Harry T. Burleigh’s Southland Sketches, III: Allegretto Grazioso
This February, the Daily Classical Music Post celebrates Black composers and musicians whose music has been suppressed and ignored. All of these musicians should be added to the music history and music theory curriculum.
Harry T. Burleigh (1866–1949) was well known in his late teenage and early adult life in his hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania, as a classical baritone. He was in great demand as a soloist in churches as well as the local Jewish synagogue. When he was 26, he won a scholarship to the National Conservatory of Music in New York. He was at first rejected by the Conservatory; however, when Frances MacDowell, the mother of the composer Edward MacDowell, encouraged him to try again, he was admitted with the scholarship. Interesting.
The director of the Conservatory, the composer Antonín Dvořák, learned a great deal about spirituals and folk songs of America from the songs that Burleigh sang for him. Dvořák said (speaking about his vision for a truly national American classical music), “Inspiration . . . might be derived from the Negro melodies or Indian chants. I was led to take this view partly by the fact that the so-called plantation songs are indeed the most striking and appealing melodies that have yet been found on this side of the water, but largely by the observation that this seems to be recognized, though often unconsciously, by most Americans.”
Later, Burleigh began to arrange spirituals as classical art songs, and these became incredibly popular. No self-respecting soloist would give a recital without at least one song by Burleigh on the program. In addition to these arrangements, Burleigh also composed some original songs set to poems by Walt Whitman, and he also composed some music for violin and piano. He is honored with a feast day in the U.S. Episcopal Church calendar; the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music says, “His greatest achievement, and that for which he will always be celebrated, was recovering and arranging many Negro spirituals for solo voice and piano so they could be widely heard on the concert stage. Various choral versions of the spirituals had been well known in the black churches, but it was Burleigh’s arrangements that made this distinctively American music available to the masses.”
Southland Sketches (1916), for violin and piano, is based on the plantation melodies that his grandfather had taught him. Burleigh said, “In Negro spirituals my race has pure gold, and they should be taken as the Negro's contribution to artistic possessions. In them we show a spiritual security as old as the ages.” This four-movement piece was published by G. Ricordi in 1916 and was performed by well-known musicians throughout the world, including the violinist on today’s recording, Margaret Harrison (one of the famous Harrison sisters from England). This is a lovely, gentle work.
My classical music post for today is Harry T. Burleigh’s Southland Sketches, III: Allegretto Grazioso.
Comments
Post a Comment