Notes on the Program

The legacy of Black American music is rich and deep, encompassing a vast range of styles and forms that have been passed through generations.  Two such forms are highlighted in this program tonight: art songs and arrangements of traditional Black American spirituals, though their stylistic and formal breadth encompasses everything from jazz and gospel to various dance and classical forms.  Our five featured composers - Margaret Bonds, Harry Burleigh, Moses Hogan, John Rosamond Johnson, and Florence Price - are each extraordinary masters of composition; their work is as much an illustration of formal mastery as it is a testament to the power of lived experience shared in song.

We begin with the works of Florence Beatrice Price, whose life arc is a reflection of the wider Great Migration era in which many Blacks living in the American South migrated up north to escape widespread racial discrimination and persecution. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas to a musical family, Price was quite dedicated to her hometown as a music educator, performer, and community member.  While she later built her career in various points up North, where she studied at the New England School of Music and worked notably in the musical circles of Chicago, she captured her love of the south in her music. You’ll hear echoes of sultry breezes and leisurely, lilting lines in her dreamy song setting, Out of the South, and in the delightful journey painted in her sprightly piece for solo piano, Down a Southern Lane. Composed in the spring and summer of 1939, these are only two of a sizable amount of music Price wrote for the instrument, from teaching pieces to Spiritual arrangements to large-scale concert fantasies.

We explore more sounds of the American South in the works of Harry Burleigh. Born and raised in Erie, PA, Burleigh was a lifelong devotee of Black American spirituals both as a performer and as a composer. His grandfather, Hamilton Waters, had liberated himself and his mother from slavery in Somerset, Maryland in 1832 – the sense of responsibility that stemmed from that freedom left a profound imprint on Burleigh’s life and work. Over time, his published art song arrangements of spirituals gained widespread circulation, and by 1910, his works were performed so often that they introduced many to the legacy of Black musical history for the first time.  Among the most beloved of his songs is the ethereal setting of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot that you will hear tonight. We have also interspersed movements from Burleigh’s only composition for solo piano, the suite From the Southlands, throughout the program. Composed in 1907, each movement is an atmospheric and evocative blending of Burleigh’s original folk-inspired melodies and quotations from beloved Spirituals. 

 We begin our second set with John Rosamond Johnson’s powerful yet simple 1925 arrangement of My Lord, What a Morning. Influenced by the revival of interest in European and American folk music traditions in the early decades of the 20th century, Johnson and his brother, poet and activist James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938), edited and compiled two volumes of Spirituals with the hope that they “will further endear these songs to those who love Spirituals, and will awaken an interest in many others.” 

As we deepen our exploration of faith and perseverance in this set, we perform Price’s striking setting of Resignation. Written in the strophic style of a Black American spiritual, this piece is actually an original composition, and quite likely an autobiographical one, at that.  It stands out in Price’s body of art songs as a singularly intimate first-hand account of suffering. Her lyrics are profound; their impact lingers long after the song has ended. Aptly, we move next to Price’s setting of Adoration, originally composed for organ solo, in 1951. A meditative and introspective piece, it is presented today in an arrangement for piano by Henry Lebedinsky.

We are then introduced to the magnificent soundscape of Margaret Bonds in her haunting and sultry arrangement of “Lord, I Just Can’t Keep From Cryin.”  Born in Chicago in 1913, Bonds was an avid musical student from a young age, beginning her compositional life at the age of four.  She went on to study with several masters of the craft, Florence Price among them, and attended both Northwestern and Julliard for her musical studies.  Bonds faced rampant discrimination throughout her schooling days: she found that Black American texts helped to anchor her sense of purpose, and also inspired her wide-ranging body of work, from art songs and chamber works to full-scale oratorios.  You will hear a marvelous fusion of styles in her songs - a blend of jazz, blues, dance and classical forms. 

We move into our closing set with an eye toward the horizon and a fervent sense of belief that there are better days ahead. Margaret Bonds’ quietly arresting setting of Hold On launches us with the refrain: “Keep your hand on the Gospel Plow, and hold on” - a steadfast calling toward faith in our daily lives.  She takes us on an inward journey, coloring each verse with different vocal and pianist shadings, as they intensify and leading us to a most satisfying culmination.   

Harry Burleigh’s transporting nocturnal setting of “In the Col’ Moonlight” takes us to a different place entirely - a spare and luminous soundscape - as he paints the all-powerful night. A completely different vision is painted in Price’s romantic setting of Sunset, imbuing us with a rose-tinted sense of hope for what lies as we turn our gaze toward “that Golden Town, that beckons me when the sun goes down.” And on its heels, we hear the shifting winds of A Southern Sky, as it glides from light to dark and back again, depicting a vivid array of colors and shadings flashing across the sky.

Moses K. Hogan, along with Andrae Crouch, Undine Smith Moore, and André Thomas, represents a new generation of composers dedicated to bringing the Spiritual and Gospel traditions to new audiences through vibrant and accessible arrangements steeped in both historical roots and modern performance practices. Hogan’s setting of the Spiritual He’s Got The Whole World in His Hands strips away the rhythmic drive often associated with the text today and turns it into a lullaby - a song of comfort, of a deep, abiding Divine presence wrapping us all in a mother’s love. In performance, we found that replacing the masculine pronouns referencing God with the feminine simply reinforced the power of the text’s images of radical inclusivity and love. No exceptions. No exclusions. All are welcome. Always.

-Notes by Michele Kennedy and Henry Lebedinsky