Head Librarian of CBMR on 'Deep River,' Spiritual Arranged by Henry T. Burleigh (1866-1949)

[ABOVE: Deep River: Songs and Spirituals; Oral Moses, bass-baritone; Ann Sears, piano; Troy 332 (1999) by Henry T. Burleigh (1866-1949) BELOW: PDF file of the song from the 1880 edition of Marsh]

On April 1, 2012 AfriClassical posted: “'Deep River (H.T. Burleigh) edt. by Cantus' Uploaded to YouTube April 1, 2012.”  Several earlier comments have been posted. The detailed comment provided by Suzanne Flandreau is posted for the first time. She is Head Librarian and Archivist, Center for Black Music Research, www.colum.edu/cbmr. The sheet music pictured above is from a PDF file which accompanied her comment:

Suzanne Flandreau

Hi everybody.

I was out yesterday but this morning I did a little sleuthing among the reference books. According to the invaluable index African American Traditions in Song, Sermon, Tale and Dance 1600s-1920 compiled by Eileen Southern and Josephine Wright (Greenwood Press, 1990) “Deep River” has a pretty venerable history: it’s from the Fisk Jubilee Singers series that goes back to the 1870s.

Southern traces it to the first edition of J.B.T. Marsh’s The Story of the Jubilee Singers With their Songs, published first in England in 1876, and then in the U.S. as a “Revised Edition” in 1880. The Jubilee Singers books have a complex bibliographic history: they were apparently produced as souvenirs and republished and sold every time the Jubilee Singers made another fundraising trip, so there are a great many variant imprints. The frontispieces picturing the group changed as the personnel changed, and songs were added fairly regularly, but once a song is there, it’s there. So “Deep River” is there as No. 77 after 1876.

That said, the Fisk publication is different from Burleigh’s melody: the chorus has the usual melody but with four repetitions of the last line. The verse has a range of a fifth, supporting Dominique’s theory that Burleigh did a little riffing on the verse.

I’m attaching a PDF file of the song from the 1880 edition of Marsh... It’s WAY out of copyright!


Dominique-René de Lerma

 The reproduction of Deep river, provided by Suzann Flandreau, reveals that the "bridge" as used by Burleigh, employs the same text, but is provided with a new melody (by Burleigh?), not found in Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's setting for piano in 24 Negro melodies, which might be the first use of the melody after its performances by the Fisk singers.   But it is noteworthy to observe that Burleigh might well have been influenced by Coleridge-Taylor's incipit of an arpeggiated tonic.

Reference to the Fisk version is not a sign of virtuosic musical research, but was possible only because the publication was held by the CBMR and illustrates the value of having the Center's collection available to someone with serious bibliographic and subject-area knowledge.  Far more important was Suzanne's alertness to the material she identified as part of the Price piano concerto.  But even the former shows the absolute obligation that the Center be retained as a unit; the expedient move of the collection away from the supervision of a specialist -- the MLS degree is not even close -- would be academically criminal, and an unforgiveable, indelible blemish.  If the value of the Center has surpassed the needs and sophistication of an undergraduate program, there is one immediately  obvious and noble solution.  

Suzanne Flandreau

Thanks for your kind words, Dominique.

Actually, the most interesting thing to me is that neat little drop of a minor third at the end of the “chorus”. It disarranges the tonic completely—something Burleigh (and C-T?) couldn’t do and retain their repetitive arpeggiated major chords, so they ended on a major tonic note.



Dominique-René de Lerma

Thanks.  I have to admit the printout is so small (being a flop as a technobug, I could not read the details, not even with my reading glasses plus a state-provided magnifying glass [a stroke 18  years ago ended vision in my right eye and perspective, while my "good" eye is decorated with a cataract and glaucoma, all of which is why I try to guide my arthritic two fingers to the right keyboard letters, finishing x {?} number of books in the likely event I don't finish by octogenarian years]).  And yesterday, the soup was cold!

Michael S. Wright

Thanks Dominique, Your valuable point on a classic  ‘CBMR in action’ says it all. Regards

Mike