These are the
complete program notes for the three Dissertation Recitals performed in lieu of
a written dissertation, done in partial fulfillment of the degree Doctor of
Musical Arts (A.Mus.D.) in The University of Michigan School of Music, Horace H. Rackham
School of Graduate Studies by Timothy W.
Holley, violoncello
Dissertation Title: “Three Recitals of
Violoncello Music of African-American Composers”
Recital One:
23 April 1995, Northside Community Church, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Recital Two: November 14, 1995, Recital Hall,
School of Music, The University of Michigan.
Recital Three: March 12, 1996, Huron Hills Baptist Church, Ann Arbor,
Michigan.
Program I (23 April 1995): David N. Baker: Sonata for
Cello and Piano (1968) Fast; Slow (Blues); Fast. Dorothy Rudd Moore: Dirge and Deliverance for Cello and Piano (1971). Noel G. Da Costa: Two Pieces for Unaccompanied Cello (1973); Five Verses/With Vamps for Cello and Piano (1968). George Walker: Sonata for Cello and Piano (1957) Allegro passionato; Sostenuto;
Allegro
Collaborative Artists: Howard Watkins, piano; Kelley Benson, piano
First Dissertation Recital Notes
David N. Baker, cellist, bassist, composer, arranger
and teacher, is one of the foremost jazz educators of this century. As director of the Jazz Studies Program at
Indiana University, his performing, teaching, composing and developing
instructional materials on jazz improvisation with Jamey Aebersold have helped
to expose at least two generations of young musicians to American jazz. As a composer, Baker studied with Bernhard
Heiden, Juan Orrego-Salas and George Russell.
The list of musicians who have commissioned works from him reads like a
Who’s Who list: Josef Gingold, Janos Starker, Ruggiero Ricci, Gary Karr, Harvey
Phillips, Paul Freeman, and the Beaux Arts Trio, to name a few. He is called upon regularly to serve on
national arts panels as an authority on American jazz, and is Music Director of
the Smithsonian Institute Jazz Orchestra, which frequently tours the United
States. The Sonata for Cello and Piano
was composed in 1968. Its three
movements of alternating tempo are cast in sonata-allegro or ternary form. The stylistic interest of this work is its
successful wedding of the European sonata-allegro principle with the rhythmic
fluidity of American rhythm-and-blues and jazz. The compositional and stylistic approach in
this work is comparable to the chamber music of Bela Bartok, as both composers
have sought to combine the flexible improvisatory nature of folk music material
with the structured framework of European musical craftsmanship and form. As Bartok drew from an inexhaustible well of
folk melodies from eastern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, so Baker
draws from nearly as many wells of stylistic and compositional influence—the
formal craftsmanship of Haydn, the musical language of Olivier Messiaen, Miles
Davis’ modal jazz and the “sound-streams” of John Coltrane, and tritonal
effects reminiscent of Charles Ives and Alban Berg. The formal design of the opening movement
clearly displays Baker’s intent of joining jazz-syncopated melodies with the
Classical sonata-allegro paradigm. The
tonal polarities of the Tonic and dominant chords are dispensed with, and the
dramatic discourse takes place between instrumental partners on a highly
rhythmic and melodically angular level.
Although Baker does not dispense with tonality altogether, his harmonic
language is additively chromatic and yet still remains centered on a single
pitch, D-natural. The two themes
presented in this movement are contrasted more by rhythm than melody or
harmony, just as themes in sonata-allegro procedure contrast each other,
without regard to style. The second
movement is originally titled “Slow”, but the ancillary title “Blues” was
devised by Mr. Starker, who has performed this movement frequently as a
separate piece. The term “blues” fits
loosely for the slow tempo and meditative quality of the opening
soliloquy. However, in terms of musical
form and style, the suitability of the title stops there—or at best should be
called “kind of blues”. The attempted
pun is intentional—despite the fact that no evidence of the blues in its
original form is present in this movement.
The extended cello passages recall the modal style of jazz played by
Miles Davis in the late 1950s, as displayed on his recording “Kind of Blue” (1959). The piano provides tenderly reflective
interludes between the extended cello passages—reminiscent of the similar
balladic dialogues heard in the various Miles Davis Quintet combinations of the
same time (c.1958-1963). The overall
tone of this movement is elegiac, perhaps a memorial to two great musicians,
John Coltrane (1926-1967) and Wes Montgomery (1923-1968), as evidenced by the
quasi-improvisatory melodic writing and fingered octaves in the cello cadenzas. The final movement is an impetuous
tour-de-force, punctuated and seasoned by constantly darting rhythms shifting
back and forth between intense lyricism and earthy blues dialogue. The lightness of instrumental texture is
created by the active cello line supported by the rhythmic commentary in the
piano, which doesn’t inhibit the sense of musical directness that characterizes
the opening theme. This movement also
develops two important motives—the first, melodic in function, is taken from
the blues scale. The second motive
functions rhythmically and harmonically, resembling a blues figure. The middle section is a serene waltz that
contains a hint of a different underpinning, perhaps Swing. A retransition from this section back to the
main theme follows, marked by rapid rhythm-exchanges between cello and
piano. Also featured are instrumental
effects, the dragging of the fingers across the white keys of the piano, and a
combination saltando-glissando effect, the bouncing of the bow on the strings
while producing a glissando with the left hand.
The outworking of formal events in this movement mirrors European sonata
treatment quite predictably, but the blues motives continue their development
to the point of near-disintegration, where only their harmonic outline remains. The virtuosic writing for the cello takes
wing, quickly spanning the full range of the instrument before the ultimate
“out-of-tune” final chord. Michael
Peebles and Gayle Cameron premiered this work in June 1968 at Indiana
University in Bloomington, Indiana, and Janos Starker and Alain Planes recorded it in 1974 for the CBS Black Composers
Series, Volume Six (CBS M-33432).
Dorothy Rudd Moore is one of the most eloquent
spokespersons for the music of African-American composers. As a founding member of the Society of Black
Composers, her compositions are mainly concerned with the musical portrayal of
African-American historical figures (including an opera based on the life of
abolitionist Sojourner Truth). A native
of New Castle, Delaware, she studied at Howard University with Mark Fax, the
American Academy at Fontainebleau with Nadia Boulanger, and privately with
Chou-Wen Chung. One of her most
frequently performed works is “Weary
Blues” (1970) for baritone, cello and piano, after Langston Hughes’ poem. Her song cycle “From the Dark Tower” (1970) consists entirely of settings of
poetry from the Harlem Renaissance: James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, Arna
Bontemps, Waring Cuney, and Langston Hughes.
She lives in New York City with her husband Kermit Moore, who is a
cellist, composer and conductor. Dirge
and Deliverance was written for her husband, and the composer herself
has kindly provided notes to this work:
“As the title suggests, the work is in two movements. The “Dirge”,
marked Adagio, begins with stark chords in the piano. The cello then enters, announcing the
principal theme, which is characterized by a three-note motif. The theme represents the human spirit longing
to be free. The chordal and rhythmic
structure forms a pattern which embodies a force enchaining the spirit, thus
intensifying its despair. “Deliverance”, marked Allegro, begins
with the cello alone, and is based on the same three-note motif of the “Dirge”.
Its character has become angry and determined however, as the spirit is
actually fighting to be free. The piano
enters, engaging is a struggle with the cello.
Suddenly, the cello plays alone again in an extended cadenza, which
alternates between rage and hope.
Reflectively, the cello plays quiet harmonics and rejoined by the
piano. This movement, which is agitated
and probingly frenetic, ends with the celebration of the liberation of the
spirit. Dirge and Deliverance was premiered by Kermit Moore and Zita Carno
at Alice Tully Hall in 1972. Kermit and
Raymond Jackson recorded the work for Cespico Records, CR#77001.
