Table Of ContentBlack Classical Musicians
and Composers,
1500–2000
AlsoByRodReguezKing-doRset
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and the First Generation of Actors, Playwrights
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Black Classical Musicians
and Composers,
1500–2000
Rodreguez King-dorset
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina
i wish to acknowledge the valuable help of sandra Powlette,
image sales and brand licensing manager at the British
library, for providing me with permission to use many of
the images included in this book.
liBRARyofCongRessCAtAloguing-in-PuBliCAtiondAtA
names: King-dorset, Rodreguez, author.
title: Black classical musicians and composers, 1500–2000 /
Rodreguez King-dorset.
description: Jefferson, north Carolina : Mcfarland & Company,
2019 | includes bibliographical references and index.
identifiers: lCCn 2019015334 | isBn 9781476669762 (paperback :
acid free paper)
♾
subjects: lCsH: Musicians, Black—Biography. | Composers, Black—
Biography. | Music by black composers—History and criticism.
Classification: lCC Ml385 .K558 2019 | ddC 780.92/396 [B] —dc23
lC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019015334
BRitisHliBRARyCAtAloguingdAtAAReAvAilABle
ISBN (print) 978-1-4766-6976-2
ISBN (ebook) 978-1-4766-3570-5
© 2019 Rodreguez King-dorset. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
Front cover image © 2019 Shutterstock
Printed in the united states of America
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
table of Contents
Introduction 1
Background: The Development and Importance
of Black Music London 10
1. John Blanke (1500–1512) 21
2. ignatius sancho (1729–1780) 35
3. Chevalier de saint- georges (1745–1799) 48
4. Joseph emidy (1775–1835) 69
5. george Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower
(1779–1860) 84
6. samuel Coleridge- taylor (1875–1912) 104
7. Rudolph dunbar (1889–1988) 116
8. scott Joplin (1868–1917) 127
9. florence Beatrice Price (1887–1953) 139
10. William grant still (1895–1978) 150
11. Margaret Allison Bonds (1913–1972) 160
12. twentieth-Century African American
Composers of Classical Music
(1900–2000) 169
Bibliography 179
Index 193
v
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introduction
there has been an abundance of knowledge and theory proposed
about black musicians and composers, but very few of the previous
books on the influence of black music mention its impact on classical
music, even though an analysis of black musicians and composers has
been carried out in various books on classical music. this book, then,
is an attempt to redress the balance by examining, through the lens of
black classical music legacy, a range of profiles of the key composers
who have made a valuable contribution to classical music.
in the modern era, we take it for granted that there is a wide gap
between “pop” music and “classical” music. However, this was not
always the case. When german- born english composer george frid-
eric Handel composed his Water Music, to be played at the king’s barge,
he was not composing “classical” music. He was a popular musician of
his day just as much as any contemporary ballad composer. (Handel
composed his jolly Water Musicaround 1717, and it was first performed
on July 17 of that year, after george i requested a concert on the River
thames. the king watched from the royal barge with various dukes
and duchesses as the fifty musicians played nearby. each movement
of the piece is based on a dance style.) the great divide between pop
and classical music started to appear toward the end of the nineteenth
century, when American popular music began to conquer europe.
What was special about this new American music? What made it
different from european popular music? the answer is obvious. Pop-
ular music was America’s first cultural export because it had something
european music did not have: increasing input from black American
culture.
African music developed differently from the european variety. it
1
Introduction
The coloured opera troupe at the Oxford Street Gallery, London (from the
Illustrated London News, November 13, 1858). Engraving, artist unknown.
This group reportedly was a minstrel act performing at the gallery: “These
gentlemen work well together, and appear to equal each other in spirit,
activity, resources, talent, and love of fun. Nothing can be more silly and
absurd than these negro- rhymes, the imperfections of which reckon among
their attractions, a false rhyme taking the rank of a positive beauty. Yet out
of all this nonsense, modulated as it is by the cunning of these minstrels’
art, there somehow rises a humanising influence which gives to an innocent
recreation a positive philanthropic sentiment. This sentiment connects
itself with them as a coloured troupe. With white faces the whole affair
would be intolerable. It is the ebony that gives the due and needful colour
to the monstrosities, the breaches of decorum, the exaggerations of feeling,
and the ‘silly, sooth’ character of the whole implied drama. Some of the
instrumental music is marvellous. Mr. Wile’s military solo on the concertina
commanded tremendous applause” (© British Library Board P.P.7611).
put much greater emphasis on rhythm, whereas european concen-
trated on melody. years later, the black slaves so cruelly brought to
America brought their music with them.
With the abolition of slavery, the fusion of African and european
influences in America created a new kind of music that was not African
and not european—it was new and excitingly different, and it was
uniquely American. this new music took europe by storm; from the
cakewalk to scott Joplin to jazz, europeans lapped it up.
2
Introduction
As european classical music experimented with its own new forms
in the twentieth century, the gap between “pop” and “classical”
widened. Black influence from America triumphed in pop music, and
it has done so to this day. in that sense, black musical culture has had
(and continues to have) an enormous influence on european and
American music.
What has not been so recognized and appreciated is that, gradu-
ally, there has been a slow but steady black influence on classical music
as well. What was remarkable about the twentieth century in the world
of music was the growing divide between popular music and the seri-
ous work of european composers. so much was this the case that
broadsheets in the media actually used a different set of critics for each
category, labeling one “pop” and the other “classical.” this is still the
case today.
While pop music became increasingly widespread and popular
(dominated as it was by African influences, mediated through
Caribbean and American former black slave communities), classical
music seemed to be willfully withdrawing from the popular arena and
becoming steadily more difficult, esoteric and inaccessible. Was there
a connection between these two developments? did those who pre-
ferred classical music come to believe that it was important to differ-
entiate this style from the everyday world of what was “base, common,
and popular”? Certainly the classical world became (or seemed to
become) increasingly snobbish about popular music. Composers who
continued to produce popular work were increasingly thought of as
having “sold out,” and were therefore to be despised, because in clas-
sical music a new renaissance was being established and it had
respectable antecedents.
innovation and experimentation were keys to much of what was
happening. in America, John Cage, with his famous “silent piece,” was
pioneering conceptual music. Karlheinz stockhausen in germany
experimented with the aleatoric principle, approximate notion and
electronic music. in Poland, a group of composers followed on from
the concrete music of edgard varèse, writing what were largely elec-
tronic sounds. elsewhere, a group of composers largely dominated by
igor stravinsky—men like leoš Janáček, Béla Bartók and Benjamin
3
