When the subject of Western or classical music is brought into a conversation certain names are almost always sure to accompany it. It doesn’t take a historian or connoisseur of the arts to recognize composers the likes of Johann Sebastian Bach. Just about any individual on the street knows that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a classical composer. Even a young adult could identify that Ludwig Van Beethoven isn’t the big St. Bernard in the family movie “Beethoven.” What is one thing that these composers have in common besides an extremely brilliant gift for music? None of these composers are a minority, or more specifically, black. If the same people that recognized Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven were asked to name at least one black composer, would they be able to think of even one?
Black composers have actually spanned three centuries and several continents, but are less well known to the general public. Most blacks of the 18th and 19th centuries were enslaved to work as servants or laborers for plantations in parts of Europe, the British colonies, and later, America. However, even during these trying times of suppression, Black composers of Western music played large roles in the advancement of Black’s in today’s society, as well as, made large contributions to music as we know it today.
One of the earliest Black composers was an extraordinary individual by the name of Joseph Boulogne Chevalier de Saint-Georges. Always described as an athlete as well as a violin virtuoso and composer, Saint-Georges led a full and remarkable life. Born near Basse Terre, Guadeloupe in 1739, and moved to Paris around 1749, Saint-George became a fencing pupil of La Boëssière, a master of arms, by the age of 13 (Badley). It was through this training that he would soon be considered one of the finest swordsmen in Europe, giving exhibition matches at Angelo’s Academy and in Brighton before the Prince of Wales (Badley). As many swordsman in that day, Saint-George was naturally drawn to combat. In the summer of 1792, Saint-George formed a corps of 1000 black men known as the Légion Nationale du Midi in order to follow his desire to take part in the Revolution; however, he found little success on the battle field and was relieved of command and sentenced to eighteen months of imprisonment (Badley).
Aside from all the adventures Saint-Georges had as an athlete and master swordsman, he was an accomplished musician and composer. Although not much is known about his musical education, there have been speculations that he received lessons with his fathers’ plantation manager and studied the violin with Jean-Marie Leclair (Badley). In 1772 he made his first public soloist début with Francois Joseph Gossec’s Concert des Amateurs and in 1773 succeeded Gossec as the director and received recognition as one of the finest orchestras in France (Badley). As did many composers, Saint-Georges also attempted composing an opera piece. It was in 1777 that he débuted his first opera Ernestine at the Comédie-Italienne, but found that it didn’t suit him well (Badley). Intent on continuing his passion for music, Saint-Georges founded the Concert de le Loge Olympique around 1781 (Badley). Then in 1797, Saint-Georges directed a new musical organization called the Cercle de l’Harmonie, but only served shortly before he passed away in Paris in June of 1799 (Badley).
Saint-Georges was just one of numerous extraordinary Black composers in a list of many to follow and even the newly independent America wasted no time in starting their own history in of Black composers of Western music. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1792, Frank Johnson was among the earliest American born composers. There is little known about his youth other than he played with the Matthew Black’s band in the late 1810’s and spent some time studying music with Richard Willis, who went on to later direct the West Point military band (“Frank Johnson”). During the 1820’s, Johnson developed relationships with several Philadelphia militia units that helped build his reputation and in 1824 he was commissioned to write the music for the triumphant return of Marquis de Lafayette to Philadelphia and score a revival of The Cataract of the Ganges at Walnut Street Theater (“Frank Johnson”). During the late 1820’s and early 1830’s Johnson contributed much of his time in Philadelphia teaching, playing, composing, and publishing his music and was even given the opportunity to perform his work for the centennial of George Washington’s birth (“Frank Johnson”). Shortly after, in 1837, along with William Appo, Aaron J. R. Connor, Edward Roland, and Francis Seymour, Johnson and his band became the first American musicians to tour Europe (“Frank Johnson”). It was from this international experience that he brought back a musical tradition that has continued it’s way into the twenty-first century, the first American promenade concert in Philadelphia, Christmas 1838 (“Frank Johnson”). It has been suggested by critics that after performances of Johnson’s “Philadelphia Fireman’s Cotillion,” that he was a distant forefather of ragtime and jazz (“Frank Johnson”). Along with being the first formal Black musician to publish sheet music, Frank Johnson has also been credited as a leader of the Philadelphia School of composers, a mentor to numerous successful Black musicians, and one of the most productive early American composers after publishing over two hundred pieces (“Frank Johnson”). After falling ill in March of the same year, Frank Johnson died, April 6, 1844 (“Frank Johnson”).
