“Out of the Silence,” from Seven Traceries, by William Grant Still, performed by Amanda Andrishak
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About the composer and piece
William Grant Still is most well known for becoming, in 1931, the first Black American composer to have a symphony performed by a US orchestra. In this period of his career, which coincided with the Harlem Renaissance, Still’s music synthesized the traditionally Black musical idioms of blues and jazz with classical forms. Yet his career is much more versatile than is often remembered. He performed and arranged in blues bands of the famous W.C. Handy, he worked on Broadway and in the film industry, and he was active in the “ultramodern” circle of Edgard Varese. And for the second half of his career following his 1934 move to Los Angeles, Still synthesized all of these styles in what he termed his “universal” musical language.
Still’s Seven Traceries of 1940 exemplify the latter “universal” part of his career. It was composed for his wife, pianist Verna Arvey. In his efforts to bring fuller representation to Still’s output, music theorist and Still expert Horace Maxile has highlighted the work’s modernistic features and mystical influences. In a spotlight on Maxile’s career, he remarked, “The thing that I’ve learned the most is to not try to put a composer in a vacuum and believe that he or she should sound a certain way in order to be considered an African American composer. There’s a wide array of ways that composers chose to express themselves and not be part of a perceived monolithic expressive voice.”
Amanda plays the fourth movement, “Out of the Silence,” which probably refers to the warm, lush melody that emerges (at 1:50 in her recording) out of the seemingly frozen, static opening. In the liner notes to Mark Boozer’s recording of Still’s complete piano music, the composer’s daughter Judith Anne Still describes each movement as a musical portrait of God. To her, the “seven faces of Divinity” include God as nurturer, teacher, humorist, stern commander, dazzling beauty, enthroned glory, and lighthearted onlooker. Judith also manages William Grant Still Music, which has been instrumental in making Still’s music and archival documents available to the public.
“Barcarolle,” from In the Bottoms, by R. Nathaniel Dett, performed by Erik Wakar
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About the composer and piece
Robert Nathaniel Dett was born in 1882 in Ontario, Canada to a community of formerly enslaved Africans who self-emancipated and settled in the North. He became the first Black American to receive a Bachelor of Music from Oberlin College (where William Grant Still, above, also studied), and he later studied composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Dett made a lasting musical impact through his teaching at many historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), including chairing the music department at Hampton University (at the time called the Hampton Institute). Notable at Hampton was the choir Dett cultivated and directed that specialized in African American sacred music. He was a prolific choral composer and arranger, and also wrote influential essays on the importance of preserving this folk repertoire. And, like Betty Jackson King (Check out King’s Four Seasonal Sketches from last week!), Dett also served as president of the National Association of Negro Musicians (NANM).
The 1913 composition In the Bottoms (subtitled “Characteristic Suite”) is Dett’s most well-known work for piano. Dett said it gives expression to “moods or scenes peculiar to Negro life in the river bottoms of the Southern sections of North America.” In this vein, he compared it to Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony No. 6 in its expressive goals. The barcarolle movement is subtitled “Morning.” Dett decorates a joyful melody with virtuosic runs over a swaying rhythm in the left hand. While the barcarolles of the nineteenth-century Romantics depicted the canals of Venice, here Dett is depicting the Mississippi River: “The rhythmic figure … paints the pleasure of a sunshiny morning on the Father of Waters…. Let your love of the beautiful in Nature permeate the Barcarolle.”
Pianist Clipper Erickson wrote his dissertation on Dett’s piano suites and also has an excellent recording of In the Bottoms. The suite is dedicated to Mr. and Mrs. Fred H. Goff, Cleveland-based philanthropists who helped Dett financially while at Oberlin.
About this week’s performers
Amanda Andrishak is currently a first year Master of Music student studying piano with Professor Evelyne Brancart. Previously, Amanda has pursued studies in Vancouver, where she received her undergraduate degree in piano, as well as in Austria at the Mozarteum Academy. Amanda enjoys playing contemporary musical works and exploring pieces by lesser-known composers. Outside of music, Amanda enjoys going on hikes and spending time with her cat, Cocoa.
Erik Wakar also studies with Evelyne Brancart and is currently a double major in piano performance and mathematics at IU.