Jeffrey Mumford (Ronald Jantz)
Dominique-René de Lerma:
Black, Brown, and Beige Concluded
The eighth program within Bill McGlaughlin's fascinating series, Black, Brown and Beige,
was dedicated to five Black composers: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Jeffrey
Mumford, Hale Smith, Alvin Singleton, and Roland Hayes. The 100th
anniversary of Coleridge-Taylor's death in 1912 did not stimulate the
revival of interest in this country it should have but, if Maine's
Longfellow Chorus had proper competition, it would doubtless still have
come out on top (the commemoration by the University of Houston missed
our notice). In Coleridge-Taylor's own country, Hilary Burrage managed
to stimulate international attention, but even her efforts did not
produce the results one would have hoped. This Brit's visits to the
United States, especially the first in 1904, was one of two major events
from abroad that were to stimulate the subsequent Harlem Renaissance
(the other being the visit of Dvořák in the previous decade). American
public schools were soon named for Coleridge-Taylor (in Baltimore and
Louisville, for example), but how many of their staff or students could
identify the composer or know any of his works today? His choral
treatment of Longfellow's Hiawatha text was next to Handel's Messiah and Mendelssohn's Elijah in popularity during the years following his early death in 1912 and the first of these -- Hiawatha's wedding feast -- ranks
with his clarinet quintet not only as the promising blossoms of true
talent, but as works fully deserving attention as mature compositions.
But what happened? I doubt that he was as incredibly precocious as
Mozart or Mendelssohn but, like Mendelssohn, the development was not
consistent. Do you agree that the Reformation symphony is not on the same level as the string octet or the overture to A midsummer night's dream? I think it was a lessening of the creative spark in Coleridge-Taylor's case that produced the Petite suite de concert;
even though this five-movement suite is certainly charming, it belongs
on the pop concert program, not the subscription series.
Jeffery Mumford served as advisor to Bill McLaughlin again for this
series of programs on Black music. His is a distinctive orchestral
voice, sometimes pointillistic, but always original. We had lunch
together in Oberlin when I had been asked to complete the semester for
Wendell Logan's Black music class, and I totally forgot to ask Jeffrey
about the fanciful titles, always in lower case, that he gave his
works. They certainly are evocative and sensual, but I wonder if the
composer and his audience conjure up the same impression, and if it
matters.
I'm sorry Bill and Hale Smith never met. Our beloved Hale was a real
talker, and always a stimulating one. No wonder his classes at the
University of Connecticut were so popular! He once took his audience
aback for the moment when he said he worried when the orchestra's
harpists were male and the garbage collectors were Anglo. Quite apart
from being a charming autocrat on panels, he was a splendid master of
composition who seemed delighted by providing titles to his works that
gave a clue to their organization, but he was no neo-classist at heart.
Alvin Singleton firmly established his reputation initially in Europe,
where he stayed for 14 years, first with a Fulbright grant, but not
failing to comment on social matters taking place back in the United
States. When he returned in 1985, he was appointed
composer-in-residence to the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (a position held
years earlier by T. J. Anderson) and in 2008 was active in Albania.
Commissions and performances of his works are frequent -- not only
throughout the U.S., but in Paris, London, Amsterdam, Vienna, Cologne,
and Rotterdam.
The program's fifth composer was the venerable tenor, Roland Hayes
(1887-1977), whose extraordinary gift as both singer and guardian of the
spiritual had been a model for Marian Anderson and all who followed.
He had been a student at Fisk University, but was expelled from the
university for giving an off-campus performance without the school's
permission. In 1923, he was the second Black soloist to appear with the
Boston Symphony Orchestra (the first had been José White in 1876,
excused because he was latino). The tenor's life story, MacKinley's Angel Mo' and her son (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1942) ranks high among biographies of musicians and in its depiction of the era.
André Watts was included with his brillant performance as a teenager in
the Liszt E-Flat major piano concerto. Ever to be enormously admired,
he always fills the house (and his fee, so it is said, even then obliges
additional patronage). He had been born in Germany in 1946 to a
Hungarian-German pianist mother and an African-American soldier; he thus
had the "disadvantage" of a typical Black American child. Even though
his parents moved to Philadelphia when he was quite young, his life was
not typical -- by age nine he was already demonstrating his uncommon
gift. Perhaps as a result, he is not known to have music by a Black
composer in his vast repertoire -- Gershwin is as close as he has come.
