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English Pages 267 [272]
A Conductor
Explores
y
America's Music and
African
Its
American Roots
Maurice Peress
In the negro melodies of America
discover
I
$T-
that
all
needed
is
of music.”
Drawing upon research
a
and noble school
for a great
—Antonin Dvorak
remarkable mix of intensive
and the personal experience of a career
devoted to the music about which Dvorak so presciently spoke,
Maurice
convincing narrative
and
Peress’s lively
treats readers to a rare
and
delightful glimpse behind the scenes of the
burgeoning American school of music and beyond.
In
Dvorak
Duke
to
recounting
the
Ellington Peress begins ,
music’s
formative
Dvorak’s three-year residency
(1892—1895), and Will Marion
would
New
York
Cook and Rubin Goldmark, who become
in turn
Dvorak
of the
his students, in particular
the teachers of Elling-
We
Gershwin, and Copland.
ton,
years:
as director
National Conservatory of Music in
by
famed Chicago World’s
to the
follow Fair of
1893, where he directed a concert of his music for
Bohemian Honor Day.
Peress brings to
light the little-known African
ence
at the Fair: the
American
piano professors, about to
be ragtimers; and the gifted young
Dunbar, Harry
T.
Burleigh,
artists
direc-
part of this story; working with
ducting
the
Bernstein’s
Duke
Elling-
and Beige'
comique,” Queenie Bie\ con-
world
premiere
of Leonard
Mass and reconstructing landmark ;
American concerts Ballet
himself a
is
ton on the “Suite from Black, Brown his “opera
own
Colored Persons Day.
Peress, a distinguished conductor,
and
its
Frederick Douglass, to organize their
gala concert for
Paul
and Cook, who
gathered at the Haitian Pavilion with tor,
pres-
at
which George
Antheil’s
Mecanique George Gershwin’s Rhapsody ,
Digitized by the Internet Archive in
2017 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/dvoraktodukeelliOOpere
Dvorak
to
Duke
Ellington
*
A Conductor Explores America s Music and
Its
African American Roots
Maurice Peress
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 2OO4
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© 2004 by Hold That Tyger, Inc.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198
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No
All rights reserved.
may be
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stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in
reproduced,
any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopving, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Chapter
17
appeared
in different
form
in
Black Music Research journal
Quotes from “Simple Song,” “Agnus Dei,” and “Fraction” from Mass:
and Dancers, by Leonard
Players,
no. 2 (Fall 1993).
A Theatre Piece for Singers,
Bernstein, texts by Leonard Bernstein
used by permission of Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing
13,
and Stephen Schwartz, are
Company LLC,
Publisher.
Quotes from Langston Hughes, “Cross,” from The Wear)' Blues, are used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf,
New York,
N.Y.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Peress,
Maurice.
Dvorak
to
Duke
Ellington
African American roots p.
/
:
a
conductor explores American music and
its
by Maurice Peress.
cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
0-19-509822-6
1.
Music — United States— African American
I.
Title.
M L200 P47 2004 .
780'. 973
— dc2i
2003002793
987654321 Printed in the United States of America
on
acid-free paper
influences.
2.
Peress,
Maurice.
To Lorca,
Paul,
and Anika
I
wrote
this
book
for the
been no conscious plan found
his
and now
I
musically curious with catholic
to
my research. am
feel the
need
to
put
less traveled it
who
paths of American music history
some coherent
all in
There has
a performer, a conductor,
I
way through some
tastes.
order.
I
view black and
African American as culture, not simply as skin color. I
wish to thank those teachers
of music
who
first
unlocked
for
me
the mysteries
— before language and without end — Gerald “Jerry” Cnudde, Her-
schel “Harry” Freistadt, Philip James,
Thanks and passion
also to for
and Martin Bernstein.
my Czech friends who unselfishly shared their knowledge
Antonin Dvorak: author Josef Skvorecky and music scholars
Dr. Jarmil Burghauser and especially Dr. Jitka Slavikova,
me through
Dvorak’s
who
literally
walked
Bohemian homes and haunts and provided me with
pre-
cious copies of holograph letters and manuscripts from his time in America.
Thanks
to several wise
fellow musicians: sky;
and knowledgeable American music scholars and
my lifelong musical brothers,
John Lewis and Howard Brof-
and Dick Hyman, Mark Tucker, Elbe Hisama, Wayne
and, in particular, Reid Badger,
who
middling incarnations and urged I
fered
also wish to
me
Maureen
my
manuscript
in
its
Dean
who
Root,
earliest
and
ever on.
thank Sheldon Meyer of Oxford University Press,
a contract
Buja,
me
read
Shirley,
who
of-
based upon a two-page treatment; and associate editor believed in
my book even
though
it
needed much more
work and who eventually led velous, insightful editor, I
had expert
me
to the book’s
“without
Manuela Kruger, who supplied
editorial
assistance^ well from
daughter, Lorca Miriam Peress,
who between
my
whom” — my
that order gifted
mar-
and more.
and generous
her acting, teaching, and
di-
recting assignments arranged for clearances and vetted the manuscript
through to
my
raw
its
sundry computer program upgrades.
read aloud for the
Acknowledgments
first
time,
finally,
deepest thanks
my ever patient “ear” for new and my forever soulmate.
dear wife, Ellen Waldron Peress,
text,
And
often
Contents
Introduction 1
3
Antonin Dvorak Comes
America
to
2
America and Negro Music
3
Dvorak’s
Symphony From
5
9 the
New World
19
4 The Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893
29
5
The National Conservatory
6
Paul Laurence Dunbar, Clorindy, and “The Talented Tenth”
7
James Reese Europe
8
George Gershwin and African American Music
9
Leonard Bernstein
of Music of America
61
79
10
Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue
11
The Clef Club Concert
12
Will Marion
13
George Antheiks Ballet Mecanique
Cook
41
83
99
115
119
67
14
Bernstein’s
15
Duke
Mass
lyj
Ellington
153 *
Queenie Pie
16
Ellington’s
17
Ellington’s Black
Afterword
Notes
,
161
Brown and Beige
191
201
Selected Discography
241
Selected Bibliography
243
Index
245
171
Art appeals to that part of our being
dependent upon wisdom;
an acquisition
.
which
which
is
is
not
a gift
and not
... to the latent feeling of fellowship with all
living to the
— Joseph
.
to that in ns
creation [which] binds together
and the
.
Conrad
unborn.
.
.
.
the dead to the living
»
Introduction
now have wanted
For some time
what
I
whom
I
learned from I
my
work
as a
to write a
book about American music —
conductor, some of the composers with
shared the exquisite pain and pleasure of a world premiere (Leonard
Bernstein’s
Mass Duke
Morton Feldman’s Rothko
Ellington’s Queenie Pie
Chapel David Amram’s Autobiography for Strings), and what I discovered I
searched and
sifted,
preparing for
which George Gershwin’s Rhapsody
Mecanique were given new
Some might
Brown and
life.
as
unusually broad.
am now pleased to find that am I
Where once
immense
There
is
I
I
have been con-
simply followed
not alone. Other
artists
my muse and
are letting their roots
who are moved many more people
there was a cultural divide between those
by Dvorak and those take
Blue, Ellington’s Black,
consider the range of American music
cerned and involved with
show.
in
re-ereations of historic concerts at
James Reese Europe’s Clef Club orchestra, and George Antheil’s Bal-
Beige, let
my
as
who
dig Ellington,
pleasure from both. These
I
now
find that
names
are not selected at
random.
an unbroken line that connects the Czech master and the American
composer and orchestra leader with one another.
The
first
music
I
knew was Dad’s Arabic
folksongs,
accompaniment of his oud, and Mamma’s Yiddisher of the sweetest purity.
seeing
my
becoming
I
which he sang
liederle,
sung
to the
in a voice
didn’t understand the words. But the experience of
parents away from their endless store- and housekeeping chores, transfixed as they reconnected with their youthful
dreams
in
3
marked
strange fading faraways,
power of music.
versal
and passing
it
on.
I
me
forever.
have spent
my
They introduced me music feeding on
life in
The odd combination
to the unithis
of my parents’ background
power
— my fa-
>
community
ther was from the ancient Jewish
from a small Polish mill town — opened
to
it is
no surprise
that
it
was
be the music of America, the multi-ethnic nation that welcomed them,
wherein I
I
me to the affect of all manner of mu-
Ellington used to say, “beyond category.” So
sic, as
my mother came
of Baghdad;
I
parked
began
my soul.
my professional musical life as a freelance trumpeter and arranger.
played at Bach concerts and on Broadway.
quintet of lovely Players
I
young
harpists,
wrote pop arrangements for a
I
“The Angelaires.” For
arranged Renaissance and baroque music that
my Chamber
we intoned
Brass
in the old
German Turmsonate tradition from atop the tower of Stanford White’s Judson Memorial Church during the Greenwich Village Outdoor Art Show. In the army
wrote dozens of arrangements for big band. Count Basie once read
I
down one
of my originals, “Mad’s Pad. ”
How
beginnings into a symphony conductor
American music has never ceased
to
he welcomed
pointing
me an
me
assistant
evolved from these fragmented
who worked
closely with giants of
amaze me.
Leonard Bernstein made possible in 1961
I
my American music adventures when
into the land of the
conductor with the
symphony
New York Philharmonic.
tinued to work with “Lenny” over the next twenty years.
conducting the world premiere of
Kennedy Center
A
for the
his
Performing
university post gave
me
orchestra by ap-
Mass
for the
The high
I
con-
point was
opening of the John
F.
Arts.
the freedom to pursue
my
later interest, re-
constructing and presenting historical American music concerts from the first
half of the twentieth century, trying to better understand the roots of our
American music. otic relationships
I
uncovered
far
more than
I
anticipated about the symbi-
— Mother would have said “one hand washes the other” — new and fresh many lines led me
between musicians, black and white, out of which was forged “African American” music. As
I
researched these concerts,
a
Antonin Dvorak, who spent the better part of three years (1892-95) in America as the director of the National Conservatory of Music. Among his to
dozen or
so composition students
were two who would become the teachers
of Ellington, Gershwin, and Aaron Copland. vations
and
his radical
The Bohemian
statement that “the future American school would be
based upon the music of the Negro,” and
my conviction
fulfillment of Dvorak’s prediction, inspired this book.
Introduction
master’s obser-
that Ellington
is
the
1
Antonin Dvorak Comes In 100 years
America
will
be the center of music
—Antonin Dvorak, quoted by former
I
It
could have been
half advanced to a far less,
bank
for the
to live
money— $15,000
in Prague. Dvorak’s
but his family enjoyed a comfortable
of his apprentice years,
and
an organist,
violist,
missions for
new works
when he supported
W. Zeckwer
and work
in
life in
his
America.
per year for two years, one-
annual income
at the
time was
Bohemia. The hardships
composing with odd
itinerant piano teacher, rolling in
for the world.
pupil Camille
have always wondered why Dvorak came
America
to
were well
jobs as
With com-
past.
and an active catalog of over ninety com-
positions, including seven operas, eight
(depending
phonies, and dozens of smaller works, Dvorak was
how one counted) sym-
far too
busy
to
accept the
composing chair offered him by the Prague Conservatory. The Dvoraks and their six healthy children,
in Prague.
They
also
aged four
to fourteen, lived in a sizable
apartment
enjoyed their cherished country house, Vysoka, a con-
verted farm cottage with an apple orchard and pigeon coops set in gentle hills
on the No.
I
estate of Mrs. Dvorak’s brother-in-law.
don’t think that
It
money
Count Vaclav (Kunic) Kaunitz.
alone induced Dvorak to come.
could have been wanderlust, the pleasures of travel. Unlike Johannes
Brahms, Dvorak’s close friend and mutual admirer, who, “haunted by visions of seasickness,” ate
1
wouldn’t
travel to
England
from Cambridge University, or Piotr
to receive
Ilyich Tchaikovsky,
America
for twenty-five days
cess ...
was racked with homesickness and with
I
and couldn’t wait
back home”), 2 Dvorak came
to
an honorary doctor-
to
who came
to
escape (“Despite [my] sucall
my soul
enjoy touring. Between the
craved to fall
come
of 1884 and
5
the spring of 1891 he crisscrossed the English channel nine times to direct
concerts of his music in London, Birmingham, and other major cities his proficiency in English. 4
which explains
secutive years in for a third.
The
America and,
Atlantic was
after a
Dvorak agreed
summer
—
spend two con-
to
break in Bohemia, returned
no English Channel. This was more
like
emi-
grating. It
could have been
for love.
Dvorak might have needed distance be-
tween himself and Countess Josefina (Kunicova) Kaunitzova, requited, love. Like
his
Mozart before him, Dvorak married the
woman who had once captured his heart. And there who say he never quite got over this passion, blow
is
first,
sister
un-
of the
reason to believe those
else to explain Dvorak’s
last-minute revision of his Cello Concerto, the crowning glory of his Ameri-
can works, on the occasion of Josefina’s death
in 1895?
coda, working in a song of his she admired, “Leave
cannot comprehend
this ecstasy
Dvorak expanded the
Me Alone
with which love has
.
.
.
me”
filled
You
really
(opus
82).
The song had provided the theme for the second movement, but this time Dvorak adds a new countermelody for the solo cello, which one perceptive Dvorak scholar has
identified as another of Josefina’s favorites (from the final
duet of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin ), conjuring up another emotionally significant text: 4
Finally,
convictions
me
your
“Happiness was so easy
could have been
it
made America
tired,
your poor,
/
to reach,
politics.
it
was so close.”
Dvorak’s strongly held humanist
particularly attractive.
Its
welcome
Your huddled masses yearning
to
call,
“Give
breathe
free,”"
5
had already beckoned tens of thousands of his Czech-speaking countrymen to
emigrate to the United States. Dvorak and his folk-inspired music were
Bohemia and Moravia
closely identified with the national struggle to free
from the domination, cultural
Empire,
as well as political, of the
Austro-Hungarian
he inherited from the father of “Czechish” music, Bedfich
a role
Smetana. Indeed,
it
was Dvorak’s nationalist credentials that attracted
Jeanette Thurber, founder of the National Conservatory of ica, to hire
him
as their
new
director, for at the top of her
Music of Amer-
agenda was the
es-
tablishment of an American school of composers. Dvorak’s influence on American music and musicians his
work
at
is
evidenced by
the conservatory, by the widespread news coverage his novel ideas
attracted,
and by the distinguished and ongoing teacher-student legacy he
initiated.
Correspondingly, the impact of the
enormous.
remain
He produced
his best
New World
a flurry of “American” works,
known and
loved: the
Symphony
in
on Dvorak was
among them
E Minor From (
four that the
New
World), the Humoresques, the “American” String Quartet in A, and the Cello
Concerto. 6
Dvorak 6
to
Duke
Ellington
Be
it
money, wanderlust,
love, or politics;
whatever the combination of
causes that drew Dvorak to American shores, one of the most significant cul-
American
tural
exchanges
in
wife,
Anna, and
their
on September
Hoboken,
history
was about
to
two oldest children boarded the
17, 1892,
when Dvorak, his SS Saale in Bremen
begin
and, after nine stormy days, debarked onto a pier in
New Jersey.
Antonin Dvorak
Comes
to
America
7
*-
2
America and Negro Music In the Negro melodies of America for a great
I
discover
that
all
is
needed
and noble school of music. They are Pathetic,
tender, passionate, melancholy, solemn, religious, bold, merry,
gay or what you
will. It
purpose. There
is
that
is
music
that suits itself to
any
mood
or
nothing in the whole range of composition
cannot be supplied with themes from
this source.
American musician understands these tunes and they
The move
sentiment in him.
— Antonin
Dvorak, New York Herald May ,
Dvorak’s famous
most important
announcement
appraisal,
and they move sentiment
would
later
is
21,
1893
often foreshortened, omitting perhaps his
“The American musician understands these tunes in
him” — an acute observation
find a parallel in “the weird
few years
that only a
and intoxicating
effect”
on
listeners
of the Scott Joplin rags, a desired effect noted by the composer himself.
1
Narratives about the infectious peculiarities of African-rooted music
appear throughout American
World
fell
ago by
my old German-born
We
under
its
history.
Even the
point brought
spell, a
home
gigue. Sachs,
me
who
suites,
among them
almost a half century
in seventeenth-
the allemande, courante, and
took great satisfaction in upending assumptions, surprised
chaconne could be traced back
Creole/African zarabanda
,
a
known
as the
sarabande and
to Africa via sixteenth-century
Spain and the Caribbean. According
dances of
to Sachs, the “lewd, lascivious”
dance so beguiling
church, metamorphosed over time into the slow,
more than
New
musicology professor, Kurt Sachs.
us with his discoveries that the courtly dances
New
to
were studying the origins of the dances found
century European classical
the
earliest settlers of the
it
was outlawed by the
stately sarabande.
the sarabanda,” the African-derived chacona also ,
But “even
known
as the
chacona mulata was sensuous and wild, the “most passionate and unbridled ,
of all dances.” 2 Sachs’s deductions were stored in
my
youthful jazzer’s
memory
bank.
9
Now that am I
and
trying to tie things together, searching for ever-larger
continuities,
I
wonder
if
the ecstatic zarabanda the ,
*
themes
Negro melodies
that
#
caught Dvorak’s attention, and Joplin’s/’weird and intoxicating” rags share
some
extraordinary “affect”
rists— that spans time
music history— the
I
borrow
a useful
term from baroque theo-
and distance. Are the main themes of America’s black
camp
slave gatherings,
bilees— connected by some For a time,
— to
common
meetings, minstrelsy, and
ju-
thread?
found myself entrapped
in historical quicksand,
drawn ever
deeper into questions about America’s black music history before Dvorak
came on the scene. And from what I have learned, and from everything know as a performer, the answer to my question is yes. Place Congo in old New Orleans (present-day Beauregard Square) was known for its Sunday afternoon slave gatherings “when not less than two or three thousand people would congregate to see the dusky dancers,” who repI
resented different African tribes: “Kraels, Minahs,
Congos and Mandringas,
Gangas, Hiboas and Fulas.” 3 America’s schalk,
first
said to
is
internationally celebrated musician, Louis
have witnessed these dances
as a boy,
and
it
Moreau was
his
Gott-
“Bam-
boula, danse de negres” (1846) that established his early reputation as a liant pianist
Woman
contains a “Place
Even
it
Congo”
earlier slave gatherings
England. In
when
and composer. Ellington’s dramatic narration
New York’s
was known
A Drum
were commonly held throughout after the
as Potter’s Field, “the Blacks
“camp meetings,” during
New
[danced] joyful above, while
than one thousand of both sexes, divided into numerous
In
a
Revolutionary War,
the sleeping dead reposed below. In that held could be seen at once
own
Is
section.
Washington Square,
ing and singing, each in their
bril-
little
more
squads, danc-
tongue.” 4
the religious revival
movement
of the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Negro congregants “instantly
formed
a
superb choir.” They created their
Testament stories, “singing tune
hymn
books.”
after
tune
own
versions of
— scarce one of which were in our
They could even be heard doing
the Ring Shout in their tents,
slapping their thighs and shuffling in rhythm. 3 For religionists, these
there were those
hymns and Old
many
of their white co-
Africanized Christian expressions were too darn hot. Yet
who found
the music irresistible.
A remarkable article about spirituals and shouts sung by black Civil War soldiers
appeared in the Atlantic Monthly
white army ister,
officer,
member
to
Duke
June 1867.
It
was written by
a
Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a Unitarian min-
of the Secret Six (a group of Bostonians
and financial support
Dvorak
in
for
Ellington
John Brown’s
raid
on
who
provided moral
Flarper’s Ferry),
and Flarvard
gentleman. Higginson describes the music he encountered d
hirty-first
South Carolina volunteers, the
mustered into national service
first
in the Civil
when he
led the
regiment of freed slaves
War. 6 Recalling that
Sir
Scott had collected Scottish ballads “from the lips of ancient crones,
be
to
Walter ”
7
Hig-
ginson found himself
brought into the midst of a kindred world of unwritten songs.
I
had
for
many years heard of— “Negro Spirituals,” — could now gather on their own soil these strange plants, which had before seen as in museums alone. Often in the starlit evening, entering the camp — [I I
I
have
silently
approached some glimmering
fire,
|
round which the
dusky figures moved in the rhythmical barbaric dance the Negroes call a “shout,”
chanting, often harshly, but always in the most perfect
time,
some monotonous
best
could,
I
Writing
— perhaps with my hand
— the words of the song, like
refrain.
some captured
I
in the darkness, as
in the safe covert of
have afterwards carried
bird or insect,
and then
after
to
it
my pocket,
my tent,
examination, put
by. 8
it
Higginson’s article included nineteen song Minstrelsy, the ersatz
young music
director in
one afternoon
texts, alas,
Negro entertainment
well before the Civil War, crossed
office
down
Corpus
my
that swept across the nation
path in the early 1960s when, as a
Christi, Texas,
to find a minstrel
not the music.
I
arrived at the
symphony
troupe rehearsing in “my” auditorium!
The show was a mostly amateur affair sponsored by the local Lions Club. Added to the blackface characters, insulting race jokes, and corny banjo tunes were equally offensive parodies of Jewish, figures. Dressed in long black
gabardine coats, with paste-on hook noses and side locks, they shrugged and
whined
as the rest of the
their tambourines.
Over time
I
I
cork-blacked cast
whooped and
hollered and rattled
was mortified. 9
have
come
sage through minstrelsy, the
to
understand that we cannot expunge our pas-
dominant American entertainment vehicle of
the nineteenth century. Black social historians such as
begun
Mel Watkins have
beneath the stereotypes, the cross-dressing, and the ludicrous
to dig
“cork” masks, dissecting the humor, the social satire, and the banjo-fiddle-
and-bones music, the better
For
of
all
its
to
understand our American
as
its
was profound,
10
contorted cartooning, minstrelsy played an enormous
part in the process that brought
Americans
past.
America
own. Furthermore,
its
for black entertainers
to
embrace the music of African
impact on black music and musicians
would ultimately reclaim
their birth-
right.
America and Negro Music 11
Several “authentic” all-black minstrel troupes advertising themselves as “the real thing” arose in the
last
quarter of the nineteenth century.
They
el-
t
evated the form, twisting the parody back on
meanwhile finding
African American roots,
com-
in minstrelsy a vehicle for displaying their skills as
bandsmen,
posers, violinists,
its
and dancers, the whole now
actors, singers,
For the finished,
ried to the highest professional standards. 11
car-
classically
trained black musician, such as the violin teacher of David
Mannes, John
Thomas Douglas
game
And, irony of that African
“Black,
(1847-1886), black minstrels were the only
American performers wore
Brown and
Yes,
mask became
ironies, the cork-black
it
in town.
form
so intrinsic to the
on stage
as well. In his
poem
Beige,” Ellington celebrates the end of black minstrelsy.
Harlem!
Land of valiant youth,
makeup from your
You've wiped the
And shed your borrowed
face,
spangles.
You’ve donned the uniform of truth. 12
Besides Corpus Christi, past in
the
unexpected places:
poem
I
have
in a
across vestiges of the black minstrel
photo of James Reese Europe’s Clef Club, in
of Ellington’s quoted above, and in an interview with Eubie Blake.
In the late 1970s
did an on-camera interview with Eubie Blake in his
I
comfortably furnished brownstone
was
come
for a television
home
show I dreamed up
in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
for
my orchestra, the
Kansas City Phil-
harmonic, about the influence of ragtime on symphonic music. n the
show “Twelfth
Street Rag,” after the familiar song that took
what was once Kansas Eubie Blake was
alert,
terview ended and
thought.
charming, and
we were packing
“Remember,” he
tickler extended, “I It
City’s tenderloin strip.
took
We
who came
time
past ninety at the time,
up, Eubie called
looking
me
full in
me over. He had a
all,
talking about ragtime.
out of minstrelsy in the
new
all-black
what seemed
artists
late
14
1890s and
who appeared
Perhaps remi-
moved smoothly
into
Broadway musicals, which, more often
wear cork. The most celebrated of these
Williams,
a gra-
he worked with, including
than not, retained minstrel “cakewalks” and “walk arounds.” to
final
the face, that long piano
to realize the significance of
were, after
the ragtime era via the
ued
name from
as always, smartly dressed. After the in-
niscing brought Blake back to the old-time several
its
We called
never wore cork!”
me some
tuitous remark.
said,
Well
It
Many
transitional figures
in blackface as late as 1919,
when he was
contin-
was Bert
a star of the
Ziegfeld Follies.
The high
Dvofak 12
to
Duke
point of Eubie Blake’s career
Ellington
came when he and
his song-
writing partner. Noble Sissle, helped launch the second wave of all-black
Broadway musicals with
tured the jazz-age hit “I’m Just Wild about Harry.”
generation of the
cork-wearing
“New Negro” and such
artists
Along
their electrifying Shuffle
the
It
was
(1921),
which
fea-
this generation, the
Harlem Renaissance, not
that of
Williams, that Eubie Blake wanted to be
as Bert
identified with. If
ever there was a
Moses of African American music, one who
handedly led black musicians and
and
sionalism,
pride,
it
their
music
single-
into the land of respect, profes-
was James Reese Europe. Europe formed a cooperative
brotherhood of Negro musicians, setting fee standards where there had been chaos and hurtful competition. His Clef Club Orchestra was the most celebrated large-scale
would cut
Negro ensemble of its time. Jim Europe reads
like a
man who
wide swath between himself and the degradations of minstrelsy.
a
The most
familiar
image of Europe shows him standing with great
nity, the central figure in a
marvelous panoramic photograph taken on the
occasion of his Clef Club’s Monster Melange and Dancefest, held on 11,
the
1911, in
fying glass:
room
floor
Manhattan Casino.
it is
me
for
a
dig-
I
have gone over
primary source. Europe
is
this
May
photo with a magni-
surrounded on the
by a huge string orchestra of almost sixty players. In addition
ball-
to the
usual violins, cellos, and basses there are thirty-five strumming instruments guitars,
harp guitars, banjos, and mandolins. There are also ten
gle trap
drummer, and one
Behind room,
sits
brasses. 16
this
flute.
are
all in
formal
pianists, a sin-
attire. 15
impressive array, on the raised orchestra stage of the ball-
which includes the usual woodwinds and
vet another band,
They
They
—
are fronted by a thirteen-man minstrel line in white trousers
and black
coats; six
blackface.
Among
hold banjos, others hold tambourines, and several are in
the “tambos” was
Henry
S.
Creamer, composer of “After
“Way Down Yonder in New Orleans.” The Interlocutor is Henry Troy, a lyricist and book writer who wrote “Gin House Blues” to music by Fletcher Henderson. William Tyers, among the most learned of Eu-
You’ve Gone” and
rope’s musical colleagues, directs the minstrel band.
about
to cut off the
strelsy.
A known
He
generation of musicians
who
1-
Jim Europe was not
carried the torch from min-
simply brought them along.
highbrow counterpart as Jubilees
to black minstrelsy,
Negro vocal ensembles
were established long before Dvorak
arrived.
The most
celebrated of these was the Fisk Jubilee Singers, formed in 1871. Elegant in dress
and manner,
this
group of nine singers and
a pianist, all
former
slaves,
presented their slave songs and spirituals in churches and on concert stages
How apt
up and down the East Coast. 18 the
Hebrew word
for the ram’s
is
the epithet “Jubilee,” taken from
horn of celebration and the symbolic number
America and Negro Music
Society.
Historical
Maryland
of
Courtesy
rear.
the
in
stage
the
on
band
minstrel
blackface
the
Note
1911.
n,
May
fifty.
On the Jubilee — the
Testament mandates that slaves be freed and that I
mammoth
Jubilee, a
19
fields lie fallow.
he Fisk Jubilee Singers made an enormous impression
World Peace
— the Old
Sabbath of Sabbaths, forty-nine plus one
the second
at
assemblage held in Boston
June 1872.
in
Others performing included the Johann Strauss orchestra, the Grenadier
Among
Guards from England, and the French Garde Republicaine.
American musicians were two Negro Lewis. 20
Henry
violinists,
Williams and
F.
A twenty-five-foot bass drum was built for the occasion. With number
choristers, the total
of performers
The World Peace Jubilees were bandmaster Patrick
came
F. E.
massed
to over 20, 000. 21
the creation of the celebrated Irish-born
Gilmore, the composer of the Civil
S.
the
War
“When
hit
Johnny Comes Marching Home.” A contemporary description of the Fisk bilee Singers’ appearance at the second
idea of the
World Peace
maddening mix of racism and adulation
Jubilee gives us
Ju-
some
American
that African
musicians encountered:
The immense audience
of 40,000 people was gathered from
all parts
of the land; and the color prejudice that had followed the [Jubilee] Singers everywhere reappeared here in the shower of brutal hisses that
greeted their city' is
insult.
appearance. But the
first
air
of that radical
New
not kindly to colorphobia, and a deluge of applause drowned the
And
day or two
a
Mrs. Julia
after,
Ward Howe’s
the Singers had a proud revenge.
stirring lyric,
“The Battle-hymn of the
Republic,” was on the program, to be sung to the
theme song of black
[the “unofficial
soldiers”
air
who
of “John
orchestra in E-fiat [making the high note a
and the
first
verses
.
.
.
a painful failure.
.
.
.
Fired by the
color was at stake, they sang as
word of that
wind of delight.
The
.
.
.
forth the
some
if
trumpet that
which others had
through the great Coliseum
old
shall
Mr. White’s masterly
great audience were carried
One
in with the
man
failed.
as if
bow held
the
away on
When
Every
a whirl-
was conspicuous, bolding
in the other.
drill
sounded
above his head with one hand, and whacking out upon
applause with the
never
extent the reputation of their
inspired.
the high notes
line rang
first
out of a trumpet.
cello
them
to
come
.
.
.
remembrance of their reception on
previous day, and feeling that to
had made easy
singers of Boston
Jubilee Singers were to
“He hath sounded
verse beginning, call retreat.”
The
to the
G at the top of the staff]
some colored
taken by
Brown”
fought for the
Union], But for some unexplained reason the key was given
were
England
his violonit
his
the grand old chorus,
“Glory, glory, hallelujah,” followed, with a swelling
volume of music
America and Negro Music
U
HARPER’S WEEKLY.
Figure
2.2
Detail from illustration of Gilmore’s second
Boston, June 1872.
Dvorak 16
to
Duke
Drawn
Ellington
for Harper’s
“World Peace Jubilee,”
Weekly by Thomas Worth
from the great orchestra, the thunder of the bands, and the roar of the artillery,
the scene was indescribable.
cheers and shouts It
“The
of,
Jubilees!
was worth more than
a
.
T
.
