Lynn Abbot and Doug Seroff
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617036750
- eISBN:
- 9781621039150
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617036750.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This book traces black vocal music instruction and inspiration from the halls of Fisk University to the mining camps of Birmingham and Bessemer, Alabama, and on to Chicago and New Orleans. In the ...
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This book traces black vocal music instruction and inspiration from the halls of Fisk University to the mining camps of Birmingham and Bessemer, Alabama, and on to Chicago and New Orleans. In the 1870s, the Original Fisk University Jubilee Singers successfully combined Negro spirituals with formal choral music disciplines, and established a permanent bond between spiritual singing and music education. Early in the twentieth century there were countless initiatives in support of black vocal music training conducted on both national and local levels. The surge in black religious quartet singing that occurred in the 1920s owed much to this vocal music education movement. In Bessemer, Alabama, the effect of school music instruction was magnified by the emergence of community-based quartet trainers who translated the spirit and substance of the music education movement for the inhabitants of working-class neighborhoods. These trainers adapted standard musical precepts, traditional folk practices, and popular music conventions to create something new and vital. Bessemer’s musical values directly influenced the early development of gospel quartet singing in Chicago and New Orleans through the authority of emigrant trainers whose efforts bear witness to the effectiveness of “trickle down” black music education. A cappella gospel quartets remained prominent well into the 1950s, but by the end of the century the close harmony aesthetic had fallen out of practice, and the community-based trainers who were its champions had virtually disappeared, foreshadowing the end of this remarkable musical tradition.Less
This book traces black vocal music instruction and inspiration from the halls of Fisk University to the mining camps of Birmingham and Bessemer, Alabama, and on to Chicago and New Orleans. In the 1870s, the Original Fisk University Jubilee Singers successfully combined Negro spirituals with formal choral music disciplines, and established a permanent bond between spiritual singing and music education. Early in the twentieth century there were countless initiatives in support of black vocal music training conducted on both national and local levels. The surge in black religious quartet singing that occurred in the 1920s owed much to this vocal music education movement. In Bessemer, Alabama, the effect of school music instruction was magnified by the emergence of community-based quartet trainers who translated the spirit and substance of the music education movement for the inhabitants of working-class neighborhoods. These trainers adapted standard musical precepts, traditional folk practices, and popular music conventions to create something new and vital. Bessemer’s musical values directly influenced the early development of gospel quartet singing in Chicago and New Orleans through the authority of emigrant trainers whose efforts bear witness to the effectiveness of “trickle down” black music education. A cappella gospel quartets remained prominent well into the 1950s, but by the end of the century the close harmony aesthetic had fallen out of practice, and the community-based trainers who were its champions had virtually disappeared, foreshadowing the end of this remarkable musical tradition.
Maurice Peress
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195098228
- eISBN:
- 9780199869817
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195098228.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter starts with Dvorák's witnessing of the exuberant festivities for the 400th anniversary of Columbusás landing in the New World only a few days after his arrival and his first concert ...
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This chapter starts with Dvorák's witnessing of the exuberant festivities for the 400th anniversary of Columbusás landing in the New World only a few days after his arrival and his first concert appearance. It is here that Dvorák often hears Negro Spirituals sung by his new assistant, Harry T. Burleigh, as he composes a new Symphony. Dvorák explicitly announces that his “newly completed symphony reflects the Negro melodies, upon which ... the coming American school must be based ... will be a surprise to the world”. He carefully signs his completed score and dates it, “Fine, Praised be to God! May 24, 1893, at nine in the morning”. In an unusual gesture, Dvorák returns to the score later that day to add a euphoric note, “Family arrives at Southhampton! (telegram l:33)”. Famous American and European musicians react to Dvorák's “negro music idea”. After that, the Dvoráks leave by train for their summer vacation in a small Czech speaking farm community in Spillville, Iowa. En route they stop in Chicago to visit the Fair.Less
This chapter starts with Dvorák's witnessing of the exuberant festivities for the 400th anniversary of Columbusás landing in the New World only a few days after his arrival and his first concert appearance. It is here that Dvorák often hears Negro Spirituals sung by his new assistant, Harry T. Burleigh, as he composes a new Symphony. Dvorák explicitly announces that his “newly completed symphony reflects the Negro melodies, upon which ... the coming American school must be based ... will be a surprise to the world”. He carefully signs his completed score and dates it, “Fine, Praised be to God! May 24, 1893, at nine in the morning”. In an unusual gesture, Dvorák returns to the score later that day to add a euphoric note, “Family arrives at Southhampton! (telegram l:33)”. Famous American and European musicians react to Dvorák's “negro music idea”. After that, the Dvoráks leave by train for their summer vacation in a small Czech speaking farm community in Spillville, Iowa. En route they stop in Chicago to visit the Fair.
