When a friend posted this clip on Facebook a few years ago, I sat
there wide-eyed listening to a mere one minute of music and thought
“This voice!” If there was ever a time to say “This is a singer
to watch” – or rather listen
to – this was it. Otello's brief entrance at the opening of Verdi's
masterpiece must be one of the most daunting walk-ons of all time, no
chance to warm-up to it, just go out and let loose with it.
And now, you'll get a chance to
hear him in a recital at Market Square Church, 7:30pm on Wednesday,
February 15th,
2023, here in Harrisburg with pianist Mark Markham in a program of
Negro Spirituals called “Make Them Hear You.” After that brief
introduction, you'll probably agree that shouldn't be a problem, even
from the back pews of the church...
On January 20th,
Pulliam made his Carnegie Hall debut in New York City, all part of a
career that saw him debut at the Metropolitan Opera in the role of
Radames in Verdi's Aïda
back in mid-December. But this is not just the big break for a newly
discovered voice: Limmie Pulliam is now 47. In the 1990s, dreaming of
singing on major stages around the world, this Missouri-born tenor
who most of his life had always dealt with “weight issues” quit
singing in his early-20s “because of concerns about body-shaming in
the music industry.” But now his renewed career is being called a
“comeback” – what is the take-away when you hear his story and
think what prejudices have caused us to miss out on, all those years
in between?
(Listen to his interview with NPR's Scott Simon on Weekend Edition here.)
There is no irony, perhaps, then,
during this “Black History Month,” we are listening to a program
called “Make Them Hear You: A Spiritual Journey” which includes a
dozen familiar Negro Spirituals born of racial prejudice. Arising out
of the world of Slavery, they gave comfort and inspiration to
generations of those who'd created these songs but which continue to
inspire everyone, regardless of race or culture, today.
Great Day! -------------------- arr. Thomas Kerr (1915-1988)
Wade in the water ------------ Improvisation
Take me to the water -------- arr. Undine Moore (1904-1989)
His name so sweet ---------- Hall Johnson (1888-1970)
There’s a man goin’ round - arr. Moses Hogan (1957-2003)
Were you there? ------------ Traditional
Deep River ------------------ arr. Mark Markham
You can tell the world ------ arr. Margaret Bonds (1913-1972)
This little light of mine ----- arr. Margaret Bonds
Witness ---------------------- arr. Hall Johnson
Give me Jesus ------------- arr. Moses Hogan
Ride on, King Jesus! ------ arr. Hall Johnson
(There will be no intermission.)
Limmie Pulliam w/an orchestration of Hall Johnson's Ride On, King Jesus! (performed in 2015 with the Delta Symphony, Neale Bartee conducting, in Batesville AR)
Unlike a more traditional song recital with repertoire usually
gathered into groups by composer or period, giving someone writing
program notes or, say, a blog-post about the program's musical
background, an opportunity to delve into a piece-by-piece analysis or
historical commentary on each song (“Now, Schubert composed these
next two songs on the same day...”).
Since no composer is otherwise associated with them, in many
peoples' minds that makes them “folk songs” which
evolved out of the culture rather than were specifically created by
an individual. It might be more appropriate to think of them as
“songs composed by Anonymous” that were passed down through the
community's Oral Tradition. While somebody must have written it
sometime, the composer's name
is unknown: in other words, “provenance unknown.” But then, one
can argue, “folk songs didn't just compose themselves.” As usual,
terminology often confuses reality.
As Lucy Miller Murray mentions in
her program notes, “Mark Markham has importantly pointed out
this program is a collection of Negro Spirituals, not folk songs, but
that they are at the level of American art songs which have been
arranged by the composers listed in
the program.”
Speaking of terminology, there is also
a matter of identifying them as “Negro Spirituals,”
“African-American Spirituals” (hyphenated or otherwise), or
simply “Spirituals.” While the Wikipedia entry (itself labeled simply “Spirituals”) states the Grove
Dictionary (1986 ed) defines “spiritual” as a “type of sacred
song created by and for African Americans that originated in oral
tradition. Although its exact provenance is unknown, spirituals were
identifiable as a genre by the early 19th century,” noting they
also did not use the “African American descriptor.” But when I
checked my own copy of the Grove Dictionary (1980 ed), it's listed
under “Spiritual” (singular, with no descriptor) as a “type of
folk song which originated in American revivalist activity between
1740 and the close of the 19th Century,” specifically to
distinguish it from “metrical psalms and hymns of traditional
church usage.”
There were also “White Spirituals,” the 1980 Grove continues,
also originating in the South which, from its own oral tradition,
developed into the published form of “Shape-Note Hymnody” another fascinating rabbit-hole for those wishing to explore the
difference between “spirituals” from one culture and another.
