Friday, July 4, 2008

PalmBeachPost.com: “For the Fourth, William Grant Still”


[William Grant Still (Photo is the sole property of William Grant Still Music, and is used with permission.)]

PalmBeachPost.com
Entertainment
July 4, 2008
“For this July Fourth, I haven’t had time to put together a playlist, but I am focusing on the work of William Grant Still (1895-1978).

Still has long been known as the dean of African-American classical composers, and his long career as an arranger and composer for popular and classical venues gave him a professional polish that allowed him to write well-crafted music of several different kinds. The folks at AfriClassical.com have several samples of his music on their site, and while the samples are short, they demonstrate Still’s melodic gift, his directness of expression, and his thorough craftsmanship.

I’m listening now to his Second Symphony, premiered in 1937 by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra. It’s subtitled Song of a New Race, and was written as a follow-up to his First, subtitled Afro-American. That first symphony was designed to evoke American black life around the Civil War, but the Second 'represents the American colored man of today,' according to Still’s program notes, which are excerpted in the Detroit Symphony’s 1993 recording (Chandos 9226) of the work. (The disc also contains William Levi Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony, also a fine piece, and Luther Henderson’s orchestration of Duke Ellington’s Harlem.)”

“Still’s Second deserves to be a standard repertory piece in American orchestras, and is just the sort of piece that should make up their bread and butter. There’s nothing wrong with playing the great Europeans to bring in the house, but there’s no good reason when compiling programs that conductors on the lookout for an accessible, attractive work to present should turn to something like the Mendelssohn Fourth instead of the Still.” Posted by Greg Stepanich at July 4, 2008 2:56 PM Full Post
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