[Adolphus C. Hailstork (b. 1941) is featured at AfriClassical.com. Hailstork composed Epitaph: For A Man Who Dreamed, In Memoriam: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), the title work on African Heritage Symphonic Series Volume II, Cedille Records CD CDR 90000 061 (2001). Paul Freeman conducted the Chicago Sinfonietta in this recording.]
Dominique-René de Lerma
Monday,
10 September.
NPR's Fresh air is
brilliantly hosted by Terry Gross, who seems extraordinarily comfortable with
any variety of subjects in which her guests are specialists. The show rather
often concludes with terse reviews by others of recent recordings. Those on
jazz and novels are penetrating, while those on pop culture understandably
avoid any notice of the music itself, traditionally lacking anything of
substance, and seem so profoundly out of place on broadcasts then not rarely
including respectable works of art. This program discussed pop recordings from
Nashville as if discography earned the city the title of Music City U.S.A. I
sent an e-mail to remind the producers that justification came about in the
previous century by the Jubilee Singers from Fisk University. A kind, polite
stock reply was the reaction, probably the end of it.
This was followed by Bill
McGlaughlin's stellar Exploring music, given this week to the pupils of
Nadia Boulanger. This is a suitable time to cite her African American students,
none of whom might not make it to this week's agenda: Vada Butcher, Donald
Byrd, R. Nathaniel Dett, Adolphus Hailstork, Eugene Haynes, Nora Holt, Raymond
Jackson, Quincy Jones, Dorothy Rudd Moore, Kermit Moore, Julia Perry, Howard
Swanson, Leon Thompson, and particularly George Walker (who was one of her few
private students).
Then came a documentary on the
production of Wagner's Ring, whose four operas were to care for the
remainder of the week. There may be those who greatly dislike Wagner (like
Stravinsky), but this is a giant whose music and art cannot be ignored -- nor
the monumental production of the Metropolitan Opera. He expects -- no,
demands! -- that those who come to him have the obligation to study his scores
in great depth before his colossal genius and shameless audacity can begun to
be understood -- and, for that matter, any aspect of 19th-century German
music. Being unequivocally German, his operas do not open the door for
non-German performers -- a position that cannot be thought prejudicial. Even
so, Grace Bumbry broke the mold in the sacred halls of Wagner's own
Festspielhaus in Bayreurth in 1961 when she was engaged for Tannhäuser,
just as Simon Estes did with Der fliegende Holländer in 1978. Then
there was Jessye Norman, superbly cast in the Met's last production of the Ring,
while Gwendolyn Killebrew had made her mark at the Met and in German
productions in the past. I initially feel at least a little discomfort to find
Black singers in the role of villains, but everyone in the Ring is a
villain, but for Brünnhilde and those swimmers in the Rhine River, so Eric
Owens has been able to shine as the sinister Alberich.
The subject of this tetrology is
the downfall of the gods and their lust for gold. I don't suggest the Met's
scheduling has a relationship to the current American presidential election.
------------------------------------
Dominique-René
de Lerma
http://www.CasaMusicaledeLerma.com
Additional Comment
Prof. Dominique-René de Lerma subsequently informed us: "Before the week ended,
Bill McGlaughlin included the Elegy of Adolphus Hailstork, with Paul Freeman conducting the Chicago Sinfonietta on the recording." The work is on the CD pictured above.
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