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Classically Black -- Revisited

Published February 4, 2025 at 12:51 PM CST

Black classical musicians have been composing substantial music for centuries. This February, we shine the spotlight on a score of great composers with roots in Africa.

Robert Nathaniel Dett

Posted February 13, 2025 at 12:00 PM CST

You can listen to Classically Black episodes HERE. You can here full episodes on Ovation at 11am during February. Historical information about each composer airs on Morning Edition at 7:18am and All Things Considered at 5:48pm.

Composer Robert Nathaniel Dett was a native of Drummondville, Ontario, a town founded by slaves who had escaped to Canada. The young Dett started piano at three years and lessons at five. His grandmother introduced him to spirituals, and his mother to Shakespeare, Longfellow, and Tennyson.

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He was the first black American to graduate from the Oberlin Conservatory, where he studied composition and piano, and was introduced to the idea of incorporating spirituals into classical music, such as Antonín Dvorak’s use of American elements in the “New World” Symphony. And he discovered the music of a fellow admirer of Longfellow poems, the Afro-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who also was fascinated by African- and Native-American music.

Dett toured as a concert pianist before embarking on a teaching career. His nearly two decades of work at the Hampton Institute in Virginia included becoming its first black director of music; founding its School of Music; and creating the Internationally-touring Hampton Institute Choir, which specialized in African American sacred music, including Dett's own compositions and arrangements.

Said Dett,“We have this wonderful store of folk music—the melodies of an enslaved people ... But this store will be of no value unless we utilize it… unless our musical architects… fashion from it music which will prove that we, too, have national feelings and characteristics.”

Though already successful, Dett continued to grow: studying at Columbia, Northwestern, Harvard, and with master composition teacher Nadia Boulanger in Paris.

While advising a U.S.O. tour during World War II Dett suffered a fatal heart attack… championing black American music to the end.

If you are interested in hearing this episode: check out our Classically Black — Revisited playlist at Ovation On-Demand.
You can find the playlist HERE

Samuel Coleridge Taylor

Posted February 12, 2025 at 12:00 PM CST

You can listen to Classically Black episodes HERE. You can here full episodes on Ovation at 11am during February. Historical information about each composer airs on Morning Edition at 7:18am and All Things Considered at 5:48pm.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was British, African, and American… as was his music.

Coleridge-Taylor's mother was English, but his father, a medical student, was descended from American slaves freed by the British and evacuated to Nova Scotia at the end of the Revolutionary War. His family then continued to Sierra Leone, established as a free black colony by Britain.

Brought up in south London, the young Samuel showed strong talent on the violin, and his family pooled resources so the 15-year-old could study at the Royal College of Music. He changed his study to composition and was a star pupil of Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. On completion he was appointed professor at the Crystal Palace School of Music.

One of his early works caught the attention of Sir Edward Elgar, who called him "far and away the cleverest fellow going.” On that reputation Coleridge-Taylor was able to have his first oratorio published before it was even performed… his adaptation of part of Longfellow’s “Song of Hiawatha,” Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, was a runaway international hit, described by Sir Hubert Parry as "one of the most remarkable events in modern English musical history."

On its strength two sequels were commissioned, and Coleridge-Taylor embarked on three tours of the U.S., where he became increasingly interested in the idea of integrating African, African-American, and Native American music with classical… the way Brahms and Dvorak did with Hungarian and Bohemian folk music.

The interest was mutual: Coleridge-Taylor was famed in the African-American community. Schools were named for him and a giant chorus, the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Society, was founded in Washington, D.C.

Tragically, Coleridge-Taylor’s bright light burned out early, passing of pneumonia at the age of 37.

If you are interested in hearing this episode: check out our Classically Black — Revisited playlist at Ovation On-Demand.
You can find the playlist HERE

Scott Joplin

Posted February 11, 2025 at 12:00 PM CST

You can listen to Classically Black episodes HERE. You can here full episodes on Ovation at 11am during February. Historical information about each composer airs on Morning Edition at 7:18am and All Things Considered at 5:48pm.