Noel G. Da Costa was born in Lagos, Nigeria and moved
to the United States with his family as a child. His earliest ideas about music and
composition were shaped in his public school years, where he had the eminent
African-American poet Countee Cullen as an English teacher. He studied at Queen’s college of the City
University of New York (B.A., 1952) and Columbia University (M.A., 1956). As a Fulbright Scholar, he studied with Luigi
Dallapiccola in Florence, Italy. He has
taught at Hampton University (VA) and in the several city colleges of the CUNY
system. Presently, he is an Associate
Professor of Music at the Mason Gross School for the Arts at Rutgers
University. His works are often concerned
with the synthesis of African-American musical idioms with dodecaphonic
(twelve-tone) and serial techniques. The
Two
Pieces for Unaccompanied Cello were written in 1973 and are based on
Ewe chant-rhythms and melodies. The Ewe
are an African tribe of Ghana, and many of its people and tribal chants were
brought to the New World by way of the slave trade. The main motive of the first piece is
declamatory, and the main motive of the second is dance-like. Each motive is stated repeatedly at the outset
of each piece. These pieces were written
for Ronald Lipscomb, who gave the premiere in 1973 at Alice Tully Hall in New
York City. Several distinct musical
styles and compositional procedures are mingled side by side in the second work
of Noel Da Costa, Five Verses/With Vamps. Predates
the Two Pieces by five years, this work
intermingles the dodecaphonic concision of the Second Viennese School (Arnold
Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern) with the popular idioms of
African-American music, particularly the vocal idioms of the song verse and
vamp. Although such a “mixture” of
cultural and musical material appears rather precarious, the system is
surprisingly receptive to the composer’s attempts to impose African-American
musical idioms onto this tonally “egalitarian” system of composition. These five pieces—externally simple in outline
yet internally complex in structure, use the verse and the vamp as their
structural underpinning. However, each
verse and vamp section fails to function in the same way twice. Most vamps are short and the verses long; but
the vamps found herein occasionally grow to unusual lengths, while the verses
consequently lose their sense of even proportion in the process. In the opening piece, the verse is repeated
at the outset while the vamp features a jazz harmonic progression which
includes a cryptic reference to J. S. Bach in the cello line. An altered version of Bach’s musical
signature appears in the vamp spelled in retrograde order, “H-C-As-B” (B-natural, C, A-flat, B-flat),
recalling Alban Berg’s musical tribute to Schoenberg and Webern in the Chamber Concerto of 1925. The second piece is the most complex in terms
of polymeter, and justifies the use of full performance scores for both
instruments. Only the vamp is of a
consistent meter in this piece; all other measures of the “verse” are of
different meters: 7/8, 5/8, 7/16, 3/8, 9/16, etc. The rate of metric and melodic change is so
great that a pattern only becomes audible at the end of the verse and in the
vamp. The third piece forms the core of
this work because of its austere and poignant expression. Only in this piece does the cello have a
fleeting chance to sing. The piano
texture is quite sparse, and never in conflict of acoustic balance with the
cello. The vamp is simpler in this
movement, perhaps an attempt at restoring a modicum of simplicity within an
already complex work. All feints at
sustaining any such long-term simplicity are again dispensed with in the fourth
piece, which presents the largest rhythmic challenge to the pianist. Unlike the second and third pieces, the vamp
in the fourth piece is both complicated and extensive—whose material also
serves as a Coda, punctuated by a “funky” bassline figure played by the
cello. The final piece is an epilogue,
restating the opening material of the first piece, but omitting the repeated
“verse”. The restrained lyricism of the
third piece is briefly recalled, and the vamp section is restored to its
short-phrased simplicity and serenity.
This work was premiered 3 March 1970 by Evalyn Steinbock and David
Garvey, and also recorded by them for Composers Recording, Inc., CRI
SD-514.
George
Walker (1922-2018)
had a long and distinguished career as a pianist, composer and educator
spanning over seven decades. He studied at Oberlin College, the Curtis
Institute of Music, the American Academy at Fontainebleau, and the Eastman
School of Music. His principal teachers were Rudolf Serkin, Robert Casadesus,
Clifford Curzon, Nadia Boulanger, Rosario Scalero and Gregor Piatigorsky. Dr.
Walker made his debut at New York’s Town Hall in 1945, and from 1950-1963
toured Europe, Scandinavia and the West Indies. His teaching career included
tenures at Dillard University, Eastman, the Dalcroze School of Music, the New
School for Social Research, Smith College, University of Colorado, University
of Delaward, and Rutgers University (professor emeritus). The Sonata for
Cello and Piano was composed in 1957 as his doctoral dissertation at
the Eastman School of Music. The year of its composition places it in an
interesting developmental position in the history of the cello sonata in the 20th
century. Several important sonatas of both European and American origin*
precede it, and yet it possesses an individual sense of originality which
allies it to, and still distinguishes it from these works. The cello sonatas of
Samuel Barber, Dmitri Shostakovich, Bohuslav Martinu, Paul Hindemith, Elliott
Carter and Sergei Prokofiev were all written within twenty-five years of the
Walker sonata, and each in its own way either follows or breaks rank with some
stylistic or compositional precedent, yet still forging a new and personal
statement. It is quite probable that the originality of the Walker sonata is
connected to his knowledge of the Beethoven cello sonatas, and the relative
novelty of the aforementioned works may have escaped his attention at the time
he was composing this work. Nonetheless, the score to this work is sufficiently
imposing, particularly for the piano and reflecting Walker’s consummate
knowledge of the instrument and his own technical virtuosity. The cello part is
also highly lyrical, and presents few non-idiomatic passages as it moves
smoothly between its singing sound and jazz-like basslines. The opening
movement is cast in sonata form with rather austere proportions, similar to the
pared-down control of material that occurs in the sonatas of Beethoven (opp.101
& 102, the latter opus written for piano and cello). The melodies in the
Walker sonata are linear, generated by the opening piano figure. The sonata is
tinged with with African American rhythms which represent “the pouring of old
wine into new skins”: a more rhythmically-driven approach to the dynamic form
and process of the sonata, much as David Baker has done in his Sonata for
Cello and Piano (1968). The intense lyricism of the melodies are
balanced against an unusually rhythmic recitative between instruments—a feature
no to be found among the precedent group of sonatas. Much of the first movement
is undergirded by two main rhythmic motives which grow out of the opening
phrased of the Exposition and Development sections. The second movement is an
atmospheric essay, a sort of musical “still life drawing”. The otherworldly
beauty of the piano chords underscore the cello line much like the music of
Olivier Messaien (1908-1991), which speaks of heavenly serenity (e.g., Le
banquet celeste” or “In Praise to the Eternity of Jesus” from the “Quartet
for the End of Time”). The melody is interwoven within the piano
texture instead of sounding apart from it, by restricting its rhythmic
activity. A short canon occupies the middle section of this movement, giving
balance and contrast to the movement, but barely disturbing its overall
serenity. The final movement is a fugal structure in 6/8 meter, with
expositions alternating with intermediate episodes in 9/8 meter—divided in a
most unusual manner: 3+4+2 instead of 3+3+3, a metrical feature common to
Walker’s style. The fugue subject is
more linear than the main theme of the first movement, but in contrast to J. S.
Bach’s fugal writing doesn’t sound very fugal at all (or “lend itself” to
predictable compositional treatment). The episodes seem to evoke a ragtime
feeling within this unusual meter. The cello plays pizzicato jazzlike
basslines, and the piano seems to play stride piano type of lines throughout as
well. The sense of musical expansion and contraction can be easily heard in the
9/8 sections as both the piano and cello lines become more texturally dense and
rhythmically involved. This breathing sense of expansion and contraction
subsides as each section closes, and is followed by a final statement of
condensed and diminuted rhythms in the closing Coda (“tail”) of the work,
except that the note-values of the subject are cut in half (diminuted to 3/8
meter), and is followed by short, lightning-fast Codetta (“tip of the tail”).
The Sonata was premiered in 1964 by Paul Olefsky and George Walker in New York
City at a concert of the Violoncello Society under the auspices of the
Kosciusko Foundation. Italo Babini and George Walker recorded the Sonata for
Serenus Recordings (SRS 12081). [*The cello sonatas mentioned which precede the
Walker sonata by no more than a generation (25 years) are: Samuel Barber,
Sonata, Opus 6 (1932); Dmitri Shostakovich, Sonata in d minor, Opus 40 (1934);
Bohuslav Martinu, Sonata No.2 (1941); Paul Hindemith, Sonata (1948); Elliott
Carter, Sonata (1948); Sergei Prokofiev, Sonata in C Major, Opus 119 (1949).]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
David N.
