Illustration from 1855 book
Twelve Years a Slave
by Solomon Northrup
(Wikipedia)
Dominique-René de Lerma:
BEYOND THE BEAUTY OF THE SPIRITUAL
In
1893, Antonín Dvořák told Americans that, if they really wanted a
national music, they must look to the spirituals, not to German models.
He had followed the same path, seeking his own Czech voice. The first
composer to heed this advice was Coleridge-Taylor, not an American,
whose 24 Negro melodies, opus 59, included an elaboration of 15
spirituals he selected from the 1872 published repertoire of the Fisk
Jubilee Singers and the 1887 anthology issued in Boston by the Oliver
Ditson Company, although it is certainly likely he had heard at least
some of these in performance. It was the Ditson company that also
published this collection of Coleridge-Taylor.
An
employee of Ditson was William Arms Fisher (1861-1948) who, as a
student of Dvořák at New York's National Conservatory of Music, took
his teacher's words to heart, not only setting words to the principal
theme of the slow movement of Dvořák's last symphony in 1922, but he
appears to have been instrumental in publishing Coleridge-Taylor's
treatment of these melodies.
We
have read about the singers from Fisk University, some of whom had been
slaves, who gave to the world America's most precious legacy, this
country's true classical music. We have heard performances recorded by
Roland Hayes, Marian Anderson, Dorothy Maynor, and Paul Robeson. Some
of us have been fortunate enough to have heard performances in recital
by Leontyne Price and the artists who followed her. We have been moved
by the settings of Harry Burleigh, Hall Johnson, Margaret Bonds and by
more recent figures as André Thomas, Charles Lloyd, Robert Morris, and
Moses Hogan. And we know what gave birth to this heritage, but it not
enough to dismiss the slave era with that painless acknowledgement.
The
Fugitive Slave Act in 1783 required all escaped slaves to be returned
to their masters, following legal procedure, no matter if they sought
freedom in states that had abolished slavery. Since slaves were not
citizens, they could not serve on juries or be represented in court.
The
Supreme Court ruled in 1842 that free states did not have to cooperate
in the relocation of escaped slaves. But one year before this law was
passed, Solomon Northup was kidnapped by slave hunters.
He
had been born free in upstate New York, where he worked on his own
farm. In 1834, he moved with his wife and three children to the
fashionable resort of Saratoga Springs. He was employed in various
positions, while Anne was engaged as a cook. Northup supplemented the
family income as a violinist, and he was well known and admired for his
musical ability.
In 1841
he met two men who offered him employment as a musician with a circus
troupe. He joined them, traveling to Washington, looking forward to the
new prospect.
Slavery,
which had been abolished in New York, was yet legal in the national
capitol. And here he was drugged and sold into slavery. He ended up in
Bayou Beouf in Louisiana, purchased by Edwin Eppes. Not only was he
witness to the vile treatment of the other slaves, he endured barbaric
conditions on his own. It was not until 1853 that he was liberated, due
to the extraordinary and complicated efforts of a visitor from Canada
(where slavery had been abolished twenty years earlier) and the
governor of New York State. In that year, again free, he published his
memoirs, Twelve years a slave (Auburn NY: Derby & Miller),
recounting in accurate detail the horrors he had seen and endured.
Although his abductors were identified and brought to trial, they were
never convicted. Nothing is known about Northup after 1863 when, age
45, he had been touring as lecturer in northeastern states.
His
book became the basis for a film by photographer-composer Gordon Parks
and, in 2013, for the award-winning and justly acclaimed film -- 12 years a slave, now available on DVD, with factual veracity carefully supervised in detail by Henry Lewis Gates.
One
may avoid the film, but not escape this pervasive factor in Americn
history; This country remains badly crippled thereby. As deeply
disturbing as it is,viewing the film sets in clear relief those beastly
circumstances from which the glory of the spiritual originated. Here in
this inhumane horror the bitter truth of the spiritual is realized.
Before I'd be a slave ...
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Dominique-René de Lerma
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