Liszt was held by Watts' mother as an idol. In more recent times,
Liszt's stock has not fared well, being a composer of seriously
difficult music (designed to show off the composer's dedication to
virtuosity that often ventured into gross flamboyance), but has risen
somewhat with consideration of his lesser known treatment of innovative
harmony and with the respectful tribute given by Jorge Bolet. This
concerto has not made it into the more elevated status.
Program nine sampled three additional composers: Olly Wilson, Roberto
Sierra, and Anthony Davis. The Boston Symphony Orchestra provided
Wilson's example with the second movement of his Sinfonia, a
memorial tribute to the composer's father and conductor Calvin Simmons
(whose early death cut short a career already international). Wilson is a
very major figure, incapable of writing inferior music or of ignoring
his ardent social stance. Sierra, a rriqueño now on the faculty
of Cornell University, is a remarkably prolific composer, ever true to
his roots and with such a brilliant reputation that we should be ashamed
for not having given him overt notice within our primary agenda.
And then there is Anthony Davis who, as a opera composer, won our notice initially with X, the life and times of Malcolm X,
in which he charts his path for opera's future. The work readily was
noticed when it was given its formal première by the former new York
City Opera in 1986. The leading role was taken by Ben Holt, who
configured his entire persona to that of the hero. The story was that
the opera was such a success, it would be presented the next year for a
less restrictive run, and would tour. This was not to be. The work was
recorded after Ben's death, and dedicated to his memory (and, by the
way, Bill McGlaughlin as conductor did have the chance to work with
Ben).
The broadcast of the final program of the series was preempted on
WFMT. Here was a catch-hall pot pourri that juxtaposed Langston Hughes,
King Oliver, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Charlie Parker with
Darius Milhaud, exhibiting what I felt to be a lack of organic unity of
the two weeks. But let's not be too critical: Bill merits our deep
appreciation for this second series of programs dedicated to Black
musical culture -- a world so diverse that it is easy to lose focus.
If we were to be treated to a third two-week tribute, what composers
would we recommend for introduction? This series brought us Samuel
Coleridge-Taylor, Anthony Davis, Adolphus Hailstork, Roland Hayes,
Jeffery Mumford, Roberto Sierra, Alvin Singleton, Hale Smith, and Olly
Wilson, all of whom could benefit from return booking. The horizon was
expanded with a few performers of "art" music (as our African figures
term "classical" music): Anne Brown, Todd Duncan, Paul Freeman, the
Howard University Choir, Natalie Hinderas, Jubilant Skyes, Wynton
Marsalis, Jessye Norman, Leontyne Price, Robert Sims, André Watts, Karen
Walwyn, and William Warfield.
What other composers might we recommend without hesitation? Michael
Abels, H. Leslie Adams, T. J. Anderson, Harry Burleigh, David Baker, Ed
Bland, Leo Brouwer, Margaret Bonds, William Banfield, Arthur
Cunningham, Will Marion Cook, Edmond Dédé, R. Nathaniel Dett, Akin Euba,
James Furman, Mark Fax, Primous Fountain, Felipe Gutiérrez y Espinosa,
Talib Hakim, Francis Johnson, J. Rosamond Johnson, Thomas Kerr, Ulysses
Kay, Tania León, Vicente Lusitano, Dorothy Rudd Moore, Undine Moore,
Gary Powell Nash, J. H. Kwabena Nketia, José Maurício Nunes Garcia, Fred
Onovwerosuoke, Robert Owens, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, Florence
Price, Julia Perry, Daniel Roumain, Howard Swanson, Joshua Uzoigwe,
George Walker ... And there are those classic giants who dedicated most
of their attention to the spiritual: Edward Boatner, Lawrence Brown,
William Dawson, Moses Hogan, Hall Johnson, Charles Lloyd, John Work ...
As for performers, we would start with Dorothy Maynor and Paul Robeson,
but after that we'd be buried with stellar figures like George Shirley,
D. Antoinette Handy, Florence Quivar, Grace Bumbry, Lawrence Winters,
Shirley Verrett, Reri Grist, Robert McFarren, Ben Holt ... those of the
recent past are too many to list, and the currently active stars (Darryl
Taylor, James de Preist, Terrance Wilson, Lecolion Washington, Kevin
Short, the McGill brothers, Eugene Moye, Leslie Dunner, Denise Graves,
Anthony Ellliot, Audra McDonald, Kevin Maynor, virtually all the Sphinx
laureates, and what about those choral ensembles from Morehouse, Morgan,
and Fisk?) ... one becomes too dizzy!
When time permits, Bill, remember us again. No other latitude on radio
gives us such attention, and we are most grateful that you are alerting
your thousands of ardent fans to this enormous world we love.
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Dominique-René de Lerma
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