Undine Smith Moore’s “Before I’d Be A Slave”
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/037MmUz29_0 Undine Smith Moore (1904–1989) was known as “the Dean of Black Women Composers.” After beginning her undergraduate music studies at Fisk University, she was the recipient of the first scholarship granted to a Fisk student by Juilliard. After graduating, she received her Master’s from Columbia's Teachers College. She also studied composition with Howard Murphy at the Manhattan School of Music. Her cantata “Scenes From the Life of a Martyr,” written in 1981 in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Only one-quarter of her compositions were published in her lifetime. Moore composed “Before I’d Be A Slave” for piano in 1953. She wrote on the title page: “It follows a program which I would hope is evident in the...