Ana and Mickey in the Arts Studio

Cincinnati is one of the top cities in the United States for the arts. From its stunning visual murals on the sides of buildings to the roaring music scene, it has something for everyone, especially during the summer months.  One of the biggest music events of the summer is the Cincinnati Opera’s annual festival, the second-oldest opera company in the United States. Many people associate opera with the elites of the past, but many of the stories explore themes of humanity that we have been grappling with both 300 years ago and in today’s modern age. With summer and its fantastic season right around the corner, let’s take a look at some of the work they are putting on this summer.  

The Season opens with Richard Strauss’s Salome. The opera premiered in 1905 and is based on a German translation of Oscar Wilde’s 1893 French play of the same name. This opera tells the biblical story of the titular Salome and her obsessive love with John the Baptist. Salome pleads with John to accept her love, but he rejects her affection. Later in the opera, she performs a dance at her stepfather Herod’s birthday feast, who is so entranced with her that he offers her any reward, even half his kingdom. Instead of wealth or power, Salome makes a different and much more gruesome request: the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter! The opera is a tale of desire and obsession with a fittingly dramatic score to accompany its grim tale. See Cincinnati Opera’s production to see how the story unfolds on June 18 and 20.  

The next major production of the summer festival is the premiere of a new Afrofuturist opera entitled Lalovavi. It was composed by Kevin Day and features a Libretto by Tifara Brown. It is set 400 years in the future and tells the story of Persephone, the youngest daughter of Titan, the ruler of Atlas, who once ruled the city of Atlanta. The society of Atlas is centered on a gene known as Syndica, which promotes vitality and longevity. The drama kicks off when Persephone is found to possess a version of Syndica that is the key to everlasting life, and she is forced to flee for her life. She then embarks on an epic quest for immortality and to uncover a hidden past. The opera is a part of Cincinnati’s Black Opera project and is sung in both English and Tut. See the world premiere at Cincinnati Opera on July 9 and 11.  

The next major production at Cincinnati Opera is arguably one of the most famous and most recognizable operas in the world: Bizet’s Carmen. The opera debuted in 1875 and is based on a 1845 novella of the same name by Prosper Mérimée. The opera tells the story of Carmen, a fiercely independent Romani woman living in Seville, Spain, and her tumultuous love affair with Don José, an uptight Spanish soldier who gives up almost everything for her. The seemingly classic love story is thrown into turmoil when the toréador (bullfighter) Escamillo enters, and it quickly becomes a tale of jealousy and desire. This story of passion has broken into pop culture with some of the iconic music, including the “Toréador Song” and “Habanera.” Come see this iconic opera brought to the stage by the Cincinnati Opera on July 25, 29 and 31, as well as August 2.  

The last opera being brought to the stage this season is Ricky Ian Gordon’s Orpheus and Euridice. It is based on the classical Greek myth of Orpheus, a musician, who loses his love, Euridice, and is so consumed by grief and determination that instead of letting her go, he descends into the underworld to bring her home. Over the centuries, this opera has been told by many different composers and mediums, such as the 1607 Baroque opera L’Orfeo by Monteverdi, to the 2016 musical Hadestown by Anaïs Mitchell. Gordon’s telling blends both the classical styles of voice with a more contemporary style of music, resulting in a haunting tale of love and loss. See this classic tale on July 28 and 30, as well as August 1.  

Opera is one of the oldest mediums for telling stories, but some people believe it is a dying art form or too “highbrow”. This could not be further from the truth. In our modern age, it has become more accessible than ever through online recordings and festivals such as the one from the Cincinnati Opera. If you have never experienced an opera, go watch one this summer, whether through local Opera companies, which often have student tickets, or by engaging with the endless archive of performances that exist online. 

Listen as we are joined by cellist Joanna Frank and harpsichordist Maksym Mahlay as they discuss Baroque music and why it’s so important to not just classical music but also jazz and popular music. Maksym is a first year Doctoral of Musical Arts student and harpsicord at the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music. Joanna is also attending the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music as a second year Bachelor of Music studying cello performance. In this episode they discuss what Baroque music is, why it’s so important to the modern-day discussion of music, as well as some of their favorite pieces from this era. Also linked is a video recording to Joanna and Maksym’s performance of Cello sonata book 3 no.3 by Jean-Baptiste Barrière.

When Undine Smith Moore (1904–1989) was eight or nine, she got really frustrated. She was writing a canon, and she couldn’t get the lines to align correctly at the end. Thankfully, she didn’t give up: she made a career as a composer and teacher that spanned 50 years!

Undine was born in Jarrett, Virginia, and grew up in Petersburg, which is a little to the south of the capital, Richmond. Undine’s older sister started piano lessons first. But soon, Undine was playing too. She studied with a Fisk University graduate, Lillian Allen Darden, and ended up going to Fisk for her undergrad. She also received a scholarship to study at the Juilliard School!

When she graduated in 1926, her teachers wanted her to apply for Juilliard’s graduate program. But Undine had other ideas. She moved to North Carolina to start teaching, and in 1928 joined the faculty of Virginia State College (now Virginia State University), where she would teach for more than 40 years.

At Virginia State College, Undine composed, taught piano and organ, led choral groups, and worked as a departmental leader and administrator. She wrote a theory workbook – A Recorded Supplement to Studies in Traditional Harmony – that she used in her theory classes, co-founded Virginia State’s Black Music Center in 1968 with Altona Trent Johns, and wrote and arranged music for her work at the college and with church ministries and rural schools in the community.

She also reconsidered her teachers’ call to graduate school. From 1929 to 1931, she traveled to NYC to get her Master of Arts in music from Columbia University’s Teachers College. In the 1950s, she took composition workshops and restarted lessons with her former teacher, Howard Murphy. In 1938, she married Dr. James Arthur Moore, who also taught at Virginia State. They had one daughter, Mary Hardie. Undine and James often performed together as James was a talented tenor. Their daughter grew up to be a professional dancer and professor at Carleton College.

In 1971–72, Undine and Altona went to Senegal, Ghana, and the Ivory Coast. They performed and lectured on Black music while connecting with locals in urban and rural areas. It was a powerful experience for Undine to be surrounded by people who looked like her.

Undine was very passionate about the study of Black music. The Black Music Center hosted seminars and institutes on Black music of all kinds and offered a course for undergrad and graduate students. While the center closed when Undine retired in 1972, the course is still part of VSU’s music curriculum!

Undine wrote more than 100 compositions. The majority are choral music and range from settings that explore African American culture to poetry by the Ancient Greek poet Sappho. Undine knew that music was a powerful way to incite social change and make people think. In the next blog, we’ll take a look at three of her compositions, two of which she counted among her best:  “Mother to Son” (1955),  “Love Let the Wind Cry…How I Adore Thee” (1961), and Afro-American Suite (1969).

Guthrie Ramsey is a musicologist, producer, pianist, composer, and all-around cool guy. He’s one of those people that when you find out he’s at the same conference you are; you do your best to try to run into him. But you gotta be quick! He’s good at dipping out when you least expect it – he’s so busy!  

Dr. Ramsey grew up surrounded by music in Chicago’s South Side. He took that love with him to college, where he got his Bachelor of Arts in music education at Northeastern Illinois University. Both his Master of Arts and PhD are in music history and musicology from the University of Michigan. For more than 10 years, he taught at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is now a distinguished emeritus professor (aka, retired!).  

In his research, Dr. Ramsey focuses on Black music making of the twentieth century, exploring not just the music itself, but its cultural and ideological significance. He wrote a biography on the bebop musician Bud Powell. He wrote a book called Race Music that looks at how musicmaking in Chicago cultivated different ideas about identity and community. And he also completed his late friend Rae Linda Brown’s book – The Heart of a Woman: The Life and Music of Florence B. Price, the first book-length bio on Price! 

Dr. Ramsey is one of those folks that weaves his various – scholarship, performing, and composing – in fascinating ways. He wrote the score for his documentary Amazing: The Tests and Triumph of Bud Powell (2015). Just last year, he released the album Race Music 21: Etudes/Grooves/Interludes, which celebrated the anniversary of his book. He has also collaborated with his daughter, vocalist Bridget Ramsey, on this Ramsey-produced number “Save Your Love for Me.” (2018). As CEO of Musiqology Media Group, Dr. Ramsey not only weaves his interests together a whole lot; he’s able to do it on his own terms because he’s in charge! 

Dr. Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr. has done a lot for research on Black music and the state of musicology that has benefited our understanding of and contributions to the study of music for years to come. He’s also modeled how you can live a robust intellectual and creative life. Think about the music you like and the topics you like to read about. Is there a way to bring them together? Can you write a composition that expresses an area of video games, history, science, or fashion that you love? Try it out, play it for someone, and see what happens!  

It’s never too late to find new composers to check out. Since we’ve recently celebrated Black History Month, I thought it’d be nice to check out some Black composers that don’t always make the listicles each year. Add these to your playlist and check them out all year round! 

L. Viola Kinney – Mother’s Sacrifice (1909) 

L. Viola Kinney (1891–1945) was a Missouri native who studied music at Western University in Kansas. She spent her career as an educator and composed at least three works in her lifetime, one of which survives: Mother’s Sacrifice. 

Mother’s Sacrifice is a character piece for solo piano. Viola moves us through different key areas, introducing emotions via new melodies and the return of old ones. We can hear tenderness in the F major sections; fun in the carnivalesque-waltz section, and tragedy in G minor; and then a reclaiming of that tenderness in the final section.  

Nokuthula Ngwenyama – Sonoran Storm (2016 & 2021)  

Nokuthula Ngwenyama (No-goo-TOO-lah En-gwen-YAH-ma) (b. 1976) is a composer and violist. In 2016, she wrote Sonoran Storm – first for solo viola and then repurposed it as the third movement of her viola concerto, also called Sonoran Storm!  

Nokuthula was inspired by her time living in the Sonoran Desert, which stretches across Mexico, Arizona, and California. The piece starts with a gritty folk energy; but there’s also moments of reflection and slowness. This shows the contrasts of the desert: the blinding sun; the fierce dust storms; and the mesmerizing tranquility of being in a space seemingly devoid of life.  

Mary Watkins – Five Movements in Color: Soul of Remembrance (1994)  

Mary Watkins (b. 1939) is a composer, pianist, arranger, teacher, and record producer. She has written a lot of material for orchestra, jazz ensemble, film, and traveling productions. She often explores historical and cultural themes in her work, whether in her operas on Emmet Till and Clara Barton or in her orchestral music like Five Movements in Color: Soul of Remembrance.  

Five Movements in Color explores African American history and experience. But instead of a canvas and paint, Mary uses the different colors of the orchestra! Whether it’s icy sounds in the strings or polyrhythms between sections, Mary paints something vibrant and dynamic through sound.   

José White – Violin Concerto in F# minor (1864) 

José White (1835–1918) was an Afro-Cuban violinist and composer born in Cuba and based in Paris. He studied at the Paris Conservatory, performed with Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and toured Europe, the Caribbean and South America. He moved to Rio de Janiero in 1875, where he served as director of the Imperial Conservatory from 1875 until 1889. He even played on a Stradivarius – the 1737 one nicknamed “Swansong!”  

His Violin Concerto in F# minor is typical of the mid-late 19^th century: highly melodic, virtuosic, and lyrical. The first movement is fierce and emotional; the second movement, in D major, is passionate; the third movement, in A major, is fiendish and peppy. 

Betty Jackson King wrote Four Seasonal Sketches in 1955. It is dedicated to Dr. Geneva Handy Southall, a musicologist who wrote Blind Tom, the Black Pianist Composer (1849–1908), a biography of Thomas Greene Wiggins.   

Four Seasonal Sketches is written for solo piano; and as its title suggests, it has four movements that evoke a different season. It’s not uncommon for composers to write music that connects to nature and the seasons. Betty’s Four Seasonal Sketches is part of a long tradition of writing short works on this topic – in other words, a subcategory of the character piece genre.   

There’s Fanny Hensel’s Das Jahr, which has a movement dedicated to each month in the Gregorian calendar. R. Nathaniel Dett’s In the Bottoms (1913), whose movements evoke the terrain and dance traditions of the Deep South. Clarence Cameron White’s Scotch Idyl (1925) expresses picturesque Scotland. And there’s Florence Price’s The Deserted Garden (1933), which evokes a beautiful, abandoned garden.   

While each of these works is distinct from the composer, there are similarities: they’re involved but not flashy and very inward-looking. It’s more about expressing how the individual – you – is reacting to the world than how you are putting a stamp on it.   

Betty organizes her composition chronologically: first movement is “Spring Intermezzo,” second movement is “Summer Interlude,” third movement is “Autumn Dance,” and the last movement is “Winter Holiday.” But since we’re in the midst of winter, we’ll start with “Winter Holiday;” all movements are performed by my friend, Dr. Samantha Ege!  

The opening chord of “Winter Holiday” comes back multiple times. Betty’s use of repetition and a melody built upon double stops and chords creates a feeling of space; her use of minor and pentatonic chords suggests an iciness and cold temperature.   

“Spring Intermezzo” has a rocking, gentle melody. You hear it mainly in the right hand, while the left hand provides harmonic support that helps the melody find and maintain its direction. At times, this creates a call-and-response texture between both hands, like you’re taking a mellow walk on a pretty spring day.  

“Summer Interlude” is built on a somber pentatonic melody. It almost creeps along, building like the heat, with moments of agitation and calm as you cool off from the blazing sun. Here, the right hand leads with the main theme. The left hand provides harmonic and rhythmic support, especially in the middle section with ragtime rhythms, highlighting the fun and freedom the summer can bring.  

“Autumn Dance” is–in my opinion– the coolest of the movements. It’s the most animated, thanks to the rag syncopations and percussive articulation in the right hand and the steady drumbeat in the left hand. Imagine the intense fall winds blowing leaves; the starkness of a blue sky; the growing cold making way for winter. It is tumultuous, exciting, and full of drama! 

How does Four Seasonal Sketches work as an exploration of the seasons? Does your interpretation change depending on what order you listen to the movements?

Did you know that Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s daughter, Avril, was also a composer and a conductor? If you didn’t, no worries; even some of us adults are just now learning about this! Here’s a little info about the music and career of Avril Coleridge-Taylor (1903–1998). 

She was born Gwendolen Avril in South Norwood, London. Her older brother was named Hiawatha, after the character in the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem her father set to music. Avril grew up surrounded by music; she would sometimes sit with her father while he was composing, even writing down some of her ideas when he passed her a sheet of manuscript paper!  

She wrote her first composition when she was 12 and won a scholarship to Trinity College of Music, where she studied composition, piano, and conducting. She got married in 1924, and for the first portion of her career was known professionally as Gwendolen Coleridge-Taylor. After her divorce in the 1930s, she decided to go by her middle name, Avril, and was known as Avril Coleridge-Taylor for the rest of her career.  

In 1933, she made her conducting debut at the Royal Albert Hall. She would often guest conduct the London Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Orchestra and became the first female conductor of the H.M. Royal Marines. She also established several ensembles: the Coleridge-Taylor Symphony Orchestra, named after her father, in 1941; the Malcolm Sargent Symphony Orchestra, and the New World Singers as well.  

In 1954, during the start of a tour in apartheid South Africa, Avril didn’t share the fact that her father was a biracial Black British man, which allowed her to pass for white. When government officials learned that she was part Black, she was no longer allowed to work as a composer or conductor, due to the racist policy of apartheid.  

But Avril kept working; she arranged and conducted BBC radio’s performance of the 1930 play The Green Pastures, and in 1957, she composed Ceremonial March for Ghana’s independence from Great Britain. In 1979, she published a biography about her father, The Heritage of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, which also featured biographical details about her own life.  

Avril is best known for her large-scale orchestral works, but she also wrote songs and pieces for keyboard and chamber ensembles. Some of her orchestral works were recently recorded by Dr. Samantha Ege and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, including her Piano Concerto in F minor (1936, rev. 1970 and 1973), To April: Poem for Orchestra, Op. 15 (1930–31), Sussex Landscape, Op. 27 (1940), In memoriam: To the RAF (1945), and Comet Prelude (1952–1953).  

Chineke! Junior Orchestra also recorded Sussex Landscape; take a listen to the Chineke! version and the BBC Phil version. How do they approach dynamics and phrasing? What about tempo? Are certain sections of the orchestra more prominent in one version versus the other? Is there an interpretation you like better? Write through your reasons why.  

Meet Anthony and Demarre McGill. They’re the McGill Brothers: performers, teachers, and orchestral musicians. They grew up in Chicago. Demarre started learning flute at 7; Anthony grew up listening to his brother practice , and soon, he picked up a woodwind instrument too: the clarinet.  

The McGill Brothers attended the Merit School of Music and played in the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra (CYSO). The brothers went on to graduate from the Curtis School of Music. Demarre would also study at Juilliard, where he got a master’s degree.  

Today, the McGill Brothers are two of the few African American classical musicians who are members of major American orchestras. Anthony is principal clarinetist of the New York Philharmonic , and Demarre is principal flute of the Seattle Symphony.  

While the McGill Brothers are well-versed in canonical repertoire, they also play new music. Demarre has performed Lowell Liebermann’s Flute Sonata, and Anthony has recorded works by Coleman, James Lee III, Richard Danielpour, and Benjamin J. Shirley with the Pacifica Quartet.   

The McGill Brothers also perform together. In 2018, they returned to Chicago to premiere a new work by Michael Abels, Winged Creatures, for flute, clarinet , and orchestra with the CYSO. This performance was featured on Anthony’s album one year later.  

The McGill Brothers took part in a project called Principal Brothers. This was envisioned by James Lee III, who wrote four works, one each, for the McGill Brothers and fellow principal players Titus Underwood (Nashville) and Bryan Young (Baltimore Chamber Orchestra). Listen to Titus perform Principal Brothers No. 2 here.  

They founded the McGill/McHale Trio with pianist Michael McHale in 2014. Their debut album, Portraits, features Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise, arranged by Michael, an Irish folk song, Valerie Coleman’s Portraits of Langston, and other music by contemporary composers.  

The McGill Brothers are also dedicated to equal rights. In 2020, Anthony returned to Cincinnati (he was once a CSO member) to record Anthony Davis’ You Have the Right to Remain Silent with the Cincinnati Symphony. That same year, both brothers took part in a virtual recording of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” with other musicians.  

In 2023, Anthony recorded Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra by Malek Jandeli, a work that explores societal injustice; he would perform it live a year later with the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra, which you can watch here.  

Even though the McGill Brothers have their own careers, they make sure to collaborate with others and each other. Who is a musician you’d like to collaborate with, even if that means the instrumentation may not be typical in classical music?  

Leontyne Price was born in 1927 in Laurel, Mississippi. Her mother, Kate Baker Price, was a soprano in the church choir, so Leontyne was surrounded by music frequently. She started piano lessons at the age of five, but soon her voice began to take up her time. When she headed off to college, she was ready to study to be a music teacher, which was a common career path for Black women in classical music.  

But while studying at the College of Educational and Industrial Arts in Wilberforce, Ohio (now known as Central State University), she was encouraged to shift her focus to performance. She graduated in 1948 and headed to Juilliard, where she had received a full scholarship. 

In 1952, she joined the cast of Four Saints in Three Acts by Virgil Thomson. Not long after, Leontyne took on the role of Bess in George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. This production took her overseas to Europe and Russia. She also married her co-star, fellow opera singer William Warfield, who played Porgy, though they would divorce in 1973.  

In 1955, Leontyne appeared on TV as the titular Tosca in a production of the Giuseppe Puccini opera; and the next year she was in NBC’s production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Magic Flute. In 1957, Leontyne performed in an opera house for the first time, playing Madam Lidoine in Dialogues of the Carmelites at the San Francisco Opera House.  

Leontyne performed in a lot of opera productions in the 1960s, traveling all over the world. One of her most significant performances was her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1961. Her performance as Leonora from Giuseppe Verdi’s Il Trovatore garnered a 42-minute ovation, the longest ever at the Met! Another was her performance as Cleopatra in Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra to celebrate the Met’s move to Lincoln Center, which opened in 1966.  

Leontyne also gave recitals, where she sang a mix of arias, art songs, and concert spirituals. One of those pieces is Florence Price’s concert spiritual “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord.” Even though they have the same last name, Florence and Leontyne aren’t related, which Leontyne makes sure to mention here! 

For more than 40 years, Leontyne brought her startling artistry to concert halls and opera houses; sometimes even TV stations! As part of the generation of vocalists after Marian Anderson and Roland Hayes, Leontyne was able to perform a wider range of roles while also helping to desegregate opera. Since her retirement in 1997, she has remained a role model for opera singers, vocalists, and folks who are fiercely dedicated to their art.

Meet Jinjoo Cho. She’s a violinist. She was born in Seoul, South Korea, and moved to the United States in 2002, when she was a teenager. She earned a bachelor’s, master’s, and professional studies certificate from the Cleveland Institute of Music.  

While she was doing all that, she was setting the stage for her performing career. In 2014, she won first place in the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis and hasn’t looked back.  

She’s soloed with major orchestras and conductors, including The Cleveland Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, JoAnn Falletta, Tito Muñoz, and Kent Nagano. She’s also a dedicated teacher; she currently serves as a violin professor at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music.  

One of many cool things about Jinjoo is that she’s not afraid to try new things. In addition to traditional rep, Jinjoo has performed and premiered works that require 360° projections or feature dancers.  

One of these is Toy Store by Juri Seo, a multi-movement work that explores the joy and quirkiness of childhood toys. The movement “Jack-in-the-Box” is so much fun; it sounds like a warped soundtrack to Pac-Man or Super Mario game, full of metallic sounds, electronic organ chords, and pointed articulations. Can you hear the difference between what’s electronic and what’s Jinjoo’s violin?  

If your parent or guardian is ok with it, check out this Instagram reel of Jinjoo playing this same movement with the images projected in the background and see how the violin and the electronic backtrack interact and intersect.   

Jinjoo is a highly dynamic performer; it’s rare that you don’t see her moving and feeling the music very deeply. Check out her performance of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s Fantasy for Solo Violin, or Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with the Busan Philharmonic.  

Whether it’s new music or music that’s been performed and recorded dozens of times, Jinjoo makes sure she brings her personal stamp to it. It’s an important reminder that even when you’re learning rep that has an established performance tradition, you can’t just perform it like everyone else does. It’s important to make your interpretation unique, even if you’re not told directly, and even if some folks don’t like your creative decisions. You must experiment to find what you like.  

What is a composition you’re studying that has a long performance tradition? What can you do within your interpretation to make it uniquely yours?  

In classical music, we’ve developed a system for categorizing music by specific eras. This helps us understand particular works stylistically and chronologically.  

First up is the Baroque era. This is roughly between 1600–1750. Composers from this era include Antonio Vivaldi, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Ignatius Sancho. It is in this era that we start to see the instruments and repertoire that we most closely associate with classical music: concertos, sonatas, violins, flutes, cellos, orchestral ensembles, etc.  

In music from this period, there tends to be an emphasis on breath and line. Instrumental music for strings requires a lot of breath between phrases (bows on this time were not as long and straight). And in music for organ, harpsichord, and voice, there is a big embrace of ornamentation and improvisatory, run-on phrases.  

Next is the Classical period (yes, a bit confusing), which runs from 1750–1820. Here is where we get Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, and Ludwig van Beethoven. This era is defined by a move towards symmetry and balance in phrases and structure, less ornamentation, and more codification of compositional techniques.  