The
he Coliseum rang with
Jubilees forever!”
Congressional enactment in bringing
that
audience
The
success of the Fisk Jubilee Singers at the
to the true
mediately led to an invitation Flouse. bilee’s
ground on the question of “civil
During the next two decades, with changes music and
artistry
would become known
The name
other Negro singing ensembles. At times eral unofficial
Land and
Thanks
to
which began
to
at the
White
in personnel, the Fisk Ju-
concertgoers throughout
the “Jubilees” was appropriated by
more than one
“official”
— and sev-
in 1884,
included appearances in the
Asia.
ensembles
like the Fisk Jubilee Singers, the idea of
pendent African American meetings, and Civil strelsy,
World Peace Jubilee im-
— ensembles were on tour at the same time. The Jubilees’ final
six-year-long world tour, Floly
rights.” 22
appear before President Grant
to
the United States and Europe.
War
art
an inde-
music, drawn from slave gatherings,
bivouacs,
became
a reality.
And
camp
thanks to min-
America’s popular music was indelibly marked “African American”
and well positioned est
.
enthusiasms of
to
grow on
its
a world-class
into the center of the serious
own. Nevertheless,
Czech composer
it
would take the hon-
to thrust
“Negro” music
— read “European” — music establishment.
America and Negro Music
U
•»
>
3
Dvorak’s
Symphony
From
New World
the
Dvorak arrived
United States on September
in the
28, 1892, as the
country
was feverishly putting the finishing touches on the four hundredth anniversary celebration of
Columbus’s landing
in the
New World.
T here was a na-
What had transpired over the last four centuries? What had we become? Where were we heading? In apposition to the small role Christopher Columbus was assigned for tional taking of stock.
the relatively tame 1792 celebrations, the master navigator was held forth as
an iconic figure
Any
for the
United States and
its
growing sense of empowerment.
misgivings intellectuals might have had about the catastrophe
bus had brought upon Native Americans and enslaved Africans
duced the practice of slavery phoria. (The
in the
more recent 1992
Colum-
— he intro-
New World — were swept aside
in the eu-
celebration, sobered by revisionist debates,
stands in stark contrast to what Dvorak encountered.) Starting
on Monday, October
hattan, draped in bunting to a revelry that
and
and glowing with
continued unabated
was flooded with flotillas
10, 1892,
visitors.
New York
Man-
electric light signs, played host
for three days
The Hudson and
City’s island of
and
nights. T
he borough
East Rivers teemed with naval
private boats that sailed out to greet them. Nightly fireworks ex-
ploded from atop
tall
buildings and gushed out in fiery “Niagras” from the
flanks of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Temporary arches, designed by Stanford White,
were erected across Fifth Avenue. And the seventy-six-foot-high Columbus
U
Monument,
the largest stone of
which weighed
niously raised by proud Italian
workmen
Columbus
stands.
From
it still
temporary quarters
his
huh
principal
where
Circle,
in the center of the
was ceremo-
newly named
1
just off
for the all-day parades,
thirty-six tons,
Union Square, the
Dvorak wrote
and
staging area
to his friend Karal Bastar,
noting the exact hour as well as the date:
New York Clarendon early just
imagine row
after
morning
at 7
Hotel,
hours 18
14
/io
g2
2
row of marchers], an incredible procession of |
people working both in the
fields of industry
and the
crafts,
and huge
numbers of gymnasts — among them members of the Czech Sokol — and crowds of people from the
And
colors. in the
all
and
.
.
.
I
sight!
haven’t got
The
man
And you should
enough words
original plan of having
Drake’s “American Flag”
bus Day, October
Dvorak fered a
time
in
fire
nationalities
12,
dawn
and
until 2:00
Thousands upon thousands of people, and an hear
all
Well, America seems to have demonstrated of!
many
also
of this went on uninterruptedly, from
morning.
everchanging
arts
at
to describe
Dvorak
the kinds of music!
all it is
new
the Metropolitan
all it is
.
.
capable
3
it all.
direct a
and
.
cantata setting of Rod-
Opera House on Colum-
was foiled on two accounts: the
text “did not get to
be completed,” and the Metropolitan Opera House
to
suf-
that forced the cancellation of the entire 1892-93 season. Dvorak’s
Columbus Day concert,
moved forward
to
his official introduction to the
October
21,
In place of the cantata,
Columbian Te Deum,
and
to
New York public, was
Carnegie Hall. 4
Dvorak conducted the world premiere of
his
directing the Metropolitan [Opera] Orchestra, soprano
Clementine DeVera-Sapio, bass Emil Fischer, and
a chorus of three
hun-
The concert was preceded by a twenty-minute oration, “Two New Worlds: The New World of Columbus and the New World of Music,” which dred. 5
was projected from the stage
in those
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, by then son’s address
pre-microphone days by Colonel a venerable Americanist. Higgin-
could well have planted the idea
celebrated American work, the
Symphony
for the title of
no. 9
(
From
the
Dvorak’s most
New
World),
which was completed within the next seven months. The speech was quoted in part in the next
morning’s
New York Herald.
The triumphs of our land in music ... lie in the future. ... If we were all made of unmixed English blood, we might have long to wait for them. great
Dvorak 20
to
.
.
.
We are
German
Duke
not
cities
Ellington
all
of English blood.
We stand
in
one of the
of the world and the other great musical race of
Europe
making our very byways
is
guest tonight [Dvorak]
.
new world
help add the
.
Italian.
may consent
.
.
.
.
Let us hope that our
and may
to transplantation
Columbus
of music to the continent which
found. 6
Higginson’s theme underscored the sanguine expectations of Jeanette
Thurber, whose gallant
were remarkable
for
efforts
on behalf of American music and musicians
her time. In i886 using her social position and wealth, 7
Company, dedicated
she established the American Opera English, and a
sister institution,
the National Conservatory, for the training
of American-born singers here at tours
opera sung in
to
home. The opera company made
several
under the baton of Theodore Thomas, the leading American conduc-
tor at that time, before
its
funding started
energies toward the Conservatory,
composers
as well as singers.
which began
Modeled
She then turned her
full
training instrumentalists
and
to dry up.
Conservatoire de Paris, where
after the
she herself had studied, the National Conservatory of Music of America was,
according
to the
Carnegie Hall program
for
Dvorak’s belated
Columbus Day
concert, “founded for the benefit of Musical Talent in the United States
conferring
its
benefits free
upon
all
.
.
.
applicants regardless of color or gender] |
sufficiently gifted
gram goes on
.
.
.
and unable
to pay.”
to explain that the tuition
To
assuage her backers, the pro-
was “loaned”
with the understanding that they would pay
budding
to the
artists
back once their careers were
it
established. 7 I
wonder
if
Colonel Higginson spent time with Dvorak
after the concert,
perhaps talking about the spirituals and ring shouts he so eloquently lauded in the Atlantic
Aionthly ?
The choice
of Higginson as the keynote speaker at
the concert cannot be a simple case of serendipity. There appears to have
been
a plan afoot.
Whether
divine or
woman-made,
it
would come
to play
out most dramatically. 8
self
Higginson was not the only African American musical resource fore Dvorak.
A young
student assistant
at
the conservatory. Dvorak saw in Burleigh a reflection of
achieved a measure of success and reward that
I
set be-
baritone, Harry T. Burleigh, was assigned to be his
himself as a student and befriended the youth:
gle
it-
it is
“If in
my own
some
to
was the son of poor parents and was reared
in
extent
career
due
I
have
to the fact
an atmosphere of strug-
and endeavor.” 9
When
Burleigh
choir at the
St.
first
Philip’s
arrived in
so large,
he joined the
men and
boys’
Free African Church, the second oldest African
Methodist Episcopal Church
“when attendance
New York,
at Trinity’s
in the country;
it
traces
Sunday afternoon African
and the African-American parishioners
Dvorak’s
its
origin to 1809,
service
had become
so dissatisfied with having to
Symphony From
the
New World 21
worship separately, that they reached a decision
to set
up
their
own
congre-
gation.” 10
was then located In the tenderloin
Philip's
St.
district at 161
West
Twenty-fifth Street, less than a mile from Dvorak’s house on East Seven-
became
teenth Street. Burleigh
had established
nity that
itself
part of the large African
around
American commu-
many of them
St. Philip's,
in
apartment
houses built and managed by the church.
There were
at least
two other musicians from
St. Philip’s
enrolled at the
National Conservatory: Edward B. Kinney, the church’s organist and choir-
who was
master,
who
member of Dvorak’s
composition
class;
and Charles Bohn,
studied piano and perhaps organ as well. This explains
men and boys’
Philip’s toric
a
why
the
St.
choir performed under Dvorak (and Kinney) at a his-
concert held in Madison Square Garden in 1894 that featured the con-
servatory’s African
men and
American
students. Eighteen years later the St. Philip’s
boys’ choir participated in another historic concert,
Europe’s Clef Club Concert
at
Carnegie Hall,
this
James Reese
time under the direction
new organist and choirmaster Charles Bohlen — Bolin had taken a Germanic spelling for his name. 11 Burleigh, Bolin, and perhaps Kinney 12 were among the first of what, under Dvorak’s prodding, would soon become well over 150 African Americans among the 600-plus students enrolled at the of their
conservator)/'.
Dvorak led the Conservatory orchestra, which met twice leigh served as the orchestra’s librarian
and timpani.
bass
can
attest that the
conductor’s lot
is
filled in
week. Bur-
on double
a lonely one.
drudge
or-
is
jobs.
Dvorak and Burleigh apparently worked well together. During
ond year his
The
among the few orchestral musicians we get to talk with off podium, and the one we depend upon for a myriad of editorial details and
chestra librarian
the
I
and copyist and
a
at the conservatory,
Dvorak wrote
to his
his sec-
family back in Prague that
son Otakar, age nine, “sat on Burleigh’s lap during the Orchestra’s
hearsals
and played the tympani.” 13 Victor Herbert,
re-
a lifelong friend of
Burleigh’s, 14 described the Dvorak-Burleigh relationship in a letter sent in 1922 to Carl Engel, chief of the
Music Division of the Library of Congress:
“Dr. Dvorak was most kind and unaffected and took great interest in his pupils,
one of which, Harry Burleigh, had the
of the thematic material for his it is
...
I
have seen
this
denied
some
— but
true.” 15
Burleigh learned his blind
many
crier
and lamplighter
Dvorak
to
of the old plantation songs from the singing of
maternal grandfather, Hamilton Waters,
freedom from slavery on
22
Symphony.
privilege of giving the Dr.
Duke
a
in 1832
bought
his
Maryland plantation. Waters became the town
for Erie,
Ellington
who
Pennsylvania, and as a young boy Burleigh
helped guide him along Harry sang in the his
Pauls
St.
Mother’s singing
father
all
The
his route.
after
men and
hoys’ choir. Burleigh also
chores and
harmonized while helping
At various times in his long
family was Episcopalian, and young
how he and
“remembered and grand-
his [stepjfather
her.” 16
life
— he
died in 1949
age eighty-one
at
—
Burleigh described his student days with Dvorak. Taken together, his writings provide insight into Dvorak’s ongoing Negro music education while he was
composing what would become the symphony From Dvorak used
to get tired
supper. ...
gave
them
1
spirituals
music) into the
during the day and
him what knew I
then
I
New World.
the
would sing
of Negro songs
to
him
after
— no one called
— and he wrote some of my tunes (my people’s
New World Symphony. 17
Dvorak began working on various “American” themes
mid-December
in
1892, filling eleven pages of a sketchbook.
Low, Sweet Chariot”]
Part of this old “spiritual” (“Swing in the
second theme of the
first
movement
Dvorak saturated himself with the
spirit
.
.
.
be found
will
given out by the
flute.
of these old tunes and then in-
own themes. There is a subsidiary theme in G minor in the first movement with a flatted seventh [a characteristic passed on to jazz, known as a “blue note”] and I feel sure the composer caught this
vented his
peculiarity of
he used
most of the
to stop
In January 1893
me
and ask
if
that
from some that
was the way the
sang
I
him;
to
for
slaves sang. 18
D v °Dk began a continuous sketch for the symphony:
When
Dvorak heard
that
as great as a
is
slave songs
me
sing
“Go Down Moses,” he
said, “Burleigh,
Beethoven theme.” 19
This, for Dvorak, was the ultimate compliment.
compose dozens of themes before accepting one
He made
his students
as appropriate for “devel-
opment.” He would then have them wrap the theme around the skeleton of an existing Beethoven sonata, imitating, measure by measure, the modulations
and key
relationships. 20
Dvorak began working on the
full
score in mid-February 1893.
Dvorak of course used Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, note It
was not an accident.
He
did
it
quite consciously.
.
.
.
for note.
He
.
.
.
tried to
combine Negro and Indian themes. The Largo movement he wrote after
he had read the famine scene
great effect
on him and he wanted
in Longfellow’s to interpret
Burleigh’s grandmother was part Indian
may
Dvorak’s
it
Hiawatha.
It
had
a
musically. [That
help to explain
Symphony From
the
why
New World 23
Dvorak often equated or confused Indian with African American music.] 21 *
•
Burleigh’s influence was profouhd. Within one week,
May 21-28,
1893,
about Dvorak’s views on Negro music and the completion
a spate of articles
new symphony appeared in the New York Herald and, by means of newspaper’s new “exclusive” Atlantic cable, its sister paper, the English-
of his the
language Paris Herald.
The
New
oft-quoted
melodies of America
discover
all
that
is
needed
came out on Sunday, May 21.
of music,” 22
speed of light and
Herald
ing. Paris
I
York Herald interview that begins, “In the Negro
made
It
for a great
traveled
and noble school
under the Atlantic
the front page of the Paris Herald the following
stringers
were quickly dispatched
morn-
Vienna and Berlin
to
the
at
to in-
terview famous musicians about Dvorak’s curious theory. So strong was the
notion of
German
musical authority that French musicians of note, such
Camille Saint-Saens, conveniently nearby
Among ist
in Paris,
as
were not consulted.
those interviewed were Joseph Joachim, a distinguished violin-
and pedagogue, who may have already been exposed
music through
his student, Will
to
American Negro
Marion Cook; Anton Rubinstein, the
pianist,
composer, and founder of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory; and Anton Bruckner, the Viennese composer and organist. Their reactions to Dvorak’s theory appeared on the front page of the Paris Herald on three consecutive days, Friday through Sunday,
May
26-28, and, thanks to cable, in the
York Herald in a single condensed article on Sunday,
New
May 28. What would
normally take several days by steamship was being accomplished in hours.
But there was more. Elsewhere
in the
May
bomb
that
ploded the time
28 edition of the
had been ticking
New all
York Herald Dvorak ex,
week:
ANTONIN DVORAK ON NEGRO MELODIES The Bohemian Composer Employs Their Theme And Sentiments A New Symphony Dr. Dvorak’s explicit
phony
reflects the
announcement
ing
editorial
it
as a
.
will
be a surprise
.
the
coming Amer-
to the world. 23
strokes
Dvorak empowered American musicians of
all
by setting a “great and noble” example, meanwhile apprising the genabout something that
perhaps afraid
24
.
.
“welcome utterance.” 24
eral public
Dvorak
.
.
page also took notice of Dvorak’s Negro melody idea, describ-
With two bold stripes
newly completed sym-
Negro melodies, upon which
ican school must be based
The
that his
In
to
Duke
to
acknowledge.
Ellington
in
my view they already suspected
but were
Dvorak
notions about the future of America’s music,
s
now broadcast on
both sides of the Atlantic, created no small amount of controversy, catching the
American music establishment
off guard.
The
Indianapolis Freeman, a
black weekly, would recall a decade later that Dvorak’s prediction
American white people
the ears of the
the naysayers were the
American composers Edward MacDowell and John
Knowles Paine. MacDowell was ica
been offered
a pattern for
Bohemian Dvorak canism
in art
still
.
“We
particularly bitter:
an American national music costume by the to
do with Ameri-
remains a mystery.’’ 26
On the other hand, Dvorak’s ideas provided just the needed by composers Indian music.
have here in Amer-
though what Negro melodies have
.
.
Among
heavy clap of thunder.” 25
like a
upon
“fell
When
who were especially interested in his own composer-governed Wa
Arthur Farwell,
like
imprimatur that was
Farwell established
Wan
Press in 1902, his declared intention was to “launch a progressive
ment
for
American music, including
lenge to go after our
own
folk
Black musicians were
move-
acceptance of Dvorak’s chal-
a definite
music.” 27
ecstatic.
The Freeman
Dvorak’s
article recalls
statements as “a triumph for the sons and daughters of slavery and a victory for
Negro race achievements,”
referring to
Dvorak, our greatest friend from
far across
him
“Pan
as
[father]
Antonin
the sea.” 28 According to William
Warfield, the distinguished bass-baritone and former president of the National Association of
Negro Musicians,
this
bond whth Dvorak
on
“lives
in
black music circles.” I
was curious about the interviews with “Eminent Musicians from Berlin
and Vienna” about Dvorak’s “Negro Melody Idea” rized in the
New York Herald, and them
of the Paris Herald to read
I
that
found an opportunity
had been summato visit the
morgue
unabridged form. The com-
in their original
ments of Joachim, Rubinstein, and an American composer, Arthur reported by an
unnamed
spectfully curious,
and
Josef Joachim:
...
It
may be
a very
American Negro melodies
into
melodies would then give the
Anton Rubinstein:
seemed thoughtful and
Berlin correspondent,
in the case of Bird
most
to try
ideal form,
and merge the
and
that these
National American Music.
tint to the
... If there
is
a great literature of these
melodies, Dr. Dvorak’s idea
is
possible.
.
.
.
allow Negros free musical education. That
They may develop
a
new melody.
In twenty five years or
fifty
years
...
we
re-
insightful:
good idea an
Bird, as
It is
shall
Negro
Ah, so they are going is
very interesting.
.
refreshing of course.
to
.
.
.
.
.
perhaps see whether the
Negros can develop their musical talent and found a new musical style.
Dvorak’s
Symphony From
the
New World 25
Arthur
Bird: ...
I
wonder whether the Negro melodies
sad, musical, [would] lose
frpm being instrumented
.
.
.
simple,
29 .
>
The comments from Vienna, under Douche,” were
Cold Water
the heading “A
hospitable to Dvorak’s thesis:
far less
“German musical
literature,” Professor
Anton Bruckner declared,
“contained no written text emanating from the Negro race, and however sweet the Negro melodies might be, they could never form the
groundwork of the future music of America.” Evidently Bruckner never heard of Beethoven’s African Polish friend, the
composer and virtuoso
composed
George Polgreen Bridgetower. Beethoven
violinist
a violin sonata for Bridgetower titled
name
rededicated to Rudolphe Kreutzer, whose
mulattica,”
“II it
carries
which he
later
still.
The final comments, which were not included in the New York Heralds summary article, were attributed to Hans Richter, conductor of the first performances of the Ring enna’s] Imperial
at
Bayreuth. His post as “the celebrated leader of [Vi-
Opera Orchestra and Philharmonic Concerts” would be
taken over by Gustav Mahler three years reporter’s voice
Richter]
is
we hear
much
as
later. It
is
the
unnamed Viennese
as the maestro’s 30 :
very enthusiastic concerning America and believes greatly
|
in
its
future music, but he could not realize that this could
from the Negro [more
racist
race, nor
wordd he admit
Hungary, every man,
music
woman and
for a gypsy to play
from written
31
sets
of interviews from Berlin and Vienna are a ease
study of reportorial spin in action.
I
have learned not
to take
newspaper
crit-
too seriously ever since Peter Pretsfelder, a clever press agent, chastised
me when
I
complained about
reviews,” he said. It
was
a
long semi-favorable revue: “Don’t read your
a
“Measure them!”
busy eight days
at the
two Heralds, and the
have happened spontaneously. Thanks
commercial cable, “tongues
.
.
.
to the
be-identified
eminence
ternational publicity
grise at the
campaign
32 .
to
Duke
Ellington
I
could not
miracle of the paper’s
have no doubt that some
New York
By now
her friends and supporters, and the
Dvorak
articles
new
were wagging” over “Doctor Dvorak’s Bold
Declaration” on both sides of the Atlantic.
26
spoke of the gypsy race of
.
These conflicting
ics
He
child of which plays by ear, but said
was quite an exceptional thing
it
that persons playing by ear
assumptions] could be taught music properly, or had ever
given evidence of talent in this respect.
that
emanate
it is
New
Herald designed
yet-to-
this clever in-
obvious that Jeanette Thurber,
York Herald, which had been
staunchly pro-abolition, shared strong
— and
in
my
view noble,
if
naive-
ideas about racial equality. Dvorak’s enthusiasms were a tonic.
On Wednesday of this stormy week, Dvorak completed the scoring of his New World Symphony, and in keeping with “
signed and dated
it:
his
Fine Praised be to God! ,
normal
May
morning.” In an unusual gesture, Dvorak returned to
add a euphoric note: “Family
One it
as
could view
this
“famous entry
both a revelation and
ones— vesting them scribe
it
all.”
34
a
as
New World
months
he carefully
One
24, 1893,
in the
to the score later that
Southhampton! (telegram
1;
day
33
some quaint exuberance. 33
symbolic dedication
with the
written about only seven
arrives at
practice,
I
)-”
see
— the blessing of his loved
energy and sense of future he had
earlier: “I
haven’t got
Dvorak’s impressions of America were
enough words
to de-
now
for all
captured
time in his symphony, a symphony that “reflects the music of the Negro.” Artists are sensitive heralds of
new
spirit in
something
the world around them.
have long
I
change; they are the
American language,
felt.
I
first
to
recognize a
believe that Dvorak was aware of
Black Americans, more often than not, dominate
fashion, dance,
and music— what we
move, and what we hear— a truth revealed
to
see, the
way we
Dvorak over one hundred years
ago.
Within Spillville,
to
spend
cestry,
a
week, Dvorak and his reunited family would leave by train
Iowa, a quiet
their
who
olin studies
summer.
told
little It
Czech-speaking farm
was Joseph
Dvorak about
J.
Kovarik, an
village,
from the Prague Conservatory
to the
where they were
American of Czech an-
who had
Spillville. Kovarik,
for
transferred his vi-
National Conservatory
at
Dvorak’s urging, earned his keep as the maestro’s American secretary and
amanuensis. They made the
a large
Grand Central Depot on
their six children,
thrills
lively
group
Forty-first Street
and an aunt (not
route they sampled the
Chicago World’s
and
as they
boarded the
and Park Avenue: the Dvoraks,
Josefina), plus Kovarik
of The World’s
train at
and
a cook.
En
Columbian Exposition of 1893,
Fair.
Dvorak’s
Symphony From
the
New World 27
r-
•*
>
4
The Chicago World s Columbian Exposition of 1893
The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 celebrated America, its industry, and its people. It was among the first events of its kind to honor the achievements of women. Almost overnight, the fair and Chicago became a gathering place for the nation’s gifted
and talented from every
scientific
and
artistic disci-
pline. Little
remains of the original
fair.
Surreal silvertint photographs offer
proof that a magnificent White City, a combination of Venice’s Piazza San
Marco and
the
Roman Forum,
pear like Atlantis. But the
fair’s
were meticulously recorded
These contain long
lists
arose for
one glorious summer only
to disap-
countless exhibitions and day-to-day events
in thick official state
and
institutional
of participants, a kind of who’s
who
volumes.
at the fair.
The
blatant exception was black America. In
my search
behind the
for
official
evidence of African American music
at the fair
I
found,
neglect of Negro achievements, a complex and broad-
ranged black presence. There were the
elite
Negroes who worked and
gathered around the Haitian Pavilion. They conspired to produce "Colored People’s Day,” an “honor day” event mixing race politics and high art that constituted their brief
moment
from the Gold Coast
via Paris, the so-called primitive, yet highly sophisti-
cated denizens of the
in the sun.
“Dahomey Village,”
There was an African
tribe direct
disdained, however, by most of the
Haitian Pavilion crowd. Finally, there was the ever-looming large musical
underbelly of the fair— the piano “professors” (soon
to
become
ragtimers),
29
Figure
4.1
Chicago World
s
Fair 1893.
View
across the
Court of Flonor,
east to west.
Photograph by C. D. Arnold courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society.
hootchy kootchies,
the
’
the sideshows, and the surrounding pleasure
my
houses.
Most
ing the
emergence of ragtime,
and
significant to
story a
is
the role played by the
fair in
hasten-
“rhythm” that would shape popular music,
no small amount of classical music, over the next three decades. Nine years after the fair closed, an ironic postscript to all three of these
in turn
black presences arrived in the form of a “Negro Musical quite a
stir
Comedy”
on Broadway and enjoyed an even greater success
Created by
many
homey and
boasts a masterful score by Will
of the elite
artists
who were
at
the
fair, it
was
that
in
made
London.
titled In
Marion Cook, chock
full
Da-
of rav-
time. I
Dvorak 3°
he Dvorak family detrained
to
Duke
Ellington
in
Chicago on June
4, 1893, to
spend
a
day
They would
at the fair.
of the
visit
summer. Dvorak himself returned from
an extended ten-day gala concert he
day” event.
The
His
1
stay.
New York
again on their way back to
first
Spillville in early
end
August
for
four days were spent in preparation for a
conducted on “Bohemian Day/’ August rest
at the
another “honor
12,
of the time was for taking in the sights.
A contemporary
diary reports that
Dvorak spent
went
to the
part of each day sightseeing
Austrian restaurant,
“On
the
and
visiting.
At night he
Midway,” where he took
his
meals and enjoyed imported Pilsner beer. The Tavern Old Vienna] |
also boasted a touring [strolling] brass band.
The band members
got
quite excited
when Dvorak
began
Austrian and Slovenian dances. Dvorak soon discovered
to play
that the musicians
first
came
into the restaurant
were largely Czech and got absorbed
.
.
.
and
in conversa-
tion with them. 2
It is
and saw
more than a
likely that
Dvorak
also heard Edison’s early
phonograph
demonstration of projected images, harbingers of the immense
changes that the performing
The composer was
would undergo
arts
besieged by
visitors.
in the
Among them
approaching century.
was Theodore Thomas,
conductor of the Chicago Symphony and overall music director of the
who
arranged
to
have a string quartet
come
to
fair,
Dvorak’s hotel, the Lakota, to
read through the “American” Quartet, just completed in Spillville.
Harry T. Burleigh was also
in
Chicago, rehearsing music
People’s Day.” At the Dvorak Archives in Prague
Burleigh that Dvorak had saved from the
and ink
in
came upon
a letter
from
of 1893. 5 Written with pen
longhand on three sheets of Hotel Lakota stationary and appar-
Dvorak the day
ently left there for
leigh introduces his friend Will ple’s
summer
I
“Colored
for
Day” concert,
to
after his
“Bohemian Day”
Marion Cook,
concert, Bur-
director of the “Colored Peo-
Dvorak:
August
13,
1892(3]
Dear Doctor, I
want
to
introduce to your consideration Mr. Will
M. Cook,
[here he begins to write “vi” for violinist, then writes over
mer
pupil of the great Joachim. [Cook wished to be
poser, not a violinist,
composer.] Mr.
and
and Joachim,
Cook
He
has
known
his biggest credit,
“fo as a
was also
I
for-
com-
a
meet you and speak with you about
his
composed an opera [“Uncle Tom’s Cabin”], the
pal role of which
”)
has marked ability in the line of composition
desires very greatly to
work.
it
a
princi-
will sing.
You remember
I
sang Mr. Kinney’s two songs
at
your
last
The World’s Columbian
concert
Exposition 31
*r-
at
the Conservatory last May. [This line
Burleigh as Dvorak’s intimate.
very curious
is
if
we
think of
believe that by mentioning Kinney,
I
Cook by association as another gifted know that Cook would not abide a racial de-
Burleigh wanted to establish
Negro composer.
We
scription.] I
am
going away from Chicago to-day but
Cook
you, and Mr.
have Burleigh work a
will leave this note for
and see you. [Victor Herbert arranged
will call
Grand Union Hotel
in Saratoga’s
that
summer
to as
wine steward and occasional singer with the orchestra. Burleigh
would be returning
to
Chicago
in less than
two weeks
for the
“Colored
People’s Day” concert.] I
sincerely trust
Hoping you cess
and
that
you
will
work and give him your opinion.
be blessed with continued good health and suc-
will see
I
will listen to his
you
Conservatory next September
in the
I
have
the privilege to remain
Yours very
truly,
Harry T. Burleigh
Dvorak was leaving in
which
to
a
in getting through.
Cook had but five days busy Maestro. The ever-enterprising
on August
arrange a meeting with the
Cook succeeded
command
for Spillville
suspect he impressed Dvorak with his
I
of German. His music for “Uncle
good impression
following month.
as well, for
Cook
Cook was on
18, so
Tom’s Cabin” must have made
joined Dvorak’s composition class the
a roll,
but he had another audition
convincing his old mentor Frederick Douglass
to
speak
at
to pass:
“Colored People’s
Day.”
That “Colored People’s Day” had been placed gust 24), toward the
waning days of the
the fair directors, was but one of
many
tor of the fair’s Haitian Pavilion,
The
fair,
late
and only
on the calendar (Au-
after
much
slights that inclined
prodding of
Douglass, direc-
toward boycotting the whole proceeding.
Haitian Pavilion, the unofficial headquarters for “Colored People’s
Day,” was the one place
don Johnson, on
a
at the fair
summer
where African Americans
like
James Wel-
break from his job as a country schoolteacher in
Henry County, Georgia, might have taken some pride and
felt at
home. 4
who was working as a carpenter and “chairboy,” met the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar at the Haitian Pavilion. Dunbar, then twenty-one, was
Johnson,
serving as a clerk for Douglass, the proud, battle-weary abolitionist fighter.
And
it
was
at the
Haitian Pavilion that Will Marion
with Douglass, an old family friend,
Cook
sat
down
who had once helped fund
to
reason
his violin
studies in Europe.
Cook
Dvorak 32
to
prevailed.
Duke
When
Ellington
the
announcement
for
“Colored People’s Day”
appeared lass
in the
was the lead
Daily Columbian the ,
official
newspaper of the
Doug-
fair, 5
attraction:
At 2:30 in Festival Hall the Honorable Frederick Douglass deliver an oration
famous “Black
“Race Problem
Patti,”
in America.’’
Mme.
will
S. Jones,
the
Mr. Sidney Woodward of Boston, Mr. Harry
Burleigh of the National Conservatory of Music of America, will sing selections from the
famous opera “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” written
by Mr. Will M. Cook. Miss Hallie Q. Brown, the distinguished elocutionist will recite stirring
and
patriotic selections.