Scott Joplin grew up in a family of railway workers in Texarkana. He learned music from a German Jewish immigrant while starting a vocal quartet and teaching mandolin and guitar. Quitting the railroad, he became an itinerant musician playing red light districts throughout the South, until he took a band to the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Joplin, playing cornet and leading his arrangements of cakewalks, found they were very popular with the Midway crowds.

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The next year Joplin settled in Sedalia, Missouri, playing at black social clubs and teaching (many of those students becoming the next generation of rag composers) until 1899, when his “Maple Leaf Rag" was published. “Maple Leaf” was not only one of the most influential of rags, it also gave Joplin steady royalty income for the rest of his life, and earned him the nickname “King of Ragtime.” He next moved to St. Louis, composing and publishing, as well as presenting his first opera, A Guest of Honor, now lost

Seeking greener pastures, Joplin moved on to New York City to find a producer for a new opera featuring a new kind of hero: a black woman educator. But Treemonisha, lacking backers, was never fully staged in his lifetime. In 1917 he was admitted to an asylum with dementia and died three months later.

After the first World War Joplin’s classically-tinged ragtime would disappear, evolving into several styles of jazz. But over a half century later the King of Ragtime would return in a big way.

Musicologists in the early 1970’s rediscovered Joplin’s works. Treemonisha was finally produced, and a surprise hit recording of his rags led to their prominent use in the Academy Award–winning score to the 1973 movie The Sting, which led to the two-step “The Entertainer” becoming a top ten pop hit. To complete his re-coronation, in 1976 Joplin was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for contributions to American music.

If you are interested in hearing this episode: check out our Classically Black — Revisited playlist at Ovation On-Demand.
You can find the playlist HERE

Henry Thacker Burleigh

Posted February 10, 2025 at 9:54 AM CST

You can listen to Classically Black episodes HERE. You can here full episodes on Ovation at 11am during February. Historical information about each composer airs on Morning Edition at 7:18am and All Things Considered at 5:48pm.

Henry Thacker Burleigh was born in Erie, Pennsylvania in 1866. His grandfather, who taught his grandson to sing traditional spirituals and slave songs, had been born a slave and purchased freedom for his family in 1832.

Young Burleigh worked many jobs… streetlamp lighter, newspaper hawker, printer’s devil, and stewarding aboard steamboats on Lake Erie… before securing a scholarship to attend New York City’s National Conservatory of Music.

The story goes that Burleigh was working his way though school doing odd jobs around the building when the Director… the world-famous Czech composer Antonin Dvorak… heard Henry’s impressive baritone voice singing spirituals in the hallway. Burleigh said: "I sang our songs for him very often, and before he wrote his own themes, he filled himself with the spirit of the old Spirituals." Dvorak in turn said: "In the negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music.”

After Conservatory, Burleigh became a noted concert soloist of art songs and opera arias and, of course, African-American folk songs, even singing for King Edward VII in London.

n 1894 he became a soloist for St. George's Episcopal Church in New York City. His appointment found some opposition at the then all-white church, and the trustee’s vote was close with, of all people, financier J.P. Morgan casting the deciding vote. But the parish soon came to love their first-rate singer, whose career at the church lasted 52 years until his retirement.

As a composer and arranger Burleigh published between two and three hundred original works, and his famous settings of spirituals, including “Deep River” and “Go Down Moses,” were instrumental in popularizing the genre.

Burleigh was also a founding and board member of ASCAP and was the 1917 recipient of the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal for outstanding achievement by an African American.

If you are interested in hearing this episode: check out our Classically Black — Revisited playlist at Ovation On-Demand.
You can find the playlist HERE

Thomas “Blind Tom” Wiggins

Posted February 7, 2025 at 12:00 PM CST

You can listen to Classically Black episodes HERE. You can here full episodes on Ovation at 11am during February. Historical information about each composer airs on Morning Edition at 7:18am and All Things Considered at 5:48pm.