For example, Haydn began to use sonata form in the first movement of his symphonies, a choice that hundreds of composers after him would imitate. Beethoven came of age during this period, and you can hear in his early works this attention to phrase symmetry and clear texture.  

The Romantic period runs from 1820–1910, and scholars and critics often position Beethoven as the one to usher in this period. The Romantic era is all about emotion, intensity, density, and length. Beethoven’s music gets longer; Richard Wagner writes 5-hour operas (or, in the case of The Ring, 15 hours); Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Schubert, Richard Schumann, and Johannes Brahms, and many, many others see Beethoven as a model for how to compose a symphony (and poor Johannes took twenty years to write his first one).  

After the Romantic era, the categorization gets a little messy. Some folks call the period from the 20^th century to the 21^st century the Modern era. It was during this period that some composers broke with the standards of the Romantic period. We get Dmitri Shostakovich composing a five-movement violin concerto; Igor Stravinsky incorporating “primitive” Russian folk music in his score for the ballet The Rite of Spring; John Cage writing 4’33”; and Arnold Schoenberg exploring the possibilities of serialism.   

Music written by living composers is sometimes called contemporary or new music, so you could say that now we’re in the New Music era or Contemporary Music era. But I need to point out something. Organizing music into eras is useful; it helps with organization and memorization. But it also leads us to focus on the few that we consider extraordinary and necessarily reflect the standard of the time. Yes, some twentieth-century composers were breaking with conventional tonality. But some of these same folks kept writing concertos (see Bela Bartok), and some embraced conventional tonalities from other traditions (see Florence Price).  

What do we miss when we let the creative choices of a few define an entire segment of a tradition? As you learn about the different eras of classical music history, be sure to remember that this gives you only a sliver of a bigger, diverse picture.  

Now I hear you asking: how do you know which minor scale is related to the particular major scale???? What is a relative key versus a parallel key??? And I say: use the rule of thirds, and refer to the tonic! 

Relative keys are scales that share the same key signature but have different tonics. You can identify relative scales by using the rule of a minor third (or the rule of a major sixth!). The tonic of a minor scale is going to be a minor third (aka three half steps) below the tonic of its relative major.  

So, if you need to find the relative major of E minor, go up three half steps and you’ll arrive in G major! And if you want to find the relative minor of G major, go down three half steps, and you’ll arrive in E minor. Another way you can do it is by going up or down a major sixth from the tonic in question (G to E is a major sixth up; E to G is a major sixth down).  

Parallel keys are scales that have the same tonic but different key signatures. So, A minor and A major are parallel keys, but A minor doesn’t have any sharps or flats, and A major has three sharps (F#, C#, G#).  

In Western classical music, relative keys are a convenient way to modulate: this is when you move a section of music from one key to another key. But that doesn’t mean you can’t modulate between parallel keys or play around with parallel keys in the same section of a composition!  

Take a listen to the opening of Price’s Violin Concerto No. 2. Initially, it sounds like we’re in D minor, but what follows also suggests that we’re maybe in D major. Now, you can say that we’re in a section that’s in D melodic minor because Price plays so much with the raised subdominant and leading tone. But sometimes she also takes us into D flat major (!), which isn’t a parallel or relative key of D major or D minor, strictly speaking.  

Now, step away from trying to figure out whether Price is writing in D minor or D major. Listen to the color of the sound: does it seem happy, tense, sad, or settled? Rather than utilize rules of modulation like we study in school, maybe Price is using some different rules, ones that aren’t related to tonal harmony but instead to modal harmony. I’ll be back next time to tell you what modal harmony means because it requires us to take a look at a different way of writing and using scales: modes!  

If you are taking private music lessons, your teacher probably has you playing lots of scales. Real talk: that was my least favorite thing to play. I wanted to play my Vivaldi and Mozart, not notes in a row up and down the fingerboard; it was so boring! 

But eventually, I learned that these boring notes in a row helped me with my intonation and opened my ear to other harmonies other than the diatonic major scale. Today, we’re going to talk about three types of minor scales that you have or will learn at some point: natural minor, harmonic minor, and melodic minor. 

Natural minor scales share the same key as their relative major scales. So, A natural minor has the same key as C major; B flat natural minor has the same key as D flat major; B natural minor has the same key as D major. 

So, if we’re playing an E natural minor scale, you’ll play E–F#–G–A–B–C–D–E. In terms of notes, you’re using the same pitches that would appear if you were playing a G major scale. But instead of starting on G, you’re starting on E. 

Harmonic minor scales introduce the raised leading tone. In E natural minor, we have E-F#-G-A-B-C-D-E, which gives us a whole step between the leading tone and octave. In E harmonic minor, we raise the leading tone, D, to introduce the tension that causes the sound to want to resolve back to the tonic, E. 

Play E-F#-G-A-B-C-D#-E and see how different it sounds from the natural minor version. Some folks say this sounds Middle Eastern/Arabian, though actual Middle Eastern scales, called maqams, are much more complex. 

Melodic minor is really cool because it combines elements of the minor scale’s parallel major with the natural minor. In melodic minor, you raise the subdominant and leading tone on the way up and lower them on the way down. 

So, E melodic minor goes E–F#–G–A–B–C#–D#–E on the way up and E–D–C–B–A–G–F#–E on the way down. While ascending, we’re trying to get towards E major, though we don’t have the G# that we’d be playing in E major. And while descending, we return to natural minor. 

When it comes to Roman numerals to represent chords in minor keys, there are a lot of lowercase and diminished symbols. All tonic chords in minor keys are represented with an “i,” to indicate that it’s a minor key. So, if you want to label an E minor chord with a Roman numeral, you use i. 

If you’re labeling the leading tone chord in E natural minor, you’ll use vii° because the chord is D#–F#–A. Play D# and A together. Notice that they don’t quite settle like D and A do; that’s because they’re a diminished fifth apart. A diminished fifth is a smaller interval than D and A, which is a perfect fifth. The ° symbol indicates this interval’s diminished status and is consistent across the leading tone chord in natural, harmonic, and melodic minor scales. 

Now for the dominant chord, sometimes it’s “v” and sometimes it’s “V.” If you’re playing a dominant chord in E natural minor: B–D–F#, you’d label it as v, because B to D is a minor third. But if you’re playing a dominant chord in E harmonic or melodic minor, you’ll get B–D#–F#, and because the first third is a major third, you label it as V. 

Go through other chords in E minor and other minor scales and see which ones are minor, major, or diminished, and think about how they help you understand the different types of harmonic color you can use when composing.  

Tai Murray was born in Chicago. She is one of six kids, and as a kid, she became fascinated with the violin. She couldn’t get enough of it, and so her mother signed her up for violin lessons when she was five. She studied with Mimi Zweig, Yuval Yaron, and Franco Gulli at Indiana University’s School of Music and soloed with the Chicago Symphony at age nine.  

She would go on to study at Juilliard too, and today she’s an active performer and teacher. When she’s not traveling the world performing, she teaches at the Yale School of Music in New Haven, CT. And when she’s taking a break from traveling and teaching, she’s at home in Berlin, Germany.  

Tai is a performer that loves old and new music. Her first album is a recording of Eugene Ysaÿe’s Six Sonatas for solo violin (1923). Eugene was a Belgian violinist-composer who decided to write solo works for violin that engage with Johann Sebastian Bach’s Six Sonatas and Partitas (c. 1720). Last year, Tai played Wynton Marsalis’ Violin Concerto (2015) with the Yale Symphony Orchestra. And in 2021, Tai played Wynton’s A Fiddler’s Tale (1998) (my first post for this blog!), Igor Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale (1918), and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s Romance for Violin and Piano (1993).  

For Tai, playing the violin isn’t only about sounding smooth and pretty. You have to pull out different sounds to show the different emotions that are occurring in the music, and those emotions aren’t always sweet.  

One of my favorite examples of Tai’s playing is her performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending (1909) in an orchestral version arranged by Martin Gerigk. Now, you may think this isn’t the best example, because this piece is all about sounding pretty: from the key Ralph wrote it in to the prominence of pitches that correspond with the violin’s open strings, thus increasing the resonance; it’s all about what sounds best! 

But that’s just part of it. Tai isn’t just showing you how beautiful the violin can be; she’s telling you a story! About a lark flying through the air and all the loops, obstacles, and adventures that comes with it as the English countryside rolls far below.  

Listen to how she uses articulation and when her tone is full versus gossamer. How does that impact the emotions you feel and the images you see when she makes these changes? Hear how  she pulls and pushes the tempo; flight can’t be steady as you use the wind to get you where you need to go.  

We violinists are often told to vibrate all the time. But vibrato is an interpretive tool, not something that is always essential. Pay attention to how Tai uses this tool and when she puts it aside. Also notice how she uses her bow – speed, pressure, angle – to give variation to her violin’s timbre, articulation, and dynamics. Are there certain sounds that reappear, certain increases or decreases in tempo that you start to associate with certain images? Write those down and reflect on why. Then see how you can include them in your own playing.  

César Franck was a Belgian composer who achieved great success in France. He wrote for orchestra, organ, chamber groups, and solo instruments. He was best friends with Eugène Ysaÿe, who was also Belgian and born in César’s hometown of Liège. Eugène was a big deal in his time. He was considered the “king” of the violin because of his tone, his interpretations, and his presence on stage. In 1886, at the age of 28, Eugène married his first wife, singer Louise Bourdeau. César knew what he would give them as a wedding present: a composition!

Eugène had an idea it was coming; he even encouraged César to make the first movement a bit faster! But even so, it was a rush to get the score of the new sonata for violin and piano to the bride and groom. César couldn’t attend the wedding, and Eugene was supposed to play the new composition at the wedding!

César and Eugène’s mutual friend Charles Bordes presented the score to the newlyweds. Eugene took the manuscript, practiced it quickly with Bordes’ sister-in-law, pianist Marie-Léontine Bordes-Pène, and then played it for the wedding’s guests. Eugène and Marie gave their public debut in Brussels later that year.

For the rest of his career, Eugène performed that sonata. Because of his advocacy, we still play it today. You’d be hard-pressed not to find a recording of this work, and maybe you’re even getting ready to play it!

Like most sonatas, Franck’s Sonata for Violin and Piano is divided into four movements. The first movement is Allegretto ben moderato. It starts slowly, with the main theme first heard in the violin, growing in intensity with dynamics before floating back to the bottom again. The piano and violin go back and forth, developing the melodic line together.

Allegro is intense, almost angry. The piano introduces the melody, which is repeated in the violin. This is the violin’s time to shine and drive the movement to its fiery conclusion. But there is a moment of quiet and contemplation; this theme will be developed fully in Ben moderato: Recitativo-Fantasia. This third movement is slow, reflective, and dramatic, and ends in a way that makes you feel like there’s no hope. But then you get to the Allegretto poco mosso, which has the most hopeful theme you can think of.

This last movement is in canonic imitation, so a combination of a canon and imitation, as there are slight differences between how the piano develops the melody and how the violin develops the melody. The piano states the theme and the violin enters with the theme on the piano’s fifth note, creating a cool doubling. On the one hand, it’s like the piano is trying to get ahead of the violin. But instead of sounding conflicting, it’s unified. Listen for when they switch roles (violin starts and piano enters); how does this impact your expectations?

Not everything is sunshine; the sad, contemplative theme we first heard in the second movement and developed in the third movement appears. But the main theme of this final movement returns and prevails, bringing the work to a triumphant conclusion.

As I mentioned above, there are A LOT of different recordings of this work. Pick three to listen to and decide which ones you like best and why!

  Listen as we are joined by Dr. A. Kori Hill, musicologist and professor at the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music, as she talks to us about what it means to be a musicologist as well as why musicology is such an important field of study.

    Dr. Kori specializes in American music, Black composers, and music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is a program notes annotator for Seattle Symphony, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and Chamber Music Society at Lincoln and head writer for our very own Classics for Kids Blog here at Cincinnati Public Radio. She is co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Florence B. Price, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.

Vocabulary and Important Terms:

• Musicology-The academic study of music
• Repertoire-The collection of all the music that a performer or composer knows/ has composed.
• Music Theory- The analytical study of elements of musical systems such as harmonies, counterpoint forms, and analytical techniques.
• Ethnomusicology- The academic study of music, culture, and place.

A few posts ago, we discussed signifyin(g): a formal process in Black music where older material is quoted and transformed into a new context. You can hear it in Ella Fitzgerald, Florence Price, William Grant Still, Sugarhill Gang, and many other works by Black composers and performers across genres. But what about other quotation practices? What are some other methods of quotation that engage with the reference to older musical material?  

Often, when a classical composer quotes an older piece of music to turn that material into something new, that composer would write a variation on that older composer’s melody OR a series of variations on the composer’s own melody. This form is called theme and variation. First, you hear the full statement of the theme. Then, you move through several short episodes where the theme is altered. Maybe the rhythm is different; maybe the melody is hidden within the texture. Or maybe it’s in a different key or mode, D major instead of B minor, or A minor instead of E major.  

One of the popular examples of a composer writing a theme and variations on a melody by an older composer is Johannes Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Haydn. Written for orchestra in 1873, Variations has eight variations and a finale, allowing us to hear Brahms’ spin on an original melody at the time believed to be Haydn’s – now scholars are not so sure. It is sometimes called St. Anthony Variations, due to the theme Brahms encountered in the original score carrying the label “Chorale St. Anthoni.”  

Another musical form that lends itself to quotation is the fantasia, or fantasy. Stemming from the Renaissance period and developed from improvisatory practices, a fantasia grows from the development and transformation of a melody, which can be original or from an older composer. This is what Ralph Vaughan Wiliams did with Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. The work is built upon Tallis’ “Why fum’th in fight” which he wrote for the Archbishop Canterbury Psalter in 1567 for use in church services.  

Like Brahms, Vaughan Williams doesn’t tell us which Tallis song he’s building his piece upon.  

But we are told in his Fantasia on Greensleeves, which isn’t only his: he allowed Ralph Greaves to arrange for orchestra “Alas, My Love, You Do Me Wrong,” from Vaughan Williams’ Sir John in Love, which is built upon the 16^th century English folk song “Greensleeves.” When you hear it, it may sound similar to the Christmas carol, “What Child is This?” by William Chatterton Dix.  

This takes us to another important practice that merges quotation and signifyin(g): contrafactum. This word is just a way of saying you’ve put new words to an old melody. This practice extends far back into the medieval period, and we have examples that we still sing today.  

Like “What Child is This?” is a contrafact of “Greensleeves,” so is “Battle Hymn of the Republic” by Julia Ward Howe a contrafact of “John Brown’s Body,” which is itself a contrafact of a camp meeting song, which was notated (but not composed!) by William Steffe.   

Ultimately, quotation in classical music is a way for composers to intimately engage with past works and for us to hear the ways music is understood, recontextualized, and becomes new again.   

If you could compose something new from a pre-existing melody, what would you use? Would you set it in a theme and variation? A fantasia? Or would it be a contrafact?  

A few posts ago, we discussed signifyin(g): a formal process in Black music where older material is quoted and transformed into a new context. You can hear it in Ella Fitzgerald, Florence Price, William Grant Still, Sugarhill Gang, and many other works by Black composers and performers across genres. But what about other quotation practices? What are some other methods of quotation that engage with the reference to older musical material?  

Often, when a classical composer quotes an older piece of music to turn that material into something new, that composer would write a variation on that older composer’s melody OR a series of variations on the composer’s own melody. This form is called theme and variation. First, you hear the full statement of the theme. Then, you move through several short episodes where the theme is altered. Maybe the rhythm is different; maybe the melody is hidden within the texture. Or maybe it’s in a different key or mode, D major instead of B minor, or A minor instead of E major.  

One of the popular examples of a composer writing a theme and variations on a melody by an older composer is Johannes Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Haydn. Written for orchestra in 1873, Variations has eight variations and a finale, allowing us to hear Brahms’ spin on an original melody at the time believed to be Haydn’s – now scholars are not so sure. It is sometimes called St. Anthony Variations, due to the theme Brahms encountered in the original score carrying the label “Chorale St. Anthoni.”  

Another musical form that lends itself to quotation is the fantasia, or fantasy. Stemming from the Renaissance period and developed from improvisatory practices, a fantasia grows from the development and transformation of a melody, which can be original or from an older composer. This is what Ralph Vaughan Wiliams did with Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. The work is built upon Tallis’ “Why fum’th in fight” which he wrote for the Archbishop Canterbury Psalter in 1567 for use in church services.  

Like Brahms, Vaughan Williams doesn’t tell us which Tallis song he’s building his piece upon.  

But we are told in his Fantasia on Greensleeves, which isn’t only his: he allowed Ralph Greaves to arrange for orchestra “Alas, My Love, You Do Me Wrong,” from Vaughan Williams’ Sir John in Love, which is built upon the 16^th century English folk song “Greensleeves.” When you hear it, it may sound similar to the Christmas carol, “What Child is This?” by William Chatterton Dix.  

This takes us to another important practice that merges quotation and signifyin(g): contrafactum. This word is just a way of saying you’ve put new words to an old melody. This practice extends far back into the medieval period, and we have examples that we still sing today.  

Like “What Child is This?” is a contrafact of “Greensleeves,” so is “Battle Hymn of the Republic” by Julia Ward Howe a contrafact of “John Brown’s Body,” which is itself a contrafact of a camp meeting song, which was notated (but not composed!) by William Steffe.   

Ultimately, quotation in classical music is a way for composers to intimately engage with past works and for us to hear the ways music is understood, recontextualized, and becomes new again.   

If you could compose something new from a pre-existing melody, what would you use? Would you set it in a theme and variation? A fantasia? Or would it be a contrafact?  

There are times when your dream isn’t derailed but postponed. That can happen for a variety of reasons. For Irene Britton Smith (1907–1999), it was because of money. She wanted to study music at Northwestern University, but her family didn’t have enough money to send her. She then attended the Chicago Normal School, where she studied to become a teacher. She would teach in the Chicago Public School system for forty years and even wrote a book about how to teach reading to kindergarteners!

And what else was she doing? She kept studying music and composing. In 1943, Irene graduated with a Bachelor of Music from the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, where she studied with Stella Roberts and Leo Sowerby (fun fact: Florence Price had studied with Sowerby there too!). 

During summer breaks and sabbaticals (that’s when a teacher gets several months off to do research), Irene studied compositions at big-name places and with big-name people: Nadia Boulanger at the American Conservatory in France, Vittorio Giannini at Juilliard, and Irving Fine at Tanglewood Music Festival. And while she was doing all that, she got her Master of Music degree from DePaul University in 1956. 

One of her pieces she completed during this time was her Sonata for Violin and Piano. It is one of her most frequently performed and recorded pieces. Irene completed it in 1947, around the time she was studying with Giannini in New York City. The sonata has three movements – Allegro cantabile, Andante con sentimento, and Vivace. 

Irene’s sonata is unique because instead of being driven by melody, it’s driven by contrapuntal motion. Contrapuntal motion is the name for the technique of integrating two independent lines into a cohesive whole. You hear this a lot in polyphonic textures. 

Also, Irene plays with expectations of modulation and harmonic progression. The first movement, Allegro cantabile, starts in D-flat major, but it’s not too clear because Irene doesn’t start on the tonic; she starts on the supertonic! 

In music theory, we represent the supertonic as ii, because if you stack the thirds starting on E-flat in the key of D-flat major, you get a series of minor thirds (E-flat, G-flat, B-flat). Play it on the keyboard and you’ll hear that it sounds a little sadder than when you play it with a G natural.  

Irene develops this main theme and then modulates to the second theme, which is in the key of A major. This section is perky and dance-like. The falling 32^nd note triplets are an ornamentation popular in romantic violin music in the 1940s. There are also moments where we slip into F# minor, which is the relative scale of A major. 

We then move back to the opening theme, but this time in G major! This section is a mix of the first and second sections in terms of character, which leads us back to the recap and the return to D-flat major. But then Irene does something cool: she takes us back to the second, perky theme, this time in B flat major, and ends the movement in that section! So, in one movement, she’s taken us from D-flat major to A major to G major to D-flat major to B-flat major. This tells us that she’s playing with the standard harmonic progression as it’s taught in classical music: lots of I to V to I. 

But here, instead of going to A flat major, which is V in D flat major, she goes to A major, which is technically sharp V. Then, she goes to G major, which is sharp IV in D-flat major (and D-flat major is flat V in G major). 

B-flat major is IV in D-flat major, which makes for a smoother modulation sonically. But by moving from D-flat major to A major, Irene creates a color shift: the emotional quality of the sound. Listen to when the violin and piano move from D-flat major to A major. Yes, both are major keys, but does it sound happy in the beginning? Why or why not? This is a great movement to think about the ways you can use modulation, not for the sake of changing keys, but to use key changes to highlight specific moods and emotions you want to highlight in a specific area of your composition. 

In Andante con sentimento, we once again return to D-flat major, moving to B-flat and back to D-flat. This movement is in 3/4 time and played in 1, so the feel is more dance-like and flowing. Vivace is in B-flat major and is the most dance-like of the movements. The rhythms are small and quick, with a few meter changes, but mostly staying in 2/4. 

As you take a listen to this sonata, see if you can identify when she modulates outside of the key changes. When does she shift to F# minor in the A major section (hint, look for E#!)? Do you hear G minor in the B-flat major sections (Hint: Look for F#!)? 

Ok, here’s a quick intro to the tools we use to analyze classical music:

First, we need to know the names of each scale degree. As you probably know, in classical music we deal with scales that have seven notes. In addition to their letter names, notes in a scale receive another name depending on their location within the scale itself. So, if you’re in A major, the note A is going to be the tonic, because it’s the start of the scale. But if you’re in D major, A is going to be the dominant, because it’s the fifth note in the scale. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here are the names for each note in a scale, what we call a scale degree.

The Tonic: This is the first note in a scale, which is represented with an upper-case Roman numeral (I) if you’re working with a major key or a lower-case Roman numeral (i) if you’re working with a minor key. 

The Supertonic: This is the second note of the scale. This is represented with a lower-case Roman numeral (ii) in major keys.

The Mediant: This is the third note of the scale. This is represented as III in a major key.  

The Subdominant: Is the fourth note of the scale and arguably the foundation for the third most important chord in the Western classical system. This is represented as IV in major keys.

The Dominant: The fifth scale degree, and the foundation for the second most important chord in the Western classical system after the tonic. This is represented as V in major keys. 

The Submediant: The sixth scale degree, which is represented as iv in major keys. 

The Leading Tone: The seventh scale degree, which serves as the leading tone to the tonic, is represented as vii°. This is also known as the Subtonic when it is a whole step below the tonic. 

Octave: This is the term you use when you are eight notes above the note you started on. 

But Dr. Kori, what about the Roman numerals for these chords in minor keys? Why does the subtonic Roman numeral have a degree symbol floating up there?? Aren’t there many different types of scales???

Yes, but it’s important to know these terms and memorize them! This is so that when we get into the different types of minor scales, the many ways major and minor scales are related to each other, you’ll have the terms and labels to help make that info make more sense. 

Now, although you’ve just been introduced to these terms, let’s look at a composition where we can apply these terms: Irene Britton Smith’s Sonata for Violin and Piano (1947). 

Meet our newest Classics for Kids intern Jack Bunch! Jack is a rising sophomore at the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music studying voice. He has lived in Cincinnati all his life and has had a lifelong love of music and performing.  Jack is so excited to be a part of Classics for Kids and share and grow in his knowledge and love of music. We are so happy to have him with us!