The famous
Jubilee Singers will render their quaint and plaintive plantation
melodies. Mr. Joseph Douglass, the gifted violinist [grandson of
Frederick Douglass and a teacher of James Reese Europe] will play several selections.
In a review of the concert that appeared two days later 6
made
of the Jubilee Singers. But two other National Conservatory musicians
Cook were
besides Burleigh and
placement Plato
no mention was
on the program:
a last-minute re-
for Sissieretta Jones with the extraordinary appellation Desiree
(Mme.
Jones canceled because her “advance” didn't arrive in time);
and Maurice Arnold companist
listed
Strathotte, Dvorak’s favorite student,
for the entire
3,000 in attendance,
program.
among them
The
announced
report
“2,000 blacks
.
who was
the ac-
that there
were
professors, teachers, Bish-
. .
ops, [and] musicians.” Douglass spoke for nearly
tunity to lash out at the directors of the fair
and
an hour, taking the oppor-
at a
nation that had turned
its
back on Reconstruction:
The management
of the fair slapped the face of the colored race,
[which suffered] unchristian, unconstitutional treatment.
Negros love our country.
We fought for
it.
treated as well as those that fought against
.
.
.
We
We ask only that we be it.
.
.
.
Judge us not by com-
parison with Caucasian civilization, but with the depths from which
we came. 7 Picking up the theme set by Douglass, Paul
“Ode
to the
And
Dunbar
read an original
Colored American”:
their deeds shall find a record
In the registry of
Fame.
For their blood has cleansed completely Every blot of Slavery’s shame.
So
all
honor and
to those
all
glory
noble sons of Ham
—
The World’s Columbian
Exposition 33
The gallant colored
soldiers
Who fought for Uncle
Sam! 8
On May 4, directly under the Daily Columbian masthead, a line drawing appeared with a caption announcing “The Arrival of the Dahomans” Sixty-seven subjects of King Behanzin, ruler of
camp on
Midway
the
Plaisance. [They
Dahomey
came] from
[sic].
up
[set
and bush
cities
re-
|
gions along the slave coast of the Gulf of Guinea,
were shivering] from the cold raw
air [as they]
West Africa. [They
groaned along under
women
heavy trunks. There were two children and twenty
among
party,
in the
the latter [were] seven of the bravest “warriors”
.
.
.
Ama-
and deterzons hideous with battle scars and with the lines of crueltv j mination on their months.
.
.
.
[The Dahomans] have been en route
faces.
Through an
interpreter they said the climate
much
better than that of Paris
week.
The camp
is
in
.
.
.
for
was
where they were on exhibition
mourning
for
two
one of the band who died
for a
in
New
York. [They] brought along toenails and part of his wool and will carry
them back
to Africa.
Their cheeks were branded
names.
Some were unbranded. A few
their family
wore
a
Godo
The Midway ris’s
or
which
rose well over
ments were staged — a place
to get
two hundred
of the
as
a place
feet
above the ground, 10
where
exotic entertain-
away from the heady formal pavilions ded-
good works.
The Dahomeyans were skirts
spoke French and
emblazoned by George Washington Gale Fer-
was part carnival, part restaurant row, and
icated to man’s
childhood with
T cloth. 9
Plaisance,
gigantic wheel,
at
assigned a
Midway, according
camping ground
to a sinister
at the farthest out-
hierarchy of human development
conceived by the “Head of the Department of Ethnology
Ward Putnam. Putnam was
World’s Fair,” Frederick
for the
Chicago
a professor of anthro-
Harvard University and a proponent of social Darwinism. In 1993 I came upon the culmination of Putnam’s madness at a fair centenary exhibit pology
at
mounted facts
at the
Chicago
on display were
Museum
a pair of nude, life-sized figures,
posites of students attending
held up
of Science and Industry.
at the fair as “the
Harvard and Radcliffe
Among the
male and female, com-
in the 1890s,
realities, for
for
its
34
Encampment,
Sitting Bull’s
the Chinese Village, the Indian Bazaar, and Cairo Street— famous
“hootchy kootchies” and their danse du
Dvorak
compromised
Dvorak’s favorite beer stop, “Old Vienna,” was
placed amid other outcast groups: the Bedouin
Camp,
which were
most advanced examples of human development”!
In fact, Putnam’s “order of human development” plan was
by practical
arti-
to
Duke
Ellington
ventre.
ARRIVAL OF TIIE DA1IOMANS.
Figure “The
4.2
Arrival of the
for the
Dahomans.” Drawn by Huit
Daily Columbian
The presence
,
May 4,
of the
1893.
Dahomey
Village was taken as an affront by the
Haitian Pavilion intelligentsia, but Henry Krehbiel, music
York Tribune a great admirer of Dvorak and ,
among
critic
of the
New
the earliest serious stu-
dents of Indian and African American music, was fascinated by what he saw
and heard I
there:
listened repeatedly during several days to the singing of a
minstrel
who was
the village,
if
certainly the gentlest
not in the entire
hut, a spear thrust in the
melodies in .
a
.
.
upon
a faint
.
.
.
All
ground by
high voice.
a tiny harp.
fair.
.
.
.
and
day long he
his side,
To
least assertive sat
and sang
.
.
.
person in
beside his little
his gentle singing
His right hand
descending
played over and over again thirds;
hand he syncopated ingeniously on the highest of two
A more
striking
homans was made
little
he strummed
descending passage of dotted [quarter and eighth notes] in
his left
Dahomen
with
strings.
demonstration of the musical capacity of the Da-
in the
war-dances which they performed several
times every forenoon and afternoon. T hese dances were accompanied
by choral song and the rhythmical and harmonious beating of drums
and
bells.
.
.
.
Berlioz in his supremest effort with his
mers produced nothing nious
drumming
Berlioz’s
to
compare
army of drum-
in artistic interest with the
harmo-
of these savages. [Krehbiel was probably referring to
Requiem, which employs ten drummers playing twelve
The World’s Columbian
ket-
Exposition 35
tledrums that span the entire chromatic
We| attempted
scale.]
to
|
make
a score
.
.
.
but were thwarted by the players who, evidently
di-
when we took out our notebooks, mischievously manner of playing as soon as we touched pencil to
vining our purpose
changed
their
paper. 11
Judging by Krehbieks account,
Dunbar could
find
I
hard to believe that
it
Cook and But we do
Dahomeyans as well. Bert Williams and George Walker— their future In
being drawn
resist
to the
know that vaudeville stars Dahomey collaborators — “with an added coat of black,” filled in as extras at the 1894 San Francisco World’s Fair when some members of the Chicago Dahomey troupe were late in arriving. The outcome of this experience was described by
Mary White Ovington,
tional Association for the
They became
sociologist
and cofounder of the Na-
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP):
in turn spectators
and studied the true African. This
contact with the dancing and singing of the primitive people of their
own
race had an important effect
upon
their
art.
Their
lyrics recalled
African songs, their dancing took on African movements, especially Walker’s.
Anyone who saw Walker
and the most
artistic
no coincidence
for the 1902
runaway
most African
of their plays, must have recognized the savage
beauty of his dancing It is
in “Abyssinia,” the
when he was masquerading
as
an African king. 12
Dahomey was the back-to-Africa state of choice Dahomey — music by Will Marion Cook, lyrics by
that
hit In
Paul Dunbar, libretto by Jessye A. Shipp, and starring Williams and Walker. 13
The Broadway show, which reopened on a
May
in
London
at the
Shaftesbury Theatre
1903 for a highly successful run of seven months, does indeed have
scene with Williams and Walker and the cast in spoof not
atavistic
uncommon
musicians, including
The
Duke
in
full
jungle regalia, an
shows by African American authors and
Ellington’s Queenie Pie.
unifying element of In
Dahomey
is
ragtime.
Its
rhythmic gestures
not only infuse the show’s strutting banjo tunes, such as “Emancipation
Day,” a Negro high holiday that Ellington also interprets in Black Brown and ,
Beige ragtime also hides just below the surface of the most charming and ;
gentle of Cook’s ballads, “Brownskin
She
ain’t
no
violet,
She
ain’t
no
red, red rose
An
tho’ the lily of
She’s sweeter yet
She
ain’t
no
Nor mornin’
Dvorak 36
to
Duke
de
I
valley’s
knows.
tulip rare
glory fine;
Ellington
Baby Mine”:
sweet
But mongst de flowers
kaint
fair
none compare
With brownskin baby mine. 14 The emergence of ragtime, immediately following and ot the fair, has often
as
an outcome
been suggested but never explored. Enough hard and
circumstantial evidence placing ragtime at or around the
fair
has surfaced to
warrant a closer look.
The wheels
clicked merrily and the brothel doors stood ajar. Concert
saloons blossomed out with extravagant shows.
.
.
.
Beer flowed, cham-
pagne corks popped, the “professors” [an honorific players]
double
for
and Negro bands played gay tunes, and the shifts.
.
.
.
Chicago
.
.
barroom piano
girls
worked
the wickedest wide-open town in the
.
nation. 1S
We know that among the fair
hundreds of entertainers who flocked
were several important ragtime players and composers. Scott Joplin was
there, as
were Ernest Hogan and Jessye
“Dream Rag”
in
it
off of
the window. Pickett later told Blake, Fair.” 16
known sical
him” by watching
“I
learned
it
Ragtime historian Rudi Blesh suggests Bear was the
as Jack the
would place him
was playing
Pickett. Pickett
his
one of Baltimore’s innumerable brothels when thirteen-
year-old Eubie Blake “learned
real
at the fair as well. 17
[‘The
Dream
through
Rag’] at the
that the piano “professor”
author of “The
We
his fingers
Dream
[Rag],”
which
can only imagine the myriad mu-
among ragtime players at the fair and the their memory banks. We do know that within
interchanges that took place
vastness of what was stored in a
to the
few years of the
fair’s
closing, ragtime sheet
music
caught on
sales
“like
wildfire.” 18
A
handful of obscure
articles
about ragtime
at the fair
were published,
mostly in Negro newspapers. In a 1915 interview in the Chicago Defender
,
Will Marion Cook, by that time an established composer and conductor and a respected authority
on “Negro music,” places ragtime
About 1888 marked the time.” [Cook in
and quick growth of the so-called
would have been eighteen
Europe], As
far
back
the Mississippi had
ence
starting
as 1875,
Negros
commenced
at the
a
to evolve this
running
start
time and
still
musical figure
but
at the
fair:
“rag-
studying
in questionable resorts
to ragtime’s predecessor, the cakewalk],
Chicago, “ragtime” got
directly at the
along
[a refer-
World’s Fair in
and swept the Americas, next
Europe, and today the craze has not diminished. 19
The distinguished researcher Lawrence Gushee has turned up an even earlier Cook interview from 1898, when he was still an unknown composer
The World’s Columbian
Exposition 37
struggling in
New York. Cook was
responding
to the proposition that
music — as exemplified by such ephemeral “clap-trap compositions
New Bully/
‘The to
Hot Time
‘A
in the
Old Town/ and
Me’” — was degenerate when compared with
Cook
Negro as
.
.
Coons Look Alike
‘All
“soul stirring slave melodies.”
responded:
One
special characteristic of these songs
companiment.
.
.
is
the
much
fifteen years ago,
ports,
and
grew out of the
particularly those of Turkey, [literally,
when
the
odd rhythms of the
worked out the
upon them; and
“rag.” at
Chicago, the “Mid-
well filled with places of amusement
where the pe-
music of the “muscle dance” was continually heard, and
worthy of note that
it is
time the popularity of the “rag” grew with
after that
astonishing rapidity and
until
of Negro sailors to Asiatic
visits
During the World’s Columbian Exposition
way Plaisance” was
unknown
belly dance] soon forced itself
trying to reproduce this they have
culiar
advertised “rag” ac-
This kind of movement, which was
.
about
danse du ventre
became general among Negro
pianists. 20
Cook’s evasive answer was atypical; he rarely missed an opportunity
back
More
significantly, the interview
at the
friend in Ernest
word “rag”
came
at the very
time he had found a
Hogan, the composer of the offending
Me.” Published
the
to
musical snobbery that plagued him throughout his career.
strike
to
.
in 1896,
“All
Hogan’s song contained the
in print; 21 the sheet
new
Coons Look Alike
first
musical usage of
music offered an optional piano arrange-
ment, a “Choice chorus, with Negro ‘Rag’ Accompaniment,” suggesting that ragtime began as a rhythmic imposition, dare
we
say improvisation,
on an
al-
ready composed piece. This was exactly the way Eubie Blake demonstrated
ragtime for our television show in 1979, playing Chopin’s “Funeral March” straight, “as
they were going to the cemetery,” and then ragged— with rag ac-
companiment— “when flourish, clinching the
Ernest
connected
his
own
to his controversial
versations that he
home
argument. “That’s Ragtime!” and he beamed.
Hogan had
Years of the Negro in
ing
they headed home.” Eubie ended the music with a
in 1908,
Show
ideas about the birth of ragtime,
song “All Coons Look Alike
Business,
Tom
had with Hogan. Their
in
Chicago
strongly suggests this
.
.
.
Me.”
In 100
Fletcher reconstructs several conlast
toward the end of Hogan’s
Hogan was out
to
which he
seeking a
meeting took place
in a nurs-
life:
little
happened during the
“sport” [the chronology
fair
or soon after].
.
.
.
The
piano player seemed very blue. “He must of had something on his
mind,” said Hogan, “because he was plunking and talking .
.
Dvorak 38
.
Each night found me
to
Duke
Ellington
in that
same house asking him
to himself.
to play
and
sing that song.
when
I
left
.
.
t
.
here was no protection for songs in those days, so
Chicago the song
left
Laughing, [Hogan] asked
he played exceptionally
Me” and
Alike to
well.
with me.”
me
He
hand him
to
concertina which
[his]
Coons Look
started playing “All
while he played he talked. “Son,” he
said, “this
has caused a lot of trouble in and out of show business, but
good
for
walks of
show business because life.
was given
With
Its
ers.
money was short in all song, a new musical rhythm
popularity grew and
That one song opened the way Finding the rhythm so
for a lot of
sold like wildfire.
who
great, they stuck to
would have been
lost to the
Cook and Hogan
(via Fletcher)
that ragtime, without fair’s
own
played just by ear their
world
if
I
it
.
.
.
trail,
torians have
come
The
had not put
in
ragtime players were
creations of music it
which
on paper.” 22
do more than simply confirm the notion
ground. Instead of the anonymous, noble-
accompanying documentation
to
.
which there would not be an American music, took
catalytic proving
that
.
and now you get
savage image traditionally imposed on African American of a paper
.
colored and white songwrit-
back rooms and cafes and other such places.
root in the
it
without the word ‘coon.’ Ragtime was the rhythm played
hit songs
the boys
was also
it
time
at the
the publication of that
to the people.
song
expect— we
find here
musics— for want
that art
and cultural
his-
composers who, through the ap-
plication of accurate notation, attention to form,
harmonic refinement, and
adroit piano voicings, crafted the improvisations of the piano “professors” into a coherent
whole and delivered
Dvorak headed back
a
music
to Spillville via the
that
seems
inevitable.
Chicago, Milwaukee, and
St.
Louis
Line, crossing the “sweeping currents” of the Mississippi River at Prairie du
Chien.
He
detrained a short time afterward at Calmar, just across the north-
east border of Iowa;
from there he traveled the
a horse cart. 23 In the
summer of 1993, accompanied by a few Czech
I
made
Dvorak anniversary pilgrimage
a
Spillville,
tion.
where we attended the Dvorak
few miles
Chicago and
in Spillville
Rock
Island.
And
tiny
farm village of
now
a
Iowa City)
to
we
crossed the
Spillville
fields.
seemed caught
these days as the Bili Clock House, was intact. is
friends, 24
Centennial Celebra-
in a
squarish brick house where the Dvorak family spent their
family slept,
on
the river obliged us with a rare breaching of
banks, flooding the surrounding towns and
The
to Spillville
(via
Driving through endless miles of corn-fruited plains,
Mississippi at its
to
last
modest museum.
The upper
The summer, known time warp.
floor,
where the
In a glass case Indian artifacts
with a stub of a pipe used by Dvorak. Lying nearby
is
a fading
Dvorak
The World’s Columbian
mingle letter.
Exposition 39
The
Clock House reminded
Czechoslovakia, the
ited in
Dvorak
them
Bili
left
it
when he died
laurel wreaths
and
little
me
homespun
of another
upstairs study in Vysoka,
in 1904.
shrine
which remains
The vV&lls are covered with
awards,
framed
a place of honor,
diploma of honorary membership presented
in glass,
and
hangs a
New York Phil-
Dvorak by the
to
as
among
large presentation ribbons lettered with the date
venue of long-ago concerts. In
vis-
I
harmonic
Society. At the back of Dvorak’s desk, along with other reference
books,
copy of the harmony
is
a
used by the National Conservatory,
text
dently sent in advance of his trip to familiarize
him
Dvorak’s handwritten notations indicate he gave
a
also a guide to
is
New York
it
with their program.
thorough review. There
r88o) with photos of the harbor teeming with
(c.
sailing ships. Scattered along the windowsills
and wainscoting
students with grateful greetings. Three photos stood out ers:
Chief Big Moon;
evi-
are photos of
among
all
the oth-
Large Head; and John Crow.
his wife,
memoir
Dvorak’s son Otakar wrote a
about
in 1961
boyhood
his
trip to
America. Although sixty-eight years had passed, he had never forgotten the
met
Indians he
in Spillville.
He
described
ing to a tribe of thirty or so Iroquois the creek. .
.
.
.
.
.
My father was
who
them
“medicine men” belong-
as
lived in tents “south of town, across
interested ... in their songs
and instruments.
Father received photos from the Indians. These photos were
among my
father’s prize possessions.” 25
The high
point of the Spillville Dvorak Centennial Celebration was a
grand parade led by a high school marching band huffing out a Sousafied “Goin’ Home,” from the
New World Symphony. The band
was followed by
Antonin Dvorak
him were
a horse cart carrying Otakar’s son,
son and grandson, Antonin IV and Antonin V,
Czechoslovakia coat and with a
man”
“the old
beard, Antonin Dvorak
who had
on the
were beginning
III
last leg
train It
still
winds
its
traces the bittersweet route of
to turn, a
reminder that the family were about
East Seventeenth Street.
The
others
Dvorak detrained
would return
into the
smoke and
to
String Quartet.
The
leaves
to separate
their parents
on
Prague.
soot of the
Depot, 26 he was carrying the completed scores of his
new “American”
Dvorak and
of their end-of-summer journey of 1893.
Antonin would remain with
his
like
way alongside the broad
little
and
traveled from
looked every centimeter
once again. Otakar and
When
his
to all of us pilgrims.
The Maple Leaf Limited sweeps of the Hudson estuary. his family
Beside
Dressed in a nineteenth-century hat and
for the occasion. full
III.
Grand Central
New World Symphony
They would both be premiered
at
Carnegie Hall during the 1893-94 season, the most triumphant of the composer’s
life.
Dvorak
to
4°
Duke
Ellington
5
The
National Conservatory
of Music of America
The at
National Conserv ator)' of Music of America was represented in
the brilliant Carnegie Hall premiere of Dvorak’s
the
New World on December )
Antonin and Otakar the student
sat in a
composer
for
16, 1893.
whom
From
(Strathotte), 1
B.
Thurber,
Philharmonic on the stage below. Scattered
players;
and
sat
proudly
in
an equally
cello section of the
in the balconies
who had copied some
on the stands of the
(
Dvorak had the highest hopes. Jeanette
prominent box nearby. Victor Herbert led the
resting
no. 9
Dvorak, his wife, and their two sons
box of honor with Maurice Arnold
Thurber and her husband, Frances
dents: Harry T. Burleigh,
Symphony
force
full
New York
were other
of the orchestra parts
a fifteen-year-old cornetist,
stu-
now
Edwin
Franko Goldman (the future composer and director of his own “Goldman”
who had
band),
already played
some of the music from
he tested the trumpet passages they
sat well I
for
Dvorak
as
Seidl or
to see if
on the instrument.
slow movement,
call for a
symphony when
he was orchestrating
wonder how many students were present
tuba player.
the
The
when
the conductor,
Anton
at the first rehearsal
of the
Seidl, sent for the orchestra’s
tuba player thought he had the week
off, for
tuba in the score. But a last-minute decision was
Dvorak — to reinforce the bass trombone
Dvorak did not
made — by
either
part with a tuba, further
underpinning the mysterious chorale that opens the Largo movement and sets a
somber mood
“Goin’
Home”
tune.
for the
hauntingly beautiful English horn solo, the
And
thousands of performances ever since, a lone
at
41
tuba player sounds the seven notes at the beginning and end of the slow
movement and then remains
trapped onstage for the
rest of the
symphony
with nothing to do.
The English horn (Strathotte)
solo
made
a lasting
impression on Maurice Arnold
and two of his fellow composition students, Harvey Worthington
Loomis and William Arms as “a study or sketch for a
Dvorak had described the slow movement
Fisher.
longer work, either a cantata or an opera
on Longfellow’s 'Hiawatha.”’ 2 But how do we explain later, just
when
.
.
.
based
that thirty or so years
the copyright was running out, Loomis, Arnold, and Fisher
—
independently of one another— fitted the English horn tune from the Largo
symphony with
of the
came up
Negro
a
own
text,
“Goin’
tually established itself as a
coincidence.
I
Home”
1923);
but
published? Arnold
it
Mine” (New York: H. Flammer,
with “Mother
“Massa Dear” (Boston: C. C. Birchard, using his
and had
spiritual text
1927);
Loomis used
was Fisher’s adaptation
it
(Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1922), that even-
popular Negro
think that Dvorak told
spiritual.
members
This has
to
be more than
of his composition class that
Negro
the English horn solo was conceived as a wordless
spiritual
— for Hi-
awatha!
What was
outcome of Dvorak’s prediction about
the
a
new
school of
American music?
How
three in particular:
Rubin Goldmark, grandson of a Hebrew cantor and nephew
did his students at the National Conservatory fare,
of the celebrated Viennese
composer Karl Goldmark; Maurice Arnold
(Strathotte), Dvorak’s “favorite”;
and proud,
feisty
Will Marion Cook, a
man
ahead of his time? 3
Rubin Goldmark (1872-1936) became
best
known
in 1924,
he headed the composition department
Art and
its
Goldmark a
as a teacher. Starting
at the Institute
of Musical
successor, the Juilliard School, holding the post until his death. also
founded the Bohemian Musical Society. In the winter of 1917,
Brooklyn-born teenager, Aaron Copland, began studying privately with
him, a relationship that lasted until Copland
began work with
his
new
and
Paris four years later
left for
teacher, Nadia Boulanger.
George Gershwin,
ever in pursuit of a conservatory equivalency diploma,
came
to
Goldmark
for-
for
a short period in 1923. 4
While Goldmark was Trio, op.
1,
still
which he dedicated
conservatory on
May 8,
to his teacher.
1893, a few
The Piano licks,
Trio, op.
no Indian tunes or
Dvorak
to
Duke
Ell ington
r,
The
trio
weeks before Dvorak
Victor Herbert offering his “kind assistance” as
be the piece that moved Dvorak
composed
studying with Dvorak he
to declare,
cellist.
was premiered
Piano at
left for Spillville,
The Piano
“Now there
a
brio
is
the
with
said to
are two Goldmarks.”
contains no overt Americanisms, no cakewalk
spirituals. It
sounds Viennese. Goldmark’s more 5
mature, unblushingly American symphonic work The Call of the Plain
which
(1925),
I
dusted off for a Dvorak American Legacy concert
Prague Spring Festival in 1992, 6 pales
and blues-inspired works that writing around the
same
1930s.
comparison with the
Copland and Gershwin, were
his star pupils,
I
talked with the conductor, composer,
and pub-
who had studied with Rubin Goldmark in the early Cohn retained a vivid memory of his teacher, in particular the hun-
Arthur Cohn,
dreds of themes he wrote, and the months
“lost,”
lowed him
I
begin composing
to
revisions of the
own
fresh ragtime-
time.
In the winter of 1993 lisher
in
at the
teacher, Dvorak.
To my
several students of
Cohn
surprise
star
true for his fellow romantic composers, Tchaikovsky if
Goldmark were
alive today
Goldmark’s
The same
and Brahms, but
he would have
ever
has risen and sunk be-
neath the horizon several times during the twentieth century.
ger that
finally al-
Goldmark
did not recall
work with Dvorak. Dvorak’s
his
Goldmark
pointed out that similar “endless
theme” had been reported by -
making known
in earnest.
before
his
I’ll
is
wa-
Dvorak apprentice-
ship engraved on his calling card.
Nor did Cohn
recall
Goldmark mentioning Aaron Copland, whereas
“he rarely missed an opportunity ready composed the Rhapsody
in
to
bring up Gershwin.” Gershwin had
Blue
,
An American
in Paris,
and the
ano] Concerto in F, and was the darling of Broadway by the time
studying with Goldmark. Copland’s big pieces Billy the
Kid
(1938), and,
above
all,
— El salon
al-
(Pi-
Cohn was
Mexico
(1936),
Appalachian Spring (1944) — were yet
to
come.
Goldmark was
particularly proud, said
with his Lullaby for string quartet.” Ira
Cohn,
Edward
that
he “helped Gershwin
Jablonski, a longtime friend of
Gershwin and the biographer of George, dismisses the import of the
Goldmark-Gershwin ‘studied’ with
can hardly be claimed that Gershwin
relationship: “It
Goldmark.
.
.
.
They met perhaps
three times.” In
my
view,
three meetings between a master teacher and an advanced musician
happens
to
be a genius can be deeply influential.
Gershwin did not As
is
live
long enough
to issue reflections
often the case, various spokespersons have arisen to
saddens
me
that the only statements
phers are dismissive or poke fun at a
and respected ...
a
New York.” 8 Had
he
comium
who
most sought lived,
on
fill
his early years.
the gap.
And
it
about Goldmark by Gershwin biogra-
man Jablonski
after teacher of
himself describes as “fine
piano and theory then in
Gershwin might have contributed
alongside that of Copland,
who
his
own
en-
wrote a moving tribute to his
teacher in 1956 on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of Goldmark’s death:
The Conservatory
of
Music of America 43
He was one
of the outstanding musicians and composers of his period.
American musicians
.
.
.
tend to forget that only half a century ago so-
music was thought of as an exotic growth
called classical
can landscape. Because of that,
had
their
music
men
work cut out
for
in a bleak native
thVmen
Edwin Franko Goldman, chestra, recalled
environment. ... In a very
the
a debt,
young trumpeter
Maurice Arnold
the conservatory was
to acclimatize the art of
first
if
for
real sense these
no other reason
in a
in Dvorak’s conservatory or-
memoir: “My
Maurice Arnold, who
harmony at
instructor in
in those days
Dvorak was very fond of him, and considered him
promising pupil.”
10
Maurice Arnold was born his
in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1865.
mother, a piano teacher. In 1883 Arnold
College of Music
to
study composition in Europe.
time and already a fine pianist and
he found, Heinrich Urban, attempted
to
imbue
dependently arrived his
compositions
Th is was around
a
in Berlin,
a suite with a at the idea of
“|
Negro Plantation
Mau-
his
most
first
lessons
left
the Cincinnati
He was
eighteen at the first
because] he discouraged spirit.” 11
teacher
me when
Arnold had
I
in-
incorporating African American music into
decade before he began
the
His
Arnold rejected the
violinist.
as
was known
rice A. Strathotte.
came from
that
possible our present day musical flowering. 9
make
they helped
of Rubin Goldmark’s time
them: they had
were the pioneers, we owe them
Ameri-
in the
same time
his studies at the conservatory.
that the Boston-based
composer George
Whitefield Chadwick was composing a Scherzo (1884) for his Second Sym-
made “American references.” 12 Arnold’s particular interest was duly noted by Dvorak: “Among my pupils ... I have discovered strong talents. phony There
that
is
one young
man upon whom am I
building strong expectations. His
compositions are based upon Negro melodies, and
I
have encouraged him in
this direction.” 13
On his
January
23, 1894,
still
new symphony, Dvorak
flushed with the enthusiastic reception given
directed the National Conservatory
Chorus and
Orchestra in a benefit concert at Madison Square Garden for the Herald's Free Clothing Fund. This concert has received the Dvorak canon.
Upon examination we
little
see that this was not
New York
attention in
some quiet
school recital for parents and friends, but rather a significant Thurber-Dvorak
“event”
— the
conservatory on parade. Especial attention was given to the
achievements of its African American students,
whose work was being held up to
as
in particular
Maurice Arnold,
an example of the new American school
come.
Dvorak was the drawing
card.
The Herald
review reported that “long
before the hour fixed for the opening, the [Madison Square Garden] hall
Dvorak 44
to
Duke
Ellington
Figure
5.1
Sissieretta Jones
wearing
medals awarded on her concert tours. Unsigned
drawing
for the
New York
Herald, January 24, 1894.
was
filled
with an
immense throng
of people.
.
.
There was hardly standing
.
room,” 14 and that the large and distinguished audience included Maestro
and Mrs. Anton
Seidl.
The
review also noted that “each
ception, belonged to the colored race.” Sissieretta Jones fair for
— the
with one ex-
’
1
same “Black
Cook’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”
soloist,
Patti”
— was
who
did not
show up
at the
the featured guest star of the
evening. 16 For the grand finale she joined with “baritone soloist” Harry
Thacker Burleigh, an all-Negro Stephen
Foster’s
who conducted. artist in
ple
“Old Folks
at
choir,
and the orchestra
Home,” arranged
performance of
occasion by Dvorak,
Jones’s portrait appeared in the Herald rendered by a staff ,
those pre-photoengraving days.
bosom
for the
in a
replete with medals
It
shows her formally posed, her am-
and awards. There
is
a smaller portrait of
Burleigh.
Dvorak bestowed
a high
both) African American
over his baton.
Edward
honor upon two of his students — one (possibly
— when
he invited them
B. Kinney, organist
to the
podium and turned
and choirmaster of
St. Philip’s
A.M.E. Church, directed the orchestra and the 130-voice
all-black choir,
among them
the “Inflamma-
tus”
the boy sopranos and altos from
St. Philip’s, in
from Gioachino Rossini’s Stabat Mater, with
Sissieretta Jones as soloist.
The Conservatory of Music of America 45
Maurice Arnold led the orchestra
brand-new composition, American
in his
Plantation Dances. '
Dvorak referred
“When
I
first
to this
came here upon
study and build
a settled conviction.
uct of the
work
And
soil.”
ap earlier Herald interview:
in
last
.
year
was impressed with
I
plantation melodies
— and
it
this idea
has developed into
These beautiful and varied themes
down
saying so Dvorak sat
fingers lightly over the keys.