Baker, Lida M. Belt, Herman C. Hudson, editors: The Black Composer Speaks
(Metuchen, NJ, 1978); Mark Gridley: Jazz Styles (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1978;
A. M. Jones: Studies in African Music (London, 1956); LeRoi Jones (Imamu Amiri
Baraka): Blues People (New York, 1963); Woodie King, ed.: The Forerunners—Black
Poets In America (Washington, D.C., 1961); Eileen Southern: The Music of Black
Americans, A History (New York, 1971, 1982, 1996); Eileen Southern: Readings in
Black American Music (New York, 1971)
SCORES
David N.
Baker: Sonata for Cello and Piano (New York, Associated Music Publishers;
Lauren Keiser Publishing, 1978; 1990); Noel Da Costa: Five Verses/WithVamps,
for Cello and Piano (New York, Columbia University/Kings Crown Press, 1976);
Noel Da Costa: Two Pieces for Unaccompanied Cello (Halsco, ms., 1973); Dorothy
Rudd Moore: Dirge and Deliverance, for Cello and Piano (New York, American
Composers Alliance, 1971); George Walker: Sonata for Cello and Piano
(Hastings—on-Hudson, NY, General Music Company, 1972)
Program II: (14 November 1995) Howard Swanson, Suite for
Cello and Piano (1949); William Grant Still, Summerland (1936); Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Variations in b minor (c.1907); Adolphus Hailstork, Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano (1985)
Collaborative Artists: Kelley Benson, piano; Karen Walwyn, piano; Joseph Striplin, violin
Second Dissertation Recital Notes
Howard Swanson (1907-1978) was born in Atlanta,
Georgia, into a musical family and began his musical studies at age twelve
after the family moved to Cleveland, Ohio.
He entered the Cleveland Institute of Music in 1930, studying piano and
composition, respectively, with Ward Lewis and Herbert Elwell. He completed his studies in 1937, and went to
France to study further with Nadia Boulanger at the American Conservatory at
Fontainebleau on a Rosenwald Fellowship during the summer of 1938. He remained in Paris until impending wartime
events forced him to flee in 1940. He
traveled to Spain, Portugal and northern Africa before returning to the United
States in 1941. He went to work for the
Bureau of Internal Revenue, but left that position to devote all of his time
and energy to composition two years later.
His musical output during the war decade consists mainly of vocal music,
settings of Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes and T. S. Eliot; much of his
early work had to be left behind when he fled Paris. It is his setting of Hughes’ poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (1942) that
brought his name its first major recognition when Marian Anderson sang it in
recital in 1949. The Short Symphony (1948) was the
result of a commission from the conductor Dmitri Mitropoulos, and was premiered
by the New York Philharmonic in 1950, received thirty performances by other
orchestras, broadcast and recorded several times, and received the New York
Music Critics’ Circle Award for the “most interesting orchestral composition”
performed by the New York Philharmonic during the 1950-1951 season. The Suite
for Violoncello and Piano (1949) also belongs to this emergent period
of creativity, and is dedicated to Bernard Greenhouse, who gave the first performance
with pianist Anthony Makas at Town Hall in New York City on 26 February 1951. The opening Prelude is a brief tone-picture
that could suggest a rural Georgia landscape from Swanson’s childhood, crafted
with the motivic homogeneity of a Bach keyboard prelude. The consistent texture of chordal writing
predominates much of the movement, calmly proceeding beneath the meandering
melody of the cello, an opening gambit of musical gestures tempered by the
influence of personal experience, black sacred music and the blues, all
elements which unify the entire work.
The second movement, Pantomime, is a curious piece, both for its
allusion to the world of the theater couched in musical terms, and its foiling
of one instrumental “character” against another. Having its origins in the ancient Roman
theater, pantomime is the art of character demonstration by way of gestures
without speech, often accompanied by music and dance. Although there is no direct connection
between ancient roman pantomime and Negro minstrelsy, it is possible (in
contemporary terms) to connect the image of the paled-faced mime to the
minstrel performing in blackface, who was a standard comic figure on the
vaudeville stage as late as the 1940s.
Musically speaking, the pantomime is characterized by the “gestures” of
both partners, abruptly angular outbursts that interrupt a smoothly flowing
line of melody and rhythm. The third
movement, Dirge, contains references to death and sorrow, both musical and autobiographical. A dirge is a lament performed at a funeral or
memorial service for the dead. Swanson
was no stranger to the sorrow of bereavement as a young man; by the time he
reached adulthood, he had lost both his parents and younger sister. The music of Beethoven, Chopin and Gustav
Mahler provide well-known examples of dirge-marches from the European concert
repertoire. However, this dirge has the
added emotional impact of the blues influence mentioned earlier, both in the
artfully placed harmonies between both instruments, and in the main melody
heard throughout. The impact of the
melody comes in no small part from the bi-tonally juxtaposed chords that groan
beneath the plaintive cello line. The
accompaniment doesn’t provide the expected harmonic changes with the blues
melody—to the extent that divergent meters are notated between each instrument
in the score. The title of the final
movement, Recessional, is a reference to the close of a church worship
service. At this place in the service,
the entire congregation usually sings, the ministers and choir march out
(“receding”), followed by the Benediction.
What follows is normally a time of open mingling and fellowship inside
and outside the sanctuary—an easily identifiable social experience on a larger
human level. In this movement, the
pictorialism on the opening Prelude is united with the arching influence of the
blues from the Pantomime and Dirge, creating a disjointed yet strangely flowing
musical effect. A gigue-like dance
rhythm opens the movement, but is soon interrupted—quite often,
actually—perhaps descriptive of the busy, animated (and interruptive) visual,
aural, physical and verbal exchanges between people following a church
service. These “picture-ideas” (drawn
partially from human experiences) are shaped with the composer’s stamp of
individuality while maintaining clarity of melodic line, which may have come
from his work with Nadia Boulanger or his own instinctive self-expression,
which was noticed by his Elwell: “Like all truly creative persons, he found his
way alone, and is probably the stronger for it”. Such individuality of expression is
paralleled in the literary work of Langston Hughes, with whom Swanson was
well-acquainted and set several of his texts.
This year
1995 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of William Grant Still
(1895-1978), who was born in Woodville, Mississippi and grew up in Little Rock,
Arkansas. He studied music at
Wilberforce College (1911-1914), Oberlin College (1917-1919) and privately with
George Whitefield Chadwick and Edgard Varese.
He moved to New York in 1919, working as staff arranger for the Pace
& Handy Recording Company during the 1920s (after having worked previously
with W. C. Handy in Memphis, Tennessee in 1916). He also performed, playing oboe in the pit
orchestra for the musical “Shuffle Along”,
the first all-black musical production to open on Broadway (1921). His work with Handy led to further
experiences as arranger for Will Vodery, the musical director for the Ziegfield
Follies. The Eastman-Rochester
Philharmonic brought Still historic recognition when Howard Hanson conducted
the premiere of the Symphony No. 1, “Afro-American”—the
first performance of a work written by an African-American by a major American
orchestra. He was hailed as “one of our
greatest composers” by Leopold Stokowski in 1945, and in his later years was
(and still is) regarded as the “dean of Afro-American composers”. “Summerland” is the second
movement of Three Visions, a
suite for solo piano written in 1936. I
transcribed it for cello in the fall of 1985, a few months after meeting Judith
Anne Still (the composer’s daughter) at the Black American Music Symposium held
at The University of Michigan that summer.