If you’ve visited Downtown Cincinnati, you may have stepped or stayed in the Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza. It’s part of the Carew Tower structure. But you may not know that, in addition to the hotel rooms, there is a place on the third and fourth floors that is called the most beautiful ballroom in the Midwest: the Hall of Mirrors. It was in this space, on March 31, 1937, that the world-renowned Marian Anderson made her Cincinnati debut. 

Anderson’s concert closed out Matinee Musicale’s 1936-37 season. If Matinee Musicale sounds familiar, that’s because they’re still around! For more than a century, they’ve been bringing world-class classical musicians to the area, so it’s not that surprising that Anderson would be invited. 

By 1937, Anderson had stunned Europe and the New York critics with her artistry. From the 1910s until 1935, Anderson had struggled to establish a career as a classical vocalist. She had to fight against racist admission practices and find a teacher who would take a Black student. She had to improve her performance of art songs in different languages, especially German. And she also had to find representation that believed in her. Thankfully, she was able to do all three. 

By the time she stepped onto the floor of the plaza’s Hall of Mirrors, she had taken audiences in Salzburg by storm. She had returned to New York triumphant, represented by the world-renowned Sol Hurok, performing regularly at Carnegie Hall and banishing her 1925 bomb at Town Hall from people’s memories. She also released records for Victor’s Talking Machine (RCA Victor). Anderson continued the standard of Roland Hayes and Harry T. Burleigh of programming a set of Negro spirituals each recital. She did just that for her Cincinnati recital. 

Her first two sets were by German composers, Handel and Schubert, respectively, including “Ave Maria” and “Der Tod und des Madchen.” Anderson would record the song with conductor Leopold Stokowski and the Westminster Choir in 1944 for a Christmas reel sent to US soldiers fighting in World War II. 

Her third set was “O don fatale” from Verdi’s Don Carlo. Her last set was concert spirituals by Hall Johnson, Roland Hayes, John Payne, and Florence Price’s “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord.” This last one would become significant two years later; Anderson would close her historic Lincoln Memorial concert with it, and record it several times in her career. 

If you look at page 10 of The Cincinnati Enquirer’s edition from Thursday, April 1, 1937, you’ll find Frederick Yeiser’s review of Anderson’s recital. The following quote gives us a glimpse into what we may have heard if we’d been there: 

“Besides having been endowed by nature with a voice of extraordinary range, power, and voice, which she uses with pliancy and ease, Miss Anderson numbers among her assets a notable interpretive gift. The racial qualities of her voice, which are so difficult to define accurately, appear more conspicuously in the richness of the low tones and the vibrant brilliance of the high ones.”

What do you think Yeiser means when he says “the racial qualities” of Anderson’s voice? Does that clarify or hinder your understanding of what she sounded like? 

If you’re in Cincinnati, see if you can go to an event at the Hall of Mirrors, or see if you can step inside. Imagine what it would be like to sit there on the floor or the balcony and hear Ms. Anderson sing. Which of her songs would you want to hear? Going off of what Yeiser shares, what do you think that would sound like? 

So, you’ve started prepping for your audition, and you know what major and degree you want to pursue. But there’s still a choice to make: should you go to a conservatory, a school of music, or a department of music??

It depends on what you’re looking for. If you want a program that focuses on performance, you’ll want to consider a Conservatory. While some conservatories are individual institutions, like The Juilliard School, the New England Conservatory of Music, and The Curtis Institute of Music, many are affiliated with a university, like UC’s College-Conservatory of Music and the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Conservatory of Music. Conservatories can also have musical theatre, ballet, and production programs, so you’ll be able to not only access a wide network of professional and semi-professional musicians but also dancers, actors, producers, costume designers, stagehands, and more. You will be in an environment that allows you to eat, sleep, and breathe your craft. 

A School of Music is similar in that it provides a high level of training, but with a bigger emphasis on the liberal arts curriculum. For my first graduate degree, I wanted to attend West Virginia University, which has a School of Music. Because I was in a master’s program, I didn’t spend a lot of time outside the music building. Still, my experience was nonetheless a nice balance because I chose to double major in performance and music history. While not out of the question at a conservatory, this double dipping is more common within a School of Music and a Department of Music. 

A Department of Music is smaller than a School of Music and often facilitates more interaction between music majors and minors and folks from other programs. For my undergraduate degree, I chose Miami University, which has a Department of Music. I met many people in the marching band and those taking private lessons who were either pre-med or pursuing a degree outside of music. I was also able to improve my skill on the violin and pursue a research project, ultimately leading to me becoming a musicologist! I purposely chose a liberal arts university because I knew I wanted an experience where I could easily meet and connect with students from other programs. 

Now, there are exceptions. There are Schools of Music like the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music that are very performance focused; Departments of Music like my alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where you can get a MA/PhD in musicology; and Conservatories like Boston Conservatory at Berklee, which you can blur the boundaries between classical and jazz, as so many others have done.  

Just like picking your degree, applying to colleges that align with what you’re looking for requires research and asking questions: about the faculty, the environment, funding options, and the community you’re joining. Don’t be afraid to ask questions! And remember: if you get to a place and you’re not vibing, you can always transfer!

Listen as Navajo pianist and composer Connor Chee talks about his compositions, which explore musical ideas drawn from his background in classical piano and his Native American heritage. Chee made his Carnegie Hall debut at the age of 12 after winning a gold medal in the World Piano Competition. A graduate of the Eastman School of Music and the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, Chee’s solo piano music is inspired by traditional Navajo chants and songs. 

Chee has released 3 studio albums of original pieces and piano transcriptions of Navajo music. The Navajo Piano won Best Instrumental Recording at the 16th Annual Native American Music Awards, and his piece “Beginnings” won Best New Age Song. 

Chee’s most recent release, Scenes from Dinétah, features piano pieces written about elements of Navajo life and culture. It has been accompanied by the release of several music videos filmed on the reservation, directed by Navajo filmmaker Michael Etcitty Jr.

No matter your age, it’s never too early (or too late!) to think about college. There are a lot of opinions about whether college is as useful as it used to be. That’s for you to decide, after doing a lot of reading, reflecting, and researching. This post will help you with that, starting with getting clear on all these different degrees! 

There are four standard types of degrees you can earn from a college: associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate. Associate degrees are 2-year programs that can prepare you for a career immediately after graduation OR entry into a bachelor’s program. 

Bachelor’s degrees – also known as a baccalaureate or an undergraduate degree– are typically 4 years. If you’re interested in majoring in performance, education, conducting, production, or composition, you should consider a Bachelor of Music (B.M.). You’ll still take classes in English, History, and Science to make sure your knowledge is well-rounded. Still, a good majority of your classes will be private lessons, ensemble and chamber music rehearsals, and performances. Also, if you want to major in something non-music related, you can add a music minor to keep playing and composing! 

If your interests lean more towards the research side of music, consider a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), where you can study your instrument but also explore areas such as music theory, musicology, and ethnomusicology.

A master’s degree–also called a graduate or postgraduate degree–is typically 2 years and allows you to get even more focused on your area of study. You can get a Master of Music (M.M.), which is more performance-based, with some research, or a Master of Arts (M.A.) if you want to focus on research. If all you want to do is keep performing, check out an Artist Diploma (A.D.). These are often offered at conservatories and are open to anyone with an undergraduate or graduate degree. To start the master’s degree program, you will need to have earned a baccalaureate degree.

Doctorates are also graduate degrees. You’ll also see them described as a terminal degree since they are the last level of education. Performers can earn a Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA), a roughly 3-year program that can end with an original research project. If you’re interested in research, a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) is the way to go; you’ll take a lot of classes on research techniques and specialized topics, get experience teaching classes, and have time to work on your dissertation. Depending on the school, this program could take as little as 3 years or as long as 7 (it took me 5!). 

Ultimately, the degree you pursue and the major(s) you select are up to you. Whether it’s for a specific career path or because you want to learn more about the world, college is worthy of your time and effort if YOU decide it is! 

As a classical musician, one of the main things we do–besides get better at our instrument or voice type, is audition. Whether for school, an opera company, or an orchestra, auditioning is a major professional component of our field. Even with its issues and limitations, knowing how to prepare for one is important. So today, we’ll go over some basic things you’ll need to be ready to do.

Now, depending on what you audition for will determine what you’re asked to play. Today, we’ll focus on the basics of preparing for a college audition, because it’s at this point where you should start being more aware (if you’re not already) of your strengths and weaknesses as a player and how to put your best foot forward in the 10-15 minutes you’re in front of the audition committee.

#1: Know the Audition Requirements

Make sure you review the audition requirements of the college you’re applying to. If you’re applying to more than one, you should see some overlap: for vocalists it may one song in English, one in another language, for string players it may be a movement from a sonata and a movement from a concerto. Ultimately, the committee wants to hear how you can interpret music from different eras and styles; how developed your technique is; and how expressive you are. They’re not looking for perfection, but for someone who is focused and dedicated to growing as an artist. 

#2: PRACTICE SIGHT READING!

I know; I couldn’t stand sight reading either! But I’m so glad my private teachers made me practice it, and if you haven’t yet, ask your teacher to help you get started! To practice sight reading, you should start with material either around your level of ability or a little bit lower. In an audition, you have only a few seconds to scan the music before you start playing, so when you practice, make sure you always check the Key signature, Time signature, Dynamics, and Accidentals. If you mess up, don’t stop! It’s important to show that even when you stumble you can recover and keep going. 

#3: Select Pieces That Show Your Strengths 

Your teacher should suggest pieces that show your technical and expressive strengths. But on the off chance you’re not getting much guidance, ask yourself: What are the pieces that I play well? How do those pieces show off how I interpret a phrase and how good my technique is? Which of the required pieces shows off these skills? If you’re feeling uncertain, sit down and talk with a teacher or another mentor. 

#4: Hold a Mock Audition

Practice makes consistent, so be sure to do some trial runs prior to the big day. This should be a few times several months before your audition. Whether your mock judge is your pet, a friend, a family member, or your teacher, it’s good to get experience playing through the whole process to it’s not totally strange when you do it for real. 

#5: Reward Yourself!

When that audition’s over, be sure to treat yourself. You’ve put in a lot of work. Though we like to tell ourselves audition results are based on merit, that’s not always the case. People have bad days even if they’ve adequately prepared; people win jobs even when they think they played horribly. The point is that no matter the result, you need to honor the work that you put in!

In 1943, William Grant Still wrote a piece for his friend, violinist Louis Kaufman. It was called Suite for Violin and Piano. But first, a little intro: William Grant Still (1895–1978), known as the “Dean” of African American composers in his lifetime, is arguably the most popular classical composer of the Harlem Renaissance era.

Still saw his composing career in three distinct periods: the first was his modernist period in the early 1920s, which included his studies with composer Edgard Varèse. From 1925–1932, Still described this as his racial idiom period, characterized by works like his Symphony No. 1, “Afro-American,” where the use of 12-bar blues, modal harmony, and Black folk quotation became a key element of his style and part of the wider aesthetic movement of the Harlem Renaissance. He called his third and final period his universal idiom, starting in 1932. This period is characterized by his orchestral work The American Scene and reflects his prioritizing of all folk music from the United States. 

While his Suite for Violin and Piano was composed during his latter period, some elements show he didn’t leave his racial idiom style behind. Each movement of the suite was inspired by the work of a Black artist: Richmond Barthé’s African Dancer (1933); one of Sargent Johnson’s many works titled Mother and Child (ca. 1930); and August Savage’s Gamin (ca. 1929). Louis edited the published violin part.

“African Dancer” is in G minor. It has three sections, moving from G minor to G major and back to G minor. The second section has a minor quality to it as if it’s trying to get back to G minor. This suggests that Still used modal harmony rather than tonality. Still also used polyrhythm. Right before the violin comes in, the pianist switches to triplets, which overlays with the violin’s straight eighth notes. These elements – modal harmony and polyrhythm – are common in African and African American music.

“Mother and Child” is in E major with a middle section in E minor, another example of modal harmony. This is the most popular of the three movements, often programmed on its own. Like “African Dancer,” there’s a main theme that appears in the first and third sections, with a lyrical theme appearing in the middle section. There’s also a short cadenza near the end of the middle section. The main theme opens with a triplet, evoking a mom rocking a child in her arms.

“Gamin” is in A major, and its main theme is cocky and impish. How does Still do that? With a lot of pickups! The violin either comes in on the “e” of a beat, “a” of a beat or enters on a downbeat with a sixteenth triplet rhythm or a Scotch snap (dotted eighth note with a sixteenth note). This evokes a cocky walk or stride, placing the strong part of the beat in places other than the one or two. While this may seem destabilizing, it reflects Still’s prioritizing African American rhythmic emphasis, which doesn’t always fall on the front of the beat.

When Melissa White saw Itzhak Perlman play violin on Sesame Street, she knew she wanted to play too. After begging her mom for two years, she started lessons and never looked back. She won the junior division of the Sphinx Competition in 2001. She has a Bachelor of Music from The Curtis Institute of Music in Philly and a Master of Music from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. 

Melissa is a soloist, teacher, and ensemble player. That means she plays a lot of concertos and chamber music. She’s a founding member of The Harlem Quartet, playing music by Walter Piston, Chick Corea, and Jeff Scott (and won some GRAMMYS!). As a member of the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, she’s played music by Amy Beach, Florence Price, and more. 

As a soloist, she’s performed Max Bruch’s G minor concerto with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, Florence Price’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with the West Virginia Symphony, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s third violin concerto with the Cincinnati Symphony. And in April, she’ll make her Austrian debut next month, performing Chen Gang and He Zhanhao’s The Butterfly Lover’s Concerto (1959) with Mei-Ann Chen and the Recreation Orchestra. 

Melissa also likes to try new things. When she played The Butterfly Lover’s Concerto with Mei-Ann and the Chicago Sinfonietta, she did so in style. She collaborated with Chicago designer Carley Brandeauxon a dress designed to unfold like a butterfly from a chrysalis – as Melissa was playing the concerto! At certain parts in the music, Melissa would rebutton or shift parts of the dress to turn from a chrysalis into a butterfly. It’s not clear if she’ll be wearing the dress during her performances in Austria; fingers crossed!

Melissa is a yoga practitioner, which helps her balance her body, mind, and spirit. With her friend, Elena Urioste, she founded a program called Intermission, where musicians spend a week incorporating yoga and mindfulness into their creative practice. In addition to her busy schedule, she teaches at New York University, the University of Buffalo, and the Sarasota Music Festival. She’s also active on Instagram; ask your parents if you can check out her videos from her 100-day practice challenge!

For more than twenty years, Melissa has been building a career that not only allows her to play music with people who brings her joy, but to build programs that help her colleagues, share her knowledge with students, and engage with music beyond listening.

When you take a music theory class, you’ll hear about sonata form, rondo form, ABA or ternary form, AABA form, 12-bar blues, and verse-chorus form. But one you may not hear about but is just as common is the call-and-response form.  

Call-and-response is a dynamic form that’s foundational to many traditions, including African, Afro-Latinx, and African American music. It is also present in a lot of religious practices, used by cantors, rabbis, Islamic teachers, and preachers. Call-and-response exists in two popular manifestations: 1) restatement of a motive and 2) completion of an unfinished motivic idea. 

If you’ve sung Naughty by Nature’s “Hip Hop Hooray,” you’ve done call-and-response. If you’ve listened to Stevie Wonder’s life performance of “Ribbon in the Sky” from the 1990s, you’ve heard an ad-libbed section built on call-and-response.  

But does call-and-response appear in classical music? Yes! One example is Florence Price’s Concerto in One Movement (1934). On the surface, this concerto is a shortened version of the three-movement form we’ve talked about in the past: fast-slow-fast. But when you look deeper, you start to see and hear how Price uses call-and-response. 

Call-and-response appears in two distinct contexts: between orchestral sections and between soloist and orchestra. We hear the first example at the very start of the Moderato section: the trumpet states the first half of the main motive (the call); next, we hear a group of woodwinds state a similar motive (the response). This continues for several more measures, where each group’s call and response changes slightly by the time we get to the trombone, which gives us a half cadence––sort of like a musical semicolon instead of a period.   

After the trombone gives us the half cadence, flutes and clarinets keep the phrase going, but the rhythm is a little different: it’s not the dotted eighth-sixteenth of before, but quarter notes and eighth notes. This takes us to the entrance of the solo piano, which is rhapsodic and improvisatory, even though every note was written down by Price. Then, we arrive at the first full statement of the movement’s melody in the orchestra––in measure 93! After the orchestra makes its call, the soloist continues the melody’s journey, providing the response as well as the conclusion of the phrase.  

Call-and-response has a lot in common with antiphony: this is the term we come across in a lot of scholarship on medieval sacred music, where choirs would be positioned on either side of the sanctuary dais, and sing in response to each other. Naturally, this also became present in secular classical works.  

But what’s the difference between antiphony and call-and-response? Antiphony is often considered a texture, whereas call-and-response doesn’t sit on top of the form; it is the form.  

Take a listen to more of Price’s music, and some of her contemporaries like William Grant Still, George Gershwin, and William Levi Dawson. Do they use call-and-response too? How do they use it?  

Have you ever been excluded? Maybe a classmate didn’t invite you to a sleepover, or one of your parents went to your favorite restaurant (without you!).  

Or maybe someone didn’t invite you to their sleepover because they think you’re “different.” Maybe they didn’t let you join their club because they don’t like the way you dress. Did you know that this happened not only to kids but to adults, too? This treatment was legal 70 years ago. 

That’s what happened to a lot of Black classical musicians in the early twentieth century. Prior to 1954, lots of states, especially in the South, had laws that made it legal to discriminate against other people due to the color of their skin. You’ve probably heard these called Jim Crow laws, after the racist stock character from minstrel shows, Jim Crow. 

While some states had laws, some folks practiced racial segregation even when there weren’t laws against it. This led some musicians to form their organizations where they wouldn’t be excluded because they were Black and could actively celebrate and support Black performers and composers, established and emerging. The National Association of Negro Musicians (NANM) is one such example. 

Founded in 1919, NANM had its start several years earlier, with violinist Clarence Cameron White and R. Nathaniel Dett writing to their colleagues about the need for a professional organization for Black classical musicians. Composer-pianist-journalist Nora Holt and teacher Henry L. Grant joined forces and established NANM. The group quickly grew to include folks in states across the nation, with two branches in Chicago, the organization’s home base. 

In 1924, Florence Price petitioned NANM to establish a Little Rock branch; it’s unclear if that went through. But we know Price had been a NANM member since 1920; Price scholar Rae Linda Brown has noted that Price’s application to the Arkansas Music Teachers Association was rejected because they didn’t allow Black members; she was named a AMTA Foundation Fellow in 2018. 

We don’t know the exact year her application was rejected, but it speaks to the importance of a group like NANM. After her move to Chicago in 1927, Price joined the R. Nathaniel Dett branch and the Chicago Music Association (CMA) branch (fun fact, CMA had been established before NANM was founded and became a branch after the fact). As a member, Price programmed recitals, gave lectures on what it was like to be a composer, and had many opportunities to hear her music performed by NANM members, sometimes even playing her works with them! 

Another important intervention was in NANM’s scholarship competition. Organized by instrument (e.g. piano, voice, violin), music by Black composers featured prominently; if you were participating in the organ category, you’d likely prepare one of Price’s organ suites; if you’re a violinist, maybe Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s African Dances or William Grant Still’s Suite for Violin and Piano. 

NANM is still active today, the oldest-operating Black music organization in the United States. You can also look at some of their papers at the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College of Chicago. So many big names in classical music––Harry T. Burleigh, Marian Anderson, William Warfield––were either NANM members, participated as judges in NANM competitions, or in the case of Anderson, was the inaugural NANM scholarship recipient!

NANM was and remains an important organization in the history of American classical music. It is also one of many examples of how folks of color used self-determination to support themselves in an unjust world. 

When you listen to Monie Love’s “It’s a Shame (My Sister)” you’ll hear quotes of The Spinners’ “It’s a Shame”. When you hear Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” the whole rhythmic foundation is from Chic’s “Good Times.” We often call this sampling, but it’s also part of a formal process that’s centuries-old in African American music: signifyin(g).

Signifyin(g) is a process of purposeful quotation of familiar material that the performer/composer turns into something new. We didn’t get the word for this until Samuel A. Floyd in the late twentieth century. Dr. Floyd was a musicologist who studied the relationships between music from the African continent and the diaspora. His book, The Power of Black Music, studies the musical elements of African music and how they were used in the development of other music genres in Black communities. 

Floyd heard the whole genre of ragtime as signifyin(g) on classical music. You can hear it in Ella Fitzgerald’s 1960 performance of “How High the Moon,” where she signifies through 40+ songs; you can hear it in Eubie Blake’s “Poor Katie Redd,” where he slides in a bit of the famous friska section of Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2; and a theme by William Grant Still, which he used as a warm up lick as a pit musician, became the basis of George and Ira Gershwin’s “I’ve Got Rhythm,” (1930) and a motivic base for Still’s own scherzo movement from his Symphony No. 1 “Afro-American” (1931). 

When you listen to the first movement of Florence Price’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major (1939), you’ll hear several moments from the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto (1878). Sometimes it’s trills, sometimes it’s Price starting a solo on the same two notes; sometimes she references similar rhythmic patterns! See how many you can identify. 

As a process descended from African methods of quotation, signifyin(g) purposefully references what the listener knows and turns it on its head. When you listen to a piece of music and the source from which they’re signifyin(g), you are entering a musical conversation. They can be a direct response to the older song or add context and meaning that is created through the act of signifyin(g) itself. Almost like you’re going to the past and the present at the same time!

What are some other examples of signifyin(g) that you hear in the music you listen to? If you could signify on a piece of music, what would you pick? 

Do you know about the bamboula? It’s a music-dance form whose name comes from the bamboula drum. It developed in Africa and was brought to the United States and Caribbean by enslaved Africans. The bamboula moved from Haiti (Saint-Domingue) to Alabama and Louisiana, especially in New Orleans. The bamboula became one of many music-dance traditions that became part of the city’s soundscape. 

When New Orleans was colonized by the French and Spanish (1718–1803), enslaved people were allowed Sundays off, but there were no laws in place that respected their right to gather. In 1817, a law was passed that required enslaved people to gather in one location – Congo Square. Located in what is now the Tremé neighborhood in Louis Armstrong Park, Congo Square is a major location in the history of American culture, music, and spiritual practice. Enslaved peoples played music, including drums, violins, banjo-esque instruments, marimbas, and pan flutes; performed vodou and hoodoo rituals – two religions that developed from the intersection of Catholic and African and African and folk practices, respectively – and enjoyed their time together and away from work. New Orleans is also known for its Creole culture, developed from the intermixture of African, Indigenous, French, and Spanish people and their cultures. 

The bamboula and Creole culture is the root of Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s Bamboula, Op. 2 for piano. A native of New Orleans, Louis’ grandmother grew up in Saint-Domingue, so there’s a possibility he learned about the bamboula through his grandmother as well as his time growing up in the city. Bamboula was written in 1848 while he was in France, battling a fever. It’s based on two Creole songs: “Musieu Bainjo” (“Mister Banjo”) and “Quan’ patate la cuite”(“When Your Potato’s Done, It’s Time to Eat It”), set in a bamboula texture. 

But what is a bamboula texture? It consists of three patterns: the first is a foundational rhythm; the second is a more active rhythmic cell, and the final rhythm on top is a short-long-short pattern. Louis uses this rhythm in the main theme of Bamboula, introduced after an intro that features an imitation of a vertical drumbeat, with hints of the main theme poking through. 