Several decades after the death of Frank Johnson another Black composer by the name of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor would make his own contributions to Western music. Born in Holborn, England on August 15, 1875, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was a well educated musician. At the age of 15 he became a violin student at the Royal College of Music where, through the support of his first benefactor Colonel Herbert Walters, he was given the opportunity to study composition with Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (Thomas). One of his most famous works was Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast (1898) which was said to have had the popularity in England equal to the works of Handel’s Messiah and Mendelssohn’s Elijah (Thomas). Even before Coleridge-Taylor ever visited the United States his music had great impact on African-Americans. Inspired by his works, the Coleridge-Taylor Choral Society was established in Washington, DC for the purpose of performing his works and it was this society that actually sponsored Coleridge-Taylor’s first visit to the United States (Thomas). Coleridge-Taylor only continued to enhance the pride and admiration felt for him by many African-Americans by his partnership with Paul Laurence Dunbar in several works and his handling of native songs from Africa and the West Indies that preserved their idiosyncratic traits and individuality into an art form that fully infused their fundamental spirit (Thomas). So great was the impact of his work in the United States that he was received by President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House and presented with a baton of cedar, a significant gift because it was made on the estates of the Negro leader Fredrick Douglas (Thomas). Shortly after his death in 1912, two American schools for ‘colored’ children were given his name (Thomas).
Just shortly after the birth of Coleridge-Taylor, another great composer was born. Florence Smith Price, born on April 9, 1877 in Little Rock, Arkansas, was the first African-American woman composer to become nationally recognized (“Pianist and Composer”). A graduate from New England Conservatory of Music in 1906, Florence Smith had a degree in organ music and a teacher’s diploma in piano (“Pianist and Composer”). Florence Smith would become Florence Smith Price after a marriage to Thomas Price. Then, in 1927, due to the intolerable racism in Little Rock, they moved to Chicago where she began to establish herself as a nationally renowned concert pianist and composer (“Pianist and Composer”). One of Price’s most celebrated works was her Symphony in E which won the Wanamaker Music Composition in 1932 and was premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in June of 1933 (“Pianist and Composer”). This marked the first African-American woman to ever have an orchestral work performed by a major American orchestra (“Pianist and Composer”). During her career, Price composed over three hundred works of various styles of music, many of which were recorded by WGN’s radio symphony orchestra (“Pianist and Composer”). In 1953, Florence Price passed away.
During the 1930’s another composer of African-American heritage by the name of William Grant Still began to make his self known around the concert circuit. Although born in Woodville, Mississippi in 1895, Still was raised by his mother and step father in Little Rock, Arkansas (“William Grant”). He attended Wilberforce University (Ohio) as a pre-med student, but could not deny his musical calling. He affiliated himself with W.C. Handy, the “Father of the Blues” and received further instruction from George Whitefield Chadwick and Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse making Still one of few American Composers to succeed without any advanced study or academic teaching career (Borroff). Striving to include the sacred and deeply artistic elements of his African heritage and bring African musical ideals into his music, Still composed the Afro-American Symphony in 1931, which became the first symphony of an African American composer to be performed by an American Orchestra (Borroff; “William Grant”). William Still could have been considered a pioneer for African Americans in concert music compiling a list of firsts to his repertoire. Along with Afro-American Symphony being the first African-American composed piece to be conducted by a major symphony orchestra, Still was also the first African-American composer to have an opera performed by a major opera company (Troubled Island, 1949), and an opera performed on national television (A Bayou Legend, 1981) (“William Grant”). The Afro-American Symphony remained the most popular American composed symphony until 1950, performed in the United States and Europe by thirty-eight different orchestras (Borroff). After composing a considerable body of work, William Grant Still died in 1978.
Even in current times African American composers continue to contribute to Western music. Born in Washington D.C. in 1922, George T. Walker, Jr., has been no stranger to awards for his contributions to the arts. With one of his teachers, Rosario Scalero, of the Curtis Institute of Music having also taught composers Samuel Barber and Gian-Carlo Menotti, Walker was in good company and went on to publish over seventy compositions of various styles to this date (“The Pulitzer”). Walker has received 5 National Endowment for the Arts awards, received numerous fellowship and honorary doctorates, the University of Rochester’s Distinguished Rochester Scholar award, and the D.C. Youth Orchestra’s 1997 Friends Award; however, in 1996, George T. Walker Jr. became the first living African-American to ever receive the Pulitzer Prize in music (“The Pulitzer”).
Black composers from many continents dating well back into the 1700’s have played an instrumental role in the growth and evolution of Western music, adding new style, perception, and techniques that have enhanced the sounds and passion that are found in music compositions of today. Even modern popular styles of music must be traced back to their roots in Western music and the contributions given to them by educated and insuppressible black men and women. In times where the color of their skin made them seem less in others eyes, the power of their music broke free of those chains. Music is a passion of life that reflects upon life and knows no color outside the color of its tone.
Cited works
Badley, Allan. Saint-Georges, Joseph Boulogne Chevalier De Biography. Naxos. 14 Sept. 2007. http://www.naxos.com/composerinfo/1843.htm
Borroff, Edith. Biographical Sketch of William Grant Still. Duke University Libraries. 14 Sept. 2007. http://odyssey.lib.duke.edu/sgo/texts/borroff.html
The Pulitzer Prize in Music: 1943-2002. 11 April 2002. American University Libraries. 14 Sept. 2007. http://www.american.edu/heintze/Pul1.htm
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