kept the core of the songs he used — “Glory, Hallelujah,” “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” “Shenandoah” — and only teased them apart at the edges, setting them adrift in an unfamiliar context of tones and rustles and plonks, or slightly recasting them.

For instance, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” underlined a kind of war-hysteria by having the soprano almost scream the chorus, repeatedly, before dropping her into a mournful, exhausted, drooping dirge.

The selections reached back to early Americana that includes a carping song about Congress and a take that reduced “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” to a mournful dirge.