Looking at the score, you can see how Louis incorporated the polymetric contents of the bamboula: the left hand holds the foundational rhythm; the second rhythm moves between the left and right hands, while the final rhythm is used in the melodic line. The bamboula is a key part of New Orleans music; its rhythm has been incorporated as the second line – a key formal element of a lot of New Orleans music. Bamboula is the first of several pieces that Louis would write that are seen as his “Louisiana Creole” Pieces. 

Louis also brings in elements of western classical piano music: improvisatory flourishes, and virtuosic sequences, especially in the middle section when he quotes the potato song. As you listen, see if you can identify when Louis quotes “Musieu Bainjo” and “Quan’ patate la cuite;” how do they sound in this style versus more traditionally-informed recordings? Would you have known Louis was using the bamboula just by listening to? If not, what does that say about how much we know about the impact of folk, popular, and sacred music on western classical music?

When you need to learn more about a topic, where do you go? Maybe you look up info on Wikipedia; maybe you go to your teacher and ask for recommendations; maybe you go to the library and check out some books. 

But what if you have a question about the material that the author is talking about in the books you check out? What if, for example, you want to read all of Marian Anderson’s diary? What if you want to see one of Fanny Hensel’s letters she wrote to her brother, Felix Mendelssohn? These items aren’t readily housed in a museum for you to go and look at. They’re housed in another type of facility that we don’t often learn about until we’re an adult––archives.

Archives are a mixture of museum and library. They can be stand-alone institutions OR connected to a university or museum. They hold letters, diaries, photographs, books, posters, CDs, film reels, and other items that used to be owned by people from the past. Archivists are folks that make sure the materials stay safe, organized, and are handled properly: sometimes you need to wear gloves because the materials are so delicate, other times holding the items with your bare hands is better. Archivists often oversee or do the work of organizing the materials of a person’s collection; that way, anyone who wants to look at a specific part of a person’s collection knows the box and folder they should request when they visit the archive.

That’s the other thing––you can go look at this stuff! Some archives are very particular in that you can only visit if you’re a scholar working on a particular project. Others only allow adults unless it’s for a class field trip. Some, like the Library of Congress in DC, require that you get an ID card before you can visit certain divisions and look at specific materials. As a musicologist, I’ve been to the Performing Arts division, where they store collections of folks like Jascha Heifetz, Fritz Kreisler, and more! They also have a recorded media division, where you can listen to recording technologies we don’t use anymore, like wax cylinders! 

Another important archive is the Center for Black Music Research in Chicago. This one is part of the Special Collections Division of Columbia College; it was established and built by Dr. Floyd and has a TON of really cool stuff: recordings of all kinds of music from the African diaspora, on vinyl, cassette, and CD. There are newspaper clippings, program notes and booklets, and personal papers from major folks and organizations in Black music studies and classical music history, like the National Association of Negro Musicians, scholars Eileen Southern, Dominique-René de Lerma, and Doris McGinty, and so many more. Archives are important because this is where the information and materials that you read about in books is drawn from. 

Now, it’s important to note that all materials that could be in an archive aren’t always stored there. Sometimes they’re owned by individuals; end up in thrift stores and pawn shops; sometimes they’re thrown away! Other times, information isn’t written down but passed to the next generation verbally, what we call oral tradition. 

Because important materials from people’s lives aren’t always preserved or respected, we don’t have everything we could or should have saved to tell us everything there is to know about how people made and listened to music. But what we do have is still a lot, and it’s important to recognize that the books you read and the information you memorize and use are the result of scholars going in, looking through archives, and recognizing what information should be known by more people. 

Check out if your local university, museum, or library has an archive. What collections are stored there? Are they accessible digitally or do you have to go in person to look at them? See what collections they have and which one’s you’d like to look at and share your idea with a teacher or parent.

Did you know that a member of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Ella Sheppard (1851-1914), used to live in Cincinnati? She moved there around 1860, several years after her father, Simon, purchased her freedom. He bought her a piano, as she had always shown musical aptitude, and Ella began studying at Wilberforce School. But then her father died in 1866, and her stepmother had to sell the piano to cover his debts. 

It was during this time that photographer James Presley Ball arranged for Ella to study voice with Caroline Staub Rivé. Rivé, a performer and composer, taught at Glendale Female College in Glendale, Ohio (right between Wyoming and Tri-County). But because Glendale didn’t allow Black students, Rivé not only taught Ella at home, but told her she could only come to her house at night and enter through the back door. 

Ella’s lessons didn’t last long – Mr. Ball couldn’t continue the payments – but Ella would continue to develop her skills as a pianist and vocalist. She worked as a music teacher to support herself and moved back to her hometown of Nashville, where she enrolled at Fisk University, then known as Fisk Free Colored School. She eventually joined the Fisk faculty and was an original member of the Fisk Jubilee Singers starting in 1871, whose national and international tour famously saved the school from financial ruin. 

Ella was the group’s accompanist, voice coach, assistant conductor and assistant director. She also oversaw the repertoire the group would perform, which included transcribing and arranging spirituals. For some vocal performers and teachers, Ella’s arrangements are a precursor to Harry T. Burleigh’s concert spirituals. It’s important to remember that at first, The Fisk Jubilee Singers didn’t perform Negro spirituals – their repertoire was classical and popular song. It was only after the urging of George White, their founder, who overheard some of the members perform the works in private, that they added them to their recitals, and became a critical and commercial success. 

If you take a look at Sheppard’s transcription of “I’m Going to Sing All the Way,” you can see the mixture of four-part choral texture, juba rhythms (the sixteenth note – eighth note – sixteenth note figure), and the rhythmic homophony between the piano vocal lines (also peep where it was published!). These elements reflect the intersection of western classical and African American idioms. 

While I was unable to find an accessible recording of this spiritual, it’s important to see Ella’s structural and stylistic choices too. This helps us understand how the group developed what is now known as the “Fisk Jubilee Sound,” an aesthetic continued by the group to this day. 

Thomas Greene Wiggins was born in 1849 in Columbus, Georgia. He grew up with his parents, Charity and Mingo Wiggins, on the plantation of Colonel James Bethune. Blind and autistic, Thomas learned and understood a lot just by listening. It could be bird calls; the wind in the trees; the sounds of men and women on the move or at work; Thomas made sense of his world through sound and dynamic touch. 

When he was four or five, he sat down at the piano in his owner’s house. He studied piano off and on with one of Bethune’s daughters (herself a student of George W. Chase) and Mrs. Bethune, until she died suddenly in 1858. 

Thomas’ first public performance was either in 1857 or 1858; he began to tour under a three-year contract between Bethune and another plantation owner, bringing in the equivalent of $3 million in today’s money. He was given the nickname “Blind Tom” by the press. When the Civil War started in 1861, Thomas only played in the South, raising money for the Confederacy on behalf of Bethune. In 1866, Thomas did a European tour, returning there several years later. He also performed to wide acclaim in the 1870s and 1880s, sharing the stage with emerging acts like John William Boone and Sissieretta Jones.

In 1863, Bethune “encouraged” Thomas’ parents to sign a five-year indentured servant agreement that also made him Thomas’ legal guardian. His mother, Charity, wouldn’t stop petitioning for her son, even after the court ruled in favor of Bethune’s guardianship in July 1865. Thomas should have been free and allowed to decide where he wanted to live; the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in Confederate states, had gone into effect in 1863, and the Civil War ended in 1865. But the ruling was tied to the judge’s agreement with Bethune’s assertion that Thomas was an “idiot” and thus couldn’t make informed decisions. Bethune was mainly interested in continuing to profit from Thomas’ talent. Thomas continued to live with the Bethune family, though he chose to stop performing a little before his death in 1908. 

Some listeners assumed Thomas’ musical skills were a trick. “Playoffs” became a feature of his recitals, where he either played in response to other musicians (kinda like a rap battle!) or was asked to replicate or imitate something in real time, which he would do flawlessly. Thomas would perform Bach preludes and fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier, Vol. 2 and popular songs like “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” He attended concerts to learn more repertoire and he composed, creating his first work, The Rainstorm, when he was about five. Many of his surviving works are programmatic or impressionistic. 

One of his most popular is The Battle of Manassas (c. 1863), a musical picture of the Civil War battle won by the Confederacy. It’s unclear who notated the published version we have from Thomas’ time; but the rhapsodic and expressive elements and tone clusters speak to Thomas’ interest in timbral color and the physicality of sound. 

Listen to the opening ostinato, imitating military drums; by putting this part in the lower range, it’s easier to feel than to hear, and serves as a contrast to the heroic themes, which are all official or unofficial national anthems: “Dixie,” “Marseillaise,” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.”  When Thomas would perform this piece, like many other works on his program, he would verbally provide the “chu chu” and whistle of a train engine. Such structures and techniques call to mind musical medleys or works like Ysaÿe’s Sonata No. 2, which quotes Bach and the Dies Irae. 

Thomas’s skill and technique is still being discovered and appreciated by new audiences. Play some of his music and see what you discover!

It’s 1893. You’re sitting in Music Hall. If you’re white, you’re sitting on the orchestra level, maybe in a box seat; if you’re Black, you’re in the gallery. Music Hall won’t be integrated for another 70+ years. A majestic Black woman enters the stage, bows, and begins to sing. Her voice is high, sweet, and gorgeous as she sings arias from Bellini’s Norma, Meyebeer’s L’Africaine, and “Comin’ thro’ the Rye.” When she’s done, you and everyone else erupts into rousing applause. You’ve just heard Sissieretta Jones!

Born Matilda Sissieretta Jones (1868–1933) in Portsmouth, Virginia, Sissieretta grew up in Providence, Rhode Island. She started singing in church choir, where her mother was encouraged to sign her up for music lessons. In 1883, Sissieretta studied at the Providence Academy of Music with Ada Baroness Lacombe and married bellman David Richard Jones. 

Between 1883 and 1888, Sissieretta shared the stage or opened for major classical artists of her time: Flora Batson, Madame Marie Selika, and Thomas “Blind Tom” Wiggins. From 1888 to 1891, she performed on two tours to the Caribbean and South America with the Fisk Jubilee Singers, under management with Adelina Patti’s manager. During the tour, she received numerous medals that she wore proudly for photos and performances. And she even found time to study at the New England Conservatory! 

In 1892, she made her Washington DC debut, sang at Madison Square Garden, and performed at Carnegie Hall, with Harry T. Burleigh! From 1895 to 1896, Sissieretta took Europe by storm, giving concerts in Italy, Russia, and Germany. 

After an invite to perform at The Met was rescinded due to racist pressures, Sissieretta founded The Black Patti Troubadours. The name was a reference to her nickname in the press, the “Black Patti,” due to stylistic similarities to her Italian peer, Adelina Patti. (also see Black Patti Records!). 

A company of singers, jugglers, comedians, and dancers, The Troubadours would perform arias, operettas, and comedic theater sketches. The highest paid African American of her time, Sissieretta made sure they traveled safely; she paid for a train car that took them to their gigs.

The Troubadours disbanded in 1915 when Sissieretta retired from performing to take care of her mother. She lived the rest of her life in financial straits, even having to sell her medals. In 2018, folks fundraised for a headstone, which now marks her resting place in Providence’s Grace Church Cemetery.

As a soprano with a high range, Sissieretta would sing selections from grand and light opera. A typical solo concert would feature “Sempre Libera” from Verdi’s La Traviata and a popular song like Stephen Foster’s minstrel ballad “Old Folks at Home (Swanee River).” 

One critic in the Saratoga Union described her voice as “beautiful, clear, steady and resonant…The exquisite crispness with which she executes complicated scales in rapid time delight all. Withal she sings intelligently, without affectation, and with much feeling.” Considering this description, what aria would you want to hear Sissieretta sing? 

The Mississippi River is a big deal. It’s not the longest river in the US – that’s the Missouri. But it’s played a big role in American culture, commerce, and identity for more than a hundred years. 

Prior to the expansion of trains and way before cars and planes, the way to get around was either by foot, horse and/or cart, or by boat. The Mississippi River was very important in the early United States, as steamboats carried merchandise, food, people – enslaved and free – from the north to the south and from the east to the west. 

Because of its importance, the Mississippi naturally became the focus of books, movies, and music. There’s the musical Showboat (1927), which follows a steamboat theater company on the Mississippi; there’s Ferde Grofé’s Mississippi Suite (1925/26); there’s William Grant Still’s The American Scene (1957), Suite No. 5 (The Southwest), Movement III. “Song of the Rivermen (They Sing of the Mississippi.” And between those two sits Florence Price’s Mississippi River (The River and the Songs of Those Dwelling upon Its Banks) (1934). 

Price completed it after her Chicago Symphony debut and dedicated it to one of her teachers, fellow composer Arthur Olaf Anderson. It’s one movement divided into four sections. It highlights Price’s skill at quoting folk music and putting it in conversation with her original melodies. 

Price scholar Rae Linda Brown identifies four spirituals and two popular songs that Price quotes:  “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” “Go Down, Moses,” “Deep River,” and “Stand Still, Jordan;” a tune Price calls “Lalotte” and “Steamboat Bill River Song” (which you might recognize as the tune Mickey whistles as Steamboat Willie!). 

However, there’s another popular song Price quotes that a YouTube commenter @ThePepperh heard: “Git Along, Little Dogies.” 

Why did Price quote these tunes? Because they represent something specific about life along the Mississippi. Of dock workers, boatmen, and captains; of mothers, sisters, and uncles sold “downriver;” of the birds and plants that grow along its banks; of the Indigenous peoples who did and continue to call the river home; of steamboat races, festivals, and the constant activity of buying, selling, and traveling. Price grew up 141 miles from the Mississippi; her composition is not only built upon imagination but experience through proximity. 

Mississippi River is not as rigid as Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. It has more in common with Bedřich Smetana’s “Vltava” (“The Moldau”); Johannes Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture (which is full of quotes of fraternity and drinking songs); and George Gershwin’s An American in Paris. It’s about painting a picture with notes and letting listeners add the specific actions, images, and scenarios that speaks to them. 

What images do you see when you hear someone say “Mississippi River?” How do these images change when you hear Price’s Mississippi River? Are there other quotes of folk and popular music that you hear that haven’t been identified? 

When Florence Price was a little girl, her parents hosted famous African Americans passing through town. Sometimes they’d host famous people like Frederick Douglass and our topic of today, pianist-composer John William Boone. 

John William was known by the nickname “Blind Boone;” he had been blind since he was a kid (some say his eyes were removed due to brain fever when he was five or six; others say he lost his sight as an infant). He was beloved for his rags, sentimental works, and virtuosic piano variations on popular tunes like “Dixie” and “Last Rose of Summer.” John William stayed at the Smiths and had a chance to hear Florence play the piano before he gave a house recital for her parents and their guests. 

John William was born in 1864 in Missouri. His mother, Rachel, had run away from slavery, and gave birth to him in a federal camp. He was always fascinated with music as a kid, but didn’t start playing piano until he moved to St. Louis to attend the Missouri School for the Blind. He fell in love with the piano to the point where he didn’t want to do his schoolwork! That, paired with the racism of some of the school administrators, led to him running away; eventually he was expelled. 

Embarrassed, he stayed in St. Louis, playing piano; but he eventually found his way back to Columbia, Missouri, where he was heard and signed by manager John B. Lange and in 1880, took part in a Christmas piano battle with another famous blind pianist-composer, Thomas Greene Wiggins (also known as “Blind Tom” or Thomas Greene Bethune, after his enslavers). 

Whether drawing upon styles like plantation songs or setting popular tunes like “Dixie” and “Last Rose of Summer” as a piano fantasy, John William would wow audiences with his keen ear and virtuosity. By 1900, he was performing 300+ concerts a year in the United States and Canada. 

John William recorded several of his works on piano rolls: this is a machine that notates pitches played by the pianist in real time, marking them on a paper roll. There are still some pianos with player rolls today. But a few times, the sessions didn’t go very well. When he came to Cincinnati in 1918 to record some for the Vocalstyle company, they didn’t get recorded well because the company didn’t use the best equipment. Two years later, John William was in Chicago, ready to record his legendarily complicated Marshfield Tornado; but he played so fast and hard that he ended up breaking the piano roll gears!

You can still hear some of John William’s music today: his ragtime music, like Southern Rag Medley No. 1 (1908); his vocal music, like “That Little German Band” (1894); and Woodland Murmurs: A Spinning Song (1888), a highly impressionistic character piece. What things do you see as you listen to that piece? What things do you imagine emerging from the forest or woods near your house? 

John William reminds us that classical and popular music are always in conversation. Though often understood as a ragtime – and thus a proto-jazz – musician, it’s important to remember he also studied classical music; and like some of his contemporaries (e.g. Scott Joplin), helped shape what we understand American classical music to be.

Randall Goosby is an American concert violinist. He is the recipient of the 2022 Avery Fisher Career Grant and was the first prize winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in 2018. He is now the 2025 MAC Music Innovator for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (CSO). The MAC Music Innovator is an award given to a Black leader in classical music who is known for artistic innovation and community engagement. Goosby will work with the CSO’s Community Engagement, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I), and Learning departments to create a residency that includes educational and community engagement programs.

Recently, Goosby made a visit to Classics for Kids! Listen along as Trinity and Randall discuss music and music education.

Maud Powell (1867–1920) learned violin fast. Like, prodigy fast! She started playing at seven in her hometown of Peru, Illinois. By thirteen, she was in Leipzig, Germany, studying violin with Henry Schradieck (yes, that Schradieck!) and Friedrich Hermann. A year later, she was at the Paris Conservatoire, where she studied with Charles Dancla (yep, that Dancla!) for six months. And then a year after that, Joseph Joachim – that guy who was friends with Brahms(!) – asked her if she wanted to finish her studies with him at the Berlin Hochschule. Powell said yes, and in 1885, Joachim conducted her in her debut, performing Beethoven’s D major and Bruch’s G minor violin concertos. 

Maud is a soloist who should be better known because she gave the American premieres of several concertos that we now take for granted (e.g. Tchaikovsky and Dvořák); and she was really big on programming living (or recently living) composers. She commissioned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s violin concerto, routinely performed the Brahms, Sibelius and Tchaik violin concertos, and also performed chamber music by Cécile Chaminade, Anton Arensky, Bedřich Smetana, and more. 

She was also the first instrumentalist to record for the Victor Talking Machine, starting in 1904. This was in the early stages of recording technology; folks were getting nervous because with the ability to listen to the same performance over and over, you’d also hear mistakes! Mistakes that would disappear in the concert hall would be preserved; this resulted in people being very picky about what mistakes were “ok” and which were no longer permitted. The result was a rise in technical accuracy over the following decades, and a shift in the width of vibrato to avoid swinging in and out of tune. 

Maud’s recordings from 1904 to 1917 are still available for listening on the Naxos album Maud Powell: The Complete Recordings Vols. 1-4.  Vol. 3 includes her arrangement of Coleridge’s Deep River. Take a listen – notice her use of vibrato and her addition of virtuosic chords. Revisit the article where I mention Harry T. Burleigh’s “Deep River.” What are the differences in tempo and style between his version and Maud’s? 

Maud recorded a lot of her own arrangements and transcriptions. An important one is her transcription of Four American Folk Songs, on Vol. 1. Each song comes from minstrelsy or the sentimental song tradition. “My Old Kentucky Home,” and “Old Black Joe” by Stephen C. Foster romanticizes slavery; “Shine On” by Luke Schoolcraft and “Kingdom Comin’” by Henry Clay Work were both written for the minstrel stage. 

You might be scratching your head. Why would Maud work so closely with Coleridge and yet transcribe and perform a medley of American songs that today we’d consider racist? That even some Black folks of her time considered to be offensive? Keep scratching your head and listen to Maud’s performance; consider whose perspective is being presented and how Maud’s interpretation enhances or obscures these contradictions.

It’s time to meet Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. He grew up in the last few decades of the Victorian era and was a celebrated composer. Born in London, England, in 1875, Samuel’s parents were Alice Hare Martin and Dr. Peter Hughes Taylor. Samuel never met his father, who moved back to Sierra Leone before finding out that Alice was pregnant. She named her son after the famous English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 

Called Coleridge by his family, he was raised by his mother and grandfather. His grandad, Benjamin Holmans, was his first violin teacher, and he paid for Coleridge’s lessons when it became clear the kid was really good. At 15, he started studying violin and composition at the Royal College of Music. It was there he began to focus on composing. 

From 1899 until his death from pneumonia in 1912, Coleridge-Taylor was seen as an exciting new voice in English composition. Edward Elgar was a vocal champion of his works and audiences in the United States established choral societies in his name and programmed his music. Coleridge also collaborated with two major American artists of his era: Paul Laurence Dunbar and Maud Powell. 

Dunbar was a poet from Dayton, Ohio known for his poems on Black culture written in dialect. Coleridge had met Paul in 1897 in England, and they kept up a collaboration that included Coleridge setting some of Dunbar’s poetry to music. 

He was also becoming interested in American music and culture, especially Negro spirituals and the relationship between Black people around the world. Coleridge wrote 24 Negro Melodies, Op. 59 (1905) for piano. It’s a piece that blurs the line between an arrangement and a reimaging; you hear melodies that you recognize, but they’re presented in a new context: the texture is sometimes homophonic or polyphonic; there’s chromaticism; there might be phrases longer than you’d expect if you were to listen to vocalists. Pick out one of the movements and compare it to the original spiritual. What is familiar? How does Coleridge set the melody and take it in new directions? 

Coleridge’s collaboration with American violinist Maud Powell left us with two works: his Violin Concerto (1912) and Maud’s arrangement of Coleridge’s arrangement of Deep River. Maud was a major concert artist from Peru, Illinois. She was known for concertizing across the United States, bringing music to audiences outside of the major music hubs of New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Chicago. 

Coleridge wrote his violin concerto for Maud and sent the orchestral parts to America–on the Titanic. He had to rewrite a new set and couldn’t attend the premiere due to illness. The concerto has only recently reentered the repertoire and is a gorgeous piece of modest virtuosity and catchy melodies. 

Maud’s arrangement of Coleridge’s Deep River is fiery, a short showman piece. Listen to bits of both works. How do they reflect what these artists – one who’d studied violin, another who made her living playing it – think about what a violin can do: technically and expressively? 

Das Jahr (The Year) is a character piece by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel. It’s thirteen movements–twelve are inspired by each month of the year–and the last one is an outro that wraps everything up. Fanny finished it in 1841 and gave it as a Christmas gift to her husband, Wilhelm. He was a creative person like Fanny, but he was an illustrator and painter. Fanny left a bit of space in the upper corner of the manuscript for Wilhelm to put his stamp on it as well. So now when you look at the manuscript of Fanny’s Das Jahr, you’ll see Wilhelm’s illustrations at the start of each movement. 

Das Jahr is one of Fanny Hensel’s most popular works. It’s been recorded many times and is still performed today. It’s what we call a character piece: an instrumental work that reflects something extra-musical: a piece of art, an emotion, or a story. We use this term for shorter instrumental pieces versus programmatic music, which is typically used for symphonic works like Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. 

Since we’re leaving summer and heading towards fall, we’ll listen to No. 8 “August” and No. 9 “September: The River” from Das Jahr. Before each movement, Fanny included a stanza from a poem. August starts with one from German poet Friedrich Schiller’s “Das Lied von der Glocke” (“Song of the Bell”).  It reads: 

Bunt von farben

Aug den Garben

Liegt der Kranz. 

Bright with color

Upon the sheaves

Lies the garland. 