Todd Decker
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199759378
- eISBN:
- 9780199979554
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199759378.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American, Popular
Author Edna Ferber's inspiration and research methods while writing Show Boat are put in context with the vogue for Negro spirituals in 1920s Manhattan. The plot of the novel is situated within ...
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Author Edna Ferber's inspiration and research methods while writing Show Boat are put in context with the vogue for Negro spirituals in 1920s Manhattan. The plot of the novel is situated within Ferber's previous work and the central character of Magnolia Hawkes Ravenal is compared to other Ferber heroines. Ferber's use of Negro spirituals to define Magnolia's identity and lay out the book's principal theme is critiqued from the perspective of popular entertainment history. Oscar Hammerstein II's alterations to Ferber's story, in particular his realignment of white characters' reactions to racial questions, are considered.Less
Author Edna Ferber's inspiration and research methods while writing Show Boat are put in context with the vogue for Negro spirituals in 1920s Manhattan. The plot of the novel is situated within Ferber's previous work and the central character of Magnolia Hawkes Ravenal is compared to other Ferber heroines. Ferber's use of Negro spirituals to define Magnolia's identity and lay out the book's principal theme is critiqued from the perspective of popular entertainment history. Oscar Hammerstein II's alterations to Ferber's story, in particular his realignment of white characters' reactions to racial questions, are considered.
Todd Decker
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199759378
- eISBN:
- 9780199979554
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199759378.003.0002
- Subject:
- Music, History, American, Popular
Paul Robeson was the primary inspiration for the song “Ol' Man River.” This chapter details Robeson's mid-Twenties career as a dramatic actor and singer of concert spirituals and describes how Kern ...
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Paul Robeson was the primary inspiration for the song “Ol' Man River.” This chapter details Robeson's mid-Twenties career as a dramatic actor and singer of concert spirituals and describes how Kern and Hammerstein sought to lodge Robeson's persona in Show Boat on several levels. An important source for the tune to “Ol' Man River” from the 1926 show Deep River is reprinted for the first time. Robeson's resistance to Hammerstein, Kern, and producer Florenz Ziegfeld's plans is explained by way of the singer's experiences in Greenwich Village and London and his desire to use his career to shape the white public's perception of African Americans.Less
Paul Robeson was the primary inspiration for the song “Ol' Man River.” This chapter details Robeson's mid-Twenties career as a dramatic actor and singer of concert spirituals and describes how Kern and Hammerstein sought to lodge Robeson's persona in Show Boat on several levels. An important source for the tune to “Ol' Man River” from the 1926 show Deep River is reprinted for the first time. Robeson's resistance to Hammerstein, Kern, and producer Florenz Ziegfeld's plans is explained by way of the singer's experiences in Greenwich Village and London and his desire to use his career to shape the white public's perception of African Americans.
Danielle Fosler-Lussier
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780520284135
- eISBN:
- 9780520959781
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520284135.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
The State Department used America’s predominantly Christian religion as part of its cultural presentations strategy. Many musical performers, including African American, white, and mixed choirs and ...
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The State Department used America’s predominantly Christian religion as part of its cultural presentations strategy. Many musical performers, including African American, white, and mixed choirs and even opera singers, performed Negro spirituals at the Department’s request. American musicians sang in Protestant churches and taught Christian music to choral groups, thereby supporting anti-Communist activity in Asia.Less
The State Department used America’s predominantly Christian religion as part of its cultural presentations strategy. Many musical performers, including African American, white, and mixed choirs and even opera singers, performed Negro spirituals at the Department’s request. American musicians sang in Protestant churches and taught Christian music to choral groups, thereby supporting anti-Communist activity in Asia.
