The Third Movement of a Classical Symphony Borrows Its Form From Which Other Art?

Black History Calendar month: William Grant Withal

Since 1976, the United States has officially recognized February as Black History Month, an annual fourth dimension to recognize the central roles blacks have played in U.S. history and a celebration of the achievements of African Americans in our culture and society. All Classical Portland will be joining the celebration of Black History Month, featuring some of the all-time recordings of composers of African origin (American, and around the globe).

One of the disquisitional values of classical music (and of art in full general) is that it allows listeners to hear the world through different lenses. Through their unique set of backgrounds, experiences, and values, composers create works that expose their audiences to humanity's rich variety of perspectives and cultural traditions. Yet, every bit an fine art that draws from a primarily western European tradition, celebrating diversity is too 1 of classical music's greatest challenges to overcome. Fifty-fifty today, black composers remain on the outskirts of the classical music establishment. Social prejudices, as well as other factors, accept excluded them from entering the classical catechism, which continues to exist largely dominated by white, male composers. However, African-Americans accept deeply influenced the orchestral tradition in the Us and beyond.

Ane of the most prominent African American contributors to the history of classical music was William Grant All the same (1895-1978), a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance and known to his colleagues as the "Dean of Afro-American composers." Born in Mississippi and raised in Arkansas, Yet took formal violin lessons and taught himself clarinet, saxophone, oboe, viola, cello and double bass. He was interested in pursuing a higher music education, but his mother pushed him to study medicine at Wilberforce University in Ohio, concerned that societal limitations would preclude a successful career as a blackness composer. Nevertheless, Even so later dropped out of Wilberforce and entered Oberlin Academy to report music.

Nonetheless had a diverse musical training. He wrote jazz arrangements for blues masters and bandleaders such every bit Artie Shaw, Paul Whiteman and Westward.C. Handy, but likewise received formal educational activity from composers including George Chadwick of the first New England school, and the French modernist composer Edgard Varèse. Over his career, Still wrote over 150 compositions, including operas, ballets, symphonies, chamber works, choral pieces, and solo vocal works.

Even so broke racial barriers and earned many "firsts" in the realm of classical music. He was the first African American to carry a major symphony orchestra in the United States, every bit well as starting time to have an opera produced by a major company in the United States. Additionally, Still equanimous the first symphonic work by a black composer to be performed by a major U.South. orchestra, the Afro-American Symphony, premiered past the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra in 1931 under the direction of Howard Hanson. On Thursday, February 1^st, All Classical will be featuring this piece of work alongside some of the other greatest works by African-American composers.

The Afro-American Symphony fits within the standard framework of a European four-move symphony but incorporates African American musical idioms throughout the slice. By blending jazz, blues, and spirituals into a traditional classical form and placing them inside the context of the concert hall, Still highlights these styles as something to be historic, rather than downcast as low course or vulgar music. Let's explore the means that Still interweaves these three African American idioms – jazz, blues, and spirituals – into his Afro-American Symphony, with a focus on the kickoff movement.

The Afro-American Symphony is scored for full orchestra, including celeste, harp, and tenor banjo (the piece was the first time a banjo had been used in symphonic music). The symphony has a typical sonata-form first motion, a slow movement, a scherzo, and a fast finale. While Still did not intend the Afro-American Symphony to be an explicitly programmatic slice, his notebooks did include alternating titles for each movement ("Longing," "Sorrow," "Humour," and "Aspiration"). After completion of the symphony, Still linked each movement to verses from poems past the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906), which raise the emotional impact of each move. Dunbar was ane of the first African American poets to achieve a national reputation from both white and blackness audiences. His accurate portrayals of African American life in the S using folk materials and dialects aptly complement Still'due south efforts to interweave African and European traditions in his piece.

For the music itself, the opening motility begins with an introductory melody past the English horn, followed by the first theme played by a muted trumpet, a blues melody adapted from W.C. Handy's Saint Louis Blues. This tune becomes a prominent centerpiece, reappearing in contradistinct forms throughout both the first movement and the symphony as a whole. We might now think of dejection music every bit whatsoever sort of sad, downcast kind of song, just the blues has a rich African American history, beginning equally a folk way that developed in the southern United States and becoming a standard genre by the end of the nineteenth century.

Since the 1920s, the blues has helped shape jazz, country music, and rock'n'roll, and many other popular musical genres. Still's tune has several key features that arrive a archetype blues melody, including its utilize of the standard twelve-bar blues harmonic progression, a swung rhythm, and a use of lowered fifth, third, and seventh calibration degrees in the melody that imitate "blueish" notes. Even so was enlightened that inserting a blues tune into his symphony could cause some listeners to perceive information technology equally unrefined. Even so, as he writes in his sketchbook, his decision to place the tune at the forefront of the piece reflects his trigger-happy defence force of blues every bit a powerful emblem of African American identity:

"I harbor no delusions as to the triviality of the Blues, the secular folk music of the American Negro, despite their lowly origin and the homely sentiment of their texts. The pathos of their melodic content bespeaks the anguish of human hearts and belies the banality of their lyrics. What is more, they, unlike many Spirituals, do not exhibit the influence of Caucasian music."

Other elements throughout the movement reverberate characteristic features of African American music. Later, for example, the offset theme repeats in the clarinet, this time with interjections from other winds. These interjections between short phrases of tune advise the "call-and-response" style establish in much African music. Nevertheless too frequently uses syncopation in the melody and accompaniment (rhythms with accents displaced on the weak shell) and chords including both major and minor thirds, farther suggesting African American-influenced jazz music.

