Meet the Composers
Harry Thacker Burleigh (1866-1949)
Harry T. Burleigh was a student of Antonin Dvořák, a composer, a baritone, an arranger of Spirituals, and a musical leader in the Episcopal Church. He is commemorated on September 11 of each year in Holy Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints. Burleigh is the arranger of the hymn tune McKee in our Episcopal Hymnal 1982. The tune is used for Hymn # 529, “In Christ There Is No East or West.”
The playlist includes two of Burleigh’s classic art song settings of Spirituals: Deep River and Steal Away to Jesus.
samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912)
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was a British composer of color who excelled in choral conducting and choral and orchestral composition. He was interested in Black music from many nations, and he wrote compositions influenced by African folk music and African-American Spirituals, within a gracious and able English Romantic musical language.
The playlist includes two selections from Coleridge-Taylor’s 24 Negro Melodies: both are based on African-American Spirituals.
R. Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943)
Canadian composer Nathaniel Dett was a student of Nadia Boulanger. He served as a choral conductor at many American historically Black colleges and universities, including a tenure at the Hampton Institute, where he transformed the Hampton Singers into an internationally-acclaimed ensemble.
Dett composed Spiritual arrangements, and original choral pieces like the moving sacred work in our playlist, Listen to the Lambs. Dett also specialized in introspective, programmatic piano works, like his cycle 8 Bible Vignettes.
margaret Bonds (1913-1972)
American composer and pianist Margaret Bonds had a special affinity for the human voice. Her compositional output includes musicals, large-scale sacred choral works like The Ballad of the Brown King, and most of all, art songs for voice and piano. She was a friend of Langston Hughes and frequently set his poetry to music. Bonds’ art songs were favorites of singers like Leontyne Price and Marian Anderson, and her beautiful setting of He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands remains one of the beloved of Spiritual arrangements.
Photograph of Florence Price from florenceprice.com
Florence Price (1887-1953)
Florence Price was an American composer, pianist, organist, and educator. In fact, one of her students was Margaret Bonds. Price is known for her sensitive art songs for voice and piano, and she also composed for orchestra and chorus. In 1932, she became the first Black woman to see a symphony she composed performed by a major American symphony orchestra: her Symphony in E minor was premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Frederick Stock.
The playlist includes one of Price’s sacred choral pieces, Poem of Praise.
William Grant Still (1895-1978)
Often called the “Dean of African-American Composers,” Still was a prolific composer of orchestral music, choral works, and opera. He a pathfinder: he was the first Black composer to have a symphony performed by a major American orchestra; the first Black musician to conduct a major American classical orchestra; the first Black composer to have an opera performed by a major American opera company; the first Black composer to have his opera broadcast on national television.
His Psalm for the Living is one of his many settings of texts by his wife, pianist and poet Verna Arvey.
Photograph from Virginia Changemakers
undine smith moore (1904-1989)
American composer Undine Smith Moore was a composer and educator who served a long and distinguished tenure at Virginia State University. Moore specialized in choral composition, including major works like her Pulitzer-nominated cantata Scenes from the Life of a Martyr, on the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
One of her loveliest shorter choral pieces is her popular setting of We Shall Walk Through the Valley in Peace, which is included in the playlist.
adolphus hailstork (b. 1941)
Adolphus Hailstork is one of the finest composers of sacred music working in America today. He is an organist and a Distinguished Professor at Old Dominion University in Virginia. Hailstork’s orchestral and choral works have been widely performed by major American ensembles and recorded on Naxos and other major labels. His work is often topical, including his opera Rise of Freedom, about the Underground Railroad; Set Me on a Rock, a choral work about Hurricane Katrina; and a tribute to George Floyd entitled A Knee on a Neck.
This playlist includes a setting of Psalm 23 from Hailstork’s choral work I Will Lift Up My Eyes.
Cover image: “He Healed the Sick” by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937). Tanner was an African-American artist who specialized in religious paintings.