Sandra Jean Graham
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041631
- eISBN:
- 9780252050305
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252041631.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
The ever-growing success of the Fisk Jubilee Singers attracted widespread notice, and by 1873–1874 the troupe was facing a field of competitors, some of whom made innovations to the concert ...
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The ever-growing success of the Fisk Jubilee Singers attracted widespread notice, and by 1873–1874 the troupe was facing a field of competitors, some of whom made innovations to the concert presentation of spirituals and others of whom were content to imitate the Fisk Jubilee Singers in style and repertory. Among the innovators were the Hampton Institute Singers, directed by Thomas P. Fenner. Their repertory was largely distinct from that of the Fisk singers, and they sang in a more folk-oriented performance style, as evidenced by the fact that they had a “shout leader” and sang in dialect. Another group of innovators was the Tennesseans (1874), directed by John Wesley Donavin, who sang in support of Central Tennessee College in Nashville. Their popularity rested on the supposed authenticity of what they billed as their “slave cabin concerts”—not a Fisk service of song but meant to be a naturalistic representation of slave life. The Tennesseans’ bass singer Leroy Pickett made many of their arrangements, becoming one of the earliest black arrangers of concert spirituals; later he became acting musical director. Imitators, on the other hand, reproduced the repertory and aesthetic of the Fisk Jubilee Singers. They included the Hyers sisters, who reoriented their programming of art songs to include spirituals so that they could complete with other black singers at the time, as well as the Shaw Jubilee Singers, New Orleans Jubilee Singers, Jackson Jubilee Singers, Old Original North Carolinians (managed by T. H. Brand), and Sheppard’s Colored Jubilee Singers. With all of these groups, a jubilee entertainment industry began to take shape in 1872 to 1874, as performance norms were established and as organizations like lyceum bureaus began to add jubilee troupes to their roster.Less
The ever-growing success of the Fisk Jubilee Singers attracted widespread notice, and by 1873–1874 the troupe was facing a field of competitors, some of whom made innovations to the concert presentation of spirituals and others of whom were content to imitate the Fisk Jubilee Singers in style and repertory. Among the innovators were the Hampton Institute Singers, directed by Thomas P. Fenner. Their repertory was largely distinct from that of the Fisk singers, and they sang in a more folk-oriented performance style, as evidenced by the fact that they had a “shout leader” and sang in dialect. Another group of innovators was the Tennesseans (1874), directed by John Wesley Donavin, who sang in support of Central Tennessee College in Nashville. Their popularity rested on the supposed authenticity of what they billed as their “slave cabin concerts”—not a Fisk service of song but meant to be a naturalistic representation of slave life. The Tennesseans’ bass singer Leroy Pickett made many of their arrangements, becoming one of the earliest black arrangers of concert spirituals; later he became acting musical director. Imitators, on the other hand, reproduced the repertory and aesthetic of the Fisk Jubilee Singers. They included the Hyers sisters, who reoriented their programming of art songs to include spirituals so that they could complete with other black singers at the time, as well as the Shaw Jubilee Singers, New Orleans Jubilee Singers, Jackson Jubilee Singers, Old Original North Carolinians (managed by T. H. Brand), and Sheppard’s Colored Jubilee Singers. With all of these groups, a jubilee entertainment industry began to take shape in 1872 to 1874, as performance norms were established and as organizations like lyceum bureaus began to add jubilee troupes to their roster.
Todd Decker
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199759378
- eISBN:
- 9780199979554
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199759378.003.0006
- Subject:
- Music, History, American, Popular
Paul Robeson played Joe for just over a decade, appearing in the first London production in 1928, the 1932 Broadway revival, the 1936 Universal Pictures film, and a 1940 Los Angeles production. All ...