It
was
— to
at his
are the prod-
piano and ran his
his favorite pupil’s adaptation of a
southern melody. 17
was delighted
I
safely sion.
copy of Arnold’s American Plantation Dances
to find a
New York
tucked away in the stacks of the
18 It
was published
Public Library Music Divi-
form of a condensed autograph score — most
in the
own hand — and instrumented for a standard European symphonic ensemble, with one exception. The fourth movement calls for probably in Arnold’s
“blocks of sandpaper,” which were used by kit or trap
drummers
in the
dance
bands and theater orchestras of the early 1900s. The sandpaper blocks un-
rhythm
derline a triplet
in the
woodwinds,
into a rollicking cakewalk. This in a classically scored work,
must be the
hut also the
There were no orchestral carefully notated indications
recreated a
American Plantation Dances, which at
Queens College and with
inet,
striking
is
no. 7, the
because
it
usage of sandpaper blocks
pop-music
effect. 19
score and a set of parts of the
full
performed with
I
the Karlovarski
The second movement,
Festival in 1992.
first
first
that soon accelerates
be found, but by following Arnold’s
parts to
I
rhythm
a
my student
orchestra
Symphony at the Prague Spring
a lilting skipping
dance
for solo clar-
reminds everyone of the celebrated Humoresque
dah-dadah-dadah-dadah one
that introduced so
many
of us to
Dvorak. They share the same gavotte rhythm, phrase lengths, and plagal cadences.
The
porters.
There
7 by a year
clarinet tune is
really
must be the one
no other candidate.
and probably was
ment, in the
light of
Dvorak was
its
.
would go over I
picture a
predates the
Goldman’s memoir, conjures up
greatly interested in the Negroes,
named
T. Burleigh.
It
Dvorak tinkled out
.
Craig, a clarinetist .
Often when the
to Bailey
and put
happy Papa Dvorak
for the re-
Humoresque
no.
inspiration. Arnold’s choice of solo instru-
In the students’ orchestra there were a violinist
that
first
his
at the
and especially
number
named
a lovely image:
of them.
I
their music.
recollect a
first
Bailey and in particular Harry
clarinet
had
a solo passage,
Dvorak
arms around him and cry Bravol
Free Clothing
Fund
concert, bursting
with pride as Arnold conducted his American Plantatio?r Dances and Bailey tootled forth, his theory
Dvorak 46
to
Duke
Ell ington
made
manifest for
all to
behold.
movement
Arnold’s final
by
oboe and accompanied by busy
tfie
swing about the
last
time with his head.
ise
wish
movement that And am pretty I
were
gallery front, they I
figures in the strings.
all
sure that under cover of that friendly
patting ‘juba.’” 20
could report that Arnold’s more mature music
I
chamber works
lished
I
la
Midway
Ventre,’” recalling his
companist
for
sets
one
the
visit to
who were
r2
Yorkville, then Manhattan’s
ac-
is
not described as a Negro by two contemporary
Edwin Franko Goldman and
that
reviewed the Free Clothing
Arnold lived
as a
concert.
the
at
end of
o East Eighty-ninth Street, was in the heart of
German
district. 22
a lasting impression I
Fund
white person
1
am reminded ,
college student and that
black pride
in a
Maurice Arnold”
“Cross,” the genesis of The Barrier an opera
Meyerowitz that made
on
me when
I
had the pleasure of conducting
My old man died in a fine My ma died in a shack. I
prominent participation
careful to so designate:
address,
last
Hughes poem,
Danse du
he must have been African American. John
New York Herald reporter who His
two pianos, eight hands, and
for
a passing reference to “the black student
book Dvorak, 21 yet he
life.
Among
Chicago World’s Fair when he was the
the
Strathotte’s
There can be no doubt his
pub-
from before or during Arnold's
Plaisance, ‘souvenir of the famous Persian
to thinking that
Clapham makes chroniclers
fifteen of Arnold’s
“Colored People’s Day.”
Maurice Arnold program
all
prom-
fulfilled the
listed in the catalog of the British Library.
time with Dvorak: a “Valse elegante”
in his
studied
are a few provocative pieces that date
“Dance de
such a gay
is
nearly every boy in the choir marked
of his American Plantation Dances.
them
And according
Herald review, the performance was a toe-tapper: “There
to the
swung out
builds into a full-blown cakewalk,
wonder where I’m gonna
of a Langston
composed by Jan saw
as a
it
young
in rp6r:
big house.
die,
Being neither white nor black? 23
Does Arnold’s have
to
crafted,
among
do with is
his
ambivalence about
his
double identity? The bulk of
many
name
or his “modesty”
his later work, while well
undistinguished. Perhaps one could find
his larger,
those of so
lifelong
more
interesting
music
unpublished works, but Arnold’s manuscript scores, other American composers of the period, including
like
Cook
and Europe, have disappeared. 24
Dvorak and the well-meaning rightly believed that the
of a
new
folks at the
Herald and the conservatory
American Plantation Dances pointed
school, but there were miles yet to go.
Dances, despite
its
inspired
moments,
in the direction
The American
clings safely to tradition.
Plantation
Except
for
The Conservatory of Music of America 47
throwing in a
lick
on sandpaper blocks, Arnold was
an African American landscape using
tion of trying to paint
first
many of the unique
canceling out
palette, thus
Dvorak and,
attracted
unenviable posi-
in the
qualities in
a
European
Negro music
that
he astutely observed, “moved sentiment in”
as
American musicians.
Over the next three decades, evolve, with
its
a
own unique sound.
new kind
of American orchestra would
instrumentation would allow a
Its
style
of inflected playing that mirrors the language and song of the people from
which
flows.
it
How
were the American Plantation Dances which Dvorak had touted ,
so mightily, perceived by other African
tory— in eral
Concert. 25
violinists in the I
time during the 1893-94 season. According
I
was barred
because I
.
.
couldn’t play;
Cook left the to
conservatory some-
an oft-quoted memoir that he
later:
.
from the
wouldn’t play
I
Fund
conservatory orchestra at the Free Clothing
say “might have been,” because
wrote a half century
at the conserva-
Marion Cook? Cook might have been one of sev-
particular, Will
Negro
American students
my
classes at the National
my
fingers
Conservatory
fiddle in the orchestra
had grown too
anyway; Harry T. Burleigh was
his pet.
and counterpoint teacher, thought
I
stiff.
.
.
.
under Dvorak.
Dvorak didn’t
like
me
Only John White, the harmony
had
talent,
and
insisted that
I
at-
tend his classes. 26
The
had grown
“fingers
stiff’
remark resonates with another
Cook’s abandoning the violin in anger
One
story
about
after a critic offered qualified praise
Tom
who knew Cook as early as 1908, when he (Fletcher) was managing the path-breaking Memphis Students ensemble, “the first modern jazz band,” led by Cook. 2 " The tale is further dramatized by Duke Ellington, who devotes a chapter to Cook in his auby referring
to his race.
tobiography, Music
When
Is
.
.
he [Cook]
.
first
returned to
newspaper
Fletcher,
New York
and did
a brilliant critique the next
“the world’s greatest
Dad Cook
is
My Mistress.
Carnegie Hall, he had per
source
Negro
a
day
office
.
.
.
and smashed
splintered instrument, life. 28
48
Duke
newspa-
took his violin and went to see the reviewer at the
greatest violinist in the world!”
to
in the
at
violinist.”
it
across the reviewer’s desk. “I
not the world’s greatest Negro violinist,” he exclaimed.
Dvorak
concert
Ellington
He
“I
am
am
the
turned and walked away from his
and he never picked up
a violin again in his
Cook did
up
pick
Clef Club Concert
historic
to believe
is
meals
Carnegie Hall
at
joined lames Reese Europe's
in 1912.
But what
I
find hardest
Cook's story that he was fed up because Burleigh “was Dvorak’s
pet— the
pet.” Dvorak’s real
does Cook’s
when he
the fiddle again
memoir
when he was
gratefully recall
traveling
beat— was Maurice Arnold. Not only
fellow to
how
Burleigh staked
up from Washington,
way; in an interview he gave during the
bed and
to a
trying to break into Broad-
London run
touted Burleigh, transforming aspiration into
him
fact:
Dahomey Cook
of In
,
“Soon you
will
have the
opportunity of seeing a negro composer of serious music in London. to
refer
I
Mr. Harry T. Burleigh whose chamber music and symphonies are well
known.” 29
Cook was heading toward
If
a parting of the ways with
Dvorak and the
Lund concert would have
National Conservatory, the Lree Clothing
forced
the issue. Violinists were ubiquitous in those days. Nevertheless, the directors
would have wanted every
of the conservatory
And
that symbolic event.
I
violinist of color
on parade
at
doubt that Dvorak, who remarked upon the lack
of wind instrumentalists at the conservatory, would have noticed Cook’s ab-
among
sence
from
a
dozen
or
more
which has the ring of an
classes,”
saw himself as a golden boy. at
violinists.
He was
Nor would he have “barred him
official
dictum. No,
I
think that
Cook
enrolled in the Oberlin Conservatory
age twelve. With the financial assistance of Lrederick Douglass, he was
then sent
to Berlin,
of Mendelssohn,
where he joined the
violin class of Joseph Joachim, friend
Schumann, and Brahms. Cook, who had
excerpts of his
opera performed at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition, could not bear the idea of literally playing “second fiddle” behind Sissieretta Jones at a special concert that
and
pupils,
music I
tra
as
Dvorak presented
to
show
certainly not for a composer-conductor
tame
as
off his African
who wrote
under Dvorak,” before or
after the
venient way to deal with his envy. all
I
He was
as a
fiddle in the orches-
Lund event, was a conwonder if Cook came to the realiza-
Dvorak’s enthusiasms about African American music, the his students
were not where Cook was
composer. Beethoven’s formulations were of no interest
already working out his
Tom’s Cabin” he had
my
Lree Clothing
also
European models he imposed upon heading
plans.
arias,
own
African American idiom
— the
to
him.
“Uncle
following the play, were no doubt sung in dialect 30
— and
Within the year Cook and Paul Laurence Dunbar would sign
a contract with the
music publishers W. Witmark and Sons
for Clorindy:
Origin of the Cakewalk a novel musical theater piece that ,
ceived, though
The
Negro-inspired
Maurice Arnold’s.
believe that Cook’s stubborn refusal to “play
tion that for
American
it
had
yet to be
basic difference
committed
The
Cook had con-
to paper. 31
between Arnold’s and Cook’s Negro-inspired mu-
The Conservatory
of
Music of America 49
sic
home
was vividly brought
me when
to
I
recorded their works in a single
on September
session with the Prague Radio Orchestra
Dances
chestra read through Arnold’s American' Plantation
(European)
friend.
The 11s
as if
it
known
oboe,
to the
onto the dance
On
floor.
far
more
for
its
or-
were an old
only challenge was getting two cakewalk tunes to
Arnold assigned them both than for beckoning
The
24, 1998.
lyric
fly.
singing
the other hand, the tunes in
Cook’s overture from In Dahomey, which require the underlying, steadily
prodding pulse of ragtime, took some time
to settle in.
For the grand finale of the Free Clothing Fund concert, Dvorak made his
own
setting of
Stephen
as “a very beautiful
“Old Folks
Foster’s
American
folk
song
.
.
.
at
that
Home,” which he described
he Foster] happened
to write
|
down
[author’s italics].
American music
is
music
that lives in the hearts of the
people, and therefore this air has every right to be regarded as purely national.” 32
These days Dvorak would be
work under copyright. In majority' of African
Old Folks
at
was
such a statement about
a
he was simply echoing the sentiments of a great
fact
Americans.
Home”
liable for
W.
E. B.
Du
Bois himself thought that
“The
justifiably part of black heritage. 33
The Dvorak archive in Prague holds the sheet music from which Dvorak made his soli, chorus, and orchestra version of “The Old Folks at Home,” five pages sliced out of a collection of minstrel songs “old and new” published
by the Oliver Ditson Company; with an arranger’s
credit, “As
Sung by
E. P.
who
paid
Christy” (Christy being the very successful minstrel troupe leader
Foster for the right to claim the song as his own). 34 Dvorak’s orchestration
music
follows the printed
Burleigh and
Madame
in almost every detail.
assigns the verses to
Jones and adds a few touches: a rising arpeggiated
figure that leads into the choir’s entrance
harmonization of the
He
refrain, “All the
and
world
is
his
own
dark and dreary.” Only as an
afterthought does Dvorak affix his name, squeezing
Stephen Foster’s name: “Arranged
for Soli,
fine four-part choral
it
between the
title
and
Chorus, and Orchestra by An-
tonin Dvorak.” 35
The Herald s ’
reviewer reported that just before Dvorak began the finale,
Mr. Friedlander, a
violinist,
stepped out of the ranks and presented Dvorak
with a gold-fitted baton of ebony as a
token of loving esteem
was too
much overcome
to their distinguished director.
by his feelings
chestra by gestures that were their kindness than
Dvorak 5
°
to
Duke
commenced is
to
conduct. Appropriately
the apostle of national music, the
directed with his baton was his
Ellington
the or-
more eloquent of his appreciation of
enough, seeing that Dr. Dvorak
number he
He thanked
any words could have been, and then taking up
the beautiful present he
first
to reply.
Dr. Dvorak
own arrangement
of
America’s most popular folksong, “The Old Folks
at
Home,” which he
scored specially for this concert. 36
At the end of the concert, Dvorak,
who
and saved every
fastidiously dated
scrap of paper carrying his sketches as well as his finished scores, gave the
“Old Folks
work
at
Home”
manuscript
to
Burleigh as a
that “lives in the hearts of the people” to the
music
him. 3
for
Goldman
recalled the concert
‘Swanee
rus participated in
River,’
ous event, one of those rare concerts
nurturing
human
Above
being.
all,
thereby returning the
man who embodied Negro years later: “a
fifty
and Dvorak beamed with
The Free Clothing Fund concert reads
are magically joined.
gift,
when
as
It is
joy.” 38
an intensely poignant yet
off as
no wonder
an unusually
warm and
that after the composer’s
death in 1904, Sylvester Russell, a leading black journalist with a national lowing, was
moved
to close his obituary: “If it
musicians alone could flood his grave with Yet,
many
in the
audience
at the
joy-
the performers and the audience
Dvorak comes
A mensch.
Negro cho-
fol-
were possible the Afro-American
tears.” 39
Madison Square Garden Music Hall
were aware that Jeanette Thurber’s unique conservatory,
as
dramatized by the
concert before them, was but a tiny oasis in a vast desert of bigotry.
The prom-
The incidence of lynchings — practically the only mentions of African Americans came across as I thumbed through hundreds of pages of the Daily Columbian — was at its height. And ise
of Reconstruction was long broken.
1
coursing
its
way between the lynchings and the
love-ins
was a small but stub-
born third stream of thought: a rejection by members of the black tual elite, the “talented tenth,” led
zation, the whitening, of
Negro
by
W.
intellec-
E. B. D11 Bois, of the Europeani-
art.
The Conservatory
of
Music of America 5
1
6
Paul Laurence Dunbar, Clorindy
,
and “The Talented Tenth”
Some prominent opment
of
own
black intellectuals with ideas of their
Negro genius” were 1
at
odds with the
conservatory, and their supporters in the press,
Washington, D.C., on December
8,
efforts
“for the devel-
of Dvorak and the
on behalf of Negro music. In
1896, John
Wesley Crummell,
a distin-
guished African American minister, brought together a high school Latin
and
teacher, two fellow clergymen,
a
young poet
to explore the idea of form-
ing a black learned society, an African Institute.
The
poet, Paul
Dunbar, had already distinguished himself by introducing Negro his poetry, consecrating as authentic folk art that
The
in minstrelsy.
five
men
dialect into
which had been parodied
agreed on a statement of purpose:
To promote
the historical and literary works of
gather in
archive valuable data, historical or literary works of Negro
authors.
its
To
aid,
cious assaults, in
endeavor
all
the lines of learning and truth.
was
left
articles.
among American
They considered
Negro
authors.
To
by publications, the vindication of the race from
nual collection of original
tion
Laurence
To
Negros. 2
women
unresolved. For their second meeting 5,
that Crispus Attucks, the
Edward Burghardt Du
publish an an-
raise the standard of intellectual
inviting distinguished black
symbolic day of March
To
vi-
to join,
but the ques-
Crummell chose
the
the anniversary of the Boston Massacre, the day first
African American hero, was killed. William
Bois, a twenty-eight-year-old classics teacher
from
53
Wilberforce University with a doctorate in anthropology, joined the group,
now expanded to nineteen. At the suggestion of Dunbar, described by Crummell as “the shining star ... a model of the younger men of genius on whom the future of their people depended,” it was agreed their name be changed from the African Institute to the American Negro Academy. They were no longer outsiders looking back; they were now full and equal citizens looking ahead."
Crummelks
At
invitation,
Du
Bois submitted a paper that he read to the
assembly, “The Conservation of the Races.”
For the development of Negro genius, of Negro
Negro
spirit,
by one vast
have
for
only Negros
ideal,
bound and welded
can work out
humanity
...
if
the
in
its
Negro
is
literature
and
of
art,
together, Negros inspired
fullness the great
message we
ever to be a factor in the world’s
history— if among the gaily-colored banners that deck the broad ramparts of civilization
is
hang one uncompromisingly black, then
to
it
must he placed there by black hands, fashioned by black heads and hallowed by the
travail
of two hundred million black hearts beating in
one glad song of jubilee. 4 Further into the paper,
Du
Bois narrows his sights and offers a musical
ref-
erence:
We are the people whose subtle sense of song has given America only American music, pathos and
only American
its
humor amid
its
mad
it
was
educated blacks
for
to discern the truth within,”
as “a
to turn to their
and
Du
its
only touch of
money-getting plutocracy.
Dunbar’s poetry had been discussed sary
fairytales,
its
demonstration of how neces-
own
Bois’s paper
race
and
seemed
history in order
to
be urging
just
such an approach. 5 Nevertheless, once the enthusiastic applause subsided, several
members
rose to question
Du
Bois’s views,
and an
all-too-familiar
mem-
separatist-versus-assimilationist debate ensued. 6 Before adjourning, the
bers
drew up
a wish
list
of forty-nine leading black intellectuals they
would
invite (all males).
Despite the academy’s professed interest in “Negro literature and it
arts,”
wasn’t until 1903 that a musician was invited to join, and then only as a
“corresponding member.” 7 This honor was bestowed upon Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, an African English
composer who called ragtime “the worst
The academicians apparently liked their music bland, at least on the record. Cook wrote about such high-minded blacks — among them his own mother, an Oberlin graduate in the class of 1865 — who “loved the Dunsort of rot.”
bar lyrics but weren’t ready for Negro songs.”
Dvorak 54
to
Duke
Ellington
Only
a
few months before the academy meetings began, Dunbar met
Cook in New York City. Cook had been on a “long siege of persuasion” get Dunbar reinterested in Clorindy 8 One such skirmish must have taken
with to
.
when
place in September 1896,
brought Cook, Dunbar, Williams and
fate
Walker, Victor Herbert, and the Casino Theater eventually
Clorindy would
make history— together.
According recitation
— where
Dunbar’s journal,
to
was the same month he gave
this
under Edison’s new “focusable
lamps”
[electric
at the
a
Lyceum
|
Theater on Twenty-third Street and Fourth Avenue. 9 Dunbar also traveled out to Far Rockaway to letters (a
visit
meeting that led
hung out with Cook,
William Dean Howells, the dean of American
to a
glowing review
in
Harper s Weekly ). 10 And he
Weldon Johnson, his friends from who introduced him around New York’s
Burleigh, and James
the Chicago World’s Fair days,
show business crowd. Among those he met were Johnson’s poser
J.
Rosamond Johnson. 11 Wouldn’t these young African American
be curious about the appearance, tertainers,
in a
white show with music written by
The Gold Bug was opening on
Burleigh’s friend Victor Herbert? Herbert’s
September
minute the producers turned color line, but to no avail.
saw
it.
to the
“a
most dismal
dovetails neatly with Cook’s
Washington, D.C., ideas for Clorindy
Whether
for
lasted three days.
Locke written
flop
.
.
in 1936,
But Cook evidently
Cook
recalls that
memoir about going up
to
riot.”
New
12
The
This
York from
meetings with Williams and Walker about his newest
12 .
or not Burleigh,
and vaudeville
sicals that
so at the last
lift,
W and W an overnight
.
Dunbar, and the Johnson brothers caught The
Gold Bug with Cook, they constituted cians,
a
popular vaudeville team, breaking the
The show
In a letter to author Alain
Gold Bug was
The show needed
the Casino Theater.
21 at
artists
time on Broadway, of black en-
for the first
Williams and Walker,
com-
brother, the
who
stars
a core
group of black
together would create the
new
Americanized Broadway, moving the Great White
waltz to ragtime. Clorindy
:
The Origin
of the
musi-
writers,
all-black
Way
Cakewalk was the
mu-
from the
first to
break
through.
Dunbar and Cook ington, D.C.,
finally
sometime
came
together to work on Clorindy in
in the winter of 1897-98.
since the Chicago World’s Fair, a time less
men
in their twenties,
erick Douglass.
wrote:
When
“He was no
proper hue
/
And
soft
in
more mature and focused
evil
influence of a living legend, Fred-
1895 a ^ a § e seventy-seven,
To
Dunbar their
They were now
a far
Each had since encountered — and
sur-
.
what was
pair.
father-
and crime he gave
tongued apologist
hurled at
Four years had passed
when Dunbar and Cook, two
came under the
Douglass died
14
Wash-
.
.
/
evil’s
sin
due.”
vived— new, enormously powerful mentors. Cook’s disillusionment with the
Paul Laurence
Dunbar and Clorindy 55
well-meaning Dvorak did not seem helped
eronian notions of Crummell and
from the
crush his
Dunbar was probably
clarify his goals.
We
to
spirit. It
might even have
relieved to set aside the Cic-
Negro Academy.
the’ American
have both men’s versions of their Clorindy collaboration. Working
letters
Dunbar
and personal interviews, Paul Dunbar’s biographer assembled version in 1907:
Cook and his [to see Dunbar
Will Marion
came
over
brother John were in Washington and asking,
“How about
finishing Clorindy ?”
|
Paul agreed.
It
was
just
what he needed — comic
England and the seriousness of his
ships in
The
first
relief after his hard-
novel [The Uncalled
three gathered at John’s house, around the big piano. John
future Clef
|.
[a
Clubber thumped out the rhythm with musician’s magic |
Will
as
Sometimes
loud. fit
hummed
the tune. Paul walked back and forth, a
rhyme wouldn’t come,
composing out
or a balky phrase refused to
the meter.
“Here,” Will said. “Have another beer.” Refreshed, Paul began dictating again. Will scribbled
jumped up
to
cally
One
.
.
.
of the
“We’ve got
A cakewalk.
Clorindy
s
subtitle
Cakewalk. Will read off the names of their
[six]
a hit show,” Will said, slapping Paul enthusiasti-
on the back. “Wait
of the songs,
the words beneath the notes and
do an impromptu dance.
was The Origin songs.
down
till it
gets to
“Who Dat Say Chicken
New York. in Dis
You’ll see.”
Crowd?,” became the
hit of
the show:
Who dat say chicken
in dis
crowd?
Speak de word agin’ and speak
Blame de
lan’ let
white folk rule
Who dat say chicken set the
— the
Chicken ater.
it,
in dis
crowd?
word “chicken” with an upward leap of
short-long, ragtime
snap
loud
lookin’ fuh a pullet
I’se
Cook
it
rhythm — also known
as the
doo-dah
“hook,” in current songwriter jargon, that
in Dis
Crowd?”
on every one’s
first
a third lick
power— “de
a catchy,
and the Scotch
made “Who Dat Say
humming list as they left the
But underneath the clever dialect and spanky rhythms
mentary. Dunbar juxtaposes
on
lan’ let
lies social
white folk rule
it”
the-
com-
— with a
simple search for sustenance.
Cook’s version of their collaboration dates from 1944, the last year of his his idea for a
life. 16
show about the
Cook
5
6
to
Duke
Ellington
memoir
written in
how Williams and Walker
origin of the cakewalk
same time he was “barred from
Dvorak
recalls
a
and
that
it
liked
was around the
classes at the National Conservatory.”
Cook
The Big Feature of
'Summer
E.E.Rice's
nights'.'
Dat Say Chicken Did Crowd.
IN
Words by
l
Music by
Will. Marion
Laurence Dunbar. BUSHED BV
Cn«a Amcaro
^o**"
Figure
e.
Co Lonoon Ena.
—
WnAutv Rovce
moved back
to
“Who Dat
Co ToPonTo. Cam
Say Chicken
Washington but he
't
^o**"
°eCl
I
libretto
(which was never used)
finally got
one hand, Cook’s
Dunbar
[sic]
and
fifty-year-old
from the signing of the contract
the winter of 1897-98; but there assigns to
Dunbar. According
to-be, “auditioned for Paul
role in Clorindy
.
must have stayed
.
.
in
to
is
Dis Crowd,” 1898
in
didn’t give up: “After a long siege of per-
Paul Laurence
suasion
lasted
t
6.1
Sheet music cover,
On
w,
&
i§S
a
to
consent
few of the
to write the
Clorindy
lyrics.”
memory was
accurate, the “siege”
in 1895 to their actual collaboration in
reason to question the minimal role
Mercer Cook, Abbie Mitchell,
his
mother-
Laurence Dunbar and Harry T. Burleigh
before she ever
met my
father.” If this
is
true,
Cook for a
Dunbar
touch with Clorindy well beyond the all-night session
they both describe. 17 Will Marion
Cook
continues:
Paul Laurence
Dunbar and Clorindy 57
[We
were] fortified by two dozen bottles of beer, a quart of whiskey
a porterhouse steak cut
ate raw.
Without
finished
all
up
.
.
with onions and red peppers, which
.
.
.
.
we
piano or anything but the kitchen table, we
a
the songs,
all
the libretto and
but a few bars of the en-
all
sembles by four o’clock the next morning.
According
to
Cook and Dunbar wrote
both narratives,
the book and
songs for Clorindy in one inspired and beery night. As for the conflicting
Rashomons — a paradigm
collaboration story
of every theatrical “if it weren’t for
have ever known
I
truth. Nevertheless, the
rest of their
me”
— somewhere between them lies the
product of their
efforts,
reworked and cakewalked-up
by the theater-smart Ernest Hogan, would produce a triumph. Cook’s de-
opening night, July
scription of the
My chorus sang like
1898,
5,
is
exultant:
meanwhile
Russians, dancing
like
Negroes,
black angels!
When
the
sounded, the audience stood and cheered
for ten
minutes.
and cakewalking
were
at last
on Broadway, and there
the minstrel!
were going
like angels,
Gone
Linkum
the Massa
a long, long way.
now
it is
Cook
learned that
Casino Roof Garden, ditions for
new
chorus and his fessionalism
.
Negroes
.Gone was the uff-dah of
We were artists and we memoir and
Cook danced
felt entitled.
forgotten
to his
Ultimately,
it
mind
own drumwas Cook’s
for Clorindy.
Rice, producer of Rice’s
Summer
Nights for the
Thirty-ninth and Broadway, was holding weekly au-
Cook showed up
acts.
own
at
Ed
.
but incidents that stuck in his
clear that
mer. Proud, defiant, and worldly, he
chutzpah that turned the corner
stuff!
.
in his Clorindy
his brother John’s role at the piano,
have the ring of truth. By
.
.
18
Cook may have compressed time about
to stay.
note was
last
uninvited with his already-rehearsed
orchestrations to offer excerpts from Clorindy. His pro-
must have impressed John Braham, the English conductor of
— he had conducted the American premiere of Gilbert H.M.S. Pinafore — since Braham turned the baton over to
the Casino orchestra
and Sullivan’s
Cook
for tbe audition.
up
an
to
shouting,
irate
“No
19
In his
memoir, Cook remembers
Ed Rice when he walked nigger can conduct
my
that
Braham
in late to the auditions
stood
and began
orchestra on Broadway!” 20 Nonethe-
Cook and Dunbar’s show crossed the color line on merit, and the Clorindy company, with Cook at the helm, was officially invited to appear.
less,
Clorindy was scheduled to in the
start late, after
hope of attracting regular theatergoers up
“where the patrons could dine and watch
show downstairs
Dvorak 58
eleven o’clock in the evening,
to
Duke
let out.
Ellington
Cook
to the
Casino Roof Garden,
lighter entertainments” after their
reports that the plan worked:
“When we
finished the opening chorus, the house was packed to suffocation.
audience heard those heavenly Negro voices and took Clorindy The Origin of the Cakewalk despite :
,
hour
in length
and
its
comedy piece with an
nnder-the-stars venue, was the original
The
big
to the elevators.”
its
being only about an
first
score— written, composed,
all-Negro musical-
directed, conducted,
choreographed, and orchestrated — by African Americans on Broadway.
James Weldon Johnson, the 1890s through
a firsthand chronicler of black art
World War
poser to take what was then
II,
describes
known
Cook as
as rag-time
“the
and work
first it
and
artists
from
competent com-
out in a musicianly
way. His choruses and finales in Clorindy, complete novelties as they were,
sung by
a lusty chorus,
were simply breath-taking. Broadway had something
entirely new.” 21
Neither the stuffed lievers in
shirts at the
American Negro Academy nor the be-
Dvorak’s prophecy at the National Conservatory could have envi-
sioned the direction that African American music was taking.
Dunbar and
Cook would soon be joined by other gifted Negro musicians and playwrights. Among the more prominent were Bob Cole; the Johnson brothers, James Rosamund and James Weldon; and James Reese Europe. “Nothing would stop us,” said
Cook, “and nothing did
for a
decade.”
Paul Laurence
Dunbar and Clorindy 59
7
James Reese Europe
In 1912
David Mannes established
his reputation as a
music educator by
or-
ganizing the Music Settlement School] for Colored People. Mannes’s path |
crossed with that of James Reese Europe and his Clef history
was made when Mannes invited them
to
Club Orchestra, and
appear
at
Carnegie Hall
in
a benefit concert for the school.
My own in the first
Mannes
path crossed with that of David
trumpet chair
of our regular Saturday
in the
Mannes School
morning
of
in 1949.
I
was
Music Orchestra
rehearsals, held in the
charming
sitting at
if
one
small
concert hall built behind the adjoining pair of elegant East Side town
houses that
made up
the school. Maestro Carl
Bamberger stopped the
hearsal
and introduced the founder of our school
elderly
man
in his nineties, at least six feet tall,
looking, with a good head of pure white hair. a
wonderful smile.