I had recently seen a most interesting photograph of William Grant Still
on the cover of the February 1984 issue of Music
Educator’s Journal, in which he is posing with a cello. (The same photograph is presently on display
here at the School of Music.) I inquired
about any works of his written for stringed instruments, the cello in
particular. Much to my surprise, I found
that there were no works originally written for the cello, but since there were
numerous arrangements of pre-existing material already within his catalogue of
works (which is usually the case with most composers), the idea of attempting a
transcription came immediately. Shortly
after the summer’s end, I received a nice-sized package of William Grant
Still’s violin music from Judith, who owns and operates the William Grant Still
Music Company in Flagstaff, Arizona. In
a short time the transcription (or “version for cello, after the violin
arrangement by the composer”) was finished, and the first performance took on
23 November 1985 in Ann Arbor. It is a
charming piece that is quite reflective of the blended art-music style in which
he had been working at while arranging dance shows and vaudeville even in the
1920s. Unlike the “Afro-American” symphony, no attempt is made to fuse the more
vernacular blues style with the craftsmanship of the European symphonic
tradition. He seems to emulate the
flavor of French modern music (Debussy and Ravel) in this work, quite the
contrast of the symphony of five years earlier.
The beauty of this work lies in its simplicity and the vocal quality of
the melody. The poignancy produced in
this work is its crown jewel, for it is probably the most transcribed
work in William Grant Still’s catalogue.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) was the best-known
composer of African descent of his day on both European and North American
continents. In spite of his interracial
heritage, over the course of his life he adopted a largely African-American
racial identity. His father was Daniel
Peter Taylor, a West African medical student from Sierra Leone. His mother, Alice Hare Martin, was a white
Englishwoman from Dover, Kent, who met Taylor while serving as a companion for
Mrs. Benjamin Holmans of Croydon, Surrey.
Unfortunately their marriage didn’t last; Daniel returned to Africa,
living and practicing medicine in Gambia for the rest of his life. Martin and Samuel were taken in by the
Holmans family, who became adopted grandparents to the boy (and Mr. Holmans,
called “Grandfather” by young Samuel, was an amateur violinist). A few years later Alice Martin married a
railway storeman named George Evans of Croydon, and their marriage provided a
modest yet fertile home life and musical atmosphere for young Samuel. His earliest musical experiences were violin
lessons with Joseph Beckwith and singing as a chorister at St. George’s
Presbyterian Church, where he won the support of the choirmaster, Colonel Herbert
Walters. Unwilling to see the boy’s
precocious talent wasted, Walters approached Sir George Grove about arranging
for his admission to the Royal College of Music, where he studied for seven
years (1890-97, where his classmates included Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav
Holst), and some of his early compositional successes were due in large part to
professional assistance received from Sir Edward Elgar and August Jaeger of the
music publisher, Novello. He was schooled
in keeping with the Victorian tradition of German Romanticism through his
composition teacher Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, heavily influence by
Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Brahms, as well as non-Germanic composers (Chopin,
Dvorak and Grieg). As he grew to
compositional maturity, his music began to show the extramusical of his
African-American contemporaries, Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du
Bois. Of particular influence on
Coleridge-Taylor was that of the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906), whose
name had burst into international literary prominence when his volume of poetry
“Lyrics of Lowly Life” was in
England. The two men met in London in
1896, and they soon collaborated in joint performances, song cycles and an
operetta, Dream Lovers. He read and admired the biographies and works
of Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, but it was W. E. B. DuBois
historical analysis of the Negro in America, “Souls of Black Folk” that was to most clearly shape much of
Coleridge-Taylor’s thought, both in terms of his racial identity and the
“programmatic” identification with African and African-American ideas and
subjects in his compositions (e.g., “Toussaint
l’Ouverture” and “Ethiopia Saluting
the Colors”, the use of Negro spirituals as thematic material in symphonic
works, and his collaboration with prominent African-American musicians during
his American concert tours). His
best-known work by far at that time was (and still is) his choral trilogy, “The Song of Hiawatha” after the
saga of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, which was frequently performed in England,
Europe and the United States during his lifetime.
Coleridge-Taylor
composed only two works for the violoncello, both introduced in 1907 amid the
flurry of activities which interspersed his second and third American concert
tours (the first made in 1904, followed by the others in 1906 and 1910). The exact date of composition for the Variations
in b minor for violoncello and piano is uncertain. Biographer W. C. Berwick Sayers makes mention
of some “Variations for Cello, which have
since vanished mysteriously” in his account of the composer’s activities
for 1906, which included the composition and first performances of the rhapsody
Kubla Khan, two of the six suites of
incidental music to plays commissioned by Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree for His
Majesty’s Theater, numerous other compositions, performing and teaching
engagements, and his second tour of America late in that same year. Amid this mix of activity, he lost two of his
close friends Paul Laurence Dunbar and composer (and RCM classmate) William
Yeates Hurlstone who died that year, affecting him profoundly. Mention of the dates of first performances of
both cello works are made; however, in light of the fact that Sayers’ biography
is not exclusively diaristic, it must be concluded that their “gestation” took
place between the time of his second concert tour of the US and the middle of
1907. In a later chapter, Sayers
comments at length about the first performance of this work: “At the String
Player’s Concert, on 30 November 1907, Mr. C. A. Crabbe played from the
manuscript some Variations on an Original Theme for the Violoncello, a work
which proved that this instrument received very special attention from him
[Coleridge-Taylor] during the year. I
have been unable to see the copy of this work, as it has disappeared
mysteriously; but at that single hearing we formed the opinion that it was a
fine, sustained, characteristic work, and the audience, which recalled player
and composer some half-dozen times, more than shared the opinion.” In an earnest footnote, Sayers provides even
further update: Mrs. Coleridge-Taylor later informed Sayers that the work had
been recovered after eight years (c.1915), and that it would hopefully be
published, which it was, in 1918. It is
quite probable that the work was composed for Mr. Crabbe, who was a member of
the Croydon String Player’s Club, a select group of musicians from the Croydon
Orchestral Society formed for the purpose of presenting chamber music
concerts. (The other concerto-form work
for cello, the Fantasiestucke in A
Major, although premiered on 7 July 1907 by Mary McCullagh and the New
Brighton Orchestra with the composer conducting—remains unpublished.) The Variations in b minor are modeled largely
after the variation-form works of two composers, Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
and Peter Ilytch Tchaikovsky (1840-1893).
Brahms used the variation form in the final movement of the Quintet in b minor for clarinet
and strings, Opus 115; Tchaikovsky’s only concerted orchestral work for the
violoncello is the Variations on a
Rococo theme, Opus 33. The
Coleridge-Taylor Variations use a
theme of similar elegance and simplicity as the “Rococo” theme, followed by
four variations. Throughout the work,
thematic transformation is given equal structural importance as the spinning
out of subsequent variations. In each
variation, the theme has a different character, melodic contour, rhythm, and
key center; in one variation it is even obscured. In cellistic terms, it has a manageable set
of technical parameters, and virtually no tangles of insurmountable
difficulty. Nonetheless, it has a
cantabile quality naturally suited to the instrument, and the theme has a
direct and dramatic musical quality that shows the influence of one of the Twenty-Four Negro Melodies (Opus
59) that Coleridge-Taylor transcribed for solo piano, “Don’t Be Weary,
Traveler” (No.12). In addition to the
aforementioned composers cited as models, Coleridge-Taylor”s affinity for the
music of Antonin Dvorak and Edvard Grieg makes itself heard as well. In his emulation of these composer’s styles,
he manages to “tip his hat” in a gesture of homage to some of their best-loved
works. He feigns pastiche in quoting a
passage from the middle movement of the Dvorak Cello Concerto in the first variation, and pays tribute to
Grieg in an infantine passage of the final variation. The work makes little attempt at deep
extramusical profundity, only a well-crafted essay in the variation of an
original and typically elegant Victorian theme.
The Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano
was composed in 1985 for the NOVA Trio, three musicians having a close musical
and professional relationship with Dr. Hailstork, who teaches at Old Dominion
University and Norfolk State University in Norfolk, Virginia—violinist Ray
Pancarowicz, cellist James Herbison and pianist Jayne Kaplan. The ethnic makeup of the trio caused
Hailstork to include utterances of Afro-American and Jewish music within the
themes and rhythmic drive of the work.