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Paul Robeson played Joe for just over a decade, appearing in the first London production in 1928, the 1932 Broadway revival, the 1936 Universal Pictures film, and a 1940 Los Angeles production. All these versions altered Show Boat to accommodate Robeson's presence. He was particularly important to Show Boat's success in London. Morgan remained the show's signature personality in the United States. The role of Queenie was definitively passed to black performers with the casting of Alberta Hunter in the part. In addition to the above versions, the 1929 Universal film is also discussed in this chapter, which focuses more generally on how the show's presentation of black performance and performers was adjusted in its first decade of remaking and how individual performers used Show Boat to further their larger careers.Less
Paul Robeson played Joe for just over a decade, appearing in the first London production in 1928, the 1932 Broadway revival, the 1936 Universal Pictures film, and a 1940 Los Angeles production. All these versions altered Show Boat to accommodate Robeson's presence. He was particularly important to Show Boat's success in London. Morgan remained the show's signature personality in the United States. The role of Queenie was definitively passed to black performers with the casting of Alberta Hunter in the part. In addition to the above versions, the 1929 Universal film is also discussed in this chapter, which focuses more generally on how the show's presentation of black performance and performers was adjusted in its first decade of remaking and how individual performers used Show Boat to further their larger careers.
Richard T. Hughes
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780252042065
- eISBN:
- 9780252050800
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042065.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
The American myth of the Chosen Nation has its deepest roots in the Hebrew Bible, on the one hand, and the English Reformation, on the other. William Tyndale, through his 1534 translation of the New ...
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The American myth of the Chosen Nation has its deepest roots in the Hebrew Bible, on the one hand, and the English Reformation, on the other. William Tyndale, through his 1534 translation of the New Testament, popularized the notion that England was a chosen nation. Convinced that England had broken its covenant with God, the New England Puritans applied that myth to themselves. In their hands, the chosen people myth became a tool that justified oppression of both native people and enslaved Africans. By the revolutionary period, this myth had become a staple of the American imagination, accepted and used even by America’s founders. The myth of the Chosen Nation assumed both the objective reality of “white people” and the superiority of “white people” over people of color. In the Negro spirituals, enslaved blacks turned the American myth of chosenness upside down, claiming that they were God’s chosen people, suffering in an American Egypt, and waiting for God to deliver them out of American bondage into a promised land, a story to which Martin Luther King Jr. appealed on the eve of his assassination in 1968. Other blacks developed countermyths such as “Yacub’s History,” related by Malcolm X.Less
The American myth of the Chosen Nation has its deepest roots in the Hebrew Bible, on the one hand, and the English Reformation, on the other. William Tyndale, through his 1534 translation of the New Testament, popularized the notion that England was a chosen nation. Convinced that England had broken its covenant with God, the New England Puritans applied that myth to themselves. In their hands, the chosen people myth became a tool that justified oppression of both native people and enslaved Africans. By the revolutionary period, this myth had become a staple of the American imagination, accepted and used even by America’s founders. The myth of the Chosen Nation assumed both the objective reality of “white people” and the superiority of “white people” over people of color. In the Negro spirituals, enslaved blacks turned the American myth of chosenness upside down, claiming that they were God’s chosen people, suffering in an American Egypt, and waiting for God to deliver them out of American bondage into a promised land, a story to which Martin Luther King Jr. appealed on the eve of his assassination in 1968. Other blacks developed countermyths such as “Yacub’s History,” related by Malcolm X.
Patrick McCreless
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780198846550
- eISBN:
- 9780191881633
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198846550.003.0010
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Literature, Theology
This chapter’s central claim is that the notion of freedom, in the context of theology, music, and modernity (1740–1850), is incomplete if it does not address the sacred music of the enslaved people ...
