I think it would be fair to say that the only work Alan Menken is famous for outside of his Disney work is for his popular off Broadway musical, Little Shop of Horrors which was also made into a movie (the stage musical being based on the Roger Corman film). However, Menken has written a couple of purely orchestral scores and this one for a dramatised documentary of the life of Abraham Lincoln is perhaps his most obscure. The most famous piece of music associated with Lincoln is almost certainly the Lincoln Portrait by Aaron Copland which is a short work for orchestra that is then joined by a narrator around halfway through. While there are no direct quotes, Menken clearly did his homework and has taken a suitable amount of influence from Copland's respected work.
The main Lincoln theme comes across as a slightly more subdued version of his carraige ride music from The Little Mermaid crossed with the aforementioned hint of Copland as well as hints of Randy Newman's style (especially the orchestral backing to some of the songs on Good Old Boys). The opening track provides a suitably respectful, yet rousing start after which the theme tends to only be heard in fragments, but appears more boldly when underscoring the speeches which were recreated. There is a great debate as to the place of dialogue on soundtrack CDs. In many instances it is a nuisance, but in this context works well due to Menken's active underscoring. This allows music and dialogue to work together rather than let the music drift along beneath the speeches which were re-recreated for the series. Like Copland, Menken has allowed the music to ebb and flow with the drama of the text as his guide and as such it works a great deal better than could be expected. I would suggest that his talents as a song writer have provided him with the greater ability to strongly underline drama that is sung or in this case, spoken.
In amongst Menken's music are several traditional refrains which have been adapted by Walter Levinsky & Richard Lieb for the album. Some work well and some are plain annoying. These, along with the speeches rather give the impression of the album being more of an audio-book version of the film than a score album. However, I would concede that traditional music of this sort was inevitable on an album such as this. Despite the large number of tracks for the running time, most of Menken's cues play without a break between tracks and as such the album only becomes fragmented when the traditional cues appear as these remain generally separate.
Anyone who enjoyed Randy Edelman's score to Gettysburg will certainly enjoy the majority of this album. Menken's brand of American music works well and demonstrates that he can write orchestral music that works better on disc than some of the orchestral scores to the Disney movies he's contributed to. In an ideal world, presenting Menken's music as a half hour extended suite with the dialogue over the appropriate sections would have made for a much more enjoyable album. With a couple of exceptions, the traditional music doesn't help the atmosphere of the album and would have been best placed at the end or not at all. I suppose an extended piece of Americana with a few snippets of Lincoln speeches would make it seem even closer to Copland's composition, but I am certain that it would have made for a better presentation of a rather nice score.
Rating ~ 
Total Time ~ 45:50
Traditional Song Adaptations by Walter Levinsky & Richard Lieb