Too of note is Still's unusual instrumental timbres. Still groups instruments together to create sounds typical of jazz big bands, including trumpets and trombones with Harmon mutes, drum gear up effects such as steady taps on the bass drum, dampened strikes on the cymbal, and col legno (on the wood of the bow) rhythms in the violins. All of these factors requite a nod to the seminal influence of jazz as the style that became near associated with America between the ii World Wars. American classical composers seeking a way to write music that was distinctly "American" took advantage of the new idiom of jazz equally inspiration, including George Gershwin, Marc Blitzstein, and Leonard Bernstein. Jazz likewise influenced classical composers in Europe, including Erik Satie and Igor Stravinsky.

Every bit the first movement continues to develop the jazzy melodies from the first theme, all the same, it transitions to a second theme with a melancholy mood, with pentatonic contours suggestive of an African American spiritual. Spirituals originated when slaves heard hymns upon conversion to Christianity and used the hymns as musical models, applying their own ideas to Biblical texts with themes of longing freedom from chains. Still's combination of blues and spiritual-influenced music fittingly reflects move'south subtitle of "Longing" while sharing a cadre aspect of the African American experience with his audience.

The residuum of the symphony continues with this fusion of African American experience into classical European grade. The 2d movement, Adagio ("Sorrow,") continues with themes that chronicle to the first move but conveying on in the spiritual style.  The third movement, Animato ("Sense of humour"), presents a pair themes and variations. Interestingly, several measures into the first theme is a melody that closely resembles Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm." Did Gershwin get his melody from However, or was information technology the other way effectually? While scholars oasis't reached a decisive conclusion, musicologist Catherine Parsons Smith suggests that Still believed Gershwin had picked upwardly the melodic and rhythmic ideas of the tune from improvisations by Still while playing in the orchestra pit of Shuffle Along 10 years earlier. Either way, the melody is a joy to listen to, and in add-on to the more than fanfare-similar second theme the movement echoes the themes of African American emancipation and empowerment in the Dunbar verse form attached to the movement. The final movement, Lento con risoluzione ("Aspiration"), begins with a poignant hymn-like department reminiscent of gospel and choral music, and gradually culminates into a lively finale.

The Afro-American Symphony is a compelling reflection of Even so's diverse range of experiences every bit a composer and musician. Still'south incorporation of three prominent forms of African American music into his piece, the dejection, jazz, and spirituals, creates a unique symphonic fashion that celebrates the complexity and richness of the blackness experience in the post-Ceremonious War musical era. Since the 1931 premiere of the Afro-American Symphony, Yet'due south multifarious style has gone on to influence fifty-fifty non-classical music. In 1934, Still moved to Los Angeles, where he composed music for films aslope his classical works, helping shape a style that other composers and arrangers used for scoring films and popular music. The Afro-American Symphony, yet, remains as Still'southward landmark piece, and remains one of the nigh often performed symphonies by an American composer in the United States. Bringing together a lifetime of musical experiences, it has earned a identify in the catechism of the Western classical music tradition not in spite of, only because of its daring and creative integration of African American and European idioms.

Hungry for more listening? Music Manager John Pitman also has some recommended recordings of Even so's works from All Classical's music library.  John chose a detail recording of Still's Symphony  for several reasons:

"The operation, by the Cincinnati Philharmonia Orchestra, is particularly bright and full of life.  There are likewise two rare gems by the composer on the CD, and a work by Olly Wilson called Expansions II, which connects Yet's mid-century music to more than recent times.  The liner notes are especially valuable, as they include several paragraphs past the composer's daughter, Judith Anne Still, who has dedicated her life to preserving her father's important contribution to American music."

If y'all are interested in listening to this CD, it can be purchased via this link to Arkivmusic.com. When purchasing the CD using this link, All Classical's programming receives 10% from the sale.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more weblog posts this calendar month featuring composers, conductors and musicians in commemoration of Blackness History calendar month, including Marian Anderson, Paul Robeson, André Watts, Kathleen Boxing and more than!

References

• Burkholder, J. Peter, Grout, Donald Jay, and Palisca, Claude V.A History of Western Music. 9^thursday New York: W.W. Norton & Visitor, 2014. Print.
• Burkholder, J. Peter, and Palisca, Claude V. Norton Anthology of Western Music. Volume Three: The Twentieth Century and Later on. 7^thursday New York: W.West. Norton & Company, 2014. Print.
• "Dunbar and Nonetheless." Duke Library. Web. Accessed thirty Jan 2018. https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/scriptorium/sgo/texts/dunbar.html
• Latshaw, Charles William. "William Grant All the same'south Afro-American Symphony: A Critical Edition." Indiana University, doctoral dissertation, May 2014. Web. Accessed 30 Jan 2-xviii. https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/17492/Latshaw%2C%20Charles%20%28DM%20Orch%20Cond%29.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
• O'Bannon, Ricky. "Listening Guide: William Grant Still." Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Web. Accessed 30 Jan 2018. https://world wide web.bsomusic.org/stories/listening-guide-william-grant-however/
• "Symphony No. 1 "'Afro-'"Wikipedia.com. Web. Accessed 30 Jan 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._1_%22Afro-American%22
• William Grant Still. Richard Fields, Piano. Cincinnati Philharmonia Jindong Cai, conductor. CD. Centaur: CRC 2331.

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Source: https://www.allclassical.org/black-history-month-william-grant-still/

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