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This chapter’s central claim is that the notion of freedom, in the context of theology, music, and modernity (1740–1850), is incomplete if it does not address the sacred music of the enslaved people of North America during this period—a population for whom theology, music, and freedom were of enormous personal and social consequence. The central figure in this regard is Richard Allen (1760–1831), who in 1816 founded the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, the first independent black religious denomination in the United States. Allen was born enslaved, in Philadelphia or Delaware, but was able to purchase his freedom in 1783. He had already had a conversion experience in 1777, and once he gained his freedom, he became an itinerant preacher, ultimately settling in Philadelphia, where he preached at St George’s Methodist Church and a variety of venues in the city. In 1794 he led a walkout of black members at St George’s, in protest of racism; and over the course of a number of years he founded Mother Bethel, which would become the original church of the AME. This chapter situates Allen in the development of black sacred music in the US: first, as the publisher of hymnals for his church (two in 1801, and another in 1818); and second, as an important arbitrator between the traditions and performance styles of Protestant hymnody as inherited in the British colonies, and an evolving oral tradition and performance style of black sacred music.Less
This chapter’s central claim is that the notion of freedom, in the context of theology, music, and modernity (1740–1850), is incomplete if it does not address the sacred music of the enslaved people of North America during this period—a population for whom theology, music, and freedom were of enormous personal and social consequence. The central figure in this regard is Richard Allen (1760–1831), who in 1816 founded the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, the first independent black religious denomination in the United States. Allen was born enslaved, in Philadelphia or Delaware, but was able to purchase his freedom in 1783. He had already had a conversion experience in 1777, and once he gained his freedom, he became an itinerant preacher, ultimately settling in Philadelphia, where he preached at St George’s Methodist Church and a variety of venues in the city. In 1794 he led a walkout of black members at St George’s, in protest of racism; and over the course of a number of years he founded Mother Bethel, which would become the original church of the AME. This chapter situates Allen in the development of black sacred music in the US: first, as the publisher of hymnals for his church (two in 1801, and another in 1818); and second, as an important arbitrator between the traditions and performance styles of Protestant hymnody as inherited in the British colonies, and an evolving oral tradition and performance style of black sacred music.
Richard Taruskin
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520249776
- eISBN:
- 9780520942790
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520249776.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
This chapter focuses on Antonín Dvořák's “New World Symphony,” and the colonialist nationalism ingrained within it. He composed music in New York during his first year as the director of Jeannette ...
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This chapter focuses on Antonín Dvořák's “New World Symphony,” and the colonialist nationalism ingrained within it. He composed music in New York during his first year as the director of Jeannette Thurber's National Conservatory of Music and it was intended as an objective lesson for his American pupils with the aim to achieve an authentic American school of composition. According to Henry Krehbiel, Dvořák urged the Americans to submit their indigenous music, such as Indian melodies and Negro spirituals, to the “beautiful treatment in the higher forms of art.” According to this chapter, this “higher forms of art” referred to German music, which was promoted by Thurber's conservatory, and Dvořák, according to him, was appointed as the director to promote this German musical colonialism.Less
This chapter focuses on Antonín Dvořák's “New World Symphony,” and the colonialist nationalism ingrained within it. He composed music in New York during his first year as the director of Jeannette Thurber's National Conservatory of Music and it was intended as an objective lesson for his American pupils with the aim to achieve an authentic American school of composition. According to Henry Krehbiel, Dvořák urged the Americans to submit their indigenous music, such as Indian melodies and Negro spirituals, to the “beautiful treatment in the higher forms of art.” According to this chapter, this “higher forms of art” referred to German music, which was promoted by Thurber's conservatory, and Dvořák, according to him, was appointed as the director to promote this German musical colonialism.
Todd Decker
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199759378
- eISBN:
- 9780199979554
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199759378.003.0000
- Subject:
- Music, History, American, Popular
The defining aspect of Edna Ferber's heroine Magnolia in the 1926 novel Show Boat was the phenomenon of a white girl singing with a black voice. The introduction locates Ferber's narrative within the ...
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The defining aspect of Edna Ferber's heroine Magnolia in the 1926 novel Show Boat was the phenomenon of a white girl singing with a black voice. The introduction locates Ferber's narrative within the history of American popular music and culture and lays out the scope of this study of Show Boat on the musical stage and screen in the twentieth century. Show Boat's place in the separately-written histories of the black-cast and white-cast musical is also assessed, on the way to situating the show at the intersection of racial performance in the American musical. The book's reliance on archival research is put into historiographical perspective.Less
The defining aspect of Edna Ferber's heroine Magnolia in the 1926 novel Show Boat was the phenomenon of a white girl singing with a black voice. The introduction locates Ferber's narrative within the history of American popular music and culture and lays out the scope of this study of Show Boat on the musical stage and screen in the twentieth century. Show Boat's place in the separately-written histories of the black-cast and white-cast musical is also assessed, on the way to situating the show at the intersection of racial performance in the American musical. The book's reliance on archival research is put into historiographical perspective.