Fanny builds “August” on a jubilant main theme. It emerges as fragments at first, as if she doesn’t know if she’ll finish it. But then she does and it’s beautiful and exciting and amazing! The main theme is in the right hand; the left hand is mainly supportive, but there are moments where it helps drive and enhance the melody. This movement is in rondo form: we hear the main theme in between new sections; one’s perky and military like, another rhapsodic and sweeping. Pay attention to how Fanny brings the melody back; if it sounds the same every time, if it’s different depending on when it returns. Does it appear near the end and if it does, is it voiced the same way as in the beginning? 

“September: The River” opens with a stanza from “An dem Mond” (“To the Moon”) by Johann Goethe, one of the most celebrated German poets of Fanny’s time:

Fließe fließe, liebe Fluß,

Nimmer werd’ ich froh.

Flow, flow, dear river,

I shall never be happy. 

The mood is immediately morose. This isn’t a happy river; the melody is minor and isn’t in the higher register; Fanny gives it to the left hand. There are moments of sunlight though. Note when major modes peek out from the texture; if the melody is ever given to the right hand; and how Fanny not only evokes the flow of water but the emotions that Goethe expresses in this particular stanza. 

Unsuk Chin is a composer based in Berlin, Germany. She was born and grew up in Seoul, Korea, where she studied piano and initially wanted to be a concert pianist. But her family didn’t have enough money to get her piano, let alone keep paying for lessons. Her teacher recommended that she consider composition. If she couldn’t get regular access to a piano, she could get regular access to the music.

Chin would go to the library and literally study the scores of Brahms, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky, pouring over them for hours. She applied to the Seoul National University twice before she was accepted into the composition program. There, she studied with Sukhi Kang, one of the earliest Korean composers to write a work of electronic music. She continued her studies in Germany from 1985–1988, where she was a student of György Ligeti, a major avant-garde composer.  

Chin writes concertos, orchestral works, stuff for piano, and vocal and choral works. Her style is avant-garde and experimental; she doesn’t use a lot of standard tonality or focus on developing a melody. Instead, she’s very interested in how different parts interlock and create new textures and looking at practices and techniques common in the Middle Ages. 

One of these pieces is Miroirs des temps (Time Mirror). Scored for alto, two tenors, bass, and orchestra, the work is inspired by the idea of mirroring: looking to the past for inspiration; looking to how a musical phrase can reflect itself when turned upside down or flipped – a musical palindrome. 

A palindrome is where you take a word and flip it. It’s the same principle in music: you take a musical phrase or melody and flip it! But Chin doesn’t state the original theme and then the flipped theme; she layers the original with the flipped theme, so they’re played at the same time! That is a crab canon. 

The third movement has several examples of a crab canon; and the whole Miroirs des temps was inspired by a medieval musical palindrome. The text used in this movement comes from “Ma fin est mon commencement et mon commencement ma fin,” a rondeau by 14^th century composer and poet Guillaume de Machaut. Machaut’s rondeau is one of the earliest examples of a musical palindrome, with three parts that are related to each other. Chin takes it to the next level and then some: sometimes this movement has eighteen different parts! 

Listen to the soprano recorder and piccolo, the tenor recorder and counter-tenor, and bassoon and second tenor in the second section of  Movement III.  How would you describe the textures created when Chin uses a crab canon? Is it only polyphonic, or is one part more prominent than the other? How do these parts interact with others in the texture? 

Even better: pick out five notes, some rhythms and a meter and create a melody. Now flip that melody and align it with the original. What works and what doesn’t when you play it together? What do you need to change to get the sound and rhythmic interlocking you want? 

In this episode, we continue our conversation on North Indian Classical music with our previous guest, Ayaaz Yasin. During the interview, we ask these questions: What makes classical music classical, and what other “classical” traditions exist in the world outside of the West?

Where do you go when looking for new music? Not “brand new” but new to you, whether written last year or two hundred years ago?

You can go to the library and ask a librarian for suggestions. But what if you don’t have the name of a composer or composition? Maybe they’ll suggest an encyclopedia or collection of interviews with composers, like William Banfield’s Musical Landscapes in Color or Helen Walker-Hill’s From Spirituals to Symphonies. 

But reading about new music and composers isn’t the same as listening to them. And neither of those books come with a recording! You can look up specific pieces, see if there’s a recording or a performance uploaded to YouTube. But what if you want to hear the piece in person??? You go to a Castle of Our Skins concert!

Castle of Our Skins is a non-profit music organization based in the Boston, Massachusetts area. Founded in 2013 by Anthony R. Green and Ashleigh Gordon, Castle of Our Skins is all about centering Black artistry. They give concerts, offer educational programming, residencies, lectures, masterclasses, and more that help people learn about the depth and variety of classical music in Black American communities. 

If you visit their website, you’ll see a list of the music they’ve performed. They don’t ignore the canon, but they don’t center it and repeat it either. There’s J.S Bach and Luciano Berio, but there’s also Irene Britton-Smith and Ulysses Kay and Bongani Ndodani-Breen and Mokale Koapeng. On their first album, Homage, with pianist-scholar Samantha Ege, Castle of Our Skin members perform chamber music by Ndodani-Breen, Zenobia Powell Perry (who lived and worked in Ohio!) Coleridge-Taylor, and Frederick C. Tillis. They even played some of the music from the album for PBS’ Basic Black show last year. 

So many names and pieces to choose from! But what if you also want to play the music? 

Castle of our Skins has got you covered there too. They have a shop where students and teachers can get scores and curriculum guides to pieces by contemporary composers like Jelani N. Surpris, Anthony R. Green, and participants in the Black Composer Miniature Challenge. 

The Black Composer Miniature Challenge is a competition where composers get commissioned to write a piece 30 seconds or less on a certain theme and for specific instruments. One of those pieces is Deeann Mathews’ Clouds to Sun Lullaby. Performed by flutist Orlando Cela and harpist Charles Overton, Clouds to Sun Lullaby is from year two of the Challenge, where composers were asked to write something for flute, piccolo, alto flute, and harp. 

Sometimes the works involve dancers too. Year four called for works for saxophone, several of which also feature a dancer. Like Boyd E. Gibson’s Variation on a Kenyan Lullaby (Nyamgodo, Nindo Tere). As you listen to Seychelle Dunn-Corbin and watch Jenny Oliver, consider: how does the music and movement match each other? Do they not match each other? Does the music drive the movement or vice versa? 

It can be hard finding new music. But don’t give up! Folks like Castle of Our Skins can help you find new pieces, new composers, new music to learn and perform. I encourage you to look up some of the composers mentioned here and find more music to love! 

Today we are joined by Ayaaz Yasin, PhD student of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Cincinnati. In addition to his research, he studies North Indian Classical Tabla with Professor Jim Feist the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, and performs occasionally with the Indian Classical, Jazz, and Western Classical fusion ensemble, “Kafi and Chai.” 

Jose Campos is a student of Cello Performance, pursuing his BM at the Jacobs School of Music. Join us as he walks us through one of the great compositions for Cello and Orchestra, Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1, pointing out its best moments, standout features, and describing the historical context in which it was written. 

You’re typically called a songwriter if you write pop, folk, hip-hop, R&B or rock music. If you write classical music, you’re typically called a composer. But did you know that you can also be called a “sound artist?” Or both at the same time?

That’s the case with Yvette Janine Jackson. Not only is she considered a composer and sound artist by other people, that’s how she describes herself!

A big reason she calls herself a sound artist is that she doesn’t always write music for traditional experiences. It’s not so much where the melody or harmony goes as it is about how pitches resonate, how they resonate in a specific room, how music technologies like tape and computers can create new cool, wacky sounds, and how those sounds engage/impact the bodies of the performer and the listener, not just their ears.

Yvette’s early education started pretty conventionally. She went to The Colburn School in her hometown of Los Angeles and got her undergraduate degree in music composition at Columbia University. Then she made a choice that’s a little different: she got a PhD in music-integrative studies at the University of California in San Diego, not composition!

Why music-integrative studies? Because rather than solely studying how to write music, students study music, sound, and culture from a range of perspectives. That means they’re creating music that engages or uses materials and practices from visual arts to computer sciences, dance, and communication! That doesn’t mean they couldn’t explore those things in a composition program, but it does mean that taking classes that allow you to dive into those things will count towards your degree instead of being “extra” classes.

When you hear Dr. Yvette’s compositions and watch her perform, it becomes very clear why such a concentration would speak to her, adding to her use of the term sound artist. When Dr. Yvette performs solo, she performs on modular synthesizers, and a lot of her music features traditional instruments and electronics. Her music also connects with cultural and extra-musical themes.

One of Dr. Yvette’s notable works is Deliberate Afraid of Nothing (2022 )for solo percussion, commissioned and performed by Colleen Bernstein. This piece, which calls for a modified drum set, cellophane, and electronics, was inspired by a line from the poem New Year’s Day by Audre Lorde. I encourage you to explore how Dr. Yvette uses the different instruments, how the sounds relate to the lines of Lorde’s poem, and the emotional character of the work. It’s a journey of discovery that will leave you intrigued and engaged.

Listen to how Dr. Yvette uses the different instruments. How do the sounds relate to the lines of Lorde’s poem? What is the emotional character of the work? Does it depend on what instrument is being played or how it’s played? Is there a melody, and if so, is it driven by a pitched or unpitched rhythm?

Another work to check out is Cannot Be (Unrung) (2018), commissioned by the University of Chicago’s Rockefeller Chapel and Dr. Tiffany Ng, who premiered the piece. It’s written for tape and carillon, which is a percussion instrument with a keyboard and 23 bells! Again, this is about how the sounds each part makes impact each other, especially between electronic materials and instruments made of wood and metal. Do you hear any sounds that you weren’t expecting? How did you feel listening to the piece a third time versus the second time? 

Amaryn Olmeda is a 16-year-old violinist from Melbourne, Australia. She’s been playing violin since she was three and half and loved it so much she decided to make it her career. 

It’s always been a thing for kids to start playing professionally in classical music; they’re often our go-to references when we talk about prodigies: kids that play at a level you typically only see in adults. But even when kids display such talent and skill, they don’t always get a chance to make a career of it; Amaryn is one of the lucky ones. 

For several years she’s maintained a busy performance schedule, appearing with the Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Sinfonietta, and the Sphinx Virtuosi. She’s also in school, studying with Miriam Fried at the New England Conservatory of Music (Florence Price’s alma mater!).

Amaryn made her Carnegie Hall and recording debut with the Sphinx Virtuosi in 2022, as the featured performer for Carlos Simon’s Between Worlds. This work is for solo violin that starts off slow and then gets active. 

Ask yourself: is there a melody (fully developed musical idea) or is there a motive (short musical idea)? Are there moments of bluegrass fiddle technique? Would you divide this piece into sections and if so, what would you name them? What does the composer, Carlos Simon, have to say about the piece? 

Last year, Amaryn joined pianist Lara Downes on a program of music by Florence Price, Jessie Montgomery, and Margaret Bonds–all Black women! Lara and Amaryn also took time to talk about Price and Bonds, the music, and the importance of “breathing” in your sound. 

When Amaryn plays Price’s “Adoration,” where does she take breaths and where does she sustain the sound? What happens when she holds the sound out instead of letting it go? 

Now let’s take a listen to Amaryn, Peter Jaffe, and the Folsom Lake Symphony on Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor. This is one of the most performed violin concertos today and one of the first “big” concertos you’ll learn, after Bruch’s G minor concerto. 

Being a soloist with an orchestra is not as easy as it looks. It’s a lot different than playing by yourself or with a pianist or a chamber group; there’s at least 80 to 90 people! You have to make sure you’re watching the conductor, listening to the orchestra, and not rushing or dragging too much. But! It’s also important for the orchestra to follow you. 

Listen to how Amaryn uses dynamics; how she shows you were the phrase (the musical sentence) is going; how does her vibrato change depending on the emotion she’s communicating? Is she always aligned with the orchestra, or does she push them? Do they push her? 

Think about the solo pieces, the duos with piano, the concertos you play. Which ones require communication between you and another musician? How does that come together so you connect with the audience? Don’t be afraid to experiment; there are many different ways to reach your listeners.  

Lately, when Errollyn Wallen must work on a commission, she doesn’t go to an office or a café or a library; she goes to her lighthouse. 

Errollyn has been living in a lighthouse on the Scottish coast for several years. It’s her ideal working place. Not because it’s relaxing, but because it gets her to focus, especially when she has a tight deadline. 

For more than twenty years, Errollyn has been writing and performing music. At first, she wanted to be a dancer; she even moved to New York to continue her studies. But there she realized her true love still lay with music. So, she returned to England, studying at Goldsmiths, King’s College London, and King’s College Cambridge, where she got her Master of Philosophy degree in composition.  

Now, she’s one of the most respected and sought after composers of our time. She’s written a lot of works for voice, orchestra, and chamber ensembles. One of her most recent is a violin concerto, debuted this year by Philipe Quint and the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, who also commissioned the work. 

Commissions are when a person, an ensemble, or an organization asks a composer to write a new piece. Often, the commissioning ensemble debuts the work and sometimes records its. Commissions are a very important way for composers to make a living and to get more people to hear their music. 

Errollyn has been commissioned by the British monarchy, Opera North, the BBC, and many other ensembles and organizations. She was named a MBE–Member of the Order of the British Empire–in 2007; and was upgraded to an CBE–Commander of the British Empire–in 2020. That’s one level lower than a damehood/knighthood! 

In addition to composing, Errollyn also sings and plays piano. She made her Wigmore Hall debut last year. One of the songs she performed is “Hurricane of Love” from The Errollyn Wallen Songbook (2006). You might be surprised: it sounds like a pop-jazz combo-rock song because it is! Errollyn doesn’t only write in a “classical” style; like many composers she incorporates all kinds of genres in her music. 

Some pieces are more “traditionally” classical. Her Concerto Grosso (2008) is inspired by the Baroque-era genre. This piece is written for a string orchestra and piano, instead of a string orchestra and harpsichord. It’s also a lot more intense and built around short motives instead of a melody. Listen close and ask yourself; do some of these motives return? If so, do they return the same way? 

The name José White Lafitte (1835–1918) may not be familiar to you. But he lived and worked with folks you may recognize. Like Louis Moreau Gottschalk: he was the pianist on José’s recital debut in 1854. Like Theodore Thomas: he conducted two performances with José and the New York Phil–the first time they had a Black soloist. Like Gioacchino Rossini–The Barber of Seville and William Tell guy–who wrote this to José in 1858: 

“Your warm execution, feeling, elegance, the brilliance of the school to which you belong, show qualities in you as an artist of which the French school may be proud.” 

José White Lafitte’s career took him all over the world; but his world began in Cuba. He was born to María Ecolásta Laffite, an Afro-Cuban woman, and Carlos White, a French businessman. He began studying music with his father, who also played violin; and when he showed that he was really good, started studying with Afro-Cuban José Miguel Román and Belgian Pedro Haserf. José was so good that a year after Gottschalk performed with him in Matanzas, the internationally renowned pianist and composer helped raise money so José could go study at the Paris Conservatoire. In the early 1800s, Paris was the center of classical culture and education, so the Conservatoire was very prestigious and very competitive. José not only got in but was accepted into the studio of Jean-Delphin Alard, a famous performer and pedagogue. In 1856, one year after entering the Conservatoire, he won the Prix de Rome in violin–one of the most prestigious prizes in classical music. 

José had a productive career as a performer, chamber musician, and teacher. He toured Europe, South America, the Caribbean, and Mexico. He co-founded three chamber groups: Société des Trois Anciens et Modernes, Société Schumann, and a lecture-recital trio with Georges Pfeiffer and A. de Gasperini. He counted Camille Saint-Saens as a colleague and championed the music of Robert Schumann, who wasn’t as well appreciated in Parisian circles. He was the head of the Imperial Conservatory in Brazil at Rio de Janeiro from 1877 to 1889; and wrote at least thirty-two compositions, including Le Bella Cubana and his Violin Concerto in F sharp minor. 

José completed his Violin Concerto in 1864, when he started teaching at the Paris Conservatoire, filling in for Alard. He gave the Parisian premiere of his concerto in 1867, but the work wouldn’t be performed in the Americas until 1974, with Ruggiero Ricci as soloist with the Symphony of the New World under Kermit Moore in Avery Fisher Hall. Like his contemporary Henryk Wieniawski, José was riding the technique wave that Niccolo Paganini had inspired several decades before. His concerto has a lot of double stops, octaves, and large leaps that require the soloist to shift quickly and accurately. In the first movement, the main theme is dark and rhapsodic, leading to intense development by the soloist. The second movement also has wide leaps but within a lyrical, stately character. The final movement is inspired by folk qualities within a rondo form, not as serious as the first movement so it’s a lot more fun. Check out Rachel Barton Pine’s recording of it from 1997. If you fall in love with it, ask your teacher if you can learn it!

Alex Merk is an accomplished Jazz musician and student at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of music. Listen as he talks about the influential legacy of Philly Joe Jones, a drummer who played on some of the most famous jazz records of our time, and who was considered the favorite drummer of Jazz legends such as Bill Evans and Miles Davis. 

Bradley Esau is a DMA student of Wind Conducting at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of music, and he is here today to talk about the innovation and collaborative legacy of Roy Hargrove, a Jazz trumpeter and composer who was ahead of his time. 

Brian Cashwell is a Jazz-pianist, composer, and educator who performs prolifically in the Cincinnati area. Having trained in both jazz and classical Piano, Dr. Cashwell holds a variety of teaching and performing positions. Join us as he shares his knowledge on the music and legacy of Bill Evans, a jazz pianist and composer known for his sentimental harmonies and impressionistic sound.

Today we are joined by guest Marissa Kerbel, a fantastic pianist and teacher, and graduate of the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music! Here she talks about the life and legacy of Lili Boulanger, a French composer who passed away very young, but accomplished many great things throughout her lifetime. Excerpts of Kerbel’s most recent album, “In 24 Years: The Music of Lili Boulanger,” are featured throughout this episode. 

https://www.marissakerbel.com/album

Clarence Cameron White (1879/80–1960) loved the violin. His mom, Jeannie White, played it and his grandad played it. So, he was really excited to hear one of the most popular violinists of his time: Will Marion Cook. Cook was the last performer on a recital in Washington D.C. Clarence did his best to stay alert, but he couldn’t keep his eyes open and when he woke up, Mr. Cook was taking a bow! 

Clarence was so upset he started to cry. He made so much noise, Cook wanted to know why the little boy was upset. A few days later, he located White and his mother and offered the young man violin lessons. Clarence said “yes!” It was because of those summer lessons, Clarence recalled, that he realized he wanted to be a violinist.  

Clarence Cameron White went on to become a performer, composer, and teacher. He could count Cook, Joseph Douglass (one of Frederick Douglass’ grandsons), Frederick Dolittle (who also taught Cook), Franz Micki, Mikhail Zacharewitsch, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and Raoul Laparra among his teachers, studying in the United States, London, and Paris. 

He taught at the Washington Conservatory of Music–a D.C. school for Black students founded by Oberlin graduate, Harriet Gibbs Marshall–West Virginia Institute (now West Virginia State), and Hampton Institute, where he succeeded R. Nathaniel Dett as head of the music department. White also served as president for the National Association of Negro Musicians (NANM), a professional organization for Black classical musicians and composers founded in 1919. 

He also fell in love. Clarence married pianist Beatrice Warrick in 1905 and toured and performed with her for years. They had two kids, but both died before their parents. When Beatrice passed away in 1942, Clarence fell in love again: this time with the librarian, educator, and puppeteer Pura Belpré. They married in 1943 and were together until Clarence passed away in 1960. 

Clarence gave recitals across the United States: Louisville, Cleveland, Atlanta, New York City, Port-au-Prince. He wrote compositions that drew upon African American and Diasporic music. One of his most popular is Levee Dance, Op. 27, no. 2 (1927) (sometimes labeled as no. 4). It’s for violin and piano and was recorded by Jascha Heifetz, who also played it on his recitals. The work is inspired by the music of dockworkers in the South and the spiritual “Go Down Moses.” 

Bandana Sketches, Op. 12 (1918) is also for violin and piano. It has four movements, each based on a spiritual with original material by Clarence woven with it: No. 1. “Chant” (“Nobody Knows de Trouble I’ve Seen”), No. 2. “Lament” (“I’m Troubled in Mind”), No. 3. “Slave Song” (“Many Thousand Gone”), and No. 4. “Negro Dance” (“Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”). Fritz Kreisler recorded No. 1 “Chant” in 1919 for the Victor label. 

He also wrote an opera, Ouanga! (1932) with librettist and fellow West Virginia Institute teacher John Matheus. White and Matheus visited Haiti for research, hosted by White’s former boss, Harriet Gibbs Marshall, where they crafted a story on the rise and fall of Haiti’s first emperor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines. 

Clarence Cameron White lived a rich, exciting life. Though not without challenges, he made a career as performer, composer, teacher, and administrator. He found a network of folks that did similar work so that they could support each other. And all because he made enough noise that his idol decided to give him a shot. 

Born in France in 1892, Darius Milhaud was a prolific composer, conductor, and teacher who embraced many international influences in his music. He was associated with a group of composers known as “Les Six” (The Six) who were known for their compositions featuring dry and aloof moods as well as everyday music that one could hear on the street corner, at the circus, stadium, school, or local café. During a brief stint as a secretary for the French ambassador of Brazil, Milhaud was exposed to and inspired by Brazilian music styles such as the great Carnaval parades, Samba, and other regional dances. After returning to France, he would continue to synthesize Brazilian-inspired elements into his compositions, publishing these pieces for both solo piano and orchestra.  

      Milhaud’s love affair with jazz sparked during a trip to London in 1920, where he heard a performance by Billy Arnold’s Novelty Jazz Band. He was struck by the freedom of the harmonies and melody lines, as well as their exciting rhythms, observing that “Their constant use of syncopation in the melody was done with such contrapuntal freedom as to create the impression of an almost chaotic improvisation, whereas in fact, it was something remarkably precise.” Spurned by inspiration, Milhaud traveled to Harlem, New York to experience the authentic sounds of Jazz, listening to a variety of different ensembles and making careful notes and observations. A year later, Milhaud penned one of his most famous works; the heavily jazz-inspired la Creation du Monde (Creation of the World), as a commission for the Ballets Suédois.  

      La Creation du Monde is written in 6 continuous parts, inspired by African legends that detail the creation of the world. Jazz-inspired musical features are scattered throughout this piece, including syncopated and off-beat rhythms, improvisatory melody lines, and different instruments weaving in and out as if in conversation. The first movement is mysterious and churning, depicting the world before creation. The second movement introduces nature: insects, birds, plants, and trees with energetic and earthy sounds. In the third movement, the first humans are created to the soundtrack of a rowdy folk-dance, and these humans fall in love in the final two movements, ending the piece with a sweet and quiet kiss.  

      Despite an overall negative and elitist attitude many classical musicians held towards jazz, Milhaud would continue to use jazz elements throughout his compositions, and he held a deep respect for the music style for the rest of his life. After moving to the US during WWII, Milhaud began teaching at multiple institutions, his most famous student being jazz pianist and composer, David Brubeck. Brubeck credits Milhaud with inspiring him to pursue jazz and setting him on the right path, and he was so grateful for his support that he named his first son after him! 

For a recent recital at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, DMA student Molly Stanford performed a piece called “Jupiter’s Moons” by Judith Lang Zaimont. Listen as Mrs. Stanford and I talk about this set of pieces as well as the woman who composed them, a living composer and teacher with a distinct and interesting writing style! 

