The Spiritual Aftermath

After Dvořák’s eventual departure from the National Conservatory in 1895, the New World Symphony continued to be a flash point in discussions about the relationships between African American and European American music and musicians, particularly the repertoire known as “Negro spirituals.” White American-born composers, such as Henry F. Gilbert and John Powell, continued to complain about lack of representation on concert programs while failing to support their Black counterparts, who leveraged relationships with figures inside and outside the musical world to create new social networks for finding professional success. In the early 1930s, William Dawson and Florence Price became the first Black composers to premiere symphonies drawing musical inspiration from early African American vernacular song and dance.

Promoting Social Change Through Audio Repetition1

The development of contemporary American music is clearly reflected in the integration of black composers, performers, and their songs into mainstream popular record charts. Between 1953 and 1978 a fascinating role reversal occurred. During that quarter century black artists shifted from creators to revivalists. The same role reversal did not apply to white artists, who tended to evolve along a more consistent audience-acceptance continuum. How can this 25-year cycle of social change best be illustrated? What particular elements of black music dramatically entered the pop spectrum during the fifties, and later gained dominance by the end of the sixties? Why did black artists become more and more conservative during the late seventies? A careful examination of audio repetition – cover recordings and song revivals – offers a great deal of revealing information about changes in social, economic and artistic life in America after 1953.

Black Opera across the Atlantic

This chapter provides an overview of the participation of black people in opera in the United States and South Africa. Themes include the practice and legacy of minstrelsy in both countries. For the United States, the focus explores the creation of an American operatic tradition outside Europe and one that features black composers and singers. For South Africa, the focus explores the experiences of Angelo Gobbato who worked in opera through the last decades of apartheid and into the new millennium with integrated casts and Neo Muyanga (Soweto-born composer) who was educated in Europe during the last decades of apartheid and has become a leading voice in the post-apartheid black opera scene. This chapter also discusses black opera singers and the Isango Ensemble.

Bringing Spirituals to the Concert Stage

This chapter focuses on the popularity of Harry T. Burleigh's spirituals in recitals and other concerts. Burleigh published his first solo arrangement of spirituals from 1911 to 1916, at a time when the tide of interest in African American folk music, especially spirituals, was gathering momentum. At least nineteen white American composers joined the stream. Black composers also produced compositions reflecting their folk heritage during these years. From the 1916–1917 concert season, when his solo arrangement of “Deep River” became the hit of the recital season, Burleigh's role as pioneer arranger and interpreter of spirituals began to eclipse his role as recital singer and art song composer. This chapter explores how the recurring controversy over the origins of African American music made Burleigh a spokesman for the uniquely expressive gifts of African Americans who, he argued, had created America's first genuine folk music. In particular, it considers Burleigh's view that the spirituals were the primary artistic contribution of African Americans. It also discusses the influence of Edward MacDowell on Burleigh's movement toward arranging spirituals as art songs.

Harry T. Burleigh

Harry T. Burleigh (1866–1949) played a leading role in American music, and African American music in particular, in the twentieth century. Celebrated for his arrangements of spirituals, Burleigh was also the first African American composer to create a significant body of art song. An international roster of opera and recital singers performed his works and praised them as among the best of their time. This book traces Burleigh's life from his Pennsylvania childhood through his fifty-year tenure as soloist at St. George's Episcopal Church in Manhattan. As a composer, Burleigh's pioneering work preserved and transformed the African American spiritual; as a music editor, he facilitated the work of other black composers; as a role model, vocal coach, and mentor, he profoundly influenced American song; and in private life he was friends with Antonín Dvořák, Marian Anderson, Will Marion Cook, and other American luminaries. The book provides rich historical, social, and political contexts that explore Burleigh's professional and personal life within an era complicated by changes in race relations, class expectations, and musical tastes.