These “shape-note” hymn books were designed to facilitate
congregational and social singing, each “shape” representing a
particular pitch in the major or minor scale. In New England, for
instance, communities would gather, trained by a “singing master”
in the tradition of William Billings (as well as Andrew Law and
Supply Belcher, the “Handel of Maine”) where these old hymn tunes
– and, eventually, their own original ones – would be arranged
and harmonized as part of a social choral experience, whether in or
outside the church itself.
Among slaves of the 1th and 19th Centuries,
without access to publication and a wider community of activity,
these texts and their melodies, based on Bible stories and lessons,
originated from “work songs” on the plantation. In 1839, a
plantation-owner's wife wrote in her diary, “how they all sing in
unison, having never, it appears, attempted or heard anything like
part-singing” (that three- or four-part harmonized style we
associate with hymns). At a funeral, she continues, “the whole
congregation uplifted their voices in a hymn, the first high wailing
notes of which – sung all in unison – ...sent a thrill through
all my nerves.”
As late as the 1970s, researchers described the performance of
these early spirituals: “The lead singer who would frequently
improvise was generally supported by 'basers' who provided a vocal
groundwork and interpolations. The singing... abounded in 'slides
from one note to another [with] turns and cadences not in articulated
notes'.” In their printed collection of spirituals, they regretted
their inability to convey in notation 'the odd turns made in the
throat and the curious rhythmic effect produced by single voices
chiming in at different, irregular intervals'.”
In time, during the course of the Civil War and following the
Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 “altering mainly the nature (but
not continuation) of slavery for many,” cultural awareness of the
spiritual spread. And while the historical and cultural details and
their implications are far beyond this simple introduction's scope, this often entailed arrangements of the melodies to suit
society's musical concepts which would included harmonic
accompaniment and a four-part hymn-like style, first with groups like
The Fisk Jubilee Singers, students at Fisk University forming an a
cappella choral ensemble in 1871 to tour and raise money for the
college. Their repertoire consisted primarily of “arrangements of
traditional spiritual songs and songs by Stephen Foster.” Their
performances brought this music to even an international awareness.
Many of these songs reflected the tribulations of slave life,
translated into biblical metaphors, like Go Down, Moses. Songs
like He never said a mumblin' word
or Nobody knows the trouble I've seen
were often called “Sorrow Songs.” There was also the evangelical
fervor in such joyous songs as Ride On, King Jesus,
giving hope that there would be freedom in salvation beyond the
present.
Frederic Douglass, an ex-slave
and Black leader born around 1817, wrote about singing spirituals
when still a slave: “A keen observer might have detected in our
repeated singing of O Canaan, sweet Canaan, I am bound for
the land of Canaan something
more than the hope of reaching heaven. We meant to reach the
North and the North was our
Canaan,” the Promised Land.
Several writers have described spirituals as “codified
songs of protest,” especially with texts based on the deliverance
of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage or Daniel from the lions'
den; or, like Steal Away,
an inspiration to escape from their own bondage. And meanwhile the
plantation owner's family living up in the big house, listened to
their slaves' singing, unaware of the underlying significance of
these texts.
Marian Anderson, contralto: Crucifixion ("He Never Said a Mumblin' Word")
Henry T. Burleigh, a Black singer in New York City, studied
composition with none other than Antonín Dvořák at the National
Conservatory in the mid-1890s. Burleigh, an Erie PA native born in
1866, was taught a number of “spirituals and slave songs” by his
grandfather. After winning a scholarship to the conservatory (with
the help of the registrar, who was also Edward MacDowell's mother),
he would later sing many of these songs for his composition teacher
and Dvořák was fascinated by them.
One of the reasons the famous Dvořák had been brought to New York, of course, the
prestige of having his name on their faculty aside, was to help young
American composers study music without having to go to Europe. His
own music had grown out of the folk songs of his native Bohemia but
the real problem in America was “what was an American folk song?”
The nation was made up of so many immigrant (and mostly
European) cultures. Dvořák decided, after hearing Burleigh sing,
that these songs of the American Negro constituted “the real”
folk songs of the nation and he recommended his students study them
and out of them, directly or indirectly, build their own musical
voice.
Whether Dvořák's famous “New World” Symphony was intended to
show his students and audiences how to do this or merely to be
another European-style symphony inspired by his stay in America, it
did not include any overt “Spiritual Themes.” One can argue the
famous tune in the slow movement, the “Largo,” could've been
inspired by one of Burleigh's songs, but it's never been proven,
though it bears many of the hallmarks of a “spiritual theme” with
its non-traditional scale, simple phrasing, and, with or without the soulful sound of
the English Horn playing it, the emotions of a spiritual's ethos.
Once the words for “Goin' Home” were attached to it in 1922, it
became a popular song but regardless remains one of the most memorable themes in
all of Classical Music.