Thomas “Blind Tom” Wiggins was born in 1849 on a Georgia Plantation. Blind from birth, he was sold along with his parents to General James Neil Bethune… "the first [newspaper] editor in the south to openly advocate secession."

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Most likely autistic, the young Wiggins exhibited a talent for sound, including reproducing piano music he heard Bethune's daughters play. By the age of five he was composing. Bethune encouraged all this, giving Wiggins a special room, complete with piano. A neighbor remembered, “He made the piano go for twelve hours out of twenty-four."

Bethune started profiting from Wiggins early on. He hired his slave out, starting at age eight, to a promoter who billed him as "Blind Tom," touring across the country, performing up to four shows a day. A Wiggins recital included part of his memorized repertoire of 7,000 pieces as well as astounding imitations of wildlife sounds and public figures. One witness reported the performance of three pieces of music at once: 'Fisher's Hornpipe' with one hand and 'Yankee Doodle' with the other, all while singing 'Dixie.’

Wiggins earned Bethune up to $100,000 a year… over $3 million today… making Wiggins probably the most highly paid… or should we say “profitable”… musician of the 19th century.

After the Civil War Wiggins was never truly freed. He continued to be indentured by contract to Bethune and then Bethune’s son, who’s accidental death caused custody to fall to an unscrupulous wife of a short marriage. Wiggins continued to tour, eventually on Vaudeville’s Orpheum circuit, until a probable stroke caused partial paralysis. Even so, he continued to play piano at all hours until a final, fatal stroke silenced him in 1908.

In the end neither worldwide fame, nor dozens of published compositions, nor numerous lawsuits were able to free the man some have called “The Last Legal Slave in America.”

If you are interested in hearing this episode: check out our Classically Black — Revisited playlist at Ovation On-Demand.

You can find the playlist HERE

José Silvestre White Lafitte

Posted February 6, 2025 at 12:00 PM CST

You can listen to Classically Black episodes HERE. You can here full episodes on Ovation at 11am during February. Historical information about each composer airs on Morning Edition at 7:18am and All Things Considered at 5:48pm.

José Silvestre White Lafitte, also known as Joseph White, was born in Matanzas, Cuba in 1836, to French and Afro-Cuban parents.

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Taught at first by his father, an amateur violinist, White’s first recital was accompanied by none other than the famed New Orleans pianist and abolitionist Louis Moreau Gottschalk, who happened to be touring Cuba at the time. Gottschalk was so impressed he proceeded to raise money to help send the 18-year-old to Paris for further training.

José White did indeed reach the Paris Conservatory, winning the Prix de Rome in violin, and becoming a French citizen in 1870.

White’s 30 or so compositions for violin, including virtuoso-level etudes and a technically challenging concerto, were chiefly written for himself and his very own Stradivarius… the 1737 ‘Swansong,” so-called because it’s believed to be Stradivari’s last.

He toured the world as a concert artist of the first order. While visiting the Americas White took a detour for over a decade in Brazil, where he served as court musician and Director of the Imperial Conservatory for the Emperor Pedro II in Rio de Janeiro, before returning to Paris for good.

But cosmopolitan as White was, he is still remembered in Cuba… where a music conservatory is named after him, and his beloved miniature La bella Cubana is an unofficial national song.

If you are interested in hearing this episode: check out our Classically Black — Revisited playlist at Ovation On-Demand.

You can find the playlist HERE

Charles Lucien Lambert

Posted February 5, 2025 at 12:00 PM CST

You can listen to Classically Black episodes HERE. You can here full episodes on Ovation at 11am during February. Historical information about each composer airs on Morning Edition at 7:18am and All Things Considered at 5:48pm.

Charles Lucien Lambert was born in New Orleans to a transplanted New Yorker and a free Creole woman of color. The Lamberts were an active musical family in a city where Free people of color constituted a special class, with privileges not available to most free blacks. In fact, Charles’ father Richard conducted the Philharmonic Society… the Crescent City’s first concert orchestra, staffed with both white players and musicians of color.

