José Silvestre White’s Violin Concerto in f sharp minor
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.
José Silvestre de Los Dolores White y Lafitte (1836–1918), most usually known as either José Silvestre White or Joseph White, was born in Cuba and received his early musical instruction from his father, who was an amateur violinist. Josephine Wright says of his first public concert in Cuba at the age of 18, “His accompanist was the famous North American pianist-composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk . . . who encouraged him to pursue further violin studies in Paris and raised money for him to travel there.” During White’s time studying at the Paris Conservatoire, he won many awards and came to the attention of Rossini, who wrote to White in 1858: “Allow me to express to you all the pleasure that I felt Sunday last at the home of my friend Mr. David. Your warm execution, feeling, elegance, the brilliance of the school to which you belong, are qualities in an artist like you of which the French school can be proud.” There is a conservatory named for him in Camaguey, Cuba, the Conservatorio de Música José White.
Some of White’s compositions, mainly for violin, violin and piano, or string quartet, still survive. They are all virtuosic in style, unsurprising given that White was known as the Cuban Paganini. There’s a great early recording of his most famous work, La Bella Cubana, apparently an experimental recording made by Thomas Alva Edison in 1924 (https://youtu.be/sjp9Zi5gzgY).
White’s Violin Concerto in F sharp minor, composed in 1864, is a lovely Romantic-era work, with beautiful melodies, virtuosic passages for the violin soloist, and lovely interchanges between the orchestra and the soloist. I have not been able to find any evidence that this concerto was published in White’s lifetime. There is an edition published under the name “Joseph White” from the 1970s.
Mark Clague says, “Composed in 1864, at the beginning of White’s touring career, the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in F-sharp Minor follows the standard three movement plan: Allegro, Adagio ma non troppo, and Allegro moderato. Although quite colorful and sonorous, the choice of F-sharp minor for a violin concerto is curious. F-sharp is a rare, but not unheard of, key for violin concertos. . . . A critic described the piece as ‘one of the best modern works of its kind. . . . The fabric is excellent, the basic thematic ideas are carefully distinguished, the harmonies are elegant and clear, and the orchestration is written by a secure hand, free from error. One feels the presence of a strong and individual nature from the start. Not a single note exists for mere virtuosity, although the performance difficulties are enormous’.”
My classical music post for today is José Silvestre White’s Violin Concerto in f sharp minor.
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