This musical story–The Ordering of Moses–was composed by R. Nathaniel Dett (1882–1943). He was among the most respected Black composers of the early twentieth century. He taught at major Black colleges like the Hampton Institute; performed as a pianist with big time artists like E. Azalea Hackley; composed over 100 pieces for choir, piano, and voice; and received an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Oberlin, in 1926.

Dett’s The Ordering of Moses may have started as a class project, but the details are a bit fuzzy. He completed it for his master’s thesis in 1932. He would bring it back–longer and more epic–to The Cincinnati May Festival, which premiered in Music Hall in 1937. While The May Festival Choir was segregated (they desegregated in 1956), that didn’t stop them from programming Dett’s oratorio.

The Ordering of Moses is not just about the story of Moses: hidden by his mother in the bulrushes, raised in the house of Pharaoh, designated by God as the savior of the Hebrews, whom he leads out of Egypt to the Promised Land. This story and Moses himself became a symbol of freedom for many African Americans in the nineteenth century. Harriet Tubman, who helped more than 300 people escape slavery, was called “Moses.” Northern states and Canada were seen as “the Promised Land.” Even though Dett was born free to free parents in Canada, he understood how important that was.

Dett did some interviews with the press before the work’s premiere. In a May 7^th interview with The Cincinnati Enquirer, he talked about the connection between Moses’ story in Negro spirituals like “Go Down, Moses” with how it’s told in the Bible:

The similarity of folk text to the words of the Scripture is striking, and the fusion of the two seems natural; moreover, the light which is thrown subsequently on the true meaning of the spiritual is very revealing.

Dett even showed up to one of the performances! In The Cincinnati Post report from May 8th, 1937, journalist May Dearness wrote:

The fourth concert of the May Festival continued to hold the interest of a large audience Friday night and brought down the house when the composer, Dr. Robert Nathaniel Dett, appeared on the stage after the world premiere of his oratorio, “The Ordering of Moses.”

The May Festival recorded The Ordering of Moses with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and James Conlon in Carnegie Hall in 2014. Give R. Nathaniel Dett’s piece a listen. Think about how it not only tells Moses’ story but the many stories of enslaved folks escaping slavery to claim their freedom. 

Molly Stanford, DMA student and soon-to-be graduate at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, joins us today to talk about Clara Schumann. She was a piano child prodigy and one of the greatest virtuosos of her time, influencing many of the great romantic-era composers such as Brahms, Liszt, Paganini, and of course, her husband Robert Schumann. Listen to our conversation to learn more about her music, life, and legacy! 

This may be dating me, but there were some instruments when I was a kid that were just cool. Guitar? Definitely. Jazz double bass. Without a doubt. Oboe? Eh…

Enter Titus Underwood, who isn’t only the boss at oboe but also looks cool while doing it. He grew up surrounded by all kinds of music: classical, religious, jazz, you name it. At first, Titus wanted to play the saxophone like his uncle, but he had second thoughts. His older sister, who played violin, suggested he play the oboe and instead of the stereotypical reaction of a younger brother (“No!”), Titus fell in love with the instrument’s sound and took her advice; he started learning oboe at age eleven.

Titus’ education prepared him for the tough process of joining an orchestra. He studied in the conservatory environment of the Cleveland Institute of Music. He was a student of John Mack (1927–2006), principal oboist of the Cleveland Orchestra from 1965 to 2001. After earning his bachelor’s degree, Titus went to Juilliard, studied with Elaine Douvas (the Met’s principal oboist) and got his master’s degree.

In addition to his primary teachers, Titus also studied with Nathan Hughes and Pedro Diaz of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Frank Rosenwein and Jeffrey Rathbun of the Cleveland Orchestra. Titus also got an artist diploma from The Colburn School in Los Angeles, studying with Allan Vogel, who played with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra from 1972 to 2016.

You may be wondering why a guy who loves to play music spent so much time in school. Why did he get not one, not two, but THREE degrees?! The answer is simple: so he could play! Nowadays, it’s not uncommon for classical musicians to get degrees. If you want a degree where you perform a lot, music schools – conservatories – like CIM and Juilliard are the way to go.

They structure their programs around lessons, concerts, and auditions, prepping students for a career as soloists, orchestra members, chamber musicians, or a mix of all three. This focus has recently been a point of debate. There are only so many orchestral jobs. When you win, you tend to stay in it for 20+ years.

Titus is nearing 10 years in his current post. He joined the Nashville Symphony in 2017, and two years later, he won the post of principal oboist. He’s the first Black musician to hold this position in the history of the Nashville Symphony and one of the few to hold a principal position in a major American orchestra. Titus also teaches nearby–at our local conservatory, University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music–and keeps an active performance schedule as guest principal oboist, guest soloist, and member of Chineke! Orchestra and the Gateways Music Festival.

One more thing: Titus has also made a short film! Directed in collaboration with CSO Nouveau Chamber Player alum and duo kayo co-founder Titilayo Ayangade, A Tale of Two Tails is Titus’ reflection on his experience as a Black man and a classical musician. Titus not only makes the oboe look cool, he shows that it can be as creative and edgy as he needs it to be. If he can do it, you can too!

Many of us are familiar with Dvorak’s “New World Symphony” No. 9 with its sweeping melodies inspired by the rolling, vast landscape of America. He wrote this piece while acting as the director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York, and at this time, American classical music was having a bit of an identity crisis! How could American music set itself apart from the European sound from which it originated from? Dvorak, despite being a Czech composer who had only spent a small amount of time in America, was able to provide an answer with the help of a conservatory student, Harry T. Burleigh.  

Harry Burleigh (1866-1949) was a talented Baritone and Bass player who attended the National Conservatory of Music on a scholarship. This school was founded by a woman named Jeannette Thurber, who opened the doors to both women and black performers, a standout decision for the times. 

To support himself financially, Burleigh worked as a handyman for the mother of famed American composer Edward McDowell. He would frequently sing while he worked, and eventually his singing caught the ear of the conservatory director, Anton Dvorak. Following this encounter, Dvorak would listen to him sing frequently, and he would always perform traditional African American Spirituals. Dvorak would later go on to use the style and character of these melodies in his own compositions, declaring that, “In the [Black American] melodies of America, I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music.” Burleigh would later act as Dvorak’s assistant, and they remained close throughout their time in conservatory.  

Dvorak would later write many articles encouraging American composers to realize the value of Afro-American and Indigenous music traditions. “The future of this country must be founded upon what are called the [Black American] melodies. This must be the real foundation of any serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States,” he wrote. These musical ideas would later go on to inspire many other great American composers such as Gershwin and Copeland. 

After graduating, Burleigh was hired on as a soloist for St. George’s Episcopal Church in New York, which caused a controversy due to it being an all-white church. Despite these protests early on in his appointment, he became close with many members of the church, and retired after 52 years of service. He performed with all the best local vocalists and at multiple civic and church events, and he would also be invited to sing before King Eward VII in England in 1908. 

Burleigh also because a household name as a composer and arranger of art songs. He published several versions of traditional Black American Spirituals, and his advocacy for the art form made spirituals a popular genre for concert singers. He became so popular during the 1910’s and 1920’s that it was rare to hear a vocal recital without a Burleigh spiritual arrangement!  

Adolphus Hailstork, a contemporary American composer, hails from upstate New York and currently resides in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Like so many of our great composers, Hailstork studied with famed composition teacher Nadia Boulenger, and his works have been performed by some of the most prominent ensembles of our day.  

Introduced to the world of music as a young chorister in an Episcopal cathedral boys’ choir, Hailstork’s compositions reflect a rich tapestry of influences, incorporating elements from Western classical music and English choir, as well as Black American music styles such as gospel, jazz, and blues.  

His body of work often references historical and modern-day events related to themes of black liberation, civil rights movements, and the experiences of Black Americans. Notably, his recent composition, “Knee on the Neck,” serves as a tribute to George Floyd and addresses the aftermath of his tragic death. 

Hailstork’s opera, “Rise for Freedom,” narrates the compelling story of John P. Parker, a black man who bought his freedom and became a successful iron foundry owner in Ohio. The story delves into Parker’s involvement in the underground railroad, where he confronts a Kentuckian slave owner, (one of his own customers,) to protect escaped slaves. 

Preferring programmatic music, which draws from real-life experiences, people, and events, Hailstork aims to convey deeper meanings and subjects in his compositions. His choice to explore meaningful, and sometimes disturbing events in American history serves as a call for listeners to engage with and contribute to building a more thoughtful and culturally rich society. 

If you play a woodwind or brass instrument, chances are you’ve played in a wind quintet. And you’ve likely come across the work of Imani Winds. They’ll perform in Cincinnati on March 10th at New Prospect Baptist Church and March 12th at Memorial Hall through Chamber Music Cincinnati.  

Imani Winds was founded in 1997 by flutist and composer Valerie Coleman. She wanted an ensemble dedicated to performing works by underrepresented composers and serving as a model for African Americans and people of color. This mission is reflected in the group’s name: Imani is Swahili for “faith.”  

The original lineup was Coleman on flute, Toyin Spellman-Diaz on oboe, Monica Ellis on bassoon, Mariam Adam on clarinet, and Jeff Scott on French horn. Imani Winds’ current lineup has two original members: Toyin Spellman-Diaz and Monica Ellis, with new members Brandon Patrick George (flute), Mark Cover (clarinet), and Kevin Newton (French horn).  

Their first album, The Classical Underground, was nominated for a GRAMMY in 2006. Two years later, the group established the Legacy Commissioning Project. This expanded their performing mission to include commissioning works by composers of color. Originally slated to commission ten works over five years, it is now in its 16th year with 45 total commissions. Each piece on their Cincy program was written in the last year or two and commissioned through this program. 

One of these pieces is BeLoud, BeLoved, BeLonging (2022) by Andy Akiho. This was inspired by a 2019 protest by inmates of the Metropolitan Detention Center over lack of heat and unsanitary conditions. The work grew into a collaborative project between Akiho and men awaiting trial on Riker’s Island, where it debuted in October 2022. “Andy worked with them to create interlocking rhythms,” Kevin Newton explained in an interview for the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. “It serves as a beautiful capsule for those young men, their hopes, and their fears. We hope it serves as a beautiful monument to them. It’s melodic and rhythmic. He picked chords and set pitches – it’s also through-composed.”  

BeLoud, BeLoved, BeLonging is for wind quintet and steel drum. It has sections that shift between the quintet and solo steel drum. The first section is built on a perky motive. Next is a haunting solo moment for the steel drum, followed by a serious section with a new motive. Another steel drum solo takes center focus, then a quintet section that is more animated. The character grows more determined, even playful. The clarinet launches into a klezmer-inflected solo, which blossoms into a cacophonous, rhythmic texture, evoking the sounds of protest. BeLoud, BeLoved, BeLonging ends abruptly with a punch, a reminder that our progress to justice is not finished and that we need each other to get it done. 

Meet Sheku Kanneh-Mason. A cellist from Great Britain, he travels to different countries every year, playing solo recitals or concerts with orchestras. On April 26-27, Sheku will perform with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (CSO) and serve as the 2024 MAC Music Innovator. If you call the Queen City home, this is a rare opportunity to hear one of the most exciting new performers active today.

Sheku was born in 1999 and grew up in Nottingham, England. He’s one of seven kids, each one a skilled musician (you’ll hear about his older sister, Isata Kanneh-Mason, next month!) Sheku started on violin and switched to cello when he was six. In 2015, he and his siblings competed in Britain’s Got Talent as The Kanneh-Masons and just a year later, Sheku won first place in the BBC’s Young Musician of the Year competition. As of 2024, he’s released six albums, two with his siblings: Muse with Isata and Carnival of the Animals with The Kanneh-Masons.

Classical musicians often pick canonical rep when they record an album, especially for their debut. Doing that allows the soloist to put their unique stamp on the music, showing listeners that they know and can handle the classics.

But Sheku shook it up. His debut album, Inspiration (2018), has several classics, not all of them classical. There’s Dmitri Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1, an arrangement of Jacques Offenbach’s “Jacqueline’s Tears” from Harmonies des bois and Sheku’s arrangement of Bob Marley and The Wailer’s “No Woman, No Cry.” These works hold special significance: Bob Marley is one of his artistic idols; programming Offenbach is his “tribute to” the inspiring impact of English cellist Jacqueline du Pré (1945–1987), and he won the BBC’s Young Musicians Award with his performance of the Shostakovich concerto, which he’ll be playing with the CSO.

A lot of Dmitri Shostakovich’s music sounds pretty and wonky at the same time. He wrote his Cello Concerto No. in E flat major, Op. 107 (1959) for his friend, Mstislav Rostropovich. Rostropovich, who, with du Pré, was one of the most celebrated cellists of the twentieth century, memorized the concerto in four days (!).

The concerto is in four movements instead of three. The first, Allegretto, is built around a pokey melody. Listen to how the woodwinds and strings help the soloist drive the drama. The second, Moderato, is all cantabile (“singing”), contrasting sharply between hopeful and sorrowful. The third movement is Cadenza (attaca); see if you hear any melodies from the previous movements! The last movement, Allegro con moto, has a lot of call and response and interlocking themes. It is furious, animated, and barely slows down. This concerto requires a cellist to pull out the expressive, emotional stops, one of Sheku’s many artistic strengths.

It’s time to meet Julia Perry! Born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1924 and raised in Akron, Ohio, Perry pursued a composition career in the United States and Europe. She got her master’s degree in composition; won two Guggenheim awards; studied with Luigi Dallapiccola, and after a move to Europe, also studied with Nadia Boulanger.  

Perry’s style is a mix of old and new: of a break with the hard tonal rules of last century and the focused experimentalism of her time. Two of her pieces, Stabat Mater (1951) and A Short Piece for Orchestra (1952, revised 1955 & 1965) will be our guide through an update of last week’s question. Instead of “Does it need to sound pretty?” we’re going to ask: “Is it not beautiful because it doesn’t sound pretty?” 

Stabat Mater is one of Perry’s best-known works. Published in 1953, it’s dedicated to her mother and is set for contralto voice and string orchestra or quartet (Perry wrote the vocal part with THE Marian Anderson in mind!). The text comes from a poem of the same name by friar Jacopone da Todi (ca. 1230–1306).  

In the score, Perry includes her English translation underneath da Todi’s Latin text. Stabat Mater, translates to “Stands the Mother” and has ten short movements that explore Mary and “the spectator’s” witnessing of Jesus’ crucifixion. In subject matter and instrumentation, Perry engages with precedents of the oratorio and cantata (check out our posts on Handel’s Messiah and Bonds’ The Ballad of the Brown King). But there are some differences: there is only one soloist instead of two or more and there is no choir. Perry intended this work for the concert stage, not as music in a church service; the tonality she uses is rarely consonant; and there is little to no four-part harmony often used in Christian hymns.  

Why would Perry take this route? Maybe the better question is, why not? The use of tonalities that aren’t “traditional,” don’t sound haunting and unfamiliar because they are. It’s because we’re not used to them. When you study classical music, you usually start with music from the Baroque or Classical era. You develop an ear that associates specific tonalities with certain emotions. And while the tonal character of Stabat Mater makes sense when we think about the subject matter, A Short Piece for Orchestra is not so easy. It’s not a programmatic work; so why does it sound so dismal? 

Let’s try to look at it from another angle. Specifically, how Perry uses specific techniques and elements to create contrast, drama, and resolution. Unlike Shostakovich or Crumb, Perry doesn’t do away with smooth, connecting sounds. She also doesn’t use extended techniques. Instead, she uses motives that lead to new motives that build intensity and create dynamic contrasts. There are moments of motivic repetition; polyphony that isn’t muddied; and harmonic clarity without traditional tonality.   

What we’re hearing in A Short Piece for Orchestra is Perry developing and embracing her compositional voice. A voice that doesn’t always comment on something specific or evoke a story. A voice that shares how you can transform a small idea into a bigger one. A voice that tells us that genres and themes of the past are still relevant today and that the sounds we consider “beautiful” are not always the sounds we consider “pretty.”  

If you study classical music, you’ve probably been told to take the edge out of your sound and make it pretty. There is so much classical music out there that sounds pretty, not only because of the harmonies and melodies but because of how folks are taught to play. But does classical music always need to sound pretty? Does presence of grit, whistles, pops, and harshness in one’s sound always mean poor technique? No! 

If you look at music from the twentieth century, there are a lot of examples where beautiful sound is chucked out the window. Listen to Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 “Leningrad,” (1942) which became a requiem (a Mass for the souls of the dead) for those who were killed in the Nazi siege of the Russian city in 1942. Or his String Quartet No. 8 (1960), who he dedicated “to the victims of fascism and war.” Harsh, even ugly sounds were no longer ignored but embraced to express harsh, ugly times.  

West Virginia composer George Crumb leaned into this, especially in his Black Angels for Electric String Quartet (1970). The first sound you hear is harsh and brittle; totally nails-on-chalkboard annoying. Why would he ask musicians to make such noise?! Well, a few things. Crumb subtitled the work “Friday the Thirteenth, March 1970 (in tempore belli).” In tempore belli is Latin for “in time of war,” which is reference to the United States’ war in Vietnam. Black Angels has thirteen movements divided into three sections: I. Departure, II. Absence, and III. Return, and in Crumbs’ words is “a voyage of the soul.”  

There’s a lot going on in this piece: a commentary on war, and on the isolation of a journey in the afterlife. This is serious, unnerving stuff. So, Crumb doesn’t go for a beautiful, gorgeous sound. He goes with sounds that he feels best express the horror and uncertainty of these subjects.   

Crumb calls for the musicians to use extended techniques, play other instruments, and be amplified. Each musician has at least four other things they have to play. Examples include the violins and violas playing a 6” glass rod, 2 metal thimbles, and a metal pick; violin 1 and cello with a maraca; and the violins with 7 crystal glasses each. Extended techniques are when musicians play their instruments in unorthodox ways. For Black Angels, the quartet members play with their bow on the fingerboard, above their fingers! They also play their instruments with thimbles on their left hand and bow on the “wrong” side of the strings! Add electronic amplification, and the instruments that we think we know sound totally unfamiliar.  

It’s important to remember that folks create music to express a range of emotions and experiences. Not all of them are positive, pretty, or comforting. But it’s also true that sounds that make us uncomfortable aren’t so because they’re expressing something negative. It might be because you’re not used to those sounds. Come back next time for a look at some music that falls in this latter category.  

When you hear “popular music,” what do you think of? Likely, a big name like Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, maybe Elvis Presley, or the Supremes. But in terms of style, big names might be harder to pin down. Classical and jazz music are so much more straight forward, aren’t they? We know exactly what we’re going to hear. Yes, there are different eras and specific styles (see Romantic era, bebop); but at the end of the day, we know what we’re going to hear. Or do we??? 

Let’s go back to Germany in the 1880s. Johannes Brahms is working on a new piece, a “thank you” to the University of Breslau for an honorary doctorate. But it wasn’t his idea. Brahms didn’t like public displays of praise; he’d declined an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University in 1876! When the University of Breslau extended the invitation, Brahms did what anyone would do: he sent a ‘thank you’ note. But his nominators, including his friend Bernhard Scholz, expected a grander “thank you”–a new composition!   

Brahms’ musical “thank you” was the Academic Festival Overture. It’s a common selection for youth and professional symphonies—it’s a nice mix of serious and fun! But do you know what else it is??? It’s an orchestral transformation of German student songs! 

If you were a college student in 19^th century Germany, you’d likely come across these songs in different areas, such as at the pub, at a freshman initiation or at a study group taking a much-needed break. The songs Brahms quotes and develops were very much in the ear of German university students and faculty. The composer himself called the work a “rollicking potpourri of student songs.”  

First up, we have “Wir hatten gebauet ein stattliches Haus” (“We Have Built a Stately House”), which appears in a gorgeous trumpet chorale that grows in intensity. This would have been a little controversial because a student organization that advocated for German unification had taken it up as their anthem. In fact, the premiere of the overture was delayed two weeks out of fear that it would incite demonstrations.  

As you move through the piece, you’ll also hear snippets of “Alles schweige! Jeder Neige” (“Be Silent! Everyone”), which is used in the Landesvater graduation ceremony. You’ll hear Brahms’ quote of the freshman initiation song, “Was kommt dor von der Höh’?” (“What Comes from Afar?”), which sounds really close to “The Farmer in the Dell.” Finally,  “Gaudeamus igitur” (“Let Us Rejoice, Therefore”), set in a contrapuntal texture, serves as the roaring finale for the overture.  

You might see Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture as an anomaly. But let’s think back to some of the music we’ve covered. A violin concerto that evokes a Turkish military band (Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5, third movement). A symphony built on western classical and African American folk tonality (Price’s Symphony No. 3). An opera with pop music and Afro-Cuban instruments (Menefield and Williams’ Fierce). This tells us that just about any stylistic ingredient can go into a classical composition. It’s not always the material you use, but how you treat the material.  

Come back next time as we explore such an example in the realm of jazz.   

Repetition is a funny thing–it can be boring or exciting. It can make you feel like you’re going nowhere or rediscovering something familiar. You can feel all those things and more when you listen to a minimalist piece. But how do you know if something is minimalist or not? 

First, Philip Glass (b. 1937). Whether it’s concert music or a film score, Glass takes a short melody–a motive–and puts it to work. It may be a while before you notice that more instruments have come into the texture; that maybe a new note has been introduced that takes you into a whole new motivic area. But the principle of minimalism is in its name: take something small and repeat it until it becomes new.  

Let’s start with “The Window of Appearances” from his opera, Akhnaten (1983). First, we hear bells and a low note in the brass, then we get a motive in the strings. When Pharoah Akhanaten enters, the texture of the orchestra changes; sometimes it’s more sparse, sometimes the weight of the introduction returns. When Queen Nefertiti and the Mother of Pharoah, Queen Tiye, enter, Glass uses textural difference to stop the aria from feeling static or boring. By repeating the same motives in different contexts, Glass builds and maintains tension as the listener waits for a resolution that is delayed. It keeps us on our toes, curious at what direction the music and the plot will go.  

Another good example of minimalism is in “News!” from Nixon in China (1987) by John Adams (b. 1947). Here, Adams shifts between motivic repetition and the introduction of new melodies. The orchestral texture is cacophonous, finding more stability when President and First Lady Nixon emerge from Air Force One with a quote of “O Say Can You See,” the national anthem of the United States. As the Americans are introduced to First Premier Chou Enlai and other Chinese officials, their vocal lines are through-composed; the minimalist mummer is in the orchestra.  

It is when Nixon breaks into his aria, “News!” that the repetition moves to the foreground. Adams gives Nixon several motives that repeat and tie together to create a melodic line. The tonality is not without cacophony but feels hopeful and positive. But then Nixon’s line becomes more through-composed; it’s the orchestra keeping the rhythmic pulse through minimalist repetition. It’s a balance between the benefits of repeating something until it becomes unfamiliar and allowing a melody to go into totally new directions.  

Like serialism, minimalism became representative of a set group of composers in the late twentieth century. Now, it’s one of several techniques that composers use to create their own unique soundscapes. It’s less about “what school are you?” and more “what do you bring that’s your own?” to the music.  

Over a hundred years ago, there lived a guy named Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951). He was frustrated because Classical music had gotten so big, long, complex, and chromatic that he felt there was nowhere else to go. It was like standing at the edge of a cliff. You couldn’t go back; you couldn’t go forward. How was he to create freely with so few options?  

What Schoenberg felt boxed in by was Western tonality and Romantic era precedents. The rules that determine the order of chords (harmonic progression); the key area you stay within or move to (modulation); and the instruments that go with specific genres (string quartet, symphony orchestra). Classical music had become so big but not as diverse in content and ideas. Chromaticism (moving from E flat to E natural, to F natural, etc.) was very prominent by the start of the twentieth century (thanks Wagner and R. Strauss!). You can only do so much chromaticism before you (and your audience) get tired. So, folks decided to do something about it.  