Familiar forms of folksong and chorale are used in the opening movement
with a uniquely generative facility that permeates the entire work. The general mood of the opening movement is
quite somber, interrupted only once by music of compact intensity. The second movement is a scherzo (with trio)
of agitated character, accentuated by the cross-metric rhythms of the
strings. The intervening trio section
provides a respite from the agitation of the scherzo, introducing a new melody
derived from the folksong of the first movement. The repetition of the scherzo leads directly
into the final movement, a lively dance in 11/8 meter. The low-register melody played by the piano
is a Hassidic Jewish melody (taken from an early work written for a church
choir). In this movement the
Hassidic-flavored melody meets the provocative “groove” of African-American
rhythm, as the rhythmic division of each 11/8 measure (2+2+3+2+2) receive a
dynamic accent throughout. A second
melody in 7/8 meter follows, a further adaptation of African-American musical
idioms in an asymmetric meter.
Technical virtuosity
is not to be overlooked in this movement, as the violin has two extended
passages, “mini-cadenzas” leading back to the Hassidic melody, and later to a
slow section that recalls both the main theme of the movement and the opening
folksong and chorale. The confirmation
of structural and musical cyclicism in this work is united with a sense of
familiarity, “of having come full circle from a definite point of origin”,
which can be heard and felt here. The
work closes with an “apotheosis” of both melody and rhythm, the inclusion of
both themes (of 11/8 and 7/8 meters), united by the “feeling of the dance”
which has been present throughout both middle and final movements. The Trio
shares an “unconsciously modeled” relationship with the Trio No.2 in e minor, Opus 67 (1944) of Dmitri Shostakovich
(1906-1975), a work also having a very strong Jewish sentiment predominant
throughout the entire work. Both works
utilize Jewish folk music within established formal music processes (folksong,
chorale, passacaglia), asymmetric meter and the cyclical treatment of thematic
material (already intensified by the “folk presence”, be it Jewish or
African-American). However, it is the
close contacts with Jewish culture and music in Hailstork’s own background that
serves as the basis for any such comparative relationship between the two
works. The Hailstork Trio was premiered 31 March 1985
in Norfolk, Virginia by the NOVA Trio, to whom the work is dedicated. This work has been performed several times in
Ann Arbor: 12 August 1985, at the Black American Music Symposium at The
University of Michigan; 27 September 1987, on an all-Hailstork program of
chamber music as part of the composer’s King/Chavez/Parks Fellowship Residency;
12 October 1992, for the Black Arts Series at The University of Michigan School
of Music. The work is soon to be
recorded by the present group of musicians.
*Other
sources list the cellist as A. E. Crabbe. **The three aspects of
Coleridge-Taylor’s racial identity that are noticeable in his music are: the
two concert overtures “Toussaint
l’Ouverture” and “Ethiopia Saluting
the Colors”, and the Symphonic
Variations on an African Air, Op.63 for orchestra; the use of Negro
spirituals as thematic materials in symphonic works; his collaboration with
prominent African-American musicians during his American concert tours.
Program III (12 March 1996) Frederick Tillis, Spiritual Fantasy No.7, “On My Journey Now”(1983);
Hale Smith, Sonata for Violoncello and
Piano (1955); Adolphus Hailstork, Elegy
(1980); William Grant Still, “Mother and
Child” from the Suite for Violin
and Piano (1943); Lawrence Brown, SPIRITUALS—Five
Negro Folksongs (1923)
Collaborative Artists: Robert Conway, piano; Kelley Benson, piano
Third Dissertation Recital Notes
Frederick Tillis began playing trumpet and saxophone
at an early age, and was influenced by the music of Benny Carter while playing
in small jazz bands in his hometown of Galveston, Texas. He studied at Wiley College (TX) and The University
of Iowa, but gained early compositional experience while serving as director of
the 3560th Air Force Band (1952-56).
Dr. Tillis later taught at his alma
mater, Grambling State University, and chaired the music department at
Kentucky State University. He is now
Professor of Music and Special Assistant to the Provost for the Arts and
Director of the University Jazz Workshop at The University of Massachusetts at
Amherst. His compositions have been
commissioned and premiered by Dr. Billy Taylor, the Max Roach Double Quartet
and the Trio Pro Viva. His Inaugural
Overture (1989) was composed in honor of the installation of Dr. Johnetta B.
Cole as President of Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. The Spiritual
Fantasy No.7 for Cello and Piano, “On My Journey Now” was composed in
1983 as part of an ongoing series of fantasies on African-American spirituals
for various vocal and instrumental combinations that presently numbers
seventeen. It has been Dr. Tillis’s aim
and commitment throughout the series to both document and preserve the heritage
of African-American sacred song in a variety of settings. Such large-scale
serial treatment of one musical form or idea certainly has several historical
precedents (e.g., J.S. Bach’s harmonizations of Lutheran chorales, the numerous
collection of folksong arrangements of Johannes Brahms, Bela Bartok, Ralph
Vaughan Williams, etc., as well as Heitor Villa-lobos’ Bachianas brasileiras and Choros). “On My
Journey Now” is a spiritual whose origins are nearly impossible to
ascertain, as it is the product of oral transmission instead of codifed
documentation. It is quite probable that
this particular song was “composed” early in the years of American slavery,
when and wherever slaves were allowed to gather for religious services. (In his book on the history and development
of the Afro-American spiritual, “Black
Song: The Forge and The Flame”, John Lovell lists the earliest known
Negro Baptist church as the Silver Bluff Church near Savannah, Georgia, which
was a joint venture of sympathetic whites and slaves, founded in 1773.) In the context of the spiritual, the
“journey” is a term of double meaning, either a pilgrimage of the soul
heavenward or a planned escapade northward via the Underground Railroad. Dr. Tillis first heard the spiritual sung by
the Morehouse Men’s Glee Club, under the direction of Dr. Wendell Whalum.
The song
(whose alternate title is “Mount Zion”)
maintains a special identity within this genre; despite its long-standing
notoriety, it isn’t easily found in the volumes of spiritual arrangements for
concert use by vocalists, even though it is well-known and commonly sung in African-American
church congregations. The spiritual
itself serves as the main theme, out of which variations are spun, and also as
a developmental springboard for the fantasy, which then takes on a shape and
character of its own. Because this work operates
as both a fantasy and variation-form, the “fantasy-variations” have an equal
sense of structural value as the theme.
In the course of this work, the theme will undergo melodic and harmonic
transformation and textural stratification to the extent that only the rhythm
of the theme will remain unaltered. The
element of musical fantasy is most appealing throughout the work as the
listener will embark upon a “journey” through various musical styles including
the blues, jazz and particularly Asian music, as a Japanese folk melody is
introduced and recalled late in the work.
An intriguing use of pivotal pentachords* will mark the latter sections
of this work, one of a blues outline and the other from the Japanese
melody. Such juxtapositions as these will
serve as an aural cue, pointing to a larger humanitarian statement uttered in
musical terms. The pentachords alternate
with each other in close proximity, revealing striking similarities between the
basic elements of folk music of two different continents. A brief cadenza bisects the final statement of
the spiritual, combining the various musical influences presented earlier in a
musical benediction, accomplished by the extension of the overtone series about
the natural sonority of open 5th in the cello. Although this “journey” takes us much farther
than expected, the simplicity of the song’s text remains firmly rooted in a
deep faith in God, which never gets “lost” no matter how far or long the
journey. Spiritual Fantasy No.7 for Cello and Piano, “On My Journey Now”
was premiered in 1984 by the cellist Leopold Teraspulsky at a faculty artists’
recital at The University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Hale Smith is a native of Cleveland, Ohio, and
he resides in Freeport, New York. He
studied composition with Marcel Dick at the Cleveland Institute of Music in the
early 1950s, and moved to New York in 1958.
