21M.410 / 21M.515 Vocal Repertoire and Performance Spring 2005 PROGRAM NOTES Edward Boatner (1898-1981), arranger Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel? When I Get Home Edward Hammon Boatner was born on November 13, 1898 in New Orleans, Louisiana to the family of an itinerant minister. Boatner’s father, Dr. Daniel Webster Boatner traveled frequently from church to church, and thus provided his son an introduction to rural church singing. Edward Boatner received his musical education at Western University in Kansas, the Boston Conservatory, New England Conservatory, the Longy School of Music, and the Chicago College of Music. In his lifetime, Boatner arranged and published more than 200 spirituals, with written works including Story of the Spiritual: Thirty Spirituals and Their Origins, and the spiritual musicals, The Man of Nazareth and The Origin of the Spirituals. His arrangements have been recorded by Roland Hayes, Marian Anderson, Paul Robeson, Leontyne Price and Nelson Eddy. Boatner achieved acclaim as a singer and also served as music director of the National Baptist Convention (1925-1933), as music director at Samuel Huston College in Austin and as Dean of Music at Wiley College. He also operated a studio in New York City where he trained choral groups, gave private voice and piano instruction, and trained actors. An avid writer, Boatner published books on music theory and composition. Writings include The Damaging Results of Racism, Black Humor, Great Achievements in Black and White and the novel One Drop of Blood (New York Public Library, Digital Library Collections). Edward Boatner died in New York in 1981, leaving a legacy of developing the concert spiritual genre in which elements of folk song and art song are blended. Sources: Perkins Holly, Ellistine. Biographies of Black Composers and Songwriters; A Supplementary Textbook. Iowa: Wm. C. Brown Publishers, 1990. New York Public Library, Digital Library Collections. http://www.nypl.org/digital/ NegroSpirituals.com The African American Art Song Alliance. University of Northern Iowa. www.uni.edu Margaret Bonds (1913-1972), composer Three Dream Portraits Margaret Bonds was born on March 3, 1913 in Chicago, Illinois. Margaret’s mother, Estella Bonds, was her first piano teacher and exposed her to great musicians like Florence B. Price and Will Marion Cook early in her life. This early contact led her to attend Northwestern University, where she earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in music in 1933 and 1934, respectively. From there she attended Juilliard to continue her studies in 1939. The song cycle Three Dream Portraits resulted from her collaboration with poet Langston Hughes, with whom she maintained an enduring friendship. During Bonds’ illustrious career, she taught at the American Theater Wing and performed with several orchestras. In 1967 she moved to Los Angeles to work at the Inner City Institute and Repertory Theater until her death on April 26, 1972. Source: The African American Art Song Alliance. http://www.uni.edu/taylord/bonds.bio.html Langston Hughes (1902-1967), poet Song to the Dark Virgin Three Dream Portraits The Breath of a Rose Fi-yer! Poet Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. He began writing poetry in high school, and soon after graduation, wrote the famous poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” In 1921, he attended Columbia University, but left a year later after a visit to Harlem. There he met many of the other 21M.410 / 21M.515 Vocal Repertoire and Performance Spring 2005 key writers of the Harlem Renaissance, such as Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson and W.E.B. DuBois, and his literary career took off. In 1932 he wrote The Dream Keeper and Other Poems, the collection from which “Three Dream Portraits” is taken. Hughes also wrote several plays and the lyrics to the Broadway musical entitled Street Scene (1947). Perhaps the most original of all African American poets, Hughes has been deemed the “Poet Laureate of the Negro Race.” He died on May 22, 1967, but his spirit and influence live on. Source: Poets.org. http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=84 Lawrence Brown, arranger Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho Lawrence Brown is best known for his arrangements of spirituals and as an accompanist for Paul Robeson, baritone. They gave the first all-spiritual recital in 1925 in Greenwich Village Theater, New York where the spiritual was elevated to a venerable place in music, paving the way for future African-American singers. Source: Bay Area Paul Robeson Centennial Committee Web Site. bayarearobeson.org Henry (Harry) Thacker Burleigh (1866-1949), arranger Oh, Didn’t it Rain? Henry Thacker Burleigh was born on December 2, 1866, in Erie, Pennsylvania. His work was greatly influenced by his grandfather, Hamilton Waters, who sang spirituals to Henry while working as Erie’s town