Daily Classical Music Post

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. https://youtu.be/VeIeC2ur-0s 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 ...