{"id":1663,"date":"2020-02-09T12:50:32","date_gmt":"2020-02-09T17:50:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=1663"},"modified":"2020-02-11T04:38:23","modified_gmt":"2020-02-11T09:38:23","slug":"the-best-of-the-black-symphonies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2020\/02\/the-best-of-the-black-symphonies.html","title":{"rendered":"The Best of the “Black Symphonies”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For this weekend’s “Wall Street Journal” I have written an impassioned encomium for William Dawson’s thrilling “Negro Folk Symphony<\/a><\/strong>” of 1934 — still (alas) buried treasure:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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William Dawson<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In 1926 the African-American poet Langston Hughes wrote a seminal Harlem Renaissance essay, \u201cThe Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.\u201d The mountain \u201cstanding in the way of any true Negro art in America,\u201d he declared, was an urge \u201ctoward whiteness,\u201d a \u201cdesire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.\u201d Hughes cited, as an antidote, \u201cthe eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul\u201d: jazz and the blues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Truly, America\u2019s protean black musical mother lode has found expression in popular genres of its own invention\u2014not string quartets, symphonies and operas. Nevertheless, a concurrent black classical music was pursued\u2014a buried history today being exhumed. The notable interwar black symphonists comprise a short list of three: William Grant Still, Florence Price and William Levi Dawson. Their failure to excite attention was partly a consequence of institutional bias: African-Americans did not play in major American orchestras or conduct them. And there was also a pertinent aesthetic bias: The reigning modernist idiom was streamlined and clean, inhospitable to vernacular grit. It projected a sanitized \u201cAmerica.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the past decade, both Still and Price have acquired new prominence. But the buried treasure is Dawson\u2019s \u201cNegro Folk Symphony\u201d of 1934, whose three movements chart an ascendant racial odyssey. They notably embed such spirituals as \u201cO Lemme Shine.\u201d A heraldic horn call, symbolically linking Africa and America, binds the whole. Dawson (1899-1990), then 35 years old, had since 1931 led the Tuskegee Institute Choir. He had never before attempted a symphony. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cNegro Folk Symphony\u201d is anchored by its central slow movement, \u201cHope in the Night.\u201d It begins with a dolorous English horn tune set atop a parched pizzicato accompaniment: \u201ca melody,\u201d Dawson writes in a program note, \u201cthat describes the characteristics, hopes, and longings of a Folk held in darkness.\u201d A weary journey into the light ensues. Its eventual climax is punctuated by a clamor of chimes: chains of servitude. Finally, three gong strokes that prefaced the movement\u2014\u201cthe Trinity,\u201d says Dawson, \u201cwho guides forever the destiny of man\u201d\u2014are amplified by a seismic throb of chimes, timpani and strings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the symphony\u2019s governing mold is European and (as Hughes put it) \u201cstandardized,\u201d its energies remain uninhibited. Its lightning physicality of gesture\u2014at one point, the music is intended to suggest \u201crhythmic clapping of hands and patting of feet\u201d\u2014exudes spontaneity, even improvisation. Dawson seizes the humor, pathos and tragedy of the sorrow songs of the cottonfield with an oracular vehemence. The best-known roughly contemporaneous American symphonies are the Third Symphonies of Aaron Copland and Roy Harris: leaner works favoring a modernist decorum. Dawson\u2019s symphony, in comparison, exudes a wild folk energy driven by an exigent cause. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notwithstanding its present obscurity, Dawson\u2019s symphony received a galvanizing premiere by Leopold Stokowski and his Philadelphia Orchestra in 1934. Speaking from the stage, Stokowski called it \u201ca wonderful development.\u201d He also broadcast the symphony nationally, and took it to Carnegie Hall. Both in New York and Philadelphia, the young composer was repeatedly called to the stage. Far more remarkable is that \u201cHope in the Night,\u201d with its culminating three-fold groundswell, ignited an ovation midway through every performance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leonard Liebling of the New York American<\/em> hailed Dawson\u2019s symphony as \u201cthe most distinctive and promising American symphonic proclamation which has so far been achieved.\u201d Its most ardent admirers included W.E.B. DuBois\u2019s future wife, Shirley Graham, who wrote to Dawson of her \u201cjoy and pride.\u201d As the music historian Gwynne Kuhner Brown has pointed out, the \u201ctumultuous approbation the \u2018Negro Folk Symphony\u2019 received from critics and audiences alike set it apart\u2014not only from contemporaneous works by African-Americans, but also from most new classical music of the period.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After that, the \u201cNegro Folk Symphony\u201d disappeared from view. Stokowski returned to the work in 1963, recording it with his American Symphony. Neeme Jarvi recorded it with the Detroit Symphony 31 years later. But performances and recordings of consequence remain few and far between. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The vital question becomes: \u201cWhat if?\u201d Dawson became a leading arranger of black spirituals, an honored \u00e9minence grise. But he had hoped to write a series of symphonies. He had hoped to conduct orchestras. Antonin Dvorak, teaching in New York in 1893, famously and controversially predicted that a \u201cgreat and noble school\u201d of American classical music would arise from the \u201cNegro melodies\u201d he adored. His African-American assistant, Harry Burleigh, turned spirituals into concert songs with electrifying success beginning in 1913. George Gershwin, in 1935, produced an opera saturated with the influence of \u201cNegro melodies\u201d: \u201cPorgy and Bess,\u201d arguably the highest creative achievement in American classical music (and this season\u2019s smash hit at the Metropolitan Opera). No less than Dawson\u2019s symphony, these lonely examples\u2014however anathema to Langston Hughes\u2019s famous admonition\u2014suggest that Dvorak did not overestimate the music of black Americans. Rather, he overestimated America. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To read a pertinent essay on “black classical music,” click here. <\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For this weekend’s “Wall Street Journal” I have written an impassioned encomium for William Dawson’s thrilling “Negro Folk Symphony” of 1934 — still (alas) buried treasure: In 1926 the African-American poet Langston Hughes wrote a seminal Harlem Renaissance essay, \u201cThe Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.\u201d The mountain \u201cstanding in the way of any true […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1663","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-qP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1663"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1669,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1663\/revisions\/1669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}