crier. While his mother, Elizabeth Burleigh, was in the employ of Elizabeth Russell, Mrs. Burleigh gained Mrs. Russell’s permission for Henry to greet the guests as they arrived for the concerts held in Mrs. Russell’s home. Thus, at a young age Burleigh heard a considerable amount of European classical music, as well. In 1892, he received a scholarship to attend the National Conservatory of Music in New York. There he met Antonin Dvorák, the man who most strongly influenced Burleigh’s career as a composer. In 1894 Burleigh was selected as the baritone soloist at St. George’s Episcopal Church of New York, which in turn gave him the financial stability to compose between two hundred and three hundred songs. His career led to many accolades, such as the Spingarn Medal in 1917, and he influenced many of the young African American musicians of the early 1900s. He died on September 12, 1949. Source: Afrocentric Voices in “Classical” Music. http://www.afrovoices.com/burleigh.html Yiu-kwong Chung (b. 1956), composer By Chance Yiu-kwong Chung was born in Hong Kong in 1956. He received formal training as a percussionist and served as Assistant Principal Percussionist for the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra from 1980 to 1986. Chung was a self-taught composer until 1986, when he won first prize at the Percussive Arts Society Composition Competition, which enabled him to study composition at the City University of New York. Chung moved to Taiwan in 1991, and is now regarded is Taiwan’s best known and most often performed composer. He has composed over seventy works for nearly every conceivable instrumentation, including symphony orchestra, wind ensemble, traditional Chinese instruments, and musical theater. His commissioned works as of 2004 include a saxophone concerto, clarinet concerto, percussion sextet, and chamber music for solo sanxian, bamboo flutes and percussion. Chung is currently a professor of contemporary music and percussion at the National Taiwan University of Arts in Taipei, Taiwan. “By Chance” is the first song in a cycle entitled Three Poems by Xu Zhimo, composed in 1997. Source: Yiu-kwong Chung Official Website. http://cykusic.com. 21M.410 / 21M.515 Vocal Repertoire and Performance Spring 2005 Xu Zhimo (1985-1931), poet By Chance Xu Zhimo was a Chinese poet, born in 1895 in the Chekiang province. In 1918, he came to the United States, where he received degrees from Clark University and Columbia University. Xu then attended Cambridge University in England, where he began writing poetry and studying the works of British romantics like John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Xu returned to China in 1922, where he maintained a career as a teacher and writer until his death in a plane crash in 1931. He is noted as one of the first Chinese poets to combine Western forms with Chinese styles, exploring themes of love, beauty, freedom, and dynamism in his poetry. Source: Denton, Kirk A. Ohio State University. CH503: Modern Chinese Literature In Translation. http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/denton2/courses/c503/xzm.htm By Chance Pinyin (Mandarin Chinese transcription) English translation ou ran By Chance wo shi tian kong li de yi pian yün I am a cloud in the sky, ou er tou ying zai ni de po sin A chance shadow on the wave of your heart. ni bu bi ya yi Don't be surprised, gong wu xü huan xi Or too elated; zai zhuan shuen jian xiao mie de zong ying In an instant I shall vanish without trace. ni wo xiang feng zai hue ye de hai shang We meet on the sea of dark night, ni you ni de, wo you wo de fang xiang You on your way, I on mine. ni ji de yie hao Remember if you will, zwei hao ni wang diao Or, better still, forget zai zhe jiao shi hu fang de guang liang The light exchanged in this encounter Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912), composer Long, long the labour Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born on August 15, 1875 in Croydon, England to Alice Hare, an English woman, and Daniel Peter Taylor, a native of Sierra Leone. Daniel Taylor found it difficult to maintain a medical practice in England because of his race, so he returned to Africa permanently shortly following Samuel’s birth. As a child, Samuel participated in church choirs. His study of the violin led to his enrollment in the Royal College of Music in 1890. After two years he began to focus upon the study of composition. "Long, long the labour" stands as the finale of Coleridge-Taylor's opera Dream Lovers, written in 1898 in collaboration with the celebrated African American poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar. Coleridge-Taylor’s most famous musical work was Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast in which he set verse from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Song of Hiawatha.” Also known for his humanitarian influence, Coleridge-Taylor became a leader in the Pan-African movement.