From that time he has gained both national and international attention
as a composer and arranger of both jazz and concert music, composing and
arranging music for jazz luminaries Ahmad Jamal, Quincy Jones, Chico Hamilton
and Eric Dolphy in the 1960s, and more recently Kathleen Battle, Jessye Norman
and Wynton Marsalis. Hale Smith first
gained national recognition for his composition, Contours for Orchestra (1962), which was premiered by the
Louisville Orchestra, and later recorded for First Edition Records. The Sonata
for Violoncello and Piano was composed in 1955 for the African-American
cellist Kermit Moore, who was living in Paris and studying with the French
cellist and pedagogue Paul Bazelaire at the time of its composition. Smith and Moore were fellow students at the
Cleveland Institute of Music; the work was requested for Moore’s European
concert tour. The Sonata received its first performance at Paris in 1956;
subsequent performances were given in Switzerland and Germany. The American premiere followed in 1958, given
by the cellist Benar Heifetz and pianist Ward Davenny in New York City. The first movement is cast in sonata-allegro
form, with an introduction that provides both germinative and cyclical material
for the movement and the entire work, a broad melody in 12/8 meter generated by
a six-note motive. The presence of
recurring material between varied movements in Classical sonata from is quite
common and could be considered an expectant feature in the works of numerous
composers**, including Brahms, Dvorak and Franck in the 19th century
and Debussy, Ravel, Kodaly and Prokofiev in the 20th*. All of these works have an abundance of material
stated and “recycled” within, and notwithstanding the strength of traditional
influence, the cyclical process is used with an equal touch of individuality
and originality in the Hale Smith Sonata.
Although the recurrence of thematic ideas are important in this work,
they do not overshadow the directness of dramatic discourse that takes place
between instruments. The predominant
atmosphere of the opening movement is one of intense dialogue balanced by brief
sections of calm. The calmness which occurs
late in the movement consists of an interlude for solo piano using
thickly-textured chords that have already characterized the introduction. A short cadenza for solo cello follows prior
to the tumultuous close of the movement.
The second movement is a literal continuation of the first (marked attacca, a directive to proceed onward),
using the broad opening melody stated by the cello. It is in this particular movement that the
presence of recurrent themes aren’t merely stated; the melodic, harmonic and
emotional direction of the work up to this point is transformed by each
recurrence of the introduction and its partial or complete statements. Despite the lack of a time interval between
movements, the slower tempo and calmer atmosphere created a gradual and more
natural “break” by way of dynamic contrast and a new melodic and harmonic
direction. A sense of vocal, even
operatic feeling embodies the cello line (marked “quasi recitativo”), followed by a nocturne supported by a
blues-like harmonic texture. The
nocturne seems to float almost effortlessly above the bluesy underpinning
before returning one last time to the music of the work’s opening. This final reprise points in two musical
directions—both backward to the midsection of the first movement (the canonic
writing) and n to the final movement, which is a dance-fantasy, subtly gestured
at be the slowly-quadrupled waltz-feeling of the meter (12/8). The last movement (Dance-Finale) is a curious
fantasy on dancelike rhythms. The
precipitously-phrased cello melody negotiates a “catwalk” among the rhythmic,
angular interjections of the piano, whose “riff” (a recurrent accompanimental
motive quite common in jazz) is an upbeat three-note motive shared with the
cello. This motive is transplanted from
the first movement via the minutest instance of a recurrent rhythm in a sonata
structure, three barred sixteenth notes.
The movement’s rondo form (A-B-A-C-B-A) has inherent formal
idiosyncrasies, in which ne section in truncated (or left incomplete upon its
restatement) to the extension of another.
The most extensive internal sections feature the waltz (having several
“occasionally missing beats” and weak-beat accents) and the Magyar-flavored
melody that recalls Bela Bartok and Hungarian folk music. So many influences harmoniously coexist in
this work that it tends to resist cogent stylistic classification. This work seems to negotiate a “catwalk” on
another aesthetic level, the merger of stylistic influences of an
individually-developed and uttered vernacular style working alongside the
European classical tradition, in which the jazz and blues traditions are
brought so close but not exclusively embraced, and the rigid, time-honored
custom of the Classical tradition are used as a flexible formal mold, and not
as an inflexible straitjacket.
Adolphus Hailstork composed his Elegy for cello and piano in 1980; after having performed
the Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano
(1985) some years ago, he sent me a tape recording of a performance in which I
had participated, along with a score and part to this work with the following
note enclosed: “Dear Tim, I don’t recall ever having sent you this short simple
ELEGY. Perhaps you can use
it. Best wishes, Adolphus. P.S.—If you ever do it, how about sending me
a tape?”
This “short,
simple” piece has a quiet intensity within it that is often associated with
grief and bereavement. It is also a
somewhat anomalous example of an “African-American elegy”, in light of the
often-elegiac tone of some of the Negro spirituals. Its withdrawn atmosphere is so removed from
the highly emotional norm of expression at a time of grief and sorrow. The expressive center of the Elegy is the private and noble
outpouring of grief as opposed to an expectant visible response (cf., the
photograph of Coretta Scott King holding her youngest daughter Bernice at the
funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in April 1968). Direct references are made to the blues in
this work in terms of both vocal and stylistic inflection. Although the better-known Elegie, Opus 24 of Gabriel Faure chooses
a comparatively extroverted manner of musical expression, Hailstork favors an austere,
introverted approach, giving the cello a melodic line that is far more
withdrawn, even “ascetic” nature.
Although the piano has the larger instrumental role, it is the cell that
has the task of extracting a wealth of deeply profound expression from a single
melodic line (or even a single pitch).
Thematic connections to Beethoven (Sonata, Op.81a, Les adieux) and Gustav Mahler (Symphony No.9, mvt. i) can be found
in the blues-affected “Farewell” melody stated by the cello.
“Mother and Child” is a
single-movement transcription from the Suite
for Violin and Piano (1943) of William
Grant Still. The Suite is an interesting example
of a piece of music written by an African-American composer directly inspired
by a work of visual art by an African-American artist. All three movements are inspired by the
sculpture of three African-American artists: Augusta Savage, Sargent Johnson
and Richmond Barthe, all of whom flourished during the Harlem Renaissance
(c.1919-1929), and belonged to the generation of artists who first answered the
eminent Negro philosopher Alain Locke’s call for African-American artists to
re-examine primitive African art for their inherent inspiration and subject
matter (e.g., Meta Warrick Fuller, Barthe, Savage, Selma Burke, etc.). It is of minor interest that Still composed
this work from a position of distant historical perspective, as the Harlem
Renaissance ended c.1929 or shortly thereafter, as many movements of cultural
interest with the Stock Market Crash and the Great Depression that followed. Nevertheless, Still captures both the beauty
of the sculpted figures of mother and child, and the middle section of the
music touches on an even deeper emotional bond naturally created between a
woman and her child.
Lawrence Brown was the accompanist of Roland Hayes
and Paul Robeson, as well as a prolific arranger of Negro spirituals. A native of Jacksonville, Florida, Brown
moved to Boston in 1914 to study music privately, going abroad in 1920 to study
composition and voice with Amanda Ira Aldridge at Trinity College, London. The same year he accompanied Roland Hayes in
his London debut at Aeolian Hall. He
also accompanied Hayes in a command performance for King George V of England at
Buckingham Palace in 1921, after which Hayes and Brown toured together for the
next four years. He first concertized
with Paul Robeson in 1925, and their collaboration would last for thirty-eight
years (and later be paid posthumous tribute in a two-man play based on the life
of Robeson). During their years in
England, Roland Hayes and Lawrence Brown made the acquaintances of some of the
best-known English musicians of that time.
Beatrice Harrison (1892-1965)
was certainly one of that distinguished group, and one of the few cellists of
that time who had the liberty to perform primarily as a solo artist and chamber
musician, a pioneering effort for a woman of Victorian/Edwardian Era England. The second of four very talented sisters,
Beatrice studied with William Whitehouse at the Royal College of Music in
London, Hugo Becker at the Hochschule fur Musik in Berlin, and gave numerous
premieres of works in the modern cello repertoire. She gave the first English public performance
of the Zoltan Kodaly Sonata for Solo
Cello, made the first recordings of the Edward Elgar Cello Concerto, and introduced compositions of Frederick Delius,
John Ireland, Arnold Bax and Cyril Meir Scott (all written for her). She toured Europe (1910-1912) with her
sisters May (violin) and Margaret (piano) as both a duo and trio, respectively;
she made two tours of the United States in 1913 and 1932. Her pleasant reminiscence about Lawrence
Brown is included in her autobiographical memoir, The Cello and The
Nightingales: “ I became acquainted with Lawrence Brown, the accompanist of Roland
Hayes, the famous Negro tenor. He was a
delightful person and most enthusiastic.