He
talked to
11s
He
left 11s to
re-
Mannes was then an
11s.
thin,
and distinguished
stood very straight and had
what
I
cannot remember),
our work.
It
was unimagin-
Mannes School that knew then — most of the facwere Viennese transplants who communicated in German with one
able that anvone at the J ulty
to
bone
briefly (about
stroked something out on a fiddle, and
1
another
— had
I
any connection with African American music, no
namesake. Nowhere School of Music
in today’s
is its
less
its
chronology of the Mannes College [nee
predecessor, the
Music Settlement School
for
Col-
]
ored People, acknowledged.
61
Music
In his autobiography,
he met
his teacher,
Is
My Faith Mannes tells the
story of
,
man who
John Thomas Douglas, “the
how
my
helped shape
life”: *
One morning when West Twenty-fifth St. Philip's
was practicing
I
Street, in the
and
Tenderloin
district,
A.M.E. Church], the doorbell jangled
Mother opened the door short
basement of our house
in the
stout,
to a rather fine-looking
[215
up the block from
in our areaway.
Negro, well-dressed,
wearing a moustache and a goatee a
la
Napoleon
III. 2
In response to his mother’s broken (Yiddish-inflected?) English, Douglas
“proceeded
German” and introduced himself as
speak in good and fluent
to
a violin teacher, saying that
it
was apparent that her son,
little
David, badly
needed one. As a young
John Douglas played
violinist,
musical entertainment companies: the Elyer eratic
and dramatic plays on black
Minstrels, stars as
two upscale black-owned
who
Sisters,
history,” 2
toured “refined op-
and the “All-Negro” Georgia
one of the most famous companies of its kind, which featured such
Sam Lucas and James
Slippers.”
for
During
this
Bland, the composer of “Oh,
period Douglas copyrighted his
Ball (1868), possibly the
first
own
Dem
Golden
opera, Virginia’s
opera written in the United States by an African
American. Around 1877 Douglas was apparently sponsored by wealthy Philadelphians — Mannes believed they were employers of Douglas's mother
— to study in
Dresden and
Paris. It
was shortly
United States that David Mannes, then
a
Mannes’s memory of Douglas remained
He composed much
after
Douglas’s return to the
boy of thirteen, became
vivid
even
his pupil.
sixty years later:
were ample evidence.
He
occasionally played at entertainments given
by people of his race, but outside of his friends few knew of his tence.
He
home
music, of which piles of manuscript in his
tried to enter a
symphony
exis-
orchestra in this country, but
those doors were closed to a colored man. Being of a modest and
retir-
ing nature he was not able to insist on being heard. Douglas was like a fish
out of water, ahead of his time by thirty or forty years. 4
despondent and
later
on began
to drink. ...
I
He grew
recall so vividly
my play-
ing Mazas, Pleyel and Viotti duets with him, for two violins, violin and viola,
and
cello
and
way
violin. In this
play with better rhythmic values.
I
I
learnt to read at sight
believe
I
was
his only pupil,
there never was a question of payment. ... In order to
meager income he
remember
his
62
to
Duke
and played
but
augment it
to
his
remarkably.
performance of his own arrangement of the “Tann-
hauser March.” ...
Dvorak
learnt to play the guitar
and
Ellington
I
was always aware of his
artistic
and
intellectual
I
and envied him
superiority,
awakened the
me
desire in
musical erudition; an envy which
his
how much John Douglas meant
Now do you
knowledge.
for further
realize
me?
to
So began David Mannes’s “cherished plan of founding the Music Settlement [School] for Colored People in
The Third
memory
of
my old
Street Settlement School, the
music school settlements “planted
first
friend
and teacher.”
of several
New York
in poorer neighborhoods, especially
City
7
among
the foreign population,” opened in 1894." In 1910
Mannes, by then the dash-
ing concertmaster and assistant conductor of the
New York Symphony,
came
be-
the Third Street Settlement’s director and immediately set out to
establish a
new Settlement School
Mannes was
its
in
Harlem, which he opened
in 1912.
driving force, and he put himself in charge of engaging
African Americans to the faculty. 6 This led to his friendship with James Reese
Europe.
It
was Europe
who
suggested that the Clef Club orchestra play
new Music Settlement School
benefit for the
for
Colored People
in
at a
its first
year of operation.
Through
Walter Damrosch, musical director of the
his brother-in-law,
New York Symphony and a darling of New York society, Mannes to patrons, the press,
and Carnegie Hall, where he often conducted the
York Symphony’s concerts
cert artists,
ployment
and for
connections
and all
Du
to
.
Bois:
.
.
new
school,
of his musicians.
“New York’s
first
this as
New
an opportu-
depth and range, in the mecca of con-
its
to publicize the concert,
the races the
music
in all
support the
some
Jim Europe saw
for children.
Negro music,
nity to present
had access
which was already providing em-
Mannes and
embracing
a
board used their
his
few concepts from Dvorak
formal concert exclusively of Negro music.
Of
Negro alone has developed an actual school of American and
national, original,
real.
.
.
.
And
this
concert will be from be-
ginning to end a concert of Negro music by Negro musicians.”
The
first
Clef Club concert was
a great success. 8
It
led to
more Carnegie
Hall concerts on behalf of the school by Europe and his “Negro
Orchestra.” 9 Their third and
last
Times: “an interesting concert.
an
art
of their own.” 10 But a
or two of a
sip
its
New
York
are beginning to
form
appearance was praised by the .
These composers
or so later,
Musical America began urging
attention during the
Haydn Symphony.”
Critics writing for ica get to read a
.
week
that Europe’s orchestra “give
ment
.
Symphony
coming year
to a
move-
1
monthly or weekly magazines such
as
Musical Amer-
handful of instant newspaper reviews and have time
to gos-
with other reviewers before writing their own. Musical America was
offering not just another review, but a consensus. Perhaps Jim
forewarned about
this slight.
Something ticked him
off.
Europe was
Three days
after the
James Reese Europe 63
Carnegie Hall concert there appeared a bold and painfully frank interview
New York Post titled “The Negro’s Place in Music.” me as a tongue-in-cheek send-up, reeking with sarcasm.
with Europe in the
Much
of
reads to
it
Europe called upon
“Our people
horns.
would have
to
racial stereotypes to explain his lack of
are not naturally painstaking” was his reason for
Ie also
1
why he
import a black oboist from Africa, where “Sudanese boys be-
Bands
gin receiving rigorous training in the British Regimental twelve.”
ohoes and
noted that the month of the Negro
ceedingly difficnlt to
make him more than
is
so
at the
shaped that
a passable player of the
age of “ex-
it is
French
horn.” Only in South Africa, where “prolonged training has corrected this
handicap,” would he be able to find black French hornists fact that
movement
without oboes and horns “a
phony” was out of the question. Later
— unsaid was the Haydn Sym-
or two of a
in the article
Europe
offers his
own
manifesto:
We have developed a kind else
you think,
is
different
of symphony music that, no matter what
and
distinctive,
and that lends
playing of the peculiar compositions of our race.
come
.
of my
.
.
from
own
.
.
.
itself to
the
My success
had
a realization of the advantages of sticking to the
music
people.
Europe’s strongest opinions were saved for the African English composer
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who could be back
that traces
to
said to follow a
European
tradition
Haydn:
much among white men: he absorbed the and technique of white men to such an extent that
Coleridge-Taylor lived too spirit
and feeling
his race
sympathy was
work.
partakes of the finish
It
real
Negro music,
and
feel as they do.
a
partially destroyed.
His work
is
not real Negro
and feeling of the white man. To write
Negro must
live
with the Negros.
He must think
12
By the time of the fourth annual Carnegie Hall concert on April 1915— which Europe and
his
renamed Tempo Club begged out of at the
12,
last
minute — the dichotomy between the white-controlled board of the school
and
its
director,
J.
Rosamond Johnson, was growing. Ignoring
Haydn, Johnson presented mostly African American music,
bit of
strictly in classical
Negro forms, such
as spirituals.
the tenor Roland Hayes in one of his earliest
white
the call for a
members
a financial
The
concert also included
New York
appearances.
crunch, closed
twenty years too soon.”
64
to
Duke
The
of the board were soon gone, and the school, suffering from six
months
later.
Mannes’s only public response was, “Our school came into
Dvorak
albeit
Ell ington
He
did not give
life at least
up supporting African American mu-
sic
and musicians. In the
final
chapter of his book,
Mannes
“Credo,”
titled
declares his sympathetic “devotion to the college for colored people, Fisk University of Nashville, of which
the debt David
have been elected a trustee.”
I
And
so
ended
Mannes owed John Thomas Douglas.
Savants at the Music Settlement School, the National Conservatory, the
American Negro Academy, and Musical America squeeze the Negro music genie into a schnapps
music had I
a destiny of
its
own.
tried, in different
ways, to
But African American
bottle.
Just before his death in 1919,
Europe wrote:
have come back from France more firmly convinced than ever that
We have our own racial feeling and make bad copies. We won France
Negros should write Negro music. if
we
try to
copy whites we
will
.
by playing music which was ours
[i.e.,
not a pale imitation of others, and
must develop along our own Europe was touching on an ing along “our
own
lines”
if
the
we
new
are to develop in
— using European models or develop-
that, rather
Negro composers.
as
and growing up with and intrigued by Ne-
many
gro music for the better part of two centuries, and
posing music
America we
lines. 13
issue
living
.
rage called jazz] and
— that affected white as well
American whites had been
.
of them were
com-
than being a “pale imitation,” was indistinguishable
from that of African American composers. What Jim Europe was courageously and insightfully arguing
the preservation of “racial feeling,”
for,
less in
the printed notes, as almost
strates,
than in the way the music
all is
of the Clef
repertoire
performed — incisive rhythm,
tonal palette, nonpitch sounds, African
language and dialect, priority given
Club
and
to the
in turn
Caribbean
lies
demona
wider
survivals in
dance, blurring of the lines be-
tween audience and performer, and between performer and composer — holistic
“performance practice” aesthetic, inseparable from the mere nota-
tion of the music, that has eluded scholars of African
American music
throughout the twentieth century. I
been
wonder how if
different the direction of
Europe hadn't died
so young.
He had
American music would have
the ear of the public and the re-
spect of his fellow musicians, and his mission was clearly defined. His sud-
den
loss,
which made the
front page of
most major newspapers, was no
traumatic to his time than Martin Luther King until Ellington to the
Jr.’s
emerged from the Cotton Club
was
to
less
my generation. Not
in the early 1930s
and “took
road” 14 both here and abroad would there be an African American
mu-
sical leader to take his place.
The double
helix of African
American music was drawing
tight, pro-
ducing the generation of Gershwin, Ellington, and Copland, the American school that Dvorak anticipated. Born within a year of one another, these com-
James Reese Europe 65
were marked by
posers' formative years
were
brilliant ragtime pianists
ment of equilibrium
a proliferation of
seem
The
in the history of Ailierican
three
when onr musical
music, alike,
when
jazz
and
lan-
classical
so far apart.
Gilbert Seldes was struck by this in 1924
critic
Seven Lively Arts, which equated vernacular American masters:
— all
— and early jazz bands. Theirs was also a mo-
guage was commonly held by white and black didn’t
ragtime
George Herriman’s Krazy Kat with Picasso
that the satirical cartoonist
was
a
when he wrote
artists
(it is
his
with European
a little-known fact
New Orleans), White-
mulatto Creole from
man’s jazz with the music of Stravinsky, and Jim Europe’s conducting with
Muck, former music
that of Karl
“Jazz burst
upon
chestra leaders in
composed his
hand
his
at
a startled
1915,’’
first
director of the Boston
world
said Paul
at
the touch of a
Whiteman. 16 By
piece, “Soda Fountain Rag.”
composing, a song, “Lola,” and
a
1915,
to “the daring decision to
George Gershwin had composed
prophesied in
its title
him throughout
Dvorak 66
spend
to
Duke
his
his
hundred or more
1915 Ellington
By
1915,
or-
had already
Copland had
tried
“Waltz which makes sense,” |
and came
Symphony. 15
my life
as a
|
musician”; 17 and by
“Ragging the Traumerai.” Already
was the highbrow-lowbrow duality that would haunt
life.
Ellington
8
George Gershwin and African American Music
Gershwin’s supreme Folk Opera,’’
is
achievement, Porgy and Bess, “an American
perhaps the best-known American music-theater piece of the
twentieth century.
where
artistic
It is
in the world,
truck affair in the
a rare night that Porgy
be
it
a full-blown
Czech Republic.
ing hundreds of arrangements. gloss
on Porgy and
Its
and Bess
production
not onstage some-
La Scala or
at
songs enjoy a
is
life
a
bus-and-
of their own, inspir-
The metamorphic Miles Davis-Gil Evans
Bess, recorded in 1958,
is
regularly performed live at con-
certs of jazz classics.
Speaking of jazz
Gershwin’s
classics,
“I
the twelve-bar blues as the jazz musician’s
monic scheme of choice. Charlie
Got Rhythm”
is
second only
jamming and composing
Parker’s “Anthropology,”
Sonny
to
har-
Rollins’s
“Oleo,” and Ellington’s “Cottontail” are arguably the most familiar of well over 150 jazz compositions built
As
I
see
it,
and hear
it,
Gershwin’s symbiotic connection with African
American music goes beyond the turn of the century. out,
I
have a grain of truth:
upon “Rhythm” changes.
that of most white
American musicians horn
have imagined Hollywood scenarios little
George, the
sprawled outside the Manhattan Casino
street
at 155th
that,
it
at
turns
ragamuffin on roller skates,
and
8th, listening to
one of
Jim Europe’s bands; Gershwin, the Tin Pan Alley dandy spending endless hours
at
black and tan clubs, that “ear” of his sopping
it
up.
We must assume, if only from his legendary “party piano” prowess, that Gershwin was blessed with
total
musical recall and the ability to play
at
once
67
what he imagined or retained with these art.
gifts,
in his inner ear.
know dozens
I
who possess the genius to create original when his parents bought an upright piano
but only a handful
Gershwin was already twelve
for his brother, Ira.
But he had been doodling around on a
ment, feeling his way through a slowly pedaled piano family's surprise, size
.
.
Two
when
and began
.
years later
of musicians
roll
friend's instru-
or two,
and
the piano arrived, “George twirled the stool
to play
to the
down
to
an accomplished version of a then popular song.”
Gershwin dropped out of high school
to
become
1
Tin Pan
a
Alley pianist and song plugger at Remick’s, a music publisher that “issued
more ragtime compositions than
its
next ten competitors combined.” 2
Gershwin had more-than-casual encounters with black music and musicians.
anist
He
did study, for a typically short time, with the master ragtime pi-
Luckey (Charles Luckeyeth) Roberts (1887-1968).
In a 1962 interview
with jazz historian Terkild Vinding, Roberts recalled: Bert Williams and Will Vodery [an African American musician
who
me to He was sell-
was Ziegfeld’s principal orehestrator| were the ones that got teach Gershwin.
.
.
.
He
didn’t have a tune in his
head
[!].
ing orchestrations at Remick's and stood behind the counter. Will
Vodery
said:
him
“Son, help
along. He’s very ambitious.”
play jazz, but he had two good hands for the classics.
everything
I
played, cause
.
.
.
He
couldn’t
George knew
was teaching him. 3
I
Eubie Blake spoke of Gershwin’s ragtime piano
skills:
“James
me of this ofay piano player at Remick’s
son and Luckey Roberts told
John-
P. .
good
.
.
enough
to learn
some of those
terribly difficult tricks that only a
could master.” 4 Gershwin also picked up ideas from listening ragtime virtuosos Les Copeland and
Mike Bernard, and gave
few of us
to the
white
credit to their
influence while describing their techniques in the introduction to George
Gershwin
s
Song Book
a limited edition of “party piano” arrangements of his
,
hit tunes. 5
By the time Gershwin
left
Remick’s in
1917,
he was moving away from
ragtime piano and becoming enamored of the Broadway songs of Jerome
Kern and
Irving Berlin.
companying pop
He was studying classical
composition and piano, ac-
singers, recording player-piano rolls,
His musical education would never stop.
and going
to concerts.
Nor would ragtime and
the blues
ever leave his side.
Soon
after his
Remick period Gershwin
string quartet, a bluesy affair
ure, Blue
Monday
Blues
he
tried his
later recycled as
an
hand
aria in
at a
piece for
an ambitious
fail-
— an operatic episode “ala Afro-American [sic]" that
played for one night as part of the George White Scandals of ig22. 6
Buddy DeSyRa’s
Dvorak 68
to
Duke
“letter
Ell ington
opera” libretto for Blue
Monday
Blues weaves
a tragic tale of a lovers’ quarrel set in a
seem
be trying
to
to portray
Harlem
Negro pathos and
sexuality— fantasized and whispered about, characters and low-life dialogue prevail. later versions,
is
casually tossed about in
if
Gershwin and DeSylva
bar.
and especially Negro
passion,
rarely seen onstage
The word
“nigger,”
some misguided
— but stock
expunged
effort to
in
add au-
thenticity.
The
story: Joe
game. He
in a craps
whom
South,"
and Violet
he hasn’t seen
She
is
from Vi, who
response
amazing resemblance
instantaneous:
is
The telegram
like you.”
“My
“down
Joe gave
arrives. Little
me
visit
He
very possessive and jealous.
is
mine,” and goes offstage before
immediately “hit upon” by
bustler (he bears an
a big score
long while, telling him that he can
for a
my Mother, Mother
“I’m going to see
Vi’ enters.
made
awaiting a return telegram from his mother
is
her. Joe has kept his plans sings,
(Vi) are lovers. Joe has just
Little
Walker, a manipulative
to the future Sportin’ Life). Vi’s
use on guys
this revolver just to
Walker,
who knows about
Joe’s plan,
wastes no time in telling Vi that “Joe’s going South in the morning, that
telegram
is
woman down there.” “You
from another
he!” she hisses. Seething
with jealousy, Vi confronts her lover, demanding to see the telegram. Joe
warned you never
fuses. “I
music throbs
to
cheat on me!” she shouts, and shoots him.
and Vi
as Joe lies dying,
rips
open the telegram. In
a
she reads aloud: “Your mother has been dead for two years, wire
coming.” Vi “It’s all
wails,
forgive
Honey,” and with
right
ing to see
“Ob
my Mother, Mother
If this
me
Joe, forgive
re-
The
monotone if
you’ll
me,” and collapses. Joe
be
says,
dying breath he sings a reprise of “I’m go-
his
mine.”
stereotypical libretto wasn’t
enough
to sink
Monday
Blue
the sometimes charming, often crude musical score and
Blues
,
its
pit orchestra-
tion— one of the few examples of Broadway scoring from the
1920s that has
survived
— did
as worthless
a
show
little to
keep
it
Theater orchestrations were thought of
ephemera, more often than not tossed out with the scenery once
closed. Will Vodery’s original orchestration for Blue
found among ingly bland
his papers in the Library of
and
literal.
still
Monday
in the pit for the
scoring for an English music-hall orches-
from the time of Gilbert and Sullivan: woodwinds and brasses
a string
ensemble with
addition was a trap
extra violas to provide
rhythmic back
drummer. Vodery ignored the
jazz
Whiteman and
possible that
Monday
jazz color
Blues does have
and
The one
band sounds — banjo,
Ferde Grofe.
Whiteman’s musicians, among the
added some of their own Blue
his principal arranger,
in pairs
beats.
saxophones, rhythm tuba, and colorful jazz mutes for the brass ate with
Blues,
Congress, 7 turns out to be surpris-
Even with the Paul Whiteman band
Scandals of 1922, Vodery was tra
afloat.
— we associ-
Of course
it is
hottest players of the day,
and phrasing.
some good songs and
a flashy ballet built
George Gershwin and African American Music 69
on
would resurface two
a tune that
erwise
with naive opera cliches and corn; Gershwin inserts the “good
rife
it is
Rhythm.” Oth-
years later as “Fascinatin’
evening, friends”
— for my younger readers, the “how old are you” — tag on
the closing chord, ending sourly on a flatted seventh. But the major cause of the show’s failure was in
The Harlem
casting.
its
Monday
characters in Blue
Blues were played by white
singer-actors in blackface, a crucial mistake that
Gershwin would not
Broadway audiences, who only
welcomed with open arms
a season earlier
the all-black musical hit Shuffle Along,
clung
strelsy style that
Monday
to
A
Jolson
1
wonders
was
it
if
the real thing. fhe use of black-
fatally
brought down hv
into the 1930s. Blue
anomalous book and orchestra-
its
its
min-
as a vestige of the old
and Eddie Cantor well
Blues was no doubt hobbled by
but
tions,
r
knew
cannot be explained away
face, in this instance,
forget.
adherence
One
to the color line.
an African American cast was ever considered. 8 In perhaps the
only reference
he believed
I
ever heard
his 1947
him make about
race,
show Beggar's Holiday, with
a
Duke
Ellington said that
book by John Latouche,
did not succeed because people “were not ready for an integrated love affair
on Broadway.” 9
Monday Blues was an important step in Gershwin’s career even if brought him together with Whiteman, for this would lead to their
Blue only
it
landmark collaboration on the Rhapsody
Monday on.
Blue two years
in
later. 10
But Blue
Blues also indicates that Gershwin was drawn to black themes early
By the time he turned
to
Porgy and Bess a decade
a crucial aesthetic realization
later,
he had come
to
about his Negro-influenced music. Gershwin
recognized that what he heard in his inner
ear, the fulfillment of his
muse,
could only be realized through the voices of African American singers. 11 In spite of race,
we
still
all
of the obvious shortcomings attached to characterizing a
recognize that the “racial feeling” to which James Reese Europe
referred thrives
and continues
to evolve in a large part of the
African Ameri-
can community. Leontyne Price, the most distinguished Bess of all time, told a
young African American
singer in a master class that her rendition of
Man’s Gone Now” lacked the “cultural context sic.” tell
Price then asked,
from the way you answered
about.”
Then
must be
“like
dersonville,
moaning
is
big-city
Dvorak
ma’am’
that
in
based
Duke
...
I
can
you know what I’m talking
how the
song’s sighing refrains
church”
is
exactly
respectively of the
what Gershwin experienced visited with
in
Hen-
DuBose and Dorothy Hey-
book and the play Porgy on which the
— for another round of southern acculturation. Gershwin, the
man-about-town, had already spent the better part of the
to
mu-
captured in the
in church.” 12
North Carolina, when he
ward— authors opera
‘Yes,
is
my getting sisterly about it?
she described and demonstrated
“Moaning
70
“You don’t mind
that
“My
Ell ington
summer
of
1934 steeping himself in the music and
munity on the Sea Islands
off the coast of Charleston,
exact setting of the Heywards’ Porgy.
com-
of the venerable Gullah
life
South Carolina — the
Heyward described
the Hendersonville
encounter:
We were about to enter a dilapidated meeting house by
my arm
caught
one
to
which
.
cabin that had been taken
group of Negro Holy Rollers, [when] George
a
and held me. The sound
that
through long familiarity,
.
.
as a
I
had arrested him was the
attached no special impor-
tance.
But now, listening with him, and noticing the excitement,
began
to
catch
its
extraordinary quality.
voices raised in loud rhythmic prayer.
It
1
consisted of perhaps a dozen
The odd
thing about
it
was that
while each had started a different tune, upon a different theme, [the
whole] produced an effect almost terrifying in Inspired
.
.
.
George wrote
producing
Bess]
hurricane.
1
primitive intensity.
simultaneous prayers
a terrifying invocation to
God
[for
Porgy and
in the face of the
"
The “simultaneous ish prayer
six
its
prayers”
remind
me
of a davenning
minyan
,
a Jew-
group, something Gershwin was familiar with. Each davenner
(worshipper) picks up the
mode
or key center established by the cantor or
prayer leader and takes off on his own, embellishing the
important phrase or word with raised voice. the whole congregation ular passage or the
comes together
end of a
emphasizing an
On musical cues from the leader,
for special
section. This
text,
is
tunes that mark a partic-
precisely
how Gershwin
scored
the storm scene.
Gershwin was not the only Jewish composer of the period who pelled to write pieces about African Americans. Besides Porgy (1935), there
(1927),
is
The Emperor Jones
(1921),
felt
com-
and Bess
by Louis Gruenberg, and Show Boat
by Jerome Kern and Edna Ferber.
The phenomenon
transcends
simple parallels of simultaneous song prayer, or similarities between the
poignant modes of Jewish cantorial improvisations and black music, both of
which may share
a
common
North African-Middle Eastern source.
I
see
these African American-inspired pieces by Jewish composers and librettists as private
a
metaphors of their own suppressed mix of angst and cultural pride,
change of ethnicity being I
remember my own
a
way of coming out from
hiding.
1930s consciousness “not to be too Jewish.”
How of-
we were encouraged to sublimate, or even hide— yet never to give up — our Jewishness! Changing one’s name, from Beilin to Berlin, Gershovitz to Gershwin, Kaplan to Copland, was quite common. Bernstein, in a biting im-
ten
itation of his
mentor, Serge Koussevitzky, told
tioned him: “Vid da
name
me how
“Koosy” had cau-
Boynschtine, a chob you’ll neveh hev.”
The Holo-
George Gershwin and African American Music 71
caust and the establishment of Israel forever abolished such sophistry.
A
younger Jewish generation would now write about themselves.
So we find the conductors Koussevitsky and the
Fritz
Reiner programming
performances of twenty-six-year-old Leonard Bernstein’s Jeremiah
first
Symphony
in the winter of 1944;
death camps had
by
become common knowledge.
symphony, Bernstein
as
In the third
he mourns
his
of the Nazi
reality'
from Lamentations,
sets a biblical text
Hebrew, “the cry of Jeremiah
original
time the dreadful
this
movement of his to
be sung in the
beloved Jerusalem, it.” 14
ruined, pillaged and dishonored after his desperate effort to save
Kurt Weill was perhaps the
first
his Jewish origins in the gigantic
New York
in 1936.
1S
composer
to
put his
art at the service of
pageant The Eternal Road produced in ,
Arnold Schoenberg, Gershwin’s friend and erstwhile
teacher, signaled his return to the Jewish fold in 1939 most appropriately, with
declamation Kol nidre, which uses
his orchestral
as
its
text a prayer that
some
scholars believe was introduced into the liturgy as a disavowal for Jews forced to
convert during the Spanish Inquisition, thus opening the door for their
return.
Had Gershwin lived on
into the
“it’s
OK to be Jewish” generation, his orig-
— to write a work for the Metropolitan Opera based upon the Jewish mystical folk tale “The Dybbuk” — might have come to pass. Instead, his folk plan
inal
opera Porgy and Bess was performed for the In the
time
at the
Met
in 1993. 16
of 1967, while preparing for a stage production of Porgy
fall
Corpus
Bess in
first
Christi, Texas,
I
visited with
and
Alex Steinert, the assistant con-
ductor and rehearsal pianist for the original 1935 production. Steinert, a Harvard
man who had won
share his
me
a Prix
memories of Porgy
,
de
Rome
in
composition, seemed eager to
clearly the pinnacle of his career.
He showed
the score he conducted from: not a full orchestral score but a heavily
marked piano-vocal score
made
to tighten for
full
of paper clips indicating cuts, the excisions
Broadway parameters the longer, slower, operatic pace of -
Gershwin’s original scored bles’s
way with the
played for
me
ladies, his
own
infatuation with a
Bub-
young dancer. He
recordings cut on huge eighteen-inch discs, the stylus needle
moving from
inside to out; these were air checks of the original Porgy cast
singing excerpts from the
ducted.
Steinert reminisced about the cast— John
show at a Gershwin memorial concert
He showed me movies
Alvin Theater.
It
was
my
Steinert con-
of the storm scene he took from the pit of the
introduction to a rich trove of Porgy
and Bess
leg-
endry and memorabilia. In 1992,
I
spoke with other musicians
arrd Bess production, tracking
them down from
orchestral parts they used in 1935-36.
Dvofak 72
to
Duke
Ellington
who
I
played for the original Porgy the signatures they
was trying
to
put an end
left
on the
to the “or-
chestration question” that has followed
Because, in his original
accompaniment
jazz-band
Got Rhythm ”
Rhapsody
for his
in
Blue in 1924, 19 the orchestra-
— An American in Paris the Concerto in F, Variations, and Porgy and Bess — were looked upon with sus,
Gershwin saw the “orchestration question”
picion.
grave. 18
from grace, Gershwin did not orchestrate the
subsequent scores
tions of all his “I
fall
George Gershwin beyond the
challenge to his
as a
le-
gitimacy as a serious composer, and he had to defend himself from whispered
published imputations that the scoring of his music was done by
as well as
others.
Thomson, who seemed unable
Virgil
“the Gershwins”
came up
remarks whenever
to resist outre
our conversations, volunteered that Alexander
in
Smallens— who conducted the premiere of Thomson’s Four months before he did the same
Acts just six
and
reorchestration” on Porgy
rageous crack
“I
do not
like
.
Bess,
for
Porgy
— had done “wholesale
an imputation that
conflicts with his out-
gefilte fish orchestration,” 20
.
Saints in Three
made
in his review
.
of the work in 1935. Milton Rettenberg, a childhood friend of the Gershwins
and the
first
pianist to play the
than once that
man]
said that
The
at the
Rhapsody
Blue
in
after
George, told
me more
opening-night party for Porgy and Bess, “Paul [White-
George should have
original Porgy
and Bess
let
Adolf [Deutsch] do the scoring.” 21
and score
orchestral parts
bound photo
(a
reproduction of Gershwin’s manuscript) are housed with the papers of the
Theater Guild, the producers of the show,
Manuscript Library
at
Yale University.
entirely in Gershwin’s hand. tration and, to
The
my surprise, none
full
The
at the
Beinecke Rare Book and
four-hundred-plus-page score
is
score contains no changes in orches-
of the major cuts. Like Steinert, Broadway
conductors rarely bring cumbersome
full scores into
the
pit.
The
full
score at
the Beinecke was a reference copy for checking suspicious notes in the parts or, as
and
I
discovered, for penciling out
strings to
started to
reduce the
size,
all
and the
but the necessary parts in the brass
cost, of the orchestra
dwindle and the show was about
to
Sometimes reorchestrating can be done “hits”
when audiences
go on the road. 22
in the parts.
But outside of a few
penciled into the drummer’s music to underscore stage action
the cuts
—
I
ing written
found no emendations
comments
left
in the parts.
I
did find, however, fascinat-
there by the players.
