Through the course of this class we have looked at lots and lots of
different kinds and composers,
lots of different style periods, you know, but
a lot of if we've been looking at dead white guys and that's just
sort of how it is sometimes but we have also looked at some women through the time.
There are plenty of other composers we could have looked at but we can't look at
everything in
one term of course. But I'd like to finish this section of
the Modern Period by looking at an African-American composer who died in
1978.
His name was William Grant Still.
He was an amazing composer. He was born in Mississippi.
His parents were both teachers and they were musicians so he had
that sort of background in his family. But his father died when he was very
young, like only a few months old.
So he was raised by basically a single mother
and they moved to a different place. He was...
he studied the violin and apparently showed great promise as a composer
very early. He went to Oberlin Conservatory of Music which is
associated with Oberlin College and if you know anything about the history of
American education
you would know that Oberlin was one of the first schools that would regularly
admit
both women and black students. So
it's a very progressive kind of school in that respect. The Conservatory
of Music is the music
arm of Oberlin. So William Grant Still went to Oberlin
to study composition. Again he had
a single-parent family and they didn't have a lot of money
but he was so talented that... that people who
taught at the school, people who were famous composers in their own right
actually gave him scholarships. These aren't scholarships that were already
there, you know, this is not like
the, you know, Sam Smith music scholarship that was there.
They came up with the money to support him so he was really fortunate
and we'll assume that his talent was just so recognizable that they
felt they had to do this because it happened not only at Oberlin,
it happened again when he went to the New England Conservatory of Music.
So you've got to imagine that he was just a presence
that people said we've got to help this man to do what he needs to do,
and he did a lot. In fact, his list of accomplishments is so big that I'm going to have to
read it to you. I can't remember all the things that he was the first
to do. He was the first
African-American composer who had one of his symphonies
performed by a major symphony orchestra in the United States.
So he wrote a symphony that was performed by an orchestra in the United States.
That was... he was the first to have that. He was the first
African-American to conduct
a major symphony in the United States. That was in 1936, so that's pretty
advanced.
He was the first African-American to conduct
a symphony, a major symphony, in the deep south.
Now that wasn't until 1955, so there was a pretty good span in there
but still that is a big step even in 1955.
He worked for part of his career he was a commercial musician so he worked on
radio shows playing,
you know, musicals and things, that sort of thing, and he was the first
African-American to conduct a white
Radio Orchestra. These are momentous
sorts of things. He was the first to have an opera
produced by a major opera company in the United States.
We have another African-American composer whose predates
Still and that was Scott Joplin who we think of mostly as a composer
of rags in piano music, who also wrote an opera,
and his was produced but it was not until long after his death. It was like
1970 something before his was produced so
Still was... kind of beat him to the punch on that.
Still was also the first African-American composer to have his
opera performed on television, national television.
So you know these are really significant
kinds of things. He was so highly regarded that he won practically every prize
there is to win
that has to do with composition. And his works
are very different and he has a lot of different kinds of styles.
Part of that is because of his own heritage, so his
ethnic background is Black, and Indian, and Spanish,
and Scottish, and Irish.
So he's got a whole mixture of kinds of cultures that he was familiar with
anyway just from his own family
background. So, as we look at pieces
from William Grant Still, we see a lot of variety in that.
He wrote a symphony that's called the "Afro-American Symphony."
So you might choose to listen to that and and think about
how those influences play out in that particular piece.
The piece that I'd like you to listen to by William Grant Still is called
"Danzas de Panama." This was written in 1953.
So it's... it's like a little suite
of dance-type pieces of
a Panamanian kind of style. So again he's drawing from various cultures.
It's a very modern kind of approach. We now see composers who are writing
music
from a broader range of cultures so it's not like
very European, very American, very whatever.
Stretching out, I mean, Panama's not the first place you think of when you think
of a place to write music about, right?
So, we're gonna listen to that.
As you watch it, I want you to look at some of the things that he does that are very
modern techniques.
One of the things that he does, and this is for string quartet by the way,
he has them playing percussion kinds of things
with their string instruments so he's got them
using the wooden side of their bows to tap on the instruments to create percussive
affects.
We think about Central American, Caribbean kinds of music...
percussion is a really important part. So he's doing some
new things with old instruments. Taking music
from a culture other than one that we normally expect to hear from,
putting it into the string quartet which is a very traditional
sort of ensemble and taking it away from our old sonata cycle,
putting some new kinds of titles on it, bringing together all the things that we've
seen all through this course where we've talked about different kinds of
genres and styles and ensembles, bringing them into something new
and unique and very modern even from
when it was written in 1953, it still has a very modern
feel.
So enjoy William Grant Still's Danzas de Panama!