First was a dude named Josef Matthias Hauer. He developed a new system of composing with the twelve pitches of the Western system in 1919 but his method didn’t really take off. Schoenberg’s from 1923 did, thanks to the adaptation of this technique by his students Anton Webern and Alban Berg (known as the Second Viennese School), and other major composers like Igor Stravinsky and Aaron Copland.  

Schoenberg created what we now consider to be twelve-tone technique or serialism. Instead of “free” atonality, where a composer writes a piece and throws the rules of Western tonality out the window, Schoenberg used an organizing principle called a tone row. A tone row is a specific organization of the twelve pitches that could not be repeated but appear in different orders. It could be a prime row (P), the original order of the pitches. It could be an inverted row (I), the original order upside down. It could be retrograde (R), the original order backwards; or retrograde-inversion (RI), where it’s backwards and upside down!    

The result was music that was spooky, unsettling, electrifying, and in some cases, really short. Webern’s Six Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6 is less than 15 minutes; Schoenberg’s “Nacht” movement from Pierrot Lunaire is less than 3 minutes. By the mid-twentieth century, a lot of mainstream composers like Milton Babbitt, Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky, and Pierre Boulez were using serialist techniques in their works. For some, it was the new stylistic “face” of classical music. But not for everyone.  

Come back next time to hear about minimalism- another style that emerged in the middle of the twentieth century! Tonality was not thrown aside; instead, it was secondary to another important musical feature: rhythmic repetition.  

In the summer of 1933, a symphony was premiered in Chicago’s Symphony Hall. It was written by a woman who’d called the city home for only six years and had been composing since she was four and decided in her mid-30s to be a full-time composer. Her name was Florence B. Price.

Price’s Symphony in E minor premiered that day by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It would be one of four symphonies Price would compose before she died in 1953 and one of three that we have the music and recordings for (the parts and score for the second symphony are still MIA).

When Price wrote her symphonies (the E minor in 1931-32, the C Minor in 1938-40, and the D minor in 1945), some saw the genre as part of the 19^th century “old guard,” a genre that had so many rules that it was stifling. But for some, especially in the United States, were still interested. It still represented the pinnacle of creativity. Shirley Graham, a journalist and composer, wrote in her 1936 article “From Spirituals to Symphonies” for The Etude that Price, William Grant Still, and William Levi Dawson were “the best America had to offer.” To her, their symphonies were the apex of a decades-long journey of Black American creativity, determination, and imagination.

As discussed in the previous post, composers used a minuet-trio or scherzo for their symphony’s third movement. Both forms shared characteristics: they were set in triple meter and ABA form and were short and spritely.

But in her symphonies (even some of her chamber works!), Price doesn’t use a scherzo OR a minuet-trio. She uses Juba. Juba, also known as “pattin’ juba” or “juba dance,” is a music-dance form that developed in enslaved African American communities. It featured body percussion, off-beat rhythmic patterns, and polyphonic textures. These features became part of ragtime and the cakewalk, a satirical music-dance form that mocked plantation owners’ mannerisms and dress.

No one had used a Juba for the third movement of a symphony before. But Price was right in step with Haydn, Beethoven, and others. Juba is a dance form; by the twentieth century, it was indicative of a sly, satirical response to discrimination thanks to juba rhythms used in the cakewalk. In using Juba for the third movements of her symphonies, Price worked with two precedents at the same time (minuet-trio’s dance and the scherzo’s humor). It showed there were still more cool things to do in a symphony!

Dun dun dun DUN! Four of the most recognizable notes in classical music. All thanks to Ludwig van Beethoven and his Symphony No. 5 in C minor. By the time he had passed away in 1827, Beethoven had written nine symphonies. Four of these: No. 3 “Eroica”, No. 5, No. 7, and No. 9 “Choral”, became symbols for human creativity, universal love, and the most awesome thing a classical composer could ever create.

Before Beethoven, symphonies were not nearly as epic in length and concept. Franz Joseph Haydn wrote over a hundred of them, and the forms he used became the standard for other composers. The first movement starts with a slow intro and leads into a more upbeat, serious section. The form of this movement is called sonata form and has three parts: 1) exposition, which features the central theme and secondary theme; 2) development, where the central theme is transformed via new rhythmic patterns and modulations; and 3) recapitulation, where the central theme comes back in the main key. The second movement is often slow and lyrical. The third movement is based on the minuet-trio dance form. It’s short, quick, and less serious. The last movement is typically in rondo form: the main phrase is followed by a new phrase, followed by the main phrase (ABAC, etc.), with a dance quality in compound meter.

Beethoven used those forms in his first symphony. But from his second symphony on, things started to change. First, he replaced the minuet-trio with a scherzo (“little joke”). Second, the timpani becomes more centralized. Third, his symphonies get longer, with some cases of them being written with an individual or specific setting in mind (see “Eroica” and No. 6, “Pastoral”).

Others, especially other German composers, took up Beethoven’s changes. The symphonies of Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, and Anton Bruckner are examples of what happens when other composers take the ideas of another and use them themselves (like Beethoven did with Haydn’s!). A tradition is created; a precedent is established.

By the late nineteenth century, writing a symphony was an indicator of a composer’s technical and artistic skill. Music critics and audiences saw classical music as not only a means of expression but a vehicle of spiritual transcendence, a way to show one’s education and cultivation (which brought with it a host of other problems).

But even with the precedents set and the narrowing of experimentation, folks in Europe and the United States put their unique spins on the symphonic form. Swing by next week for a look at an American symphonist who did just that. 

There are SO many great music scholars out there. So many folks that make it easy for us to access information on music and its history. That’s the cool thing about music scholarship: it doesn’t stay the same. Because there’s always something new to uncover or reinvestigate.  

Take Dr. Mark Clague. He’s a musicologist at the University of Michigan. Dr. Clague has written several books and articles on American music and edited the memoirs of the US Navy’s first Black bandleader, Alton Augustus Adams, Sr. He’s also helped fix something important. You know George Gershwin’s An American in Paris? How it has taxi horns in the percussion section? Turns out that for YEARS, orchestras were tuning those horns wrong. How could this happen?!?!?  

Well, Gershwin, like Beethoven (and many other composers), didn’t have the neatest handwriting. And since Gershwin’s sudden death in 1937, there hasn’t been a lot of scholarly editing of his work. Until Dr. Clague came along. He was hired by Gershwin’s grandnephew Todd and The Gershwin Initiative to oversee the creation of critical editions of Gershwin’s music. As he started work on a critical edition of An American in Paris, Dr. Clague noticed that what was on the page was not what he heard on recordings. Thanks to his work and corrections, we’ll now hear the horns tuned as Gershwin intended.  

Another cool thing about music scholarship is that sometimes you–the scholar–need to be part of the research too. That’s what Dr. Deborah Wong realized. She’s an ethnomusicologist at the University of California, Riverside. And in her book on Japanese American taiko, Louder and Faster, she didn’t just interview taiko players; record performances; and research the history of tradition for more than 10+ years. She was also a taiko player! So, she also interviewed herself, engaging critically with her personal reflections which is a scholarly practice called “autoethnography.”   

There are some scholars who don’t think autoethnography is “rigorous.” But Dr. Wong’s use of autoethnography adds another layer to her study of the complexity, the contradictions, the difficulty, and the personal and communal importance of performing taiko. How can you understand a tradition made by people without knowing the people? How can you understand a tradition without considering how you fit within it all as a performer yourself? Since Dr. Wong embraces the tools she needs to answer these questions, she shows us that some of the best music scholarship embraces the human experience.  

If you love reading about composers, compositions, and music traditions, you’ve likely enjoyed something written by a music scholar. These folks go by many names and use many tools to study all these things. Not all musicological topics are historical, and not all music scholars are musicologists. So today, I want to break down for you the three major disciplines of academic music study people pursue when they want to write about music history and culture: musicology, ethnomusicology, and music theory.

First, let’s discuss ethnomusicology, which is typically the study of non-Western music via transcription and ethnography. Ethnography is a research technique where you go to a specific community or town and live with the residents to learn about the music you’re studying (which often involves writing it down–transcribing!). Then, go back home and write a book or article (or both!) about it. In the beginning, ethnomusicology was dominated by the work and interests of white European and American men. But in the middle of the twentieth century, the field began to diversify, and more ethnomusicologists called for more nuanced analysis of traditions in Africa, Asia, and Indigenous populations. Though not without problems, ethnomusicology is arguably the most diverse of these three fields in terms of topics and scholars.

Music theorists also study a range of traditions and repertoire. But unlike ethnomusicologists, music theorists focus on diving deep into the music itself to understand the construction of styles and traditions. They use music analysis A LOT. They represent their observations through music notation, graphs, and discussion of major musical moments in the body of the text. But studying to be a music theorist doesn’t mean you can’t consider historical, cultural, or political questions, as many of them do just that.

At first, musicology was the study of archival music manuscripts and the preparation of these manuscripts for future scholars to study. Eventually, musicology became the study of music and the lives of composers like Beethoven, Brahms, Liszt, and Wagner. But like all fields, scholars within and outside the field who studied music critically realized this was a small piece of a bigger pie. Now, musicologists don’t study only Western classical music but popular and folk traditions. It’s become less a matter of what you study than how you study it: through archives, music analysis, and reception history.

Together, music theorists, ethnomusicologists, and musicologists have given us books, essays, and articles that help us understand music in society, past and present. Next time, we’ll review profiles of today’s music scholars introducing us to new reps and fixing some facts about the rep we thought we knew.

Fierce (2022)–the opera set in Cincinnati– was written by composer-pianist William Menefield with a libretto by author Sheila Williams. The four characters of the opera: Rumer, Nyomi, Morgan, and Vesta, were inspired by Williams’ conversations with real teenage artists living in the region. The score is not strictly “classical.” Menefield’s self-described “musical salad” features powerful orchestral lines but also Afro-Latin rhythms, gospel, and blues that shift between expressing the characters’ youth and desire for unfettered expression and their moments of uncertainty and conflict as they consider the next stage of their lives.

One of my favorite moments is an aria from Vesta, as she sings about her love for otters. Did you think an opera could have an aria where a character sings about their love of otters? I didn’t; but Williams and Menefield did! “Otters are Wonderful” is quirky, heartfelt, and earnest. A reminder that opera isn’t only about the serious but the fun and goofy too.

However, Omar (2022) is anything but fun. Composed by Rhiannon Giddens (who also did the libretto) and Michael Abels, Omar is based on a real dude: Omar ibn Said, an Islamic scholar born and raised in Senegal, kidnapped during a military battle and sold into slavery in 1807. During his enslavement, he wrote fourteen documents in Arabic, one of which was an autobiography. This document is currently the only Arabic autobiography written by an enslaved person in the United States, challenging standard knowledge of enslaved peoples’ religious traditions, literary practices, and interior lives.

Omar debuted at the famous Spoleto Festival in 2022, in the same city where ibn Said was first enslaved, Charleston, South Carolina (he escaped and was resold to an enslaver in North Carolina). This opera would win the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2023.

What makes Omar interesting is not just its subject matter, but the people who created it: Giddens is a trained classical vocalist who shifted to a career as an old-time music/folk singer and songwriter. Abels is also classically trained, but best known for his film scores (see Get Out and Us). For them, opera was the ideal method to communicate the scope, drama, and power of ibn Said’s story. They didn’t allow assumptions of what opera could or couldn’t do deter them; they believed it could and made it so.

These are just two of many operas that communicate ideas, issues, and experiences of the recent past and present. As opera companies get more daring, we will see the true variety that exists within this art form more often and more frequently. A reminder that any creative practice is not what people tell you it is, but what its creators make of it.

Opera. A small word for a tradition with a long history and a big personality. Maybe you saw a production of Giacomo Puccini’s La Boheme (1896) as a kid. Or maybe your favorite singers were Jessye Norman, Eric Owens, and Renee Fleming. Maybe your favorite film was the Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd parody of Richard Wagner’s opera, “What’s Opera, Doc?” Or maybe you realized that the chef’s song in The Magic School Bus episode where Ms. Frizzle and the kids are almost baked in a cake was George Bizet’s “The Toreador March” from Carmen (1875)!

No matter the scenario, listening to opera puts you in touch with a centuries-old storytelling tradition. Sometimes, these stories are based on real people and experiences: see Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones (2021) or John Adam’s The Death of Klinghoffer (1991). Sometimes, they’re adapted from literature: see Leoš Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen (1923) and Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland (2007). And sometimes, they’re fictional stories commenting on real-life topics: see Raven Chacon and Du Yun’s Sweet Land (2020) or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Magic Flute (1791).

At its heart, opera is about telling a story. But sometimes, not everyone’s story gets told or told well. For example, Bizet’s Carmen leans heavily on negative stereotypes of Romani women, stereotypes Romani people are still fighting against today. In Mozart’s The Magic Flute, the character of Monostatos is untrustworthy and disrespectful to our story’s heroine, Pamina. For more than a century, Monostatos was portrayed as a Moor, a person of African descent living on the Spanish Peninsula. But this role wasn’t performed by a Black singer but by a white singer in blackface. Some opera productions have used blackface and yellowface as recently as 2015. This practice highlights two issues in the performance space that still exist today: 1) lack of diversity in casting and 2) lack of diverse stories big opera companies choose to tell.

It can be disheartening that such a significant storytelling method contains offensive characters. However, recent productions of The Magic Flute reimagine Monostatos as a troll figure, stripping away the original character’s racist and xenophobic aspects. Recent productions of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly center on Cio-Cio San’s self-worth, eager to shed the limits Pinkerton, Puccini, and the audience placed on her.

Opera has been used to tell many different stories by many different people. Not all have received the attention they should. But more people are showing us how adventurous this genre really is.

Keep an eye out for the next post, where we’ll dive into some recent examples that show there is no limit to what can serve as “operatic material” or who can be an opera composer.

Hi, I’m Iman, the new Classics for Kids Intern! I am a flutist, activist, and plant enthusiast. I’ve been playing the flute since I was 10 years old! I am excited to share my passion for music and history with the Classics for Kids community!

After World War I, African Americans began traveling North to seek a better life full of economic and social equality at the end of Slavery. Also known as The Great Migration, over 250,000 African Americans had migrated North. Harlem in New York City had become a popular destination for folks to settle down, be free, and be “unapologetically Black”, after years of being silenced.   

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Renaissance meaning to “make new”, the Harlem Renaissance (1920s-1930s) was the birth and revival of Black contributions! Whether it was in fashion, music, art, or even politics, the goal was for African American artists and activists (persons who push for social change and equity) to regain control over the representation of their culture and their experiences.  

Click the video below to learn more about the Harlem Renaissance

The following video provides more info on the Harlem Renaissance and the impact it had on society: BrainPOP

  The following video provides more info on the Harlem Renaissance and the Impact on Society  

This playlist was created to amplify the Black artists and their contributions to Western Music. This is a living playlist that I will be adding to regularly during my internship with CFK. Check back in for new tunes! 

Some folks joke that Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) wrote the same concerto 200 times. He didn’t; he wrote at least 300, some think as many as 500, though not all of them have survived.

One of Vivaldi’s most famous is The Four Seasons, four concertos for violin, strings, and basso continuo (a supportive part often played by a harpsichord or other keyboard instrument). Each concerto evokes a particular season, accompanied by a sonnet that describes different seasonal +scenarios. We don’t know for sure that Vivaldi wrote them. But since each sonnet is divided into sections that align with each concerto’s three movements, he likely did.

Here are several things to listen for: the alteration between sections where the soloist plays with the orchestra and when the soloist is the star (ritornello form); the fast-slow-fast structure of the concerto; the return of the main melody near the end of the movement (proto-sonata form). These would become core features of the concerto: a classical genre where a solo instrument is supported/in conversation with a larger ensemble, usually an orchestra.

“Spring” (La primavera), Op. 8, RV 269, is in E major, a key signature associated with a bright, happy character. In Allegro, we hear the flutter of bird calls between the soloist and the concertmaster (listen to the violas later on; you may hear a barking dog!). Largo e pianissimo sempre is lyrical and melancholic. The soloist sings the melody with the support of the orchestra. Allegro pastorale sees a return to the triumph of the first movement.

“Summer” (L’estate), Op. 8, RV 315, is set in G minor. Allegro non molto is blistering and fierce like the scorching summer sun. The soloist’s lyricism in the Adagio is offset with intense, repetitive interjections by the orchestra. This movement’s brevity makes it feel more like an interlude, making way for the fury of the Presto.

“Autumn” (L’autunno), Op. 8, RV 293, is relaxed and chill. It is set in another happy key, F major. Allegro gives the soloist a lot of fun passages, moving between lyrical, spritely, and intense. Adagio molto again throws on lyricism and melancholy. But this time, the soloist and orchestra are unified, supporting the contrapuntal motion of the basso continuo. The Allegro is joyful; its dotted rhythms evoke a rustic country dance. After all, autumn is the time of harvest, reaping the rewards of the year, letting loose before the freeze of winter.

“Winter” (L’inverno), Op. 8, RV 297, begins with shivering. We hear it in the opening of Allegro non molto, quiet and creepy. It shifts quickly to a swirling winter wind. Largo is singing and hopeful, the soloist telling a story of warmth by the fire; the orchestra is the rain drip–dropping outside. Soloist and first stand of 1^st violins tread carefully on ice in the Allegro. The sounds are icy and brittle, lilting and delicate, and then a whirling intensity brings the concerto to an end.

Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745–1799), was a virtuoso violinist, composer, conductor, and fencer. His life brought him into contact with many famous people. As the music director of Concert de la Loge Olympique, he commissioned the six “Paris” symphonies of Franz Joseph Haydn and sometimes Queen Marie Antoinette of France would attend his orchestra concerts. Saint-Georges composed operas, concertos, string quartets, sonatas, and symphonies. But since we’re still in concerto land, we’ll discuss his Violin Concerto Op. 5, No. 2 in A major and Op. 7, No. 1 in A major. 

Unlike Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, Saint-Georges didn’t intend for these concertos to have an extra-musical meaning. But that doesn’t make them any less exciting or inventive.  

Saint-Georges’ Violin Concerto Op. 7, No. 1 was published in 1777. The concerto is a good example of music from the Classical era, written for solo violin, string orchestra and basso continuo. Musicologists often see the Classical era as running from 1750–1830. Classical music of this period was defined by the galant style, which prioritized symmetrical phrasing; restrained emotion; and simple textures (solo voice supported by harmony).  

Saint-Georges’ Op. 7, No. 1 concerto is galant style all the way—the melody of I. Allegro moderato is elegant and light with textures that aren’t thick and complex. II. Adagio con espressione is lyrical and a little more emotional, but not too much. Again, the textures are sparse. III. Allegro moderato has the most fire of the movements, with the rhythms, form, and tempo creating a dance-like character.  

Saint-Georges’ Violin Concerto Op. 5, No. 2 was published earlier, in 1775. It also calls for solo violin, string orchestra, and basso continuo. The theme of the. I. Allegro moderato is fun and infectious. The first orchestral section serves as an introduction. When the soloist enters, they’re not here to repeat what was just said but take the material in a new direction. II. Largo is open and emotionally honest. III. Rondeau is charming and energizing, bringing more of the Baroque period fire into the solo and orchestral parts.  

Saint-Georges joined his contemporaries in setting a standard for concertos’ final movements: use fast, energizing rhythms with a dance-like character OR use a pre-existing dance style for the movement (a rondeau is a dance-music form with roots in the Middle Ages and Renaissance). 

Like Vivaldi, Saint-Georges did not always get his due after he passed away. But the last few decades have witnessed an increase in people performing and recording his works. In the next blog post, we’ll look at The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi.  

Franz Schubert’s Der Erlkönig (1815) is told from four perspectives: the narrator, the father, the son, and the Earl King. The repetitive triplet figure in the piano is the main motive, urgent and desperate. The father is racing against time, cradling his sick child. But there is someone else on the road: the Earl King. And he wants to take the child away.  

Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe (1840) is an example of a song cycle, a collection of songs meant to be performed or published as a set. “Dichterliebe” contains 16 lieder, engaging with the positive and negative of falling in love. The first lied, “Im wunderschönen Moat Mai” (“In Beautiful May”), is one of the most popular from this cycle. Its melody is lyrical and aching, calling for a rich timbre from the vocalist and pianist. 

Harry T. Burleigh’s concert spiritual Deep River (1916-17) expresses enslaved peoples’ desire to escape bondage. Burleigh created three versions of the work. Word painting, a technique where musical figures enhance or contrast with the text, is essential here. “Deep River” is set in a low register and opens with downward figures, expressing the deepness of the water. The last version features less harmonic complexity to center the vocal line and remind listeners that this work developed in an oral tradition.  

Florence B. Price completed her song cycle, Four Songs from “The Weary Blues,” in 1941. Each song is set to a poem from Langston Hughes’ “The Weary Blues” (1926), and the most popular of the cycle is her Songs to the Dark Virgin Price dedicated the song to her eldest daughter, Florence Louise. Each stanza is a setting of the three poems (the “songs” of Hughes’ original). Price sets the vocal line low; with each stanza, the vocalist climbs higher, reaching a glimmering high point by the end. The narrator wishes to protect the Dark Virgin: reflecting their brilliance, wrapping them in a garment to hide them; and finally immersing them in the [holy] fire.  

These are just a little taste of the story-telling power of concert spirituals and art songs. Dive in and enjoy! 

But both call for a vocalist and a pianist, so what’s the difference?

Concert spirituals are arrangements of spirituals composed by enslaved African Americans set in a western classical harmonic style. The genre started with the arrangements of Ella Sheppard (1851–1914), pianist, arranger, and assistant conductor of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers. Fun fact: Sheppard studied music in Cincinnati, Ohio s a kid!

As spirituals were initially performed acapella, Sheppard needed to set these pieces to the group’s needs (voices and piano) and their performance style, which blended western classical and African American sacred techniques. In the next century, Harry T. Burleigh (1868–1949) would expand and codify the stylistic standards set forth by Sheppard the Fisk Jubilee Singers, which were then taken up by his contemporaries, like Florence Price (1887–1953) and Margaret Bonds (1913–1972).

Art song refers to vocal repertoire where the text is (typically) a setting of poetry, with original music by the composer. The genre, as we recognize it today, developed in the 19^th century, defined by composers like Robert Schumann (1810–1856), Johannes Brahms (1833–1897), and Franz Schubert (1797–1828), who set poetry by famous German poets like Johann Goethe and Heinrich Heine. (NOTE: another term for German art song you may have seen is “lied,” “lieder” when plural). Burleigh and Price also contributed to American art songs, composing original themes to text by poets like Langston Hughes, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and others.

You’re probably thinking, “this is all good, Dr. Kori. But what are these stylistic standards Burleigh codified? And is there a sonic difference between concert spirituals and art songs?” My next blog post will have a more detailed look at art song and concert spirituals by Schubert, Schumann, Price, and Burleigh.

Margaret and Langston met in Chicago in 1936 and took to each other immediately; three years later, she called New York City her home. Soon, Margaret wasn’t only setting Langston’s published prose to music but asking him to write new stuff for her new music. One of these collaborations was a Christmas cantata, The Ballad of the Brown King. 