He used to come down to Foyle
Riding [(sic, the Harrison family cottage)] and fry chicken for us, just as
it was done in the southern states. It
was after this, in the Music Room, that he taught me to play the beautiful
Negro songs and I was able to catch their unusual rhythms which pleased him
greatly. He arranged these songs for me
and we gave a concert at Wigmore Hall which attracted so much attention that it
was completely sold out.” A review from
the London Daily Telegraph also
appears in her memoir: “Mr. Brown has given these beautiful tunes an
unobtrusive background calculated to set off their natural charms to the best
possible advantage and Miss Harrison’s employment of a slow portamento could
readily be accepted as a successful attempt to produce one of the most
characteristic features of Negro singing”.
In his lifetime, Lawrence Brown made nearly four hundred vocal and
choral arrangements of spirituals, including the settings for violoncello and
piano, which date from 1923. Some of his
vocal arrangements were published in the double-volume of spirituals compiled
and edited by James Weldon Johnson and John Rosamond (American Negro Spirituals, New York, 1925, 1926).
Final Oral Examination “Opening Gambit”:
The recurrent
issue within each work programmed in this series of three recital of
violoncello music of African-American composers has been that of “stylistic
merger”, which is the blending of once seemingly disparate musical styles with
each other in a common compositional framework.
The first recital program dealt with the merger of modern (and
postmodern) musical ideas within the traditional sonata-allegro formal process
in the David Baker Sonata. The work’s tripartite form is traditionally
conformist, yet the content of each movement is filled with and generated by
stylistic motives and rhythms of considerable African-American identity, of
which jazz and R&B (rhythm-and-blues) are the most pervasive. Dorothy Rudd Moore’s Dirge and Deliverance might very well have taken its
structural cue from Robert Schumann, whose Adagio
and Allegro, Opus 70 and Fantasy
Pieces, Opus 73 both make use of a single melodic idea as the basis for
multiple sections of the work. However,
the Dirge and Deliverance
attempts to achieve an equal to greater height of drama in posturing the
opening Adagio as a sort of continuous variation-form (i.e., passacaglia) in
order to build up a larger amount of musical and psychological tension. The Deliverance
serves to both struggle with and eventually relieve the tension built up during
the Dirge, culminating in the cadenza
for the cello at its midsection, representing the struggle between rage and
hope within the human spirit. The two
works of Noel Da Costa manage to combine the dodecaphonic technique of the
Second Viennese School (i.e., Schoenberg, Berg and Webern) with the pliability
of African-American melodic and rhythmic ideas.
The Two Pieces for Unaccompanied
Cello, based on Ewe chant rhythmc and melodies, are largely an exploration
of the inherently choreographic aspects of the rhythms, which are taken from a
ritual dance of the Yeve cult, a social and religious group within the Ewe
tribe. The Five Verses/With Vamps (for cello and piano) deals directly with
the interfacing of African-American musical idioms with the 12-tone technique
(and possible some serialistic aspects of composition as well). The George Walker Sonata might well be considered the most “neoclassical” work of
this program, as it adheres to a greater degree of motivic clarity than the
foregoing works. Its formal proportions
betray an austerity of musical material, despite a considerable demand of
technical capabilities for both partners.
The second
program takes on a more Romanticist tone, addressing programmatic ideas in ways
removed from those of the Baker and Moore works. Two of the works on this program are even
more unique within this genre for the reliance on the heritage and influence of
the blues, and thus creating a further sense of uniqueness within the merger of
musical style. The Suite of Howard Swanson is a highly individual and
sophisticated treatment of the blues influence, as heard in the meandering
melody of the Prelude, the ironic,
bittersweet minstrel-like comedy of the Pantomime,
the inescapable sorrow of the Dirge,
and the stained-glass coloristic effects of the Recessional. Despite the
suggestiveness of each movement title, assistive references to the poetry of
Langston Hughes are helpful in beginning to comprehend the individuality of
Swanson’s craft and musical expression in this work. The short piece of William Grant Still, “Summerland”, sounds of the influence of
Debussy and Ravel, yet it maintains both clarity and simplicity of melody,
harmony and texture (e.g., the Preludes
of Debussy, Jeux d’eau and Sonatine of Ravel). The work is taken from a three-movement suite
for solo piano, Three Visions,
which may be one of precious few essays emulating the French Impressionist
style. The Variations in b minor of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor are perhaps the
earliest known work written for the violoncello by a composer of African
descent. Composed c.1907, its from is
one used quite commonly within his complete oeuvre;
one of his better-known orchestral works, Symphonic
Variations on an African Air, (Op.63, 1906) uses the spiritual “I’m Troubled in Mind” as its theme. The merger of style and form is more apparent
in the orchestral variations—the union of the Negro spiritual with European
symphonic treatment. The theme of the
‘cello variations is original yet not without a connective reference to one of
the Twenty-Four Negro Melodies for
Solo Piano (Op.59, 1904), “Don’t
Be Weary, Traveler” (No.12), which also makes use of the
variation-form. The only chamber work
presented on these programs is the Trio
for Violin, Cello and Piano (1985) of Adolphus Hailstork. The work’s three-movement cyclical structure
unites the influences of two great musical cultures, the Jewish and
African-American. The “folk presence” of
the Trio is mainly Hailstork’s
highly imaginative treatment of the opening folk melody; however, the
utilization of Jewish or African-American folk music within an established
formal process in a cyclical manner also recalls the Trio No.2 in e minor, Opus 67 (1944) of Dmitri Shostakovich.
The third
program was originally planned as a lecture-recital on the influence of the
Negro spiritual as found in several cello works of African-American
composers. Although the lecture-recital
did not come to fruition, this program dealt instead with the germinative
presence of the spiritual (or Negro folk song) in the two works that opened and
concluded the program. The Spiritual Fantasy of Frederick
Tillis is based on the spiritual “On My
Journey Now”, and operates on several structural and musical levels,
wedding both the fantasy and variation-forms while also incorporating various
musical styles and cultures in the process.
The Sonata of Hale
Smith shares an affinity with the sonatas of David Baker and George Walker,
mainly for its imitative yet originally reserved handling of formal process, as
well as what should now be referred to as the “inclusion of the necessary”—jazz
and blues elements—in a most striking and honest manner, true t the original
style yet tastefully extending the potentialities thereof in a concerted
work. The Elegy of Adolphus Hailstork predates his Trio by five years;
its lyrical style is similar to the opening movement of the latter work, both of
whom share a plaintive atmosphere. The
Elegy tends to maintain a certain measure of anomaly, in light of the
“expectable” outworking of emotion at a time of sorrow. Its withdrawn tone is quite the opposite of
the elegies of the European repertoire (cf. Gabriel Faure Elegie, Opus 24, Frederick Delius Elegy), yet it uses the familiar three pitches descending in
stepwise motion as its “farewell motive”, as Beethoven and Mahler have
done. The merger here is most
imaginative, as in the Trio:
the motive doesn’t change, and yet the harmonic and emotional atmosphere is
transformed from a deeply sorrowful and extrovertive lament to a profoundly
introvertive “adieu”—a gesture of
resignation. The influence of the blues
in the “farewell motive” only becomes apparent as the harmonic contour of the
work takes shape. The single-movement
transcription of “Mother and Child”
is from the Suite for Violin and Piano
(1943) of William Grant Still. In a
manner recalling Samuel Coleridge-Taylor or Howard Swanson, Still uses the
visual inspiration of the work of three African-American sculptors, Augusta
Savage, Sargent Johnson and Richmond Barthe, all who flourished during the
years of the Harlem Renaissance (c.1919-1929).