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Footloose, Lambert would move to France and then, in the 1860s, to Rio de Janeiro, where he became a member of the Brazilian National Institute of Music and operated a piano and music store. He was so associated with French romantic music there that some historians have mistakenly referred to him as a Frenchman.

In 1869 he had a reunion with another famed New Orleans musician, the visiting white French creole Louis Moreau Gottschalk. Lambert and his son helped perform a huge work of Gottschalk's requiring 31 pianos!

As a teacher, Lambert’s legacy lived on in the great Brazilian composer Ernesto Nazareth… and in his own son Lucien-Léon Guillaume Lambert.

Referred to as Lambert Jr. (pictured) he studied in France with Jules Massenet and became a better-known musician and composer than his father. In 1905 he recorded three wax cylinders for the Pathè Company in Portugal… believed to be the first classical music recordings ever made by a performer of African descent.

If you are interested in hearing this episode: check out our Classically Black — Revisited playlist at Ovation On-Demand.

You can find the playlist HERE

Edmond Dédé

Posted February 4, 2025 at 1:32 PM CST

You can listen to Classically Black episodes HERE. You can here full episodes on Ovation at 11am during February. Historical information about each composer airs on Morning Edition at 7:18am and All Things Considered at 5:48pm.

Esmonde Dédé was born in New Orleans in 1827, a member of the fourth generation of a free creole family of a thriving city of music. The Crescent City already boasted symphony orchestras and the Theatre d’Orleans, one of the leading opera houses on the continent for half a century.

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The young Dédé was a violin prodigy who would learn music theory from the New York-born Charles-Richard Lambert, himself part of a New Orleans black classical dynasty.

Dédé worked as a cigar maker to save money to travel to Paris, where he became a student and an auditeur at the Paris Conservatoire.

In the early 1860s, Edmond took a post in Bordeaux to conduct the ballet company at the Grand Théâtre there, where he would also lead bands at the popular cafés in the city.

Dédé continued to compose. His Quasimodo Symphony premiered in 1865 back home in New Orleans, to a large audience of prominent local free people of color and visiting Northern whites.

He returned to New Orleans just once, in 1893, when three benefit concerts were held in his honor, featuring the city’s elite musical innovators, including the teacher of a future musical star… pianist Jelly Roll Morton.

If you are interested in hearing this episode: check out our Classically Black — Revisited playlist at Ovation On-Demand.

You can find the playlist HERE

Chevalier de Saint-Georges

Posted February 4, 2025 at 1:01 PM CST

You can listen to Classically Black episodes HERE. You can here full episodes on Ovation at 11am during February. Historical information about each composer airs on Morning Edition at 7:18am and All Things Considered at 5:48pm.

Violinist, composer, conductor, impresario, swordsman, duelist, cavalry commander, royal bodyguard, revolutionary… le Mozart Noir.

All of the above describes one of the most amazing characters in history… let alone music history… that you may never have heard of. Joseph Bologne, chevalier de Saint-Georges was born in the French-held Caribbean archipelago of Guadeloupe, son of a married French businessman and his Senegalese slave. Sent off to school in France at age seven, and to fencing academy at 13, he studied… and quickly mastered… the science of fencing and the art of the violin. By 20 he was a chevalier… a member of Louis XVI’s bodyguard… and famed composers had written for or dedicated works to him.

Famed as a fencer throughout Europe… he would use that as a diplomatic skill with the likes of the Prince of Wales to argue for the abolition of slavery… he was also renowned in France for his musical skills as a composer: writing quartets, operas, symphonies, and a dozen violin concertos; as a virtuoso; and as a conductor, organizing orchestras and commissioning Haydn’s Paris symphonies.

Beloved by the monarchy, he was a favorite of (and played private duets with) queen Marie-Antoinette. Nevertheless, he was also a hero of the Revolution, commanding the first all-black regiment in Europe, the Legion St.-Georges. He partook in perhaps one last revolutionary adventure (accounts differ) to Haiti, before re-devoting himself to perfecting his artistry on the violin.

If you are interested in hearing this episode: check out our Classically Black — Revisited playlist at Ovation On-Demand.

You can find the playlist HERE