The Ballad of the Brown King has nine sections featuring hymns and spirituals set in classical and gospel harmonies (Malcolm J. Merriweather arranged this version). It tells the story of the Magi Balthazaar, the wise African man who traveled to see the baby Jesus. On the surface, cantatas are much like oratorios: a genre with vocalists and orchestral ensembles with religious themes and no costumes or props. They were traditionally written for use in a church service, but by Margaret’s time, they had become stand-alone events.   

The Ballad exists in two versions. The first premiered in 1954, but Margaret decided it needed to be bigger, grander. Remember, 1954 was the year the Supreme Court ruled in Brown vs. Board of Education that segregation was unconstitutional. It was a major civil rights victory, but the fight for equality wasn’t over; Margaret was very aware of that. She asked Langston to write two more poems for her cantata. She dedicated the piece to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This new version premiered in 1960 on TV with Margaret leading the New York City College Orchestra and Theodore Stemp conducting the Westminster Choir of the Church of the Master. One of the cantata’s movements, “Mary Had a Little Baby,” got so popular it was arranged and published in different versions: one for solo voice, another for women’s voices.  

Margaret may have written her cantata for Christmas, but she and Langston were thinking beyond the holiday. They were creating when Black Americans were fighting for their rights: to vote; to hold a steady job; to buy a house where they wanted to live; to live their lives without the threat of violence. Margaret and Langston were reminding us that at one of the significant events in the Christian tradition was an African king adorned in gold and jewels. Black folks were–always had been–a part of the past. And that was no small thing.  

First, we must travel back to the 1700s, to London, England, where George Frideric Handel was flourishing. Born and raised in Germany, George’s career as a composer, conductor, and keyboardist took him to England. He became the 18^th-century equivalent of a rock star there when English audiences loved his in-vogue, Italian-style opera, Rinaldo (1711). In the coming years, he was commissioned by and received a pension from the British king; invested in the very unsavory, highly lucrative slave trading enterprise, Royal African Company; and brought English audiences more Italian-style classical music with his organ concertos, suites for keyboard, and the topic of today, oratorios.  

Oratorios and operas are very similar: they both use vocalists and instrumentalists to tell a story. But unlike operas, oratorios don’t feature costumes or sets, and the stories they tell are usually drawn from religious sources. The oratorio is in three parts, chronicling the prophecy of a messiah by the prophet Isaiah and the life of Jesus, his death and resurrection, and the spreading of his message by the apostle Paul. George’s friend Charles Jennens wrote the story, also known as the libretto, for Messiah. He drew material from the Old Testament of the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer.  

Part I of Messiah aligns with the holidays of Advent and Christmas. Advent signals the start of the church year and features a nearly monthly-long celebration to prepare for Christmas Day. Those that celebrate Advent sometimes perform Messiah, Part I in a sing-a-long and tack on “Hallelujah” at the end. But “Hallelujah” actually closes Part II, which covers the events of Good Friday and Easter Sunday. The “Hallelujah” chorus features text from the Book of Revelation, an intense, apocalyptic vision of the end of days and Jesus’ salvation of humanity. Charles focuses on the hope of this book, and George uses different textures to enhance the tension and excitement: 1) homophony (a central theme with accompaniment); 2) unison (everyone sings the same thing at the same time on the same pitch!); and 3) a fugue, where the central theme enters at different times, creating a polyphonic texture that pulls your attention in all different directions.  

“Hallelujah” from Messiah shows how Christmas celebrations continue to straddle the religious and secular. For some, it celebrates a figure of immense spiritual importance; for many, it symbolizes a time of year when we celebrate hope, community, and caring for each other.  

Beatrice is the main character in a piece by Wynton Marsalis called A Fiddler’s Tale (1998). It’s a retelling of Igor Stravinsky’s L’Historie de soldat (1918). It is also part of an even longer tradition of stories where a person runs into a demon/devil/magic man who offers them something special–if they give up their soul. In some of these stories, like Charlie Daniels’ The Devil Went Down to Georgia; Malindy and Little Devil; and Rumpelstiltskin, the person outwits this demon/devil/magic man and gets something special. But others, like Goethe’s Faust, Stravinsky’s soldier, and Marsalis’s Beatrice, aren’t so lucky. 

Marsalis and his longtime friend Stanley Crouch set A Fiddler’s Tale in a Black Southern folk context, with a small ensemble (violin, double bass, clarinet, bassoon, drum set, cornet, trombone, and narrator). There is just about every musical style you can think of in Marsalis’ A Fiddler’s Tale, slinky blues and jazz combos, dissonant tangos, rags, and waltzes. Marsalis uses classical and American music to build the story’s tension: can you make it big without giving yourself up?   

A Fiddler’s Tale starts with Beatrice and her band playing and walking (Fiddler’s March). She’s a phenomenal fiddler, but she isn’t happy. She wants to be a star; she sure is good enough! This desire makes her the perfect target for Bubba Z. Beals, aka B.Z.B., the Devil. He promises her success equal to her talent (Fiddler’s Soul). Beatrice strikes a deal with the devil and becomes a superstar. Bubba Z. renames her “The Beacon” or “The Beacon with the Bow.” He is fully in control, even telling the narrator to step aside! 

Five years later, Beatrice isn’t shining so brightly. Her music is stale and hollow (Pastorale) and when she returns home, her band rejects her. At her lowest, she meets her idol, the legendary fiddler Uncle Bud. Uncle Bud gives her a drink that reignites her passion and skill and tells her to see a holy man traveling through the South (Happy March). But Bubba Z. is there to “see” the savior, too. Beatrice and the embarrassed narrator trick Bubba Z. into drinking Uncle Bud’s holy water, leading to a reunion with Beatrice and her band (Concert Piece). Her performance heals the holy man (Tango, Waltz, Ragtime) just as Bubba Z. returns, enraged. He demands Beatrice give him Uncle Bud’s violin, but she refuses: he’s gotta “dance [his] way out of this.” (Devil’s Dance). The holy man embraces Beatrice, “the beacon of the spirit and the beacon of the sound.” (Little Chorale) 

But you can’t please this lady. Beatrice feels trapped working with the savior (Big Chorale). It’s keeping her “outside of the big action.” She runs away and finds Uncle Bud, who gives her something to drink. But it’s horrible, nasty stuff — it’s Bubba Z.! In this final act of trickery, the devil comes out on top (The Blues on Top). If there is a lesson in A Fiddler’s Tale, it’s that happiness can be elusive, and you have to give something to get something. But that doesn’t mean a major sacrifice is a right choice–especially if it calls for giving up the thing you loved in the first place.  

As a kid, I loved reading about classical music as much as playing it. But it wasn’t until I got to college and started a research project with Dr. Tammy that I realized the classical music books I read for fun took a lot of research to write. When curious music lovers like me conduct research, we dig into archives and read many books, looking for answers to questions about music and composers. 

Because of what I learned in music classes from professors and musicologists like Dr. Tammy, I could pick up a book and read that Antonio Vivaldi was a red-headed priest-composer who wrote A LOT of concertos, that Samuel Coleridge-Taylor wrote his violin concerto for the American virtuoso Maud Powell; and that Mary Lou Williams adapted her style to every era of 20^th century jazz.   

Now, as a musicologist (and sometimes violinist!) who researches networks and repertoire of Black classical artists, I’ve realized that the classical music you hear or read about doesn’t always highlight or feature the diversity in this art form. I’ll share information and tools so you can learn more about the diversity in classical music. I look forward to our journey together and can’t wait to share my first music post with you later this month!  

At a time when women’s music making was restricted to the home, and they had limited access to the training and performing ensembles that made life as a composer possible, Amy Beach became one of the most acclaimed American composers. She radically shifted the conversation about women and their roles in music, and her music was representative of larger conversations being had about what constituted the “American” sound.

Born in 1867 Amy Beach was only one of a collective of female composers that came to prominence in New England during the last decade of the 19^th century. Helen Hopekirk, Clara Kathleen Rogers, and Margaret Ruthvan Lang. Like these women, Amy Beach showed considerable intellectual and musical ability at a young age. She taught herself to read by age three and by the age of four she was already composing her own melodies. Her family supported her talents, and she began studying piano and harmony formally. Remarkably, Beach never studied composition in a formal way.  She taught herself by studying the orchestral scores of well-known European composers. The result was a well-developed musical voice and a prolific catalog of works by the time of her death in 1944. 

While she was successful as a concert pianist, Beach’s most enduring legacy lies in how she challenged prevailing views about women as composers.  She became the first American woman composer to have her works performed regularly.  In 1896 she made history when her Gaelic Symphony (Symphony in E minor) became the first symphony by a woman composer to be performed by a major orchestra. This composition thrusted Beach in the middle of a larger conversation about the construction and promotion of an “American” sound in classical music that was initiated by Antonin Dvorak in 1892 when he assumed the directorship of the National Conservatory in New York.

Nationalism was an artistic movement that was spreading across Europe as political and geographical lines that defined nationhood were being erected.  American composers had yet to engage fully in this movement in 1892. Incidentally, Dvorak had been associated with the rise of a Hungarian nationalistic style with his adaptation of folk melodies in his works.  But back to Amy Beach! The conversation about an American sound proved to be very complicated as no one singular racial or ethnic identity framed the fullness of American identity.  Beach’s musical and ideological response to Dvorak’s call for the promotion and creation of an “American” nationalistic sound was her Gaelic Symphony. It was the first orchestral work to use Irish folk melodies as its major themes and it represented how Beach directly addressed the tensions that existed between Boston’s Irish American and white, upper-class communities.  Through this composition, Beach validated the experiences and culture of the Irish people at a critical time when the anti-Irish sentiment was high. The work remains one of her best known and most performed works.

Over the next forty-eight years she would write in many different mediums—solo piano works, choral, orchestral, and chamber works. Many of these works were performed regularly, but not Jephthah’s Daughter.

Beach wrote Jephthah’s Daughter during a period of significant achievement and was believed to have been inspired to it by her friend, acclaimed soprano Marcella Craft.  In 1911, following the death of her husband and mother, Amy Beach traveled to Europe with Craft in hopes that she might perform the work.  Afterall both had become highly acclaimed in Europe by that time.  The performance never happened and as both prepared to return to the US because of the impending war, Beach asked friends to transport her scores back with their belongings.  A trunk these scores, including Jephthah’s Daughter was packed in, was seized by the Germans. It was believed to have been lost forever, but in 1928 the trunk was recovered. The following year Beach retrieved her scores, but the work was never performed in her lifetime.  The December 2021 orchestral performance of Jephthah’s Daughter and the continuous programming of her Gaelic Symphony are reminders of Amy Beach’s importance in the early history of classical music in America.  But it also reminds us that women composers and musicians have made considerable contributions to classical music.

“Playing for dogs makes me calm and happy because everybody should get to listen to music. It feels weird in a good way to play flute as a Black person because I’m the only Black player at my school, but I like all my band friends… We just started learning last quarter, but I like ‘Hot Cross Buns,’ ‘Rain Rain Go Away,’ and especially ‘Donkeying Around,’ because you get to make donkey noises. It was nice to play for the dogs because they were excited, like saying ‘YAY, HADDASHA!’ ”

Thanks, Haddasha, and keep practicing—we’re cheering for you, too!

Did you know Cincinnati has a direct connection with the Jubilee Singers and this historic 1871 tour?  Yes, it’s true.  There are strong and important correlations between the history of the Jubilee Singers, the emergence of the spiritual, and the Queen City.  The first points to Cincinnati’s identity as a border city, overlooking the Ohio River, which provided a geographic and ideological barrier between the slave states of the South and freedom in the North. As a major industrial city, Cincinnati was home to a large diverse population that fostered different religious practices, cultural and musical traditions.  By 1829 that population also included over 2,000 Blacks.  Over time the city also embodied the tensions that existed between the pro-slavery sentiment and the abolitionist movement before the Civil War.  Its proximity to the Ohio River made it a major stop on the Underground Railroad.  Enslaved people that crossed the river were assisted by local people including Levi Coffin, John Rankin, and John Parker. The spirituals, songs that were created out of the conversion of enslaved people to Christianity served as the language that linked these abolitionists with escaping slaves. Messages that mapped routes, “captains” (named used for abolitionists) and survival strategies were wrapped into lyrics that drew on the heroes and stories of the Old Testament.

Years later when the Jubilee Singers embarked on this historic tour they followed the path of the Underground Railroad, stopping first in Cincinnati before heading north to Columbus, Oberlin and eventually New York.

The second connection that existed between Cincinnati and the Fisk Jubilee Singers involved singer/arranger/pianist Ella Sheppard (left, 1851-1914). Sheppard served as the rehearsal director, arranger, and vocal coach for the Jubilee Singers, but she also spent her formative years in Cincinnati. She was born on Hermitage plantation outside of Nashville, TN in 1851.  Her father, Simon Sheppard, purchased his freedom through contracted work.  When Ella was around four years old, her father purchased her freedom for $300. But their master would not allow for Ella’s mother, Sarah, to be freed.  She was eventually moved to a plantation in Okolona, Mississippi and was not reunited with her child until years later.

Ella and her father remained in the Nashville area, but he struggled financially, and his debts grew.  Afraid that Ella and new wife Cornelia would be taken by creditors, Simon brought the family to Cincinnati in 1861.  Cincinnati was the sixth largest city in the nation and home to a large black population, which by 1829 was over 2,000.  It was here in the vibrant cultural scene of Cincinnati that Ella developed her skills as a musician, studying piano and voice.

When Simon died of cholera in 1866, Ella supported her family with her musical talent. She played for small functions, and gave music lessons. In time she earned enough money to move back to Nashville to attend the Fisk Free Colored School in hopes of training to be a teacher. 

The Fisk school struggled financially during these early years and the 1871 tour of the Jubilee Singers was initiated as a fundraising campaign.  It ultimately ignited a cultural revolution that illuminated to audiences the lived experiences of enslaved people and the authentic music that developed out of it.  What the Jubilee Singers performed differed vastly from the songs of popular minstrel shows.  Initially they performed a combination of traditional European choral music and a few settings of spirituals, but as it became clear that the latter resonated more strongly with audiences, the Jubilee Singers focused more on the singing of those slave melodies. (Read what Shepperd wrote about these songs here)

The popularity of the group grew and eventually took them to Europe where they sang for Queen Victoria and her court.  She had her court artisans capture the group in a painting that hangs today in Jubilee Hall on the campus of Fisk. If you’re wondering how the tour went?  It was a financial success raising $20,000 for the school.  The Jubilee Singers embarked on several more tours and raised over $150,000.  Ella Sheppard eventually retired from the group and spent her final years as an activist, wife, and mother.  But her influence on American and European music should not be ignored, as they represent one of the earliest examples of a black woman operating in the role of composer and arranger. Sheppard not only sang with the Jubilee Singers, she also transcribed spiritual melodies into notation, and created the arrangements that reflected the influence of Western European classical music.  We cannot talk about the Negro spirituals that are sung today in churches, schools, and communities by people of all different ethnic and cultural identities without reflecting on the early contributions of Ella Sheppard.

Most people identify the spiritual with the sadness and brutality of slavery, but I challenge you to listen to them more deeply.  Spirituals are songs of resistance, that express a sentiment of hope, faith, and persistence, just as much as many of them are sad in nature. More importantly, they serve as an important historical artifact that documents America’s evolving identity.  So, the next time you hear “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”,  “Go Down Moses” or “Wade in the Water,” think about how these songs framed part of Cincinnati’s history as a stop on the Underground Railroad and a major cultural outpost in the decades following the Civil War.

Dr. Tammy

What should be noted early on is that the Hellfighters’ band was not the first time James Reese Europe had worked with Latino musicians.  As early as 1912 bassist and tuba player Rafael Escudero (1891-1970) played in his Clef Club Orchestra and Europe’s Syncopated Society Orchestra also contained several Puerto Rican musicians. So, it was of no surprise to many of Europe’s peers when he decided to recruit musicians from the island to fill out the sound of the Hellfighters’ band.  The eighteen musicians that arrived in New York in 1917 to join the 15^th Regiment were highly skilled and played more than one instrument.  Most started their careers working in bandas muncipales (municipal bands), which were prominent throughout Latin America.  

These groups, like the one pictured in this photo, were modeled after military bands and they played in a style that fused European military practices with local traditions.  With the passage of the Jones-Sharoth Act in 1917, which gave US citizenship to anyone born on the island, thousands of young men registered for the draft under the banner of the U.S. flag.  

Many of the Afro-Puerto Rican musicians that served in the Hellfighters band had strong personal ties that stretched back to childhood.  These relationships as well as their shared lived experiences were important as they navigated language barriers and the racial politics of the American armed services.  These cultural differences were bridged once the music started. 

While many of these musicians were familiar with some North American popular music forms, the regimental band’s diverse repertory also exposed them to more regional forms like black and white hymnody, the blues, and ragtime. The syncopated rhythms of the latter two and the proto jazz compositions the band played were like many of the folk traditions of Afro-Puerto Ricans. The advanced musicianship of musicians like Rafael Hernández (clarinet, left), Rafael Duchesne, José Rosa (tuba), Severino Hernández and their black counterparts were central to the peculiar and hypnotic sound of the Hellfighters’ band.   

After the war, many of these musicians continued to work with Europe performing as a newly formed Hellfighters’ band for a series of post-war concerts. They also participated in the last recording sessions Europe made prior to his death in 1919. It is these recordings that provide up some glimpse and understanding of the radical nature of this group’s sound. But we still have so much to learn.  

The obscurity that surrounds the legacy of many of these musicians is due to many factors.  Some of these musicians returned to Puerto Rico after spending some years in America and focused on popularizing and preserving Latin American dance and music traditions like plena, danza, and jibaro.  Many found it increasingly difficult to navigate the racial tensions that surged following World War I, and either anglicized their names and assumed new identities or integrated into the sanctuary of cultural spaces like Harlem. Those that chose the latter contributed significantly to progression of black musical theater in the 1920s, and jazz through their work with the dance orchestras of black bandleaders like Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington.  So, I invite you to listen to the Europe band’s recording of W.C. Handy’s “Memphis Blues” from 1919 as near the very end of song you will hear a trombonist improvising during the break.  It is believed to be Rafael Hernández, one of the most celebrated of Europe’s Boricua band members.   

Dr. Tammy

Key to the Hellfighters’ musical importance was its bandleader, James Reese Europe (1881-1919, right), who prior to joining the 15^th infantry Regiment of the New York National Guard had emerged as one of America’s most influential and celebrated bandleaders. He was second only to John Philip Sousa in importance.  Europe first came to prominence working with black music theatre productions, but in 1908 he joined a collective of black bandleaders and composers in forming the Clef Club, a black musicians’ union, and orchestra.  In 1912 the group became the first all-black orchestra to perform at Carnegie Hall. 

In the ensuing years, Europe formed several different groups, including the Exclusive Society Orchestra, which performed a diverse repertory consisting of popular songs, rags, marches, musical theatre songs, and classical works for elite audiences like the Vanderbilts, and Astors. In 1913, this group became the first black orchestra to be offered a recording contract and for the next three years, recorded exclusively for the Victor Company. Their recordings foreshadowed the sounds that what would be marketed as jazz by 1919. However, in truth, these recordings were largely orchestral forms of ragtime (“Castle Rag”) and blues (“Memphis Blues’’).  

Europe’s fame also grew from his work with famed dancers Vernon and Irene Castle. His society orchestra provided the soundtrack to the array of dances the Castles popularized during this period. But as the war escalated in Europe, Vernon Castle and James Reese Europe enlisted to join the fight. (Castle was British by birth and joined the Royal Air Force) James Reece Europe was one of a few Black officers that served in the 15^th Regiment from New York, and he served in the machine gun squadron.  His duties also came to include developing a regimental military band. Europe recruited musicians from all over the country and in time expanded to the municipal bands of Puerto Rico. Yes, the Hellfighters consisted of both Black and Afro-Puerto Rican musicians.  This illuminates another important layer to the ethnic and musical history of the group.  More on this in the next blog.  

Where most regimental bands were limited to 28 musicians, the Hellfighters band consisted of 40.  This was due in part to the diverse and difficult repertory that the group played, which required that musicians not only be proficient in reading music, but also in improvisation.  

So why was this group so important? Well, they have often been credited with introducing blues, ragtime, and early jazz to French audiences. We know that their performances were highly acclaimed, and far-reaching. Consider the fact that between February 12 and March 17, 1918, the group traveled over 2,000 miles performing in twenty-five different cities for French civilians and British, French, and American troops. That’s a lot of performances and a lot of movement.

Audiences greeted the group enthusiastically and the French press heralded every performance. The Hellfighters’ band rejoined their unit in March 1918 to fight under the command of the French Army, who subsequently changed their name to the 369^th Regiment.

Although it’s taken 103 years for the 369^th Infantry’s contribution to World War I to be formally recognized, the cultural imprint of the Hellfighters’ band is easily traceable. Their final concert in Paris January 31, 1919 drew a crowd of approximately 50,000 and over the next decade, the syncopated rhythms and “blued” harmonies of the group would find their way into the compositions of a number of European composers (e.g. Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky). The recordings the group made while in Paris and America document the revolutionary nature of their sound. But the lasting imprint of the Hellfighters’ band might be its ability to bridge the divide separating popular and classical music, and American and European culture in the early 20^th century.  Indeed by 1920, the seeds planted by the Hellfighters’ performances in France would explode into a cultural revolution fueled by innovative performances of Josephine Baker, Sidney Bechet, and other black artisans.

Dr. Tammy

Naomi Lewin brings classical music to life through stories of composers’ lives and examples of their work. She researches each show, writes the script and produces the program. After studying music, elementary education, and voice, Naomi worked as an opera singer before becoming a classical music radio announcer.

Most compositions or songs begin with an introduction. It is the way in which a composer, songwriter or musician gets the attention of the listener and establishes an expectation for what is to come. This is my version of a musical introduction. My name is Dr. Tammy L. Kernodle and I’m a musicologist.  I’m also one of the newest members of the Classics for Kids team.

I’m often asked what a musicologist is and what do I do.  Well, that’s not as simple as it might seem.  Most days I teach a range of classes on the history of music at a major university and occasionally I will perform with a small jazz band that I formed a few years ago.  But much of what I do is behind the scenes.  You don’t really see me, but you might read the words I have written or occasionally you might hear my voice on the radio or a podcast. A musicologist is someone who researches, studies, and writes about the history of music. While much of that work focuses on the music of the past, I also study the music that is happening now. There are people who specialize in certain forms of music, kind of like there are different types of doctors. My work focuses a lot on African American musicians, and composers, jazz, gospel, and blues.  But I also work on American composers, women composers, and Western European classical music.

My work takes me into some interesting places like the special archives of libraries, the homes of famous musicians and composers and the venues where music is performed.  I have also worked with some major museums you might know like the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City or the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. I’m often asked how I got into doing this type of work. Well, that’s a long story, but I’ll be brief. It began with me starting piano lessons at the age of 3. I grew up in a musical family where my paternal grandmother played piano and several other instruments, and all my cousins played piano, organ or sang.  I took piano lessons for many years and eventually went to college and majored in music. My intentions were to be a music teacher, but when I discovered I could combine my love for history and music, my life took another direction. When I graduated, I moved to Ohio to attend graduate school and study in the field of musicology. And as they say the rest is history or HERstory.

Each month I will be using this space to talk to you about some of the “hidden figures” and “hidden narratives” of classical music. I promise not all of the conversations will be focused on the historical past as there are some really cool things happening right now as it relates to music. But for now, I just wanted to introduce myself and say Hello! Hola, Bonjour and What’s up? I’m looking forward to sharing what I’ve learned and continue to learn.

Signed,

Dr. Tammy