In this work Still seems to have moved away from the French
Impressionist influence, adopting a more thickly-scored Romantic tone
(recalling Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninoff), perhaps better capturing the
visually-perceived feeling of bonding between mother and child. The Five
Negro Folksongs (1923), as arranged by Lawrence Brown, form the “other
end” of the influential connective of the spiritual, this time in a much more
“original” setting. The cello world owes
a large debt of gratitude to Beatrice Harrison for her advances made upon the
instrument in both performing presence and addition to the repertoire, from her
performances of the Brahms (and Delius) Double
Concerto with her sister May to giving the first English public
performance of the Kodaly Sonata for
Solo Cello, a work whose technical demands remain most advanced in our
time as well. Lawrence Brown’s
arrangements are part of a sizeable body of cello literature written for,
premiered by and/or championed by her; in fact, Brown may be the only American
to have composed or arranged any music for her.
Harrison’s most expressive tone must have been easy to “exploitatively”
arrange for, particularly in the slower songs—an “art” that she successfully
learned from Brown during his years in England as an accompanist for Roland
Hayes.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Program One/Textbooks:
David
N. Baker, Lida M. Belt, Herman C. Hudson, eds.: The Black Composer Speaks (Metuchen, NJ, 1978); Mark C.
Gridley: Jazz Styles (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1978); Arthur Morris Jones: Studies in African Music (London, 1956);
LeRoi Jones (aka Imamu Amiri Baraka): Blues
People (New York, 1963); Woodie King, ed.: The Forerunners—Black Poets in America (Washington, D.C.,
1981); Eileen Southern: The Music of
Black Americans, A History (New York, 1971, 1982, 1996); Eileen Southern: Readings in Black American Music (New
York, 1971).
Scores:
David
N. Baker: Sonata for Cello and Piano (New York, Associated Music Publishers,
1978); Noel Da Costa: Five Verses/With Vamps, for Cello and Piano (New York,
Columbia University/Kings Crown Press, 1976); Noel Da Costa: Two Pieces for
Unaccompanied Cello (ms., 1973; calligraphy by Hale Smith); Dorothy Rudd Moore:
Dirge and Deliverance, for Cello and Piano (New York, American Composers
Alliance, 1971); George Walker: Sonata for Cello and Piano (Hastings-on-Hudson,
NY, General Music Company, 1972).
Program Two/Textbooks,
Articles:
Herbert
Anticliffe: “Some Notes on Coleridge-Taylor”, MQ, viii (1922), 180; Verna Arvey: In One Lifetime—The Biography of William Grant Still (Fayetteville,
AR, 1984); David N. Baker, Lida M. Belt, Herman C. Hudson, eds.: The Black Composer Speaks
(Metuchen, NJ, 1978); Coleridge Alexander Braithwaite: A Survey of the Lives
and Creative Activities of Some Negro Composers (diss., Ph.D., Columbia University, 1952); James H. Cone: The Spirituals and The Blues (New York,
1972); Ronald A. Crutcher: “The Chamber Music of African-American Composers”, American String Teacher, Fall 1995, 71;
Ronald A. Crutcher: Music Alive 1990!! “Chamber Music of African-American
Composers”, Chamber Music, viii
(1991), 22; Maud Cuney-Hare: Negro
Musicians and Their Music (New York, 1936); William Edward Burghardt Du
Bois: The Souls of Black Folk (New
York, 1903); Samuel Floyd, ed.: Black
Music in the Harlem Renaissance (Westport, CT, 1990); Jeffrey Green: Edmund Thornton Jenkins—The Life and Times
of an African-American Composer (Westport, CT, 1982); Robert Bartlett Haas:
William Grant Still and The Fusion of
Cultures in American Music (Los Angeles, 1972); D. Antoinette Handy: Black Conductors (Metuchen, NJ, 1995);
William Christopher Handy: W. C. Handy—Father
of The Blues (New York, 1941); John Tasker Howard: Our American Music (New York, 1930); Nathan Huggins: Harlem Renaissance (New York, 1971);
Langston Hughes: Selected Poems (New
York, 1959); John Lovell, Jr.: Black
Song—The Forge and the Flame (New York, 1972); Garfield Moore:
“Recitalist’s Choice: Music for Solo Cello”, STRINGS, May/June 1995, 80; Hans Nathan: Dan Emmett and The Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy (Norman, OK,
1962); Claire Lee Purdy: Victor Herbert
(New York, 1944); Marsha Reisser: “Howard Swanson: Distinguished Composer”, BPIM, xvii (1989), 5; W. C. Berwick
Sayers: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, His Life
and Letters (London, 1915; Chicago, 1969); Rawn Spearman: “The ‘Joy’ of
Langston Hughes and Howard Swanson”, BPIM,
ix (1981), 121; Robert C. Toll: Blacking
Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth Century America (New York, 1974);
Various contributors: Black Music in
Britain: Essays on the Afro-Asian Contribution to Popular Music
(London, 1990, 3, 30); Glenn Watkins: Pyramids
at the Louvre—Music, Culture and College from Stravinsky to the Postmodernists
(Cambridge, MA, 1994); W. Wells-Harrison: Modern British Music for Violoncello
and Piano, No. VII…Coleridge-Taylor, Variations in b minor, STRAD, xxix, no.339 (1918), 67; Percy M.
Young: “Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, 1875-1912”, MT, cxvi (1975), 703
Scores:
Samuel
Coleridge-Taylor: Variations in b minor for Violoncello and Piano (London,
Augener, 1918); Adolphus Hailstork: Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano (St.
Louis, MO, MMB, 1991); William Grant Still: “Summerland” from Three Visions for Solo Piano. Transcription
by Timothy Holley (Flagstaff, AZ, WGS Music Co., 1985); Howard Swanson: Suite
for Violoncello and Piano (New York, Weintraub, 1951)
Program Three/Textbooks:
David
N. Baker, Lida M. Belt, Herman C. Hudson, eds.: The Black Composer Speaks (Metuchen, NJ, 1978); Tilford A.
Brooks: America’s Black Musical Heritage
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1984); James H. Cone: The Spirituals and The Blues (New York, 1972); Beatrice Harrison,
Patricia Cleveland-Peck, ed.: The Cello
and The Nightingales—The Autobiography of Beatrice Harrison (London, 1985),
137; Alain Locke: The Negro and His Music
(Washington, D.C., 1936); Alain Locke: The
New Negro (New York, 1925); John
Lovell, Jr.: Black Song—The Forge and the
Flame (New York, 1972); Eileen Southern: The Music of Black Americans, A History (New York, 1971, 1982,
1996); Eileen Southern: Readings in Black
American Music (New York, 1971).
Scores:
Lawrence
Brown (arr.): SPIRITUALS—Five
Negro Folk Songs (London, Schott, 1923); Adolphus Hailstork: Elegy for Cello
and Piano (ms., 1980); Hale Smith: Sonata for Violoncello and Piano (New York,
C.F. Peters, 1984); William Grant Still: “Mother and Child” from the Suite for Violin and Piano (1943). Transcription for cello by Timothy Holley
(Flagstaff, AZ, WGS Music Co., 1988); Frederick C. Tillis: Spiritual Fantasy
No.7 for Violoncello and Piano, “On My
Journey Now” (New York, American Composers Alliance, 1984)
*Pentachordal Outlines,
Frederick Tillis, Spiritual Fantasy No.7, “On
My Journey Now”
(The blues pentachord extends horizontally; the Japanese melodic pentachord
extends vertically)
D e f/f# a b (Blues
melody)
E-flat
G
A/A-flat
C
(Japanese melody)
**Selected Listing of
Cyclical Works:
Johannes
Brahms: Sonata for Cello and Piano (Opus 38), and Violin and Piano (Opus 78);
Antonin Dvorak: Symphony No. 9 in e minor, Opus 95 “From the New World”; Cello
Concerto in b minor, Opus 104 (1895); Cesar Franck: Sonata in A Major for
Violin and Piano; Claude Debussy: String Quartet; La mer; Trois Nocturnes;
Sonata for Cello and Piano (1915); Sonata for Violin and Piano (1917); Maurice
Ravel: Sonata for Violin and Cello (1922); Sonata for Violin and Piano (1927);
Zoltan Kodaly: Sonata for Cello and Piano, Opus 4; Sergei Prokofiev: Violin
Concerto No.1 in D Major, Opus 19; Sonata in f minor for Violin and Piano, Opus
80; Sonata in C Major for Cello and Piano, Opus 119