The only problem was, given the racism inherent in White society,
Dvořák's suggestion did not prove a popular avenue for something as
“high-society” as Classical Music. One of Dvořák's
contemporaries was the largely self-taught Amy Beach who decided to
base the themes for her own symphony the year following Dvořák's
“New World” on the folk songs of her Scots-Irish ancestors, so she called it
the “Gaelic” Symphony (incidentally, the first symphony in
America written by a woman, yet another rabbit-hole for the Google-eyed curious).
When Henry F. Gilbert, a
Massachusetts-born composer (who was White interested in folk music, submitted his
1908 work, Dance in Place Congo, inspired by Creole dances from
Congo Square in New Orleans, to the Boston Symphony, conductor Karl Muck
dismissed it as “[N-word]-Music” and refused to play it. It
wasn't performed until 1918 with appropriate choreography at the
Metropolitan Opera House. It later became a success in Europe in the
late-20s. While it may smack of “cultural appropriation” today by
some, Gilbert's intent was little different than, say, Brahms, a North German
composer, writing dances inspired by Vienna's Hungarian gypsy bands.
* * ** *** ***** ******** ***** *** ** * *
Over the generations, the singing
of these spirituals soon developed into the blues and gospel songs
that became popular in the 1920s.
By the time the phonograph came along, companies only recorded
these “spiritual” and gospel songs with White performers. In
1920, following her success as a blues singer, Mary Smith became the
first African-American singer to make a commercial record, but they
still recorded her with an all-White back-up band. The producer “had
received threats from Northern and Southern pressure groups saying
they would boycott the company if he recorded a Black singer. Despite
these threats the record was a commercial success and opened the door
for more Black musicians to record.”
Given how something like This Little Light of Mine
could grow into a world of music shining far beyond its roots, pardon
my metaphors, it is something else to think about when listening to
them in a recital setting. Given arrangements to complement their
original style, supplying simple harmonies, they also prove capable
of more complex treatments just as many of the folksongs that
inspired Dvořák or were imitated by composers as diverse as Brahms,
Mussorgsky or Bartók (I will always remember a violinist friend
listening to Bartók's 4th
Quartet, how “this must be what 'down-home music' sounds like to a
Hungarian”).
The arrangers of these songs, in
their own ways, elevated their status to the level of Art Songs
whether by Schubert or Rachmaninoff and made them available to a
wider audience. Here are Lucy Miller Murray's biographical sketches
for each of the arrangers, quoted from her program notes:
Baltimore-born Thomas Kerr (1915-1988) dreamed of attending the
Peabody Conservatory but, since African American students were not
admitted at that time, he attended Howard University and later
continued his studies at the Eastman School of Music where he
completed his Bachelor of Music degree in piano and his Master’s
degree in music theory. He later returned to Howard University as a
Professor of Piano and Chairman of the Piano Department. He composed
more than one hundred works including those for piano, voice, organ,
choir, and chamber ensembles and was awarded numerous prizes. Sadly,
he died in a car accident at the age of seventy-three.
Undine Moore (1904-1989) was considered the “Dean of Black Women
Composers” and a distinguished classical pianist and teacher. She
wrote numerous vocal works many of which were inspired by Black
spirituals and folk music. She attended Fisk, an historically Black
college, and received a scholarship to Juilliard and later studied at
Columbia, the Manhattan School of Music, and Eastman. She was the
recipient of many distinguished awards. Her numerous works include
twenty-one art songs for solo voice and accompaniment.
[Born in Athens GA], Francis Hall Johnson (1888-1970) achieved
fame for his arrangements of African-American spiritual music as well
as for his performances as a violinist and violist. [As a child, he
was inspired to play the violin after hearing a recital by the
grandson of Frederick Douglass.] He was also noted for his music
[conducting the choirs] for such films as The Green Pastures
[with its all-Black cast], Lost Horizon, and Walt Disney’s Snow White and the
Seven Dwarfs. Among the singers he coached were Marian Anderson
and Robert McFerrin Sr.
Moses Hogan (1957-2003) is yet another American composer and
arranger best-known for his settings of spirituals. He is considered to have revitalized the Negro
spiritual tradition. Along with Deep River that we hear on
this program, his many works also include such famous ones as Abide
With Me and Go Tell It on the Mountain.
Mark Markham has importantly pointed out that this program is a
collection Negro Spirituals, not folk songs, but that they are at the
level of American art songs which have been arranged by the composers listed in the program. Of special note is Mr. Markham’s
arrangement of Deep River that we hear on this program. He
played the work at Jessye Norman’s funeral:
Chicago-born Margaret Bonds (1913-1972) was one of the first Black
composers to gain recognition in the US and is best remembered today for her arrangements of
African-American spirituals. She studied with Florence Price and
later at Northwestern University and the Juilliard School and with
Nadia Boulanger. Her father was an active force in the civil rights
movement as was Bonds herself and her musician mother. Bonds worked
closely with Langston Hughes and set much of his work to music.
= = = = = = = = = = = = =
– Dick Strawser
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