In Gershwin’s time, orchestral parts were
(Nowadays computer programs produce work was established would
still
copied out by hand.
print-quality parts.)
the
was the single hand-copied
same
set that traveled
Only when
a publisher invest in the engraving
of multiple sets of scores and parts for sale and/or rental. 23 So in 1935
— and
set
of parts for Porgy
a
and printing
all
that existed
and Bess now at Yale,
with the show from Boston to
New York
and
that
George Gershwin and African American Music 73
A core group of instrumentalists— usually the first violinist, a lead trumpet, and the drummer—
was used again on the road
traveled with the show.
mark on
The
and dated
players signed
for
East and
were hired
rest
locally.
tours.
Many if not most of these
their parts as a matter of pride, like leaving one’s
mountain summit or deep
a
West Coast
Some added
in a cave.
cryptic messages
along the borders or on the occasional blank page, such as a warning to the
One
next user about a difficult passage.
ning time from night
Gershwin
With
well past eleven. Another recorded the night that
One comment
died.
in
is
Chinese characters.
the help of an old union directory,
who had
the “first-run” pit musicians
they were eager to
drummer. Denecke
and
retired
I
was able
to
contact several of
signed their names. Without exception,
about their time with Porgy.
tell stories
Henry Denecke,
for
Boston, before the cuts were implemented,
to night. In
show came down
the
player kept a record of the show’s run-
living in Wisconsin,
was the show’s original
studied with and later joined his father,
first
who
played
Joseph Rumshinsky in the Yiddish theaters on Second Avenue. Denecke
also played percussion for the
and Bela Bartok’s Music
and
for
world premiere of Edgard Varese’s Ionisation
Two Pianos and
his wife, Ditta Pasztory, at the pianos
“But Porgy and Bess," he
One
said,
Brown, the
was “the high spot
star
our
timpani.
lives .” 24
He
told
me
who
told
work
his
by tradition, the librarian
also,
that at the
came
sonal valet/driver, Paul Mueller,
no intention of allowing
tried to turn
to
me that while
to pick
up the
parts.”
in
Many celebrated composers with
in
plete
composer
and demonstrating .
26 Strictly
more than
When
to
the time
came
per-
25
meet have asked
for
help
in the
He made
a
not for others, that he was a com-
Broadway composers such
sew costumes
located
of his Broadway shows, keeping his
for himself, if
Berlin suffered no such doubts.
I
acknowledges several orchestrators
many
per-
.
printed score of Mass. But Gershwin had something to prove. habit of scoring the overtures for
Porgy
on many of Gershwin’s most
a deadline to
Be-
Gershwin had
be tossed away with the scenery.
he was
in orchestrating. Bernstein publicly
for the
end of the run, “George’s
sonal secrets, he had never heard about a ghost orchestrator
hand
away Ann
whom Denecke knew from his Juilliard days.
of the show,
pit orchestra.
Mueller,
in
Goodman on
Chicago when the clerk
drummer, Denecke was
and Bess
and Sol
composer
Porgy and Bess recollection that stayed with Denecke was being in
the check-in line at a hotel in
ing a
Percussion, with the
Kern and Irving
as
They were not expected
to orchestrate
any
27 .
for scoring his
Broadway-bound
folk opera Porgy
and Bess the whole orchestration
affair so
haunted him that he
monumental
task that
no Broadway composer since the
scoring
it
himself, a
days of Victor Herbert would have considered undertaking.
Dvorak 74
to
Duke
Ellington
insisted
Even master
on
or-
chestrators such as Bernstein,
pended upon others
Morton Gould, Kurt Weill, and Ellington
de-
Broadway shows. 28 The composer's
to orchestrate their
place was in the house, watching and listening to the total work and making
himself available
music— not
of the
eleventh-hour inspirations, and reworkings
for refinements,
buried in a smoke-filled room with a gang of copyists
scratching out parts.
more than enough evidence
find
I
On
chestrations were his own.
in
Gershwin’s scores that his
the one hand, there are
some
or-
fine touches
might not have survived the formal con-
in his earliest orchestrations that
servatory education he coveted: the solo role he assigns to a bluesy, derby-
muted
jazz
trumpet
slow
in the
movement
of the Concerto in F, and the
four taxi horns in his American in Paris their ,
and B)
brilliantly
worked
random
into the fabric of the work.
pitches (G, A-flat, A,
But there are too many
examples of naive, meaningless, and even counterproductive scoring that
journeyman
indicate an apprentice or a
help,
it
eral of his
There
is
a recording of Gershwin
Porgy and Bess orchestrations on July
began with the
the music
is
first
real
in F, his first full-fledged
Damrosch and
ing
Porgy
safe,
19, 1935,
pit orchestra. 80
Any
a tryout of sev-
months before
re-
listener familiar with
the
making sure
A decade
for a private orchestral reading of his
symphonic
New York Symphony. 81
These tryout
his orchestrations
ear-
Concerto
orchestration, before sending
with apocryphal stories about a ghost scorer. it
conducting
time he checked out his orchestrations.
Gershwin had arranged
jibe
Gershwin was getting
aware of changes that Gershwin subsequently made.
instantly
This was not the
ter
If
there were the tryout sessions, private orchestral readings of his
orchestrations.
lier
work. 29
wasn’t very special.
Then
hearsals
at
it
to
sessions
Wal-
do not
They show Gershwin
play-
“sounded" before putting them be-
fore the public.
Several of the principals from the forthcoming production sang in the
Ann Brown, a recent graduate of Juilliard, sang Bess; Todd Duncan, a member of the music faculty at Howard University, sang Porgy; and Abbie Mitchell, who starred in Clormdy and In Dahomey Porgy and Bess tryout session:
,
sang Clara. This
is
the only recording
“Summertime.” Born
in
we have
Baltimore in the early 1880s of Jewish and African
American parentage, Mitchell must have been She
is
in
of Abbie Mitchell singing
in
her early
fifties at
the time.
marvelous voice, sounds appropriately youthful, and convincingly
blends classical diction and dialect. Morton Gould was the orchestral pianist,
and we can hear him playing piano solo.”
The recorded
and
opening “Jasbo Brown honkytonk
tryout session offers a rare glimpse of Gershwin re-
hearsing from the podium. efficient,
a hit of the
He comes
off a
thorough professional, seasoned,
clear.
George Gershwin and African American Music 75
How could this take-charge guy with the
compromised three months
“original cast” recording to be
Victor
How did
company?
Gershwin
Lawrence Tibbett
orchestra in
orchestra
singers,
did a
I
Corpus
Branch, the minister of the only African
by the
rationalize the flouting of his
RCA
dictum
Helen Jepson
as Bess
and Clara, and
as Porgy? 12
In the spring of 1968
my
later
and Bess when Brown, Duncan, and Mitchell
that only black voices sing Porgy
were replaced by two white
Hell’s Kitchen accent allow the
full dress
production of Porgy and Bess with
When
Christi, Texas.
St.
asked Reverend Harold
I
John the Baptist Church
American member of the
mounting Porgy and
Bess, his
was not threatened.” Then he countered, African American talent to show
itself in
how he
city council,
first
Corpus Christi and
in
felt
response was that his
about our
“manhood
would be an opportunity
“It
for
our town.”
Porgy and Bess presents dramatic and vocal challenges that only superb
can meet, and
artists
it
has led to operatic careers for
many black
cans. Nevertheless, in the 1960s
and Bess like
as a
critics
and
African Ameri-
artists
dismissed Porgy
white man’s exploitation and plagiarism of black
art.
Others,
Reverend Branch, were conflicted. Ellington’s angry assessment of the
work — “Gershwin’s lampblack Negroisms” — still I
stings.
was not surprised by the controversy and emotion Porgy and Bess gen-
erated, but
I
was unprepared
for
its
The Corpus
mysteries.
And I came away from
took place in spring of 1968.
much
and Bess belongs
to life as
does to the Heywards and the Gershwins.
it
We
were fortunate
Guillaume — now
whom 31
I
had met
in
as
to the
black singer-actors
engage William Warfield
to
a television actor,
Vienna — sang
Christi production
that experience believing
that Porgy
ers.
many
who
to sing Porgy.
then a classically trained
Sportin’ Life.
Our
bring
it
Robert
lyric
tenor
Bess was Martha Flow-
Clara was sung by a young student from Texas Southern University in
Houston, Faye Robinson,
who went on
to a fine career in opera.
TSU
also
supplied our Porgy ensemble and choir, which was under the direction of
Ruthabell Rawlins. 14 I
remember
well
my
took the music to a level far
more music
in the
I
first
rehearsal with the choir
had never imagined
room than appeared on
in
— how their singing
my mind’s
the page.
It
ear.
T here was
was richly layered
with expressive details; like an oriental carpet or mosaic, step away and the details
blend into a shimmering, lustrous whole.
During the rehearsals
for
Porgy and
at the
aware of an arcane underlife that has attached
who on
eral
way
to
Corpus
Christi
and meet with the
me
I
was made
the work. Irving Barnes, if
he could stop by T’SU
choir.
He had been
in sev-
major productions of Porgy and Bess and had some pointers he would
Dvorak 76
itself to
sang the role of Jake, the Fisherman, asked
his
performance
to
Duke
Ellington
them.
like to give
1
said,
“Be
that inspired the choir to
my guest.”
do something
In the final scene Porgy
New York to find
Bess.
1
tells
He begins
suspect 1
shall
forget.
Row
to sing the closing song,
and the company answers, “I’m on
a familiar
sentiment
God when
never
the folks of Catfish
My Way,”
for African
was what Barnes told them
it
Americans,
that
he
is
My Way to a
Heav’nly Lan’,”
a spiritual of faith
and
trust in
made
the sopranos hold a
B above
the staff— not the
most comfortable note — for
five
sings “but you’ll be there.” T
he sopranos rejoin the others on the four
is
supposed
my han,” again
measures, meanwhile the
ending on high
B.
At
to cut off, leaving the orchestra to play
as the curtains close.
rium reopened
for
When
this
I
last
bows, the chorus was
still
holding the
found myself crying. Later that night,
as
of the cast final
bluesy phrase
the curtain in Corpus Christi’s Del final
Mar Audito-
chord with the
They were
hold-
still
my family and
leaving the cast party, the choir gathered around us and sang,
on
rest
point the whole cast
out the
sopranos on high B! The curtain closed and reopened. ing the chord.
it
and Bess anthem.
On the final “Oh Lawd,”
words, “to take
to
“Oh Lawd, Pm on
faced with the impossible. In Corpus Christi the choir
into a personal Porgy
going
I
were
“Oh Lawd,
I’m
My Way.” J
J
George Gershwin and African American Music 77
9
Leonard Bernstein Never look back upon roads not taken. The roads yon did they are the story of your
take,
life.
— Virgil Thomson, on his ninetieth birthday
My curiosity about Dvorak and American recently, but
Bernstein,
its
who
music came
seeds were planted in the 1960s.
my symphonic
jump-started
who reawakened my
love for jazz, the
first
to the surface rather
Had
career,
I
and Duke Ellington,
part of this
book — my idiosyn-
on African American music and musicians from the
cratic take
the twentieth century, with Dvorak as splendid guidon
come
first
— could
half of
not have
about.
When harmonic
Bernstein was appointed music director of the in 1958,
tensibly to develop stairs
not met Leonard
he
New York
Phil-
instituted a novel assistant conductors’ program, os-
American
talent.
One
neighbor and musical colleague
of the
at the
first
to
be chosen was
Mannes School
my up-
of Music, Stefan
Bauer Mengelberg, nephew of the famous Dutch conductor. What seemed a
world away suddenly came within reach, and In February 1961 a letter arrived
ing
me
at the
to
meet Bernstein
at a
I
too applied.
from the Koussevitsky Foundation
invit-
gathering to be held in his studio apartment
Osborne, Stanford White’s massive brownstone-and-stained-glass
edifice that stands diagonally across the street
from Carnegie
1
Fill.
In the in-
tervening years, an eruption of towering glass-sheathed buildings has formed a
canyon around Fifty-seventh and Seventh, and the Osborne’s once proud
now seems tired and squattish. But thought was crossing the Rubicon when I entered the lobby on a Friday afternoon, March 10, 1961. I was playing a pair of Young Audience concerts earlier that day with my brass stance
I
1
79
quintet, the I
just
Chamber
Brass Players, thinking
waited about; besides,
crammed
brass players
would be
I
less
nervous than
needed the money. After the concerts, we
I
if
five
into a small sedan, with the tuba as a sixth passenger. >
By the time
I
struggled out of the car
when
it
dropped
me
off for
my
meet-
my Irish tweed suit and hand-loomed wool tie were a Under my arm, in the hip fashion of the day, carried my
ing with Bernstein,
rumpled mess.
I
green corduroy trumpet bag.
The Osborne was
intimidating: a long canopy, liveried
cage elevators. “Yes, Mr. Bernstein
toned the elevator man.
He
in
is
and
in silence.
entered the studio to find
seated about, not
had
my
knowing whether
horn with me.
my hands
Its
the second floor,” in-
lever across the crescent-shaped
five or six
to talk or
familiar tubes
and
other
men
in their twenties
study the ceiling.
twists
I
was glad
I
under the corduroy kept
occupied.
Bernstein arrived, cigarette in hand.
resumes,
2DD on
bird-
pause the ancient hydraulic car floated up
brass guide, I
hand
pivoted the
after a second’s
Studio
doormen,
all
He
explained that according to our
of us were qualified to be assistant conductors with the Philhar-
monic. Therefore he was following the lead of Harvard’s Medical School:
when ical
faced with
more deserving applicants than they had room
came up
school faculty
whom to
To
things
start
One
a conductor.
and
frustrated fellow
that Bernstein
said that
was time that ticed,”
he
a player
when was
a
1
I
piano so that he could demon-
to
in several or-
be charlatans (oops).
told Bernstein the truth: that
was
now
when was I
gether and
I
for
Boy Scout
ing arrangements,
I
I
“It
used
a
little
boy, and that
to
fit
I
my dad sang
also explained
two bugles together, making
a kind
could get the “in-between notes,” and that even
and conducting whenever the opportunity
leading an orchestra that totally focused,
When
heart
would be chosen.
I
was
had been curious
playing the trumpet professionally, teaching theory, writ-
became
felt that
I
I
me on his oud. That got him!
with the music. I
become
said.
of sliding trumpet, so
only
to
from the ranks, one with orchestral experience, be no-
and played Arabic folksongs
I
at the
sit
and passionate about music ever since
though
help
immediately questioned the entire pro-
he found most conductors
When my turn came,
that
why he wanted
Bernstein asked each of us
conducting prowess. Another told of playing viola
strate his
chestras
in a social setting to
accept.
off,
demanding
ceeding,
med-
the
with the novel idea of holding cocktail parties,
where they would meet and observe the candidates
them decide
for,
all
arose,
of my musical interests
it
was
came
to-
without nervousness, and fully occupied
the gathering ended,
I
was the
first
to leave. In
my
Among the many part-time gigs had at the time was teaching harmony, I
Dvorak 80
to
Duke
Ellington
and theory one day
sight-singing, I
worked with teenagers
tween
would swim
I
came from my
call
at the
in the
me
wife warning
Y pool, which
that “a very
Coates, called. She wants you to phone her monic.’’
I
was
still
at
my wet bathing suit when
in
Ninety-second Street YMHA.
and adults
in the afternoon
an hour
for
week
a
once;
1
I
was when a
lady,
Miss Helen
where
is
haughty it’s
about the Philhar-
Miss Coates,
herself as “Mr. Bernstein’s personal secretary,’’ told
sen to be one of his assistants. She said that
in the evening. In be-
me
that
would receive
who I
introduced
had been cho-
a confirmation in
the mail, “But say nothing to anyone about this until the official announce-
ment appears
newspapers.”
in the
A month
passed. Finally, the
Herald Tribune on April
Named
by Philharmonic
The heading
1961.
in the
New York
read “3 Assistant Conductors
and below were three postage-stamp-
for 1961-62,”
and the simple caption, “John Canarina and Maurice
sized photos
two
12,
announcement appeared
New Yorkers,
and
Seiji
Our Philharmonic
Peress,
Ozawa, of Japan.”
year began in late September with a four-day tour to
Philadelphia, Baltimore,
Richmond, and Washington, D.C. Bernstein con-
ducted Beethoven, Strauss, Ravel, and the glorious American soprano Eileen Farrell sang
Wagner
The
excerpts.
May with
season ended in late
an hom-
age to Stravinsky on his eightieth birthday, coupled with the Piston Violin
Concerto with
Then came
a
soloist
Joseph Fuchs, and the Brahms Second Symphony.
week of acoustical
testing of the
new Philharmonic
magnificent orchestra was humbled in the cold space and the sound wizard Maestro Feopold Stokowski was called
podium and asked tuba as well,
E
for the first
flat!”
Hall.
at the last
in.
Our
minute
He mounted
the
two chords of the Eroica — “Trombones and
Whap, whap went the band. He
stood listening and gave
his prophetic assessment: “It will never do.”
In between, there were thirty-three
weeks of subscription concerts,
in-
cluding the notorious Glenn Gould-Bernstein brouhaha over the Brahms
Piano Concerto with public disclaimers by Bernstein
First
with Mr. Gould’s interpretation spect to
him
as
an
artist”
.
.
.
but
I
have agreed
to
—
“I
do not agree
conduct out of re-
— which set off a mini-scandal. There was my official
debut with the orchestra, Eric
Satie’s
tongue-in-cheek Parade, a Dada ballet
score punctuated with ragtime, pistol shots, ratcheting roulette wheels, and a clattering typewriter with bell. “Just stand there
Fenny. You
dozen
I
a
it
happen,” said
sixty-three soloists, four
or so recordings, four televised
special television broadcast of
eon with
let
bet.
There were eleven guest conductors, hearsals, a
and
Carmen formal ,
Young
balls,
weekly
re-
People’s Concerts, a
and
doddering dowager, Minnie Guggenheimer.
a hysterical
lunch-
1
studied 134 major works in rehearsal and performance, score in hand.
Leonard Bernstein 81
When
I
left
the Philharmonic
I
had enough repertoire
eral seasons in a regional orchestra.
I
also
had what
finishing school” diploma, earned by hanging
around
me through sevcall my “orchestral
to get I
a world-class maestro,
who became “Nonnie Helen” to my children, taught stage deportment, how to bow and recognize the orchestra and soloists, and green room etiquette by commen-
his
band, and the formidable Miss Helen Coates. Miss Coates,
tary
and example; she conveyed
and
to us the social
political
persona appro-
priate for a maestro.
Meanwhile,
my musical
Columbia Artists, overnight, Christi In
my
Goodman,
Columbia helped me season Jul ius
I
I
was
still
on
first
get a two-year contract with the
music directorship with
me
a roll
as
an
assistant
two years
conductor
later
heard Black Brown and Beige ,
Dvorak 82
to
“I
Duke
The New York Philcover their summer con-
and
at
the
that
I
the Joffrey Ballet's
fast,
career.
first
too slow.”
White House
Festival of
met Duke Ellington and
for the first time, setting the stage for
my double
Ellington
to
know— too
made an appearance summer of 1965. It was there
ual return to jazz
a professional orchestra.
when I became
Joffrey Ballet
the Arts in the
Corpus
worked with Andres Segovia, Mischa Elman, Benny
live-music conductor. Said Bernstein,
The
signed on with
Katchen, and Alexander Brailovsky.
harmonic retained certs.
I
the most powerful of classical music managements. Almost
Symphony, my first
world had been reconfigured.
my grad-
io
Gershwin’s Rhapsody I
sincerely believe in jazz.
America and
I
feel sure
of past and present.
it
it
expresses the spirit of
has a future
want
1
think
I
to
Blue
in
— more of a future than
help that future pan out.
— Paul Whiteman, in Paul Whiteman and Margaret McBride, Jazz
One would
be hard pressed
to think of
an American musical event that has
been written about more than Paul Whiteman’s launching of George Gershwin’s
Rhapsody
music for
in Blue.
society parties
was about
to
become one
corn-fed, cheery bear of a
won
and played
of the
1
He made
first
hit records for Victor,
radio orchestras.
A
and
Denver-born,
man, mild mannered and well spoken, Whiteman
over the movie colony during his hand’s extended run at the Alexander
Hotel in Los Angeles. For ences and charmed as his
in
liners
up and down the East Coast where James
Reese Europe’s bands once held sway. his
the brightest stars in popular
bands crossed the Atlantic on ocean
in the 1920s. His
some of the same
Whiteman was among
months
in 1923
he delighted London audi-
British aristocrats with his natural
manner
as well
music. T he following winter Whiteman’s flagship orchestra was hack
New York,
home
many
five
appearing nightly
at the
posh Palais Royal Restaurant, their
port since 1920. Vincent Sardi Sr. was captain of the
hibition, high society
came
dance — to the music of the
in droves to eat
hottest
and
to listen
staff.
Despite Pro-
— and especially to
dance band of the moment. Whether
it
was the London audiences’ warm reception of his music, the urgings of cultural intellectuals
such
band was planning timely intuition,
as Gilbert Seldes, the
to play at the
somewhere
news
that the
Vincent Lopez
Metropolitan Opera House, or his
in the fall of 1923
Whiteman embraced
own
the idea
of presenting his music in a formal concert setting. In preparation for
my sixtieth
anniversary re-creation of the Aeolian Hall
83
concert of 1924— “Same Day,
Whiteman sidemen who
eral
Same Hour, Same Block” —
I
interviewed sev-
played in the original concert. Violinist Kurt
Henry Busse
Dieterle painted a vivid picture of the hand's ace trumpeter,
(pronounced “bus-ee”)— his raccoon led galoshes,
and
derby hat, and
coat,
his ever-present cigar
2
1
.
can
easily
stylishly
unbuck-
imagine Busse walking
the few blocks through the theater district from the Palais Royal on Forty-
eighth and Broadway to Aeolian Hall between Forty-second and Forty-third Streets just west of Fifth
thousand-mile
Avenue;
in cultural terms, however, the
For Busse was about
trek.
to set
up
walk was a
on the same
his horns
stage
New York’s leading classical trumpet teacher, Damrosch’s New York Symphony. This must have evoked
where Max Schlossberg, played in Walter
mixture of pride and trepidation, but there
a curious
comed
no doubt he wel-
the challenge. Busse was famous, the recording star of “Whispering”
and “Hot Lips," and wonders
if
No
a Erst.
is
he
rich,
felt his
earning
much more than
the
symphony boys. One
behavior to be slightly sacrilegious. This was, after
all,
dance band had ever before appeared on that or any other Ameri-
can concert-hall stage — James Reese Europe's 1912
Club Concert had long been
forgotten
“just before jazz”
Clef
— and the whole of musical New York
buzzed with excitement. Aeolian Hall, one of New York’s most prestigious concert
up the lower
third of a nineteen-story building
been
titled his
concert “An Experiment in
Tuesday afternoon, February
Today such
a
lieved they
had
12,
which has since
New York
Company’s
showroom. Whiteman
Modern Music.”
It
was scheduled
for
1924, at three o’clock.
program would be
in 1924, jazz bands, black
why
building,
radically reconfigured, also served as the Aeolian Piano
corporate headquarters and their primary
took
on the then-upscale business
The
thoroughfare of West Forty-second Street.
facilities,
billed as
“An Experiment
and white, encouraged by
a place at the forefront of the
in Jazz.”
But
critics like Seldes, be-
newest trends in music.
And
not? All of the master composers of Europe were borrowing from them:
Stravinsky, Ravel,
Milhaud, and
Satie, to
name
a few.
The
scribed, in the Victorianisms of the time, as the concert that
of jazz” and
“made an honest woman out
on Lincoln’s birthday,
as the
as patrons
Carl
“made
of jazz,” and, because
“emancipation proclamation of
Whiteman’s “experiment” was
event was de-
brilliantly
it
a lady out
took place
jazz.”"
planned and staged. Enlisted
and patronesses were American culture mavens Gilbert Seldes and
Van Vechten; music
critics
and
writers
Deems Taylor, O. O.
McIntyre,
and Fannie Hurst; prominent musicians Walter Damrosch, Leopold Godowsky,
Jascha Heifetz, Fritz Kreisler, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Moritz Rosenthal,
and Leopold Stokowski; opera divas Amelita Galli-Curci, Alma Gluck, and
Mary Garden; and
Dvorak 84
to
Duke
financier Otto Kahn, the president of the Metropolitan
Ell ington
Opera.
Whiteman
Palais Royal.
to the
band’s luncheon rehearsals at the
Together they raised and contributed money, wrote program from the
notes, spoke glowingly It
them
invited
stage,
and packed the house with
glitterati.
was the highlight of the 1923-24 concert season.
The
follow-up was equally
was repeated
brilliant.
The
“experiment,” with a few changes,
Carnegie Hall and Philadelphia’s Music Academy.
at
tour was booked by the impresario F. C. Coppicus, tan
who
A spring
ran the Metropoli-
Opera Musical Bureau. Whiteman and Gershwin rode with the band,
now twenty-four strong
(an extra saxophone was added), in a pair of specially
outfitted railroad ears.
Aboard were three Chickering grand pianos — two
— all care-
white ones for the band and an ebony concert grand for Gershwin
husbanded by Emil Neugebauer, the tuner and technician
fully
for the cel-
ebrated concert pianist Joseph Levine. Before the heyday of radio, touring
and recording were how Whiteman brought public.
And
this
major concert
was a whirlwind
halls of
such
tour:
cities as
Cleveland, Cincinnati, and
St.
tenberg (another sideman
got to
tail
to the attention of the
twenty concerts in eighteen days in the Rochester, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis,
Ann
Louis. In
know and
Arbor, Michigan, Milton Ret-
the source for
herein described), a recent graduate of Columbia
hood
friend of the Gershwins, took over as the
for the rest of the tour.
the
I
band
his
Gershwin had
new George White Scandals
returned to
of 1924.
New York, they recorded
his “experiment”: the
Rhapsody
Herbert’s Suite of Serenades.
to get
in
Soon
to
in
Blue piano
New York
to
boy-
soloist
prepare for
Whiteman and his band the two big new pieces from
after
(for Victor)
Blue with Gershwin ,
The Aeolian
of the de-
Law School and
Rhapsody
back
much
as soloist,
and Victor
Hall concert was clearly the high
point of Whiteman’s career, one he tried in vain to repeat as he sought out “other Gershwins” and staged other “experiments.” Inevitably, the slow
of the Rhapsody in Blue
became
mustachioed caricature became Gershwin’s Rhapsody
is
his
musical signature,
just as his bald,
theme round,
his logo.
indisputably the
first
American
shaped from blues and ragtime that crossed over
to find a
the standard orchestral repertoire, albeit at
in a
first
orchestral
work
welcome place
symphonized
Dvorak’s prediction was coming true, and dance-band leaders
in
version.
— Europe,
Cook, Whiteman, and Ellington — were among those pointing the way.
Whiteman and
his chief arranger,
Ferde Grofe,
checked out Ellington’s “Washingtonians,” who were playing
at the Holly-
In the winter of 1923-24
wood (soon
to
be the Kentucky Club),
just
two blocks north of the Palais
move uptown to the Cotton Club and world fame was Though they claimed that they “couldn’t steal even two bars
Royal. Ellington’s three years away.
of Duke’s amazing music,” 4 something always rubs off on professionals like
Grofe and Whiteman. Ellington recalled Whiteman’s
visits
and how he
Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue 85
Figure
10.1
Miguel Covarrubias caricature of Paul Whiteman. Courtesy of Maria Elena Rico Covarrubias.
“showed
his appreciation
by laying a big
fifty
dollar bill
on
ns.”
He
credits
Whiteman for leading the country to embrace syncopated music, “which he had made whiter .” Another important black dance-band leader to whom Whiteman and 5
.
.
.
Grofe regularly listened was Fletcher Henderson. Henderson, a Fisk graduate
who had
played piano in Will Marion Cook’s jazzy upgrade of the Clef
Club Orchestra,
the “Southern Syncopaters,” led the house
land Ballroom, four blocks north of the Palais Royal.
Dvorak 86
to
Duke
Ellington
band
at the
Rose-
Whiteman and Grofe
probably heard Louis Armstrong’s electrifying effect on the Henderson band in the fall of 1924.
back and forth between bands, within
Inevitably, musical ideas flowed
bands, and from soloists to arrangers. Riffs
were soon written down; In his pathbreaking
a collaborative art
book Early Jazz
in 1924
ing Louis Armstrong and
form was being created en masse.
Gunther Schuller
6 ,
cornet licks that found their way into a
’Long Mule,” recorded
became head arrangements and writes about Busse
Don Redman arrangement
of
“Go
by the Fletcher Henderson band and featur-
Coleman Hawkins.
Armstrong’s impact on jazz and dance bands was cosmic. His improvisa-
were no mere
tions
the-spot.”
Much
ad-libs but, in the
of the vocabulary of jazz was codified for
And Redman was among the
strong.
licks into his
He
his passion for jazz.
tled Jazz, giving full credit to
its
America three hundred years ago
wrote a book in 1925
ti-
came
to
African American origins: “Jazz in chains
.
.
priceless freight destined
.
whole nation dancing.” He stayed abreast of its
lating the
time by Arm-
and incorporate Armstrong’s
to absorb
first
all
arrangements.
Whiteman maintained
to set a
words of John Lewis, “eompositions-on-
newest trends into
his carefully scripted
stylistic
.
.
.
changes, trans-
brand of music
— “All
I
did
Whiteman hired Redman to write special arrangements for his band in the new Armstrong-inspired style and engaged his own improviser, the “hot trumpet man” Bix Beiderbecke. Two years later, Whiteman engaged William Grant Still, another conservatory-trained black was
to orchestrate jazz.”
In 1927
composer-arranger, as a full-time
Seeing
Whiteman on
another, and for est
me
Hollywood film
member
film, fiddle in
of his arranging
hand, fronting
an all-important, reason
in 1920 to his last
his
staff.
band, suggests yet
for his success.
From
appearances on television
his earli-
in the rp^os,
Whiteman handling his violin as if he were bouncing a baby on his shoulder. They are totally connected, innocently and infectiously at ease — the fiddle and Paul. “He trembles, wobbles, quivers— a piece of jazz jelly” was how Olin Downes described Whiteman, who was well over six feet tall we
see
and weighed three-hundred-plus pounds,
in his enthusiastic review of the
Aeolian Hall concert. 8
This was the
man who convinced
timely “Experiment in called
it
phonic
“the
hall.”
first
Modern Music.”
jazz concert that
And about the
the rich and famous to support his
was ever given
longhairs
who were
Damrosch, Rachmaninoff, Heifetz and
Whiteman
later
in the sacred halls of a
sym-
In a radio interview,
Kreisler
present,
and
he
said,
“There was
several others [pause]
we
probably gave them a light haircut.” 9
The program was band recording,”
it
carefully designed. In recognition of the
“first
jazz
opened with “Livery Stable Blues,” complete with mock
Gershwin’s Rhapsody
in
Blue 87
Figure
10.2
Miguel Covarrubias sketch of Whiteman and
his Orchestra at
Hall, April 21, 1925, repeating their successful
“Experiment
Music” concert, featuring Gershwin playing for the sponsors of the
his
Rhapsody
Modern
in in
Blue
American Academy of Rome. Note the
of Oscar Levant and Gershwin in the lower
left
Carnegie
profiles
corner.
Courtesy of Maria Elena Rico Covarrubias.
horse whinnies and chicken squawks in the raucous inal
Dixieland Jazz Band.
Whiteman then
served
hokum
up
his
style
of the Orig-
most favored
Palais
— one for virtuoso banjo multiple-reed wizard Ross Gorman —
Royal arrangements. T hey included two solo turns player
Mike Pingatore and one
for
along with exact renderings of his hit records (he was very proud of
Dvorak 88
to
Duke
Ellington
this)
“Limehouse Blues” and “Whispering.” There were crowd-pleasing “knucklebusters” by the dashing novelty piano virtuoso
Zez Confrey. Sheet music
Confrey ’s “Kitten on the Keys” had already outsold Scott
for
“Maple Leaf Rag,” and their popularity.
For
all
his player-piano-style novelties
these,
Whiteman
Joplin’s classic
were
at the
peak of
played his violin while directing
the band.
When a
the audience returned for the second half, they were greeted by
much augmented
Palais Royal band.
The
rhythm players were now joined by eight For the
extra string bass.
down
his violin
violins,
two French horns, and an
Whiteman put
time in his dance-band career
first
and took up
three reeds, four brass, and five
a baton.
He
led the twenty-three-piece
ensem-
ble as a proper stand-up conductor, dressed, as was the orchestra, in the cus-
tomary daytime formal cutaway, with striped pants and ascot
tie.
Whiteman led newly arranged versions of “standard selections,” including Edward MacDowell’s “To a Wild Rose” and Rudolf Friml’s “Chansonette,” later known as the “Donkey Serenade.” hen came the ultimate test of the “experiment”: two new works by Victor Herbert and Gershwin that t
had been commissioned especially
Whiteman recognized dream of moving
their
in
for the occasion. 10
Gershwin
a
kindred
They shared
spirit.
a
music out of the dance palaces and music theaters and
onto the concert stage, but he had no way of knowing whether Gershwin
would produce
a
winner. While Gershwin’s better Broadway songs had been
— an Aeolian Hall recital by the emEva Gauthier in November 1923 — Whiteman had witnessed
well received in a formal concert setting
inent soprano
firsthand the failure of Gershwin’s operatic scena Blue
Confrey was the insurance policy; he would Confrey naturally received equal all
Monday
Blues.
Zez
also help guarantee a crowd.
Gershwin. Gershwin was by
billing with
accounts an especially winning pianist, and Whiteman’s idea that he com-
pose “a jazz piece for solo piano and orchestra” turned out to be inspired. Virgil
Thomson, one
Aeolian Hall concert and recollections:
“My
hands with
my sixtieth
starts
ing, ful
the
both the original 1924
anniversary re-creation, wrote
the whole thing
me of his lick,
fitting
to
an
and the composer’s beau-
off,
have Victor Herbert compose a work
choice. Despite his Irish birth (1851) and
1
for the
European
train-
Herbert had by 1924 become a highly respected, beloved, and success-
“American” composer, conductor, and solo
itan
at
their lightly fleet fingers, also his singing piano tone.”
Whiteman’s decision concert was a
who was
chief memories of that premiere are the clarinet
upward glissando which tiful
of the special few
cellist. 12
The
Opera production of Herbert’s opera Natoma had been first
time a work by an American composer and
librettist
1911
Metropol-
notable:
it
was
about American
subject matter sung in the English language had appeared on the Met’s stage.
Gershwin’s Rhapsody
in
Blue
89
ip
By accepting the commission, Herbert gave Whiteman’s concert the vote of confidence
it
needed
in the eyes of the serious
music establishment.
— for
guess that the novelty of a Herbert premiere
a jazz
It is
my
dance band! —
helped bring out John Philip Sousa, Rachmaninoff, and possibly Stokowski
on
snowy Tuesday afternoon.
that
The program worked
which since 1984 has toured the United
cert,
The
does. 1 ’
still
magic back then and our re-creation of the con-
a
States,
Canada, and Europe, and inspired
secret of the program’s success lies in the artful
way Gershwin transforms the same ragtime and blues harmonies, the and
brass
and the banjo and tuba rhythms
sax colors,
been listening and toe-tapping
to
fiddle,
audience had
that the
throughout the evening into
a
masterwork
with immediate appeal. With his Rhapsody in Blue for solo piano and jazz
band, Gershwin took a giant leap for American music. Reconstructing the Aeolian Hall concert gave
w ith
original
me
hands-on experience
Whiteman band arrangements, including Grofe’s
chestration for the
Rhapsody
win did not orchestrate
in Blue,
and
this particular
I
began
to
masterful or-
understand
why Gersh-
work himself. Working from Gersh-
win’s two-piano score, Grofe orchestrated the second (accompanying) piano part for the
augmented
jazz
band he and Whiteman chose
for the concert.
There were unusual choices of instrumentation to be made, and they were further complicated by the doublings.
The brass and rhythm section doublings were straightforward, but the three reed players covered eleven instruments in
ophone, from baritone
to sopranino,
all: five
different sizes of sax-
and every woodwind
symphonic
in the
family except the bassoon but including the rare and exotic heckelphone.
Add
to this eight violins (divided four ways),
horns.
Such
ensemble would
a hybrid
set
another string bass, and two
unusual scoring problems before
The complex reed doublings were the most what instrument, how long to get it ready, when to
the most experienced composer.
obvious
— who
plays
switch.
Furthermore, the scores
hand the
tailored to
first
the
fit
page of score
for the
or “reed 3,” to indicate “Ross,’’ to indicate
was raised line
to
an
skills
leading jazz bands of the period were
of the individual players.
Rhapsody
what was
who was
art
for the
to
in Blue,
When
Grofe
laid out
he did not write “trumpet
be played on a given
staff,
1”
but “Busse” and
playing. This practice extended to
all
bands and
form by Ellington, who would switch the trumpet-lead
between “Gootie” and “Rex”
(the
same
for
trombone and
sax players)
within a composition because he wanted their particular sound or style for a
given passage. The jazz band, being an American invention, places value
upon the
individual,
Dvorak
Duke
90
to
upon
Ell ington
his or her particular instrumental expertise
and
in-
terpretive contributions.
player by player ing, not It
one
Grofe knew the intricacies of the Whiteman hand,
and instrument by instrument, but however brilliant his
single note of the
must be noted
Rhapsody
in
Blue
Gershwin possessed
that
a
is
his
scor-
own. 14
composer’s keen ear
for in-
strumentation. There are instrumental indications in the holograph (original
Monday
manuscript) of Blue
Blues as well as in the two-piano holograph
score of the Rhapsody. In fact, his orchestrational
skills
were about
to
be put
to the test.
Hard on the heels of the Rhapsody's triumph came
a
commission from
new concerto for solo piano and “orchestra”— generic, faceless, European — to be completed in time for the upcoming New York Symphony season (1925). Starting with the Concerto in F, for solo piano and
Walter Damrosch
orchestra,
for a
Gershwin scored
of his concert works himself even as he con-
all
tinued studying composition and orchestration with every fashionable teacher that
would have him. 15 In preparation for
my reconstruction
sulted several original sources of the
holograph
in the Library of
of the Aeolian Hall concert,
Rhapsody
in Blue:
I
con-
Gershwin’s pencil
Congress (the two-piano score he prepared
for
Grofe), Milton Rettenberg’s 1924 manuscript copy of the same, a photocopy
Whiteman Collection at Williams recording by Whiteman with Gershwin
of Grofe’s original score in the
College,
and the June
as
soloist. 16
per side
The
10, 1924,
short recording time available in 1924
piano
— under seven minutes
— forced Gershwin to make cuts. Nevertheless, the recording, on two
sides of a twelve-inch disc, in the score or parts.
I
have
is
chock-a-block with details never written
to
assume
that during the road tour,
down
which im-
mediately preceded the recording sessions, some of the jazz embellishments
added by the players or Gershwin became “frozen” — such dles of turning notes (gruppetti) that flavor a phrase,
and
hollers that clarinetist Ross
in the familiar
and klezmerlike whoops
introduced here and there, not only
Gorman
who was
present at rehearsals for the concert, over-
suggest to Gershwin that he could play the opening clar-
inet run with a long ip/finger slur instead of the simple scale that 1
written,
bun-
opening.
Milton Rettenberg, heard Ross
Gorman
as the little
and Rettenberg claimed
called that Victor Herbert
came
that
to
Gershwin loved
it.
had been
Rettenberg also
re-
one of the rehearsals and gave conducting
Whiteman for his Suite of Serenades 17 Herbert also took the time to help Gershwin, who was having second thoughts about the slow theme of the Rhapsody in Blue the centerpiece of the work, by reassuring him that it pointers to
,
,
was most appropriate. Herbert suggested
to
Gershwin
that
he
set
it
up by
ex-
tending the piano arpeggios that introduce the slow section, giving time for
Gershwin’s Rhapsody
in
Blue 91
the excitement of the preceding cadenza to cool down. Herbert later turned to
Rettenberg and
know what
said, in
do with
to
Victor Herbert’s
an
wish
aside, “I
I
had written
that theme.
and Rettenberg’s passing
little dig,
clude Leonard Bernstein on
this
list.
Rhapsody
it
on,
in Blue.
It
only one of
is
pains
‘
all. It is
paste of flour
me to
in-
Bernstein’s overall praiseworthy assess-
of the work begins with the disclaimer,
position at
would
it.”
a long line of envious deprecations of the
ment
I
“The Rhapsody'
not a com-
is
a string of separate paragraphs stuck together with a thin
and water .” 18
Charles Schwartz, in his well-documented
begrudging biography
if
Gershwin: His Life and Music attacks the Rhapsody in Blue for
its
“lack of
,
musical development in the best sense .” 19 Schwartz touts the
Gilman, who found the work “so his
Appendix
Schwartz
from
.
for the
writes: “[His]
[a]
.
I,
Lawrence
critic
derivative, so stale, so inexpressive .” 20 In
most part an essay about Gershwin’s “Jewishisms,” popular tunes and large-scaled works seem
to spring
motley mixture of Jewish melodic characteristics and overt Amer-
.
Gershwin
icanisms.” Schwartz then challenges
“He had
works:
loads of chutzpah, but practically
nique of large scale composition.
somehow
put together pieces that
.
.
as a
composer of serious
no grounding
Mainly by following
.
manage
in the tech-
he
his instincts,
to fall into the serious
music
cat-
egory .” 21 Schwartz got dangerously close to Constant Lambert’s racist and anti-Semitic outburst, with
Gershwin
as his target, in his
book Music Ho!:
In point of fact, jazz has long ago lost the simple gaiety
the charming savages to the negro
who wants
to
whom go
it
home
owes
its
.
.
.
The
nostalgia of
has given place to the infinitely
weary nostalgia of the cosmopolitan Jew I
birth.
and sadness of
who
has no
home
to
go
more to.
.
.
.
he importance of the Jewish element in jazz cannot be too strongly
emphasized.
.
.
.
There
is
an obvious link between the exiled and per-
secuted Jews and the exiled and persecuted negroes, which the Jews, with their admirable capacity for drinking the beer of those
knocked down the
skittles,
have not been slow in turning
who have
to their ad-
vantage. But although the Jews have stolen the negroes’ thunder,
although
I
in
Pan Alley has become
a
is
is
that small section of
genuinely negroid. Hie “hot” negro records
still
and not merely galvanic energy, while the blues have ity
that places
Rhapsody
in
them
far
Blue has proven
Like most ot Gershwin
Dvorak
to
92
Ellington
s
itself to
music,
it
.
it
have a genuine
a certain auster-
above the sweet nothings of George Gershwin
thiive.
Duke
.
commercialized Wailing Wall,
the only jazz music of technical importance that
.
22 .
be critic-proof and continues
to
generates an immediate resonance
and larynx of anyone who ever
in the feet
thrilled to
ragtime lieks or Puccini’s
arching tunes, which, without the genius of inspiration, no master of form
can match. The scale of Rhapsody 80 percent of which
companiment
mind.
in
Gershwin had Rhapsody
Blue
in
is
theme. Beginning
makes
is
Blue
in
and conceived with
for solo piano,
form
Its
a plan
is
modest, a sixteen-minute work,
is
my view,
logical and, in
and carried
it
out
in the traditional bines
the chromatic scale but F.
key of
sible, in the
E
It
arrives
key of
midcourse,
way ter
the
a savvy
Blue
principal motives
— the
AABA
Gershwin met key and back.
all
the notes of
away from
B-flat as pos-
keys,
its
way back
to the
key of B-flat for
that preclassical
tune create
for the first
measures.
in the closing
young Broadway songwriter, was confronting
same challenge
of the
Rhapsody
in
B-flat,
as far
triumphant restatement of the clarinet motive
Gershwin,
structure of
major, for the hauntingly beautiful slow theme. With
even more variants the Rhapsody works its
ac-
supported by a key scheme that revolves around the slow
and the horn’s response — through eleven
clarinet call
hand
coherent.
The
brilliantly.
way with ever-developing variants of its two
its
a jazz
composers faced.
How
in his
own
does a mas-
time a sustained, integrated work?
this
challenge with his tonal arch, working his way to a distant
The
structure holds his ever-flowing font of ragtime piano im-
provisations together, improvisations that rarely lose sight of his two principal
immense piano chops enabled him
motives. Meanwhile, his
to write bril-
liantly for the instrument.
Gershwin might have taken
his lead
from one of his
Claude Debussy, who challenged the academy and
of
means and
tripartite exposition,
Olympian model
which
against
composers,
fellow-traveling critics
form, perfected by Beethoven
for exalting sonata-allegro
favorite
— with
its
economy
development, and recapitulation
all
large scale pieces of
— as the
music were
to
he
judged:
should
I
like to see a
formed on
a single
kind of music free from themes and motives or
continuous theme.
The development
will
that professional rhetoric, it
will
F
which
is
that amplification of material,
the badge of excellent training. But
be given a more universal and essentially psychic conception.-"
Almost from
no longer be
at the
same time, the German
straitjacket
rench music by Debussy and Ravel and
movements
in all parts of
music was carving out
its
was being removed
— coincident with nationalist
Europe — the newly emerging African American
own
path.
Here was
a
premacy of the beat obliges melody and harmony rhythm. American composers such
as
music
in
which the
su-
to share center stage with
Copland and Gershwin
elevate
rhythm
Gershwin’s Rhapsody
in
Blue 93
w-
where others elevate harmony and melody. Moreover, American composers continued to use traditional harmony— harking back to ragtime, bines, and part-sung spirituals
— well past the time that
doned elsewhere. Infused with
fascinatin’
it
had been superseded or aban-
rhythm,
this
music forms a unique
in the history of twentieth-century art.
and remarkable strand
Kurt Sachs offered the notion that opera composers write in established
and familiar
order to
styles in
make
Other musicologists have developed posits that there
is
a limit to the
easier for the listener to absorb the text.
it
“harmonic rhythm, which
a theory of
number
of harmonies the
human
ear can
absorb in a given span of real time. Mozart, for example, does not change
chords on every quarter note of fast-moving music, whereas harmonies
change on each beat of a slow-moving Bach chorale. Taken together, these theories suggest a musical “golden
American music requires more
mean,” perhaps explaining why African
established, familiar
harmony
to
balance
its
complex rhythm — a Euro-African symmetry. This was the musical language Gershwin Until
inherited, the language of his
Sam Adler’s
1971 recording of the
billed as the Berlin
Symphony, using
Grofe score
band,
now
what
I
This
is
for jazz call
Rhapsody
I
parts
had assumed
Rhapsody
in
I
Blue with what was
adapted from the original 1924
that the only edition available
symphony
the “Hollywood Bowl” version for full
the orchestration
grew up with and
of several expansions that Grofe and others
conducted, and
first
made
symphonic orchestration, published
the full
in Blue.
of his jazz
band
was
orchestra.
it is
the last
original. In
shortly after Gershwin’s un-
timely death in 1937, the all-important banjo and saxophones are listed as optional instruments.
Grofe seems not
to
have had the heart
together.
But even when they are included
swamped
in a rich orchestral sea,
in a live
to discard
them
al-
performance, they are
along with the snappy dance rhythms that
distinguish the work. I
began performing the jazz-band orchestration
creation concert,
I
felt
formance movement, formers
who
a further responsibility to a collaboration
for
my
re-
between musicologists and those per-
tempi, size offerees, and especially performance
number
But
emulate the “authentic” per-
specialize in historic replication by
instruments, mutes, and
in 1976.
way of original instruments, style.
I
duplicated the exact
of players. Hard to find were the E-flat so-
pranino saxophone, the heckelphone, and a slide whistle sensitive enough
to
play the chromatics in “Whispering.” 1
he sopranino saxophone
is
the smallest of that family, higher in pitch
than the more familiar B-flat soprano
D\'orak 94
Bechet, and
more sensuous and penetrating sound in the upper register than E-flat clarinet or, some might say, the flute. The heckelphone extends the
possessing a the
made popular by Sidney
to
Duke
Ellington
range of the oboe family downward into the baritone
even further
register,
than the English horn, and with a weightier and more colorful tone. 24
My new once worked
Whiteman
Paul for
Whiteman, the drummer Herbert
up with the sounds of the
and
late 1920s
recordings
I
his
had been studying and
Although he grew
Harris.
dance bands, before he
early 1930s
would engage any musicians, Harris refreshed
Whiteman
man who had
orchestra was assembled by a
memory by listening to
transcribing,
t
he musicians
Harris assembled were not your Epical big-band players, but an
sortment of fine studio players
Among them were several
who were
amazing
capable of playing in any
1920s aficionados. Banjoist
the
Eddie Davis was
as-
style. full
of
information about Mike Pingatore, Whiteman’s banjoist and lifelong friend, said to have
been
in the
band longer than Whiteman because “Paul came
Our tuba player and bass saxophonist, Vince Giordano, was an avid Whiteman researcher and the leader of the “Nighthawks,” late to the first rehearsal.”
a
popular society dance band that specialized
even had a Renaissance music healthy curiosity for
Dean can
listen to a
all
specialist,
in
music from the
We
1920s.
Allan Dean, a trumpeter with a
kinds of good music played on a cup mouthpiece. 25
Busse recording and analyze his
and
style, his vibrato,
— the way Busse rushes a phrase and pauses, waiting for the band to catch up — and come up
other subtle nuances such as his peculiar use of rubato
with an amazing replication.
At the
their respective instruments.
ings of the 1920
Many
of the other musicians did the first
orchestra rehearsal,
Whiteman band performing
same on
played record-
1
pieces they later played in the
Aeolian Hall concert. Musicians took copies home; detailed listening
them was worth more than
a
to
thousand words or the most painstaking nota-
tion.
For the “role” of Gershwin, we engaged the American pianist Ivan Davis.
Symphony, but he had
Ivan had recorded the Rhapsody with the Detroit
never heard the jazz band version, nor was he a jazz pianist. credible ear and a terrific sense of time. style.
He
I
He
has an in-
helped him with the 1920s ragtime
contributed his finely wrought phrasing and singing tone. The
tuoso jazz
sty list
and composer Dick
Hyman
did the
vir-
Zez Confrey honors.
As the day of the concert approached, we became something of a media sensation.
Hyman and
on National Public Radio. digging out old
1
appeared on the Today show.
All the
New York
Whiteman and Rhapsody
in
I
was interviewed
newspapers did feature Blue
stories
from the archives.
Aeolian Hall had long ago been converted into office spaces, but to hire
Town
Hall,
articles,
I
was able
an acoustically sensitive mid-sized auditorium that was
only a block away. By the afternoon of the concert,
and more than 600 potential
ticket buyers
all
1,495 sea f s
were turned away.
were
sold,
Among the
Gershwin’s Rhapsody
in
110-
Blue 95
who attended were Morton Gould, Virgil Thomson, and Lester Lanin. The Gershwin family took a box. Whiteman’s granddaughter came with her family. She brought me a blue carnation to wear, as Whiteman had throughout his career. There were three members of the 1924 Whiteman hand still tables
around: Milton Rettenberg, housebound in
who was
living in a nursing
Dieterle,
who
home
New York; pianist Henry Lange, and eighty-one-year-old Kurt
in Kansas;
played violin in the concert of 1924 and was
playing
still
“TV
dates” in Los Angeles. 26
come
Dieterle agreed to tel
had him
New York for the
to
as a courtesy guest).
suggested he bring his fiddle. Carl John-
I
Whiteman
son, the curator of the
Collection at Williams College, called to
say he was bringing a gold-clad baton that
we
played the Rhapsody,
him
He
audience.
to the
I
occasion (the Carlyle Ho-
Whiteman had
invited Dieterle to join us
on
used. Just before
stage
ceremoniously presented the baton
the front desk of the fiddle section.
Our
and introduced to
me and sat in
Lamar
concertmaster,
Alsop, gra-
ciously turned over the solo violin interlude (in the middle of the slow section) to Dieterle.
had unwittingly tapped
I
mentioned above
of the people for
most of those senior
sixtieth anniversary
box
us,
and concertgoing days
Hall that afternoon have ended. T he
tight little
music
circles and,
am happy
I
office. 27 I
asked Virgil
he blurted out, “But they in
Town
New York’s
formance with the one he heard
would be
no longer with
concert was a triumph, in the hall, in the press, in the
After the concert
nally,
Many
an astonishing and timely nostalgia.
are
citizens at
buzz that went around to say, at the
into
Thomson
in 1924. all
He
if
he could compare our per-
tried to
beg
off.
I
pushed. Fi-
we do now.” This
played lighter than
keeping with the quieter sound environment of the 1920s.
Today’s singers and instrumentalists are consciously or unconsciously
competing with high powered, in-your-face cinematic sound and recordings.
Broadway
theaters have
been turned
into veritable
sound
mikes and shotguns (long-distance microphones), the
studios.
live
With body
onstage sound
is
amplified and “massaged,” making the extreme ranges crackle and woof un-
Broadway gypsies hoof their way through complicated
naturally.
mouth along with prerecorded chorus cle
Choir
size. Pit
parts
to
Mormon
another building.
And
is
veritable
music director) and piped back
the whole at the
is
mixed on
to sing
and play
Three days
and the
Dvorak 96
1
to
aftei
board (by the
We have forgotten
lightly.
the d
’atro Sistina for a
Duke
a
audience through dozens of
loudspeakers, and through monitors for the cast on stage.
how
Taberna-
musicians play into individual microphones; sometimes
the “pit
in
blown up
steps as they
Fillington
own
Hall concert
we were on our way
week of gala performances and
to
Rome
a television broad-
cast.
The audiences came dressed
and black
tie.
gram, which
silk scarves,
Within the year would come our recording of the
entire pro-
won
a
folks
who were
Birth of the
at the original
Rhapsody
Jr.,
a television producer. In
stage to greet us after the concert;
in
Blued we occasionally
who heard
Aeolian Hall event, and some
one of the performances during the 1924 Busse
dresses, boas,
Record of the Year award from Stereo Review.
On our tours with “The met
“shimmy”
white
in
tour. In
Colorado we met Henry
Los Angeles two Ferde Grofe
Jrs.
came on
one was an adopted son from Grofe’s
first
marriage, the other his biological son from his second marriage.
When the excitement of the Town Hall sided,
all
of the hype
and the media began work of art, and is
its
I
had bought into and passed on
to
nag
at
me. Despite
curiosity to
had tapped
in
its
Rome
to willing
intrinsic merits as
tour sub-
audiences
an inspired
public acclaim as a breakthrough event. Rhapsody in Blue
but one chapter in the American music
my
concert and the
know more,
somewhere
back. In a few years
to pass
in the
my muse
led
story.
The whole
enterprise piqued
on more: the African American more.
middle of the
me
to
story,
and
I
I
knew I would be
Dvorak, Will Marion Cook, and Jim
Europe.
Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue 97
11
The Clef Club Concert my
Jim Europe was the biggest influence
in
He was
the roots and forces
at a
point in time at which
of Negro music
And he
all
merged and gained
musical career.
widest expression.
[their]
furnished something that was needed.
— Eubie
Blake,
in
Lawrence T. Carter, Euhie Blake:
Keys of Memory
Thanks
to the
devoted and thorough research of Reid Badger, James Reese
Europe (1881-1919) music
history. 1
is
at last
being retrieved from the fringes of American
Europe was one of the
brightest lights of the African
Amer-
ican music world, which he helped guide and shape during the twenty
between Scott Joplin and Louis Armstrong — between the publi-
ical years
cation of the of the
Hot
first
Five.
ragtime
hit,
“Maple Leaf Rag,” and the seminal recordings
Europe, a charismatic conductor, founded
ming and choraling “Negro Orchestra,” the
first
moves
crit-
a
unique strum-
He formed one
the Clef Club.
of
hot dance bands, interpreting the African American rhythms and
that fueled the
untimely death fighters,”
at
first
American dance
craze. Just
age thirty-nine, Europe’s 369th
was introducing
a
new music
plain his obscurity
— was
What Europe
compose
a hit.
amazed musi-
Europe would be the
did not do
— and this
first to
helps exSissle
in his last years, as the godfather
which reestablished black musicals on Broadway and,
the words of the critic
his
“the Hell-
But he was recognized by
and Blake, close collaborators with Europe of Shuffle Along,
Army Band,
they called “jazz” to
cians and the public of France. James Reese
be crowned “King of Jazz.” 2
months before
and author Gilbert Seldes, “paid honor
in
to [Europe’s]
memory.” 3 With some humility
1
believe that
Europe’s 1912 Clef Club concert
at
my reconstruction
Carnegie Hall, the
and re-creation of
first
all-black event
99
held there, and
name
broadcast on National Public Radio helped bring Europe’s
its
to the attention of the
musical public once again. >
began
It
as a
“wouldn’t
it
be fascinating
to
hear” idea that
Judith Aaron, executive director of Carnegie Hall. to reconstruct three of the hall’s historic concerts
It
I
broached
to
took form as a contract
— concerts originally pre-
Duke Ellington, George Antheil, and Jim Europe. My idea proved timely. The hall was looking for a popular, preferably black, music project, one that would impress the National Endowment for the Arts, which had been chiding Carnegie Hall for its elitism. The Carnegie Hall Foundation could perhaps afford to lose their NEA grants hut not the more important
sented by
prestige
and imprimatur the grants then represented
The mark
hall’s
promotional team came up with a
Jazz Concerts.”
I
argued
for
in the art world.
title for
the series: “Land-
“Three American Landmark Concerts,”
The Clef Club concert took place The Antheil concert, despite its con-
preferring not to characterize the music.
before the word “jazz” had surfaced.
nections to jazz and ragtime, was mostly an avant-garde event from the 1920s.
And
Ellington,
we know, was beyond
category.
But these were public-relations
who lived and breathed labels. They stuck with their title. The concerts were scheduled to take place in one festival week
folks,
1989.1.1
had
months
six
very different hands.
Tyger Productions”
to find the
music and
incorporated myself, choosing the
I
after
my
came
an end
to
in the
name “Hold That
Mom’s Warsaw
Polish family, which, with one excepghetto, the old ragtime
title
deeper symbolism. Hold That Tyger formed a small but efficient
were
off I
took on a staff.
We
and running. 4
began researching the Clef Club concert with
May 2,
and three
mother’s maiden name, Tygier. With the odd
spelling that referred back to tion,
to hire choirs, soloists,
in July
1912,
a
copy of the original
Carnegie Hall program in hand:
Part
I
Clef Club March
Jas.
Reese Europe
Clef Club Orchestra conducted by the composer ,
2.
Song,
Gal”
“Li’l
Words by Paul Laurence Dunbar The composer 3.
(a)
Dance
(b)
“You’re Sweet to Your
[singing
of the Marionettes
Just the
Same”
J.
Rosamond Johnson
and playing]
Hugh Woolford
Mammy Johnson
Versatile Entertainers Quintette
Dvorak 100
to
Duke
Ellington
4-
vous— Valse
(a)
l out a
(b)
Panama— Characteristic dance
Petite
5.
Wm. Wm.
H. Tyers H. Tvers
Clef Club Orchestra, conducted by the composer (a)
Song, “Jean”
Henry
(b)
Song, “Snwanee River”
Foster
[sic]
T. Burleigh
Miss Elizabeth Payne 6.
Benedictus (from an original Mass)
Choir
of St. Philip's
Church, NY, Paul C. Bohlen, organist
Part 7.
“Swing Along,”
a
Paul C. Bohlen
II
Negro melody
Will Marion
Cook
(See page 10 for words.)
Clef Club Chorus, Will Marion Cook, leader 8.
Piano Solo, Danse Heroique
J.
Rosamond Johnson
The composer 9.
(a)
“Hula” — Hawaiian Dance
Europe
(b)
“On Bended Knee”
Burleigh
Clef Club Orchestra ro.
“By the Waters of Babylon” Choir
11.
of St. Philip's
(a)
Dearest Memories
(b)
The
(c)
Take
(d)
Old Black Joe
Coleridge-Taylor
Church, Paul C. Bohlen, organist
Belle of the Lighthouse
Me
Back
to
Dear Old Dixie
Royal Poinciana Quartette 12.
“The Rain Song,” words by
Alex. Rogers
Will Marion
Clef Club Chorus, Will Marion Cook, assisted by
13.
Cook
leader,
Deacon Johnson’s Martinique Quartette Enrope
(a)
Lorraine Waltzes
(h)
March, “Strength of the Nation,” dedicated to the proposed Colored
Regiment
Europe Clef Club Orchestra
The program encompassed an
impressive mix of
styles,
from banjo-
driven vaudeville tunes to liturgical works for men’s and boys’ choir accom-
The Clef Club Concert
panied by pipe organ. There were formal marches, waltzes, concert virtuoso piano solo, “traditional” choral selections,
the Versatile Entertainers Quintet,
out to be a harbinger of
which had
and
arias, a
ensemble,
a featured
a style of playing that
turned
jazz.
This wide-ranging musical palette was the work of the black music
no one has ever explained why there was not
yet
Joplin’s
on the program. Joplin was
he have been
left out, in light
living in
Harlem
elite,
work of Scott
a single
How could
at the time.
of the global spirit with which Europe selected
the repertoire for the concert?’ sent copies of the program to scholars
1
try
asking
them
help
to
me
locate the
and
collectors across the coun-
music that had long been out of print.
My
special connection at the Library of Congress,
the
American Music Division, sent
a care
Wayne
head of
Shirley,
package of Clef Club pieces,
in-
Wayne went into the chamber of last resort, the Copyright Office hie. From the Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University, and from Vincent Giordano, who cluding the band parts for Europe’s “Hi! There! March,” for which
has one of the largest privately
came
sets
owned
collections of musical Americana,
of parts for the “Clef Club March.”
Among
J.
Rosamond Johnson’s
papers at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
I
found the un-
published manuscript of his “Dance Heroique,” a virtuoso piano solo written in a style that
posed cated
while he was a student
it
it
can be best described
to his teacher,
at the
Boulevards
New
meets Joplin.” Johnson com-
England Conservatory and dedi-
Charles F. Deunee, a student of Hans von Biilow.
Another lucky find was the Mass
Church on
as “Liszt
134th Street,
between
in
G by Charles Bohlen. At St.
Adam
sic minister,
A
Gerald Morton.
I
met with
St. Philip’s
pulled open a large metal cabinet. Filed
of choral parts for the
Mass
Samuel Coleridge -
aylor’s
work sung by the choir
Morton
— and before that for Dvorak. asked him of the Mass in G by his predecessor, Charles
by chance he had a copy
He
mu-
choir had once sung at
Carnegie Hall with the Clef Club
Bohlen.
their
very fine organist and conductor,
was, of course, interested to learn that the
if
Malcom X
Clayton Powell and
— previously Seventh and Lenox Avenues —
Philip’s
in
6
among
I
the Bs was a set
G, the same ones used seventy-six years
earlier.
“By the Waters of Babylon,” the other sacred
for the
Carnegie Hall concert, was there
as well.
Coleridge - aylor was hailed in the United States by Booker T. Washington as “the foremost musician of his race,” and, as
we know, he was
vored by the American Negro Academy.' Jim Europe had Coleridge-
1
aylor’s
little
fa-
interest in
music. Nevertheless pressure must have been put upon
him by his younger sister, Mary, the assistant director and the accompanist of the prestigious Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Choral Society of Washington, D.C., established in 1903.
Dv orak 102
to
Duke
Ellington
Mary Europe was
the musical equal of her brother. In 1894,
when
she
was nine and Jim was fourteen, they both entered a citywide composition
Mary took
contest.
the
prize;
first
Jim came
in second. 8
fluence extended into the theater and jazz world as well.
certs,
I
was
sitting
Frank Wess. cert,
We were sharing the Band
Basie
Billy Eekstine,
“I
for ten years with
Goodman, Dizzy first
you are doing the Clef Club concert
see
If it
weren’t for Miss Europe,
con-
Gillespie,
introduce
to
week,"
later this
my music teacher
might not have be-
I
|
come
a musician.”
We had
with Benny
as well as
Dunbar High.
Paul
Frank had played
that evening.
artist
for the Ellington
from Washington, D.C.; Maty Europe was
said Frank. “I’m |
conducting duties
and Eddie Heywood. 9 Frank was one of the
the flute into jazz.
at
backstage in Carnegie Hall with the veteran jazz
which was being given
Count
the
On the opening night of the Landmark Jazz Con-
Porgy, was her student.
first
Mary Europe's inTodd Duncan, the
began engaging
artists to
a lot of explaining to do, for
musicians, as he had been to
were the bass-baritone,
Bill
the trumpeter, Joe Wilder,
and play the Clef Club
sing
repertoire.
James Reese Europe was unknown
me before
I
began
my research. The
I
most
to
exceptions
Warfield; the choral conductor, Jester Hairston;
whose
father
was
a
Clef Clubber; and
a
few of the
“strummers,” the banjo, guitar, and mandolin players.
We engaged the
Boys Choir of Harlem. They would join with the
from the Morgan State University Choir of Baltimore 7
to
form
a
boys’ choir for the sacred works. Following Europe’s example,
Nathan
men and I
invited
Carter, the conductor of the choir, to lead them, as Charles
Bohlen
had done
in 1912.
Johnson’s
“Li’l
And
I
asked William Warfield,
who was
singing
Gal," to act as host and narrator where
I
felt
it
J.
Rosamond
was needed.
thanks to Walter Gould, Morton Gould’s brother and a knowledgeable
publisher of American choral music, Jester Hairston, a living legend,
on board as
men
to lead
came
Will Marion Cook’s “Swing Along" and “The Rain Song,"
Cook had done
in 1912.
10
Sophisticated and proud of his Negro heritage,
the eighty-eight-year-old Hairston
made
the
young
singers
from Morgan State
University comfortable with Cook’s dialect song “Swing Along":
Swing along chillun, swing along de Lif’ yo’
head
Swing along
an’ yo’ heels
lane,
mighty high;
chillun, ’taint agoin’ to rain
Sun’s as red as a rose in de sky.
Come
along Mandy,
White White
come along
Sue;
folks watchin’ an’ seein’
folks jealous
when
what you do,
you’se walkin’ two by two,
So swing along chillun, swing along. 11
The Clef Club Concert 103
Pianist
Leon
Heroique” and
who
to
Bates was engaged to play
Rosamond Johnson’s “Dance
J.
accompany Warfield and mezzo-soprano Barbara Conrad,
sang Burleigh’s
art
song “Jean.” 12
Jim Europe’s Clef Club Orchestra was unique. In addition sized orchestra with the standard instrumentation of strings, brasses,
and percussion, there was the
to a salon-
woodwinds,
mass of strumming players who
large
sang— a combination first exploited on a smaller scale by Will Marion Cook and Ernest Hogan in their Memphis Students’ Ensemble (1905), of
also
which Europe was
member.
a
At an earlier Clef Club “Symphony Orchestra” concert
gram
listed sixty-nine
and bandoris
(a
strummers
in
all.
There were
banjo-mandolin hybrid also known twenty-seven
like violins into
many as twelve
thirty-seven
mandolins
as the banjoline), divided
and ten seconds. There were nine tenor
firsts
banjos and twenty-three harp guitars theorbo, with as
1910), the pro-
(c.
(a
modern
version of the Renaissance
unfretted bass strings to pluck). According to
David Mannes, the Clef Club ensemble had “a beautiful
sound
like a gi-
We were able to engage thirty eager strummers in all — ten each
on man-
soft
ant balalaika orchestra.” 13
dolins, banjos,
one found
and guitars— but had given
11s.
Bob Ault heard about
rip
on finding any harp guitarists when
some
the concert through
guitar-banjo
grapevine and offered to drive from Brentwood, Missouri, to take part in
it.
Europe’s uniquely instrumented Clef Club survives in the lore of the banjo, guitar, and mandolin world.
mers played only chords, and by
One story still
told
is
Clef Club strum-
that
Europe himself hinted
ear.
news-
at this in a
paper interview, explaining that his unusual orchestration “gives that peculiar
strumming accompaniment
steady
’ten pianos.’
The
result
of Negro harmony.” 14
can catch anything
way
it’s
I
written,
if
is
a
they hear just
it
once or twice, and
make up something a
But there has dolins
to
and bandoris
be more into
firsts
put
if it’s
just play
“They
too hard for ’em the
else that’ll
former Clef Club
whether the strummers did more than figure, they
essentially typical
also told musicologist Natalie Curtis,
once asked Marion Cumbo,
music they could
and mandolins] and
background of chords which are
Europe
why they
[of guitars, banjos,
go with
cellist
born
it.”
15
in 1898,
rhythm. His answer: “All the
in.” 16
to the story.
Why would
and seconds
in
strum chords? Europe was himself a trained
one divide the man-
symphonic fashion simply
violinist
who
took up the
to
man-
dolin— which is tuned and fingered exactly like a violin — out of expediency. r Some strummers, of course, played by ear. But in order to play the music
that Europe’s
program called
for,
those
who
played
bandori needed an advanced single-string technique
Dvorak 104
to
Duke
Ellington
first
mandolin and
— expert coordination
between
fingered melodies and figures in the
fast
pick in the right. take
them
virtuosos
The
firsts
would
also
need
into the higher positions. As
among
Another
we
left
story
I
were single-string
will see, there
heard from several of our banjoists and in Europe’s orchestra
guitarists
were good singers to
fill
was that
who “ghosted”
in the ranks. Lest
unjoyful noise in their enthusiasm, their instruments were
And why
outfitted with rubber strings. ers
technique that could
a left-hand
on whatever strumming instrument Europe needed
make an
fluttering
Europe’s banjoists.
many of the strummers they
hand and the
wouldn’t pay
for a
mere
singer,
not? In the days
when
nightclub own-
Bing Crosby and Morton Downey
w'ere fitted out with silent guitars or banjos by
Whiteman,
as
was Noble
Sr.
Sissle
by Europe.
Eor our re-creation the singing was the
Morgan
State University
left to
the Boys Choir of Harlem and
Men’s Choir. They were placed on
behind
risers
the orchestra that fanned out in a long crescent across the Carnegie Hall stage.
one
There were
in the center.
also seven pianos spread about, three
either side
and
The piano strummers, who most of the time chorded along
with the rhythm section, were
Club March,”
on
let
as reported in a
Well before the
loose in the ragtime finale of Europe’s “Clef
review of the 1912 event.
rehearsal, urgent requests for parts
first
from strummers. They wanted
to
“woodshed,”
a
began coming
modus operandi
in
that or-
who pride themselves on their sight-reading ability, would rarely admit to. But we did not find parts for these instruments in any of the published orchestrations we located. So began writing mandolin, banjo, chestral players,
I
and
guitar arrangements myself, a task that sent
society
and banjo club publications. And
making
a case for themselves
of the chord
Tom
names onto
and
just in case the
a few' “fakers”
the guitar
me to studying old mandolin
and banjo
rumormongers were
had slipped
in,
I
wrote
many
parts as well.
Show Business, Clef Club probably
Fletcher explains, in his 100 Years of the Negro in
how many,
if
not most, of the strummer-singers of the
learned their parts:
When new songs became party
and
Club]. the
invite Bill Tyers [treasurer
They would
new
After he
popular, the musicians would stage a
songs. Bill
all
and
assistant director of the
Clef
bring their banjos, guitars and mandolins, and
would play them over while the gang
listened.
had played the melody two or three times, they would have
fixed in their minds.
They would
harmony and
in
it
learn the words, an easier matter be-
cause they could read and write. After that the
little
Bill
would teach the boys
about an hour or so everybody was up
to date. 18
The Clef Club Concert
came from a cohort of about five or six guitar, banjo, and mgndolin players who had gotten together to practice on their own. They serenaded me over the phone: “Is this the
A week
or so before our
first full
sound you wanted?" they asked.
was so choked up
I
I
my
could hardly express
how beautifully they blended and how steady and even was rhythm. The best part is the strummers’ crescendo. At our section re-
amazement their
hearsal,
at
found that
I
tremolo that
raises
strummers could produce
thirty
you out of your
Using the “period ear" recordings, I
rehearsal, a call
I
did
some hard
I
a
smooth, swelling
seat.
developed from transcribing 1920s Whiteman
listening to the few
Europe and Cook recordings
could find and wrote orchestrations where they did not exist— in particu-
lar for
The most fun was
Cook’s “Swing Along” and “The Rain Song."
and then orchestrating, Burleigh’s “On Bended Knee.
ing,
find-
In the 1912
Carnegie Hall program booklet, under a section entitled “Words of Songs," a printed text
was included
“On Bended Knee," and
for
the caveat, “With
apologies to the composer for slight rearrangement."
Oh, look away yonder— what do
A band of angels after me. Come to tote me away from
I
fiel’s all
’Cause nobody knows the trouble I
assumed
see?
green
I’ve seen!
was a Burleigh song (with
this
a
borrowed
someone, perhaps William Tyers, had arranged usual combination of singer-players.
I
contacted
it
all
last line),
Clef Club’s un-
my
sources to be on
of
“On Bended Knee"
work by Burleigh
and based upon the old
“Nobody Knows the Trouble
more than
1912,
published
fifty
19
I’ve
Seen." By
— his lifetime total would top four hundred — but no one came up After
in a collection of Burleigh’s
1910.
titled
of Burleigh’s songs and choral arrangements had been
“On Bended Knee.”
with
that
for the
the lookout for a vocal or choral spiritual
and
Each piece
is
ston, Burleigh’s wife
some sleuthing discovered I
the elusive
title
piano pieces, From the Southland, published in
introduced with an inspirational
poem by Louise
Al-
— thus the inclusion of a text, her poem, in the program
booklet.
“On Bended Knee” ends with a musical quotation of the familiar spiritual “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” for which Burleigh devised the most delicious Dvorakian harmonies. The familiar and As one might expect,
moving phrases
cry out,
the unusual palette
if
made
not for words, for available to
hummed support. a cornet
tune produced a fresh “made in America” sound.
106
to
Duke
Ell ington
was drawn
to
me. And the combination of delicately
strumming mandolins, choral humming, and
Dvorak
I
warmly singing the
One
Europe's “Clef Club March” was described in the
final challenge:
reviews as a rousing opener, with the strummers “bursting into singing” at the trio
and masses of ragtime
pianists playing
Henry Creamer’s words nor Europe’s
away
at the end. 20
But neither
rag piano parts appear in the published
them — wrote some appropriate words and
versions.
So
variation
— making sure to add my own caveat: “apologies to the composer for
I
supplied
a piano-rag
liberties taken.”
The
conservative style of most of the Clef
aficionados, who, cert
Club music
upon hearing about our reconstruction
from the early years of the
century',
expected a
lot
surprised even
of an all-black con-
of ragtime syncopation.
But the marches are right out of Sousa, the waltzes from Victor Herbert.
A
few hotter numbers are ragtime inspired: William Tyers’s boisterous havanaise “Panama,” Will
Marion Cook's showstopper “Swing Along,” and the
pieces played and sung by the Versatile Entertainers Quintet.
The out of a
search for the music of the rpr2 Clef
total of
Club Concert was
twenty-one compositions, only
gratifying:
five substitutions
had
to
be
made. For example, the songs performed by the Versatile Entertainers — the
“Dance of
Same
’
and “You’re Sweet
the Marionettes”
— had not come
Moreover,
I
to light, neither
didn’t have a clue as to
Mammy
Your
to
on recordings nor
how
Just the
as sheet
music.
the group might have sounded.
Were they singers, players, or both, and if players, on what instruments? 21 The day of the concert was fast approaching and I was about to give up when Frank Driggs, a jazz historian, came up with a recording of a Versatile Entertainers Quartet (also known as the Versatile Four) that was recorded in Great Britain in February 1916 (His Master's Voice, C-654). Three of the four musicians on the recording were members of the Versatile Entertainers
Quintet
Carnegie Hall
at
in 1912
“banjoline” player; Charles
heard playing on
—
!
They were Anthony Tuck,
Wenzel
Mills, pianist
New Orleans riverboats as early as
and
vocalist
vocalist
1907);
and
(who was
and Charles Wes-
who played cello and drums. summer of 1913, Tuck, Mills, and Johnson were members
ley Johnson,
In the
band sent
to
France by Jim Europe
Cafe de Paris and the Casino
in Deauville.
abroad and established themselves thus the
as
The
and Vernon Castle
at
three Versatiles remained
“household names
England” 22 —
in
HMV recording, which provided me with an authentic example of
their singing
and playing
What heard on I
string
to play for Irene
of a
the
style.
HMV recording was an electrifying virtuoso single-
plucking technique.
No
chording strummers these. The Versatiles’
banjo playing was wild and “jazzy,”
as
was their singing, and
the word “jazz” was yet to be officially introduced to
at a
New York.
t
time
when
Reseuweber’s
he Clef Club Concert
Cafe on Eighth Avenue
Columbus
off
bands, including the Versatile Four,
New
up from
Orleans
— irony
catchy enough to match
its
foi;
Circle had been featuring hot black
some time when
— an
of ironies
its
formances— a an ensemble
own
against the
name
a
If
heard on the
I
we could match
HMV recording
the Versatile’s per-
task— we would demonstrate that there was
Jim Europe’s historic and wide-ranging concert that played
a style of syncopated
music that would soon make
rubric jazz. Admittedly, clarinet,
ODJB.
devilishly difficult
at
band with
all-white
brought
music, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band.
But the Versatile Entertainers Quartet could hold
in 1917 they
it is
a place for itself under the
hard to equate banjos with the ODJB’s cornet,
and trombone. But the aggressive drumming of Wesley Johnson,
in
reminds one of ODJB’s Tony Sbarbaro.
particular,
Hanging over
a tape
HMV 78s for hours,
copy of the old
I
transcribed,
note for note, the Versatile Quartet’s performance of “Winter Nights,” by
Schwartz, and Wilber Sweatman’s
thought
“Down Home
to the fact that these songs
Rag.”
I
gave not a second’s
were different from those performed
at
the Clef Club concert in 1912, or that there was one less Versatile Entertainer.
Our four musicians — ban joists Martin (Aubert) Ayodele and Eddy Davis, pianist Frank Owens, and trap drummer 23 Chuck Spies (there was no cello on the
HMV recording) — had the necessary skills and caught the just-before-
jazz at
sounds dead on. At the concert, the audience went wild.
microphone
the
saying, “Eat your heart out,
ODJB,” an
I
found myself
invidious
com-
parison that has since been independently taken up by a team of British jazz researchers:
When
the Original Dixieland Jazz
Band
brought with them a new
1919, they jazz. In all
style of
artists
these groups that preceded
ODJB
But
1
had
less
and
than a week
five or six
to turn the
truly national popular-
fifty-two singers into
times over a two-week pe-
New Clef Club
Orchestra of sixty-
an early-twentieth-century vernacular
that could play waltzes, marches, characteristic pieces,
The musicians we assembled — from mandolin way
pits,
new name,
the Versatile [Quartet] Four. 24
three players
band
a
who came to England many of whom were black. Of
one obtained
Our new Versatile Quartet rehearsed riod.
music with
in April
playing syncopated music
from the end of the nineteenth century,
.
England
other respects, however, they were merely continuing a line
of American
ity ..
arrived in
and ragtime. 25
societies, pizza parlors,
and the rich pool of New York freelancers — easily played
through the marches and waltzes
at the first reading.
But
it
Broad-
their
way
took several passes
before the ragtime tunes began to click into the “eight to the bar” frame. 26
Dvorak 108
to
Duke
Ellington
One for the
might think that playing
in
ragtime
average American musician. But for those brought up on swing, or on
bebop and
rock, not to
mention the
classical repertoire, the playing of rag-
time and the related dance music of the 1920s playing as
would he second nature
style
Swing
particularly difficult.
is
distinguished by a rolling triplet “twelve to the bar" inner beat.
is
And
swing bands and combos moved into the smaller clubs, where they were
danced
listened rather than
to,
swing and bebop players devised ever-looser
time and phrase structures. Lagging behind (playing
off)
the beat
became
the
thing to do.
To
play in ragtime,
nervous dancing
we have
to relearn the
style of the 1920s,
how
way ragtimers supported the
they respected and constantly
and landed squarely on the beat "eight
iterated, reinforced,
to the bar,”
re-
not
twelve.
“Eight
to the bar” 2
denotes that there are eight pulses in a normal four-
come on
beat measure (whether they Joplin, four eighth notes);
accounted
for.
and
four quarter notes or, as with Scott
that every pulse, or subdivision,
is
present and
Joplin illustrates this in his "Ragtime Primer,” lining
up the
notes of a ragtime phrase with vertical dotted lines from bass clef to treble,
from
hand
left
show how
to right, to
to
keep the eight pulses steady and
RAOTIMF SCHOOL OF »y SCOTT JOPLIN Composer at “ Maple Leaf
REMARKSby
all
'What
is
acurriloualy called ragtime
classes of musicians. That
article
-will
be better
is
Rag'.’*
an invention that
is
here to stay. That
is
nowoonoeded
publications masquerading under the name of ragtime are not the gemdna these exercises are studied. That real ragtime at the higher class 1*
all
known when
rather difficult to play is a painful truth whioh most pianists have discovered. Syncopations are no indication of light or trashy music, and to shy bricks at"hateful ragtime”no longer passes formusioal culture To assist amateur players in giving the “Joplin Rags” that weird and intoxioating effect intended by the composer is the object of this work .
Exercise No.l. It is evident that, by giving each not*, its proper time and by scrupulously observing the ties, you will get the effect. So many are careless in these respects that we will specify each feature. In this number, strike the first note and hold it through the time belonging to the second note. The upper staff is not syncopated, and is not to be played. The perpendicular dotted lines running from the syncopated note
below to the two notes above will show exactly never play ragtime fast at any time.
Slow march tempo (Count
Figure
From
its
duration
.
Play slowly until you catch the swing, and
Tito)
11.1
Joplin’s School of Ragtime, self published in 1908.
The Clef Club Concert
locked together. Only then can the desired “weird and intoxicating effect” be achieved.
A simple
shifting of accent within the
striking effect.
motor pulse of ragtime creates
For example, an unsyncopated measure “eight accent on the
a natural stress
a
to the bar,” has
of every pair of poises:
first
dada-dada-dada-dada; dividing the bar 2222. If
displace the natural accent of the second pair,
we
habanera
we
get the havanaise or
effect:
dadada-da-dada-dada; dividing the bar 3122 If
we
displace the accent of the
first
Cook
Turkish “belly dance” rhythm
and second
pairs
we
get a variant, the
talks about:
da-dada-da-dada-dada; dividing the bar 12122 Finally,
we
remove the accent of the
the habanera and
we go back to
if
third pair,
get the magical ragtime syncopation:
dadada-da-dada-dada; dividing the bar 332 Joplin loves to
ond
strain
combine
or even further displace these syncopations.
(measures 9-16) of “Maple Leaf Rag”
dada-dada-dadada-da
dadada-dada-dadada
/ /
first
last (off-beat)
/
323
2222 first
measure and not accenting the
two pulses of the second measure, the bar line
of Stravinsky.
sic
/
pulse of the
This displacement of the bar
toire
/
dada-dada-dada-dada;
dividing the phrase 223333
By accenting the
du soldat
line,
I
am
is
displaced or obliterated.
convinced, caught the keen ear
have often performed the “Ragtime Dance” from his L’his-
I
(1918) as
an example of the influence of African American mu-
on European masters. T he work
is
scored for a prototypical ragtime en-
semble-violin, cornet, trombone, clarinet, drums, double interloper, a bassoon rives largely
sec-
an eye-opener:
is
dada-dadadada-dada
The
— but
it
has
become
bass,
and one
me that the entire work de-
clear to
from Stravinsky’s fascination with ragtime’s motor rhythms and
mixed meters,
a
game
of displaced accents where the eighth note
is
king.
The
respected twentieth-century music critic H. H. Stuckenschmidt concurs:
“The polyrhythms we observe
in L'histoire
du soldat would be unthinkable
but for the jazz records which [conductor Ernest Ansermet brought Stravin|
sky from
America during the
First
World
War.” 28
In ragtime, the “weird and intoxicating” Joplin effect
comes from
play-
ing or improvising off-beat, “displaced” accents over a steady and heady beat
Dvorak
no
to
Duke
Ell ington
of eight pulses per measure. gravity'.
Our
bodies, following our ears, take
“Swing" ups the ante, offering more places
And
steady beat of twelve pulses per measure.
for
defying
displacement over a
the pulses can be real or im-
jazz— African American music — everyone
plied, for in
off,
a
is
drummer.
Listening to vocal and jazz band recordings of the 1920s has led
me to be-
lieve that “swing" entered
our consciousness and overtook ragtime through
when
the most popular bands, such as those of Fletcher
the blues. At a time
Henderson and Paul Whiteman, were playing uptempo, two-beat dance tunes with a straight eight-to-the-bar pulse, blues singers such as
Ma Rainey were al-
ready rocking and swinging the slower blues tunes, tentatively on some, like
“Lucky Rock Blues"
(1924),
Black Bottom” (1927). blues recordings that
back-up band
for
even hear some swinging on
I
W.
but with full-out tripletizing in
C. Handy’s
Memphis
Ala Rainey included the
Fletcher Henderson Band
— Coleman
before bands would swing
The
in 1922.
Don Redman, and
Hawkins,
new swing music
notation of the
made
One
saxophone section from the
all-star
It
uptempo tunes twelve
Rainey’s
earlier instrumental
Blues Band
Bailey— and Henderson himself playing piano.
“Ma
was only
a
Buster
matter of time
to the bar as well. 29
did not follow
suit.
Swing arrange-
ments, sheet music, and eventually bebop “charts” were written with even eighth notes! This practice continues today.
The music
looks like “eight to
the bar," but players automatically produce the long-short “twelve to the bar”
rhythm of swing unless
To
practical side to this.
There
specifically told to “play straight eighths.”
is
a
notate the long-short rhythms as they are really
played requires a more complex musical arithmetic, either groupings of quar-
and eighths with
ters
triplet brackets or writing
out the whole thing in
when everyone knows how to do it as Sometimes composers and arrangers who want a swing
12/8,
both of which are tiresome
if
nature.
effect resort
to dotted eighths
and
sixteenths,
which
is
by second
not only rhythmically inaccurate
but tedious to notate as well. 30
Here or I
lies
the danger of putting a sheet of ragtime music in front of jazz
symphonic musicians who are used
have heard
Rhapsody American
in
anachronism intrude
this
by the
Both should know
Domino, feel.
the
into a
tripletizing.
performance of Gershwin’s
lost
its
New York
Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein.
when Chuck
Berry, Fats
and the Beatles brought back the “eight
to the bar"
hegemony
over popular music
We were due for a change. feel
It
seems
that a
fundamental rhythmic
our bodies in space, occurs about every
emerged around
An
better.
Elvis Presley,
way we
swinging the eighths or
Blue by the Berlin Philharmonic under Simon Rattle and
in Paris
Swing
to
1895,
swing began taking over
mid-1950s, right on schedule,
came
rock and
thirty years.
in the late r920S,
shift,
Ragtime
and
in the
roll.
The Clef Club Concert
Jazz musicians
became paranoid. Rock and
Many asked
dance craze they could master. death of swing, of jazz Ellington’s tells in his
sister,
According
itself.
he thought
his
it is
themselves whether
is
not so
young beauties
At about the same time
it
would end
much
was the
The
how
for
move
change
to
in
on her
that his
music
Queenie.)
as the deaths of the principal
keepers of the flame,
movement
sprang up to revive and document the recent past and to reaffirm jazz as first
shot across the
tional treasure,
bow came
launched
“The Entertainer”
a Scott Joplin revival with a period
to top off
Repertory
Within two years Chuck
Hall. 31
Ensemble and George Wein sponsored the
Company under the
In the decade following,
direction of Dick
derson into
New York’s
some of these same Hall,
fancier cabarets
fellow-travelers
and
on the
were rehearsing
for the
“eight to the bar” approach that
the Clef Club repertoire. But Will
I
at
Israels
the
New
founded
New York Jazz
his circle attracted audi-
Whiteman and Luther Hen-
bars,
and
I
found myself with
stages of Town Hall
and Carnegie
conducting Gershwin, Ellington, and Cook where once
When we strict
performance of
Hyman. 32
Vince Giordano and
ences hungry for the acoustic delights of Paul
art.
Schuller, a na-
an all-American orchestral concert
England Conservatory’s Jordan his National Jazz
when Gunther
Alay 1972
in
ter-
go on with his work.
Ellington (1974) and Louis Armstrong (1971), a jazz repertory
The
he
story
about an aging mil-
trying to
at the sea
world had undergone, and his quandary over
how
this
new
Ruth Ellington Boatwright, Duke
about Ellington’s bewilderment
(Ellington never revealed
wasn’t just another
world had been undermined.
opera comique Queenie Pie
lionairess fighting off scheming ritory as
to
roll
I
Clef Club re-creation, was able
to
breathe
did Mozart. it
was with a
into
life
much
Marion Cook’s “Swing Along” was the
of in-
evitable exception that proved the rule.
“Swing Along” was
first
heard in 1903
don production of In Dahomey
33 ,
It
as a
new curtain-raiser for the Lon-
stopped the show
concert and again at our re-creation in 1989.
at the 1912
And although
it is
Clef Club
subtitled “rag-
time march,” “Swing Along” contains elements of blues and swing, anticipating styles that would not be fully established for several decades.
During seeped
in.
rehearsals,
’
tried to
make
to
do exactly what
no rhythmic anachronisms
Cook also wrote the text, said. The words “swzngalong
it
(c/udada dada), though written in even eighth notes, insinuated a
subtle, long-short, tripletlike inner
song, the strutting and joyous
and
sure that
Nevertheless, “Swing Along,” for which
seemed here and there chillun
I
lilt
into the reading.
mood turns
Toward
the end of the
dark and pensive, the music slows,
a harmonic-melodic-textual juxtaposition that
the blues appears: a four-bar phrase turns to
minor
we
usually associate with
as the text
is
repeated, the
tune leans on lowered thirds and sevenths (blue notes), and a tonic-seventh
Dvorak 112
to
Duke
Ellington
chord resolves toward the subdominant (Cook uses a diminished seventh on
The
the raised-fourth scale step).
blues form, whether twelve, sixteen, or eight
bars in length, invariably begins with repeated strains going from
minor and with The
this
W. C. Handy’s “Memphis
1909 and published in either that he was into In
Cook’s bluesy coda
1912.
ahead of his time — as early
Dahomey! — or
he added
that
quent publication by G. Schirmer
as the
in
composed
in
“Swing Along” indicates
as 1898 or 1903
this hint of
in 1914.
when
it
was put
an emerging form into the
We
tried playing this bluesy pas-
when
I
harmonies changed. And of course
I
sage straight, but the section began to
bend the notes
Blues,” was
Clef Club performances and the song’s subse-
final strains for the 1911-12
to
to
order of harmony.
blues,
“first”
major
make
sense only
asked the band let
the straight
eighths swing.
Jon Pareles, in the .
.
.
New York
brought
“the most
who
my re-creation
reviewed
Times (July
memorable
remarked that our “rainbow coalition
17, 1989),
to life a fascinating
of the 1912 Clef Club concert
moment
pieces were by Will
in
American music.” Noting
Marion Cook
.
.
.
that
dialect songs that
maintained their tuneful directness,” Pareles saw Cook’s line “White
folks
watchin’ to see what you can do,” from “Swing Along,” as “slyly appropriate to the original concert.” Pareles
summed up
those black musicians who, like Jessye sical tradition,
Wynton
Marsalis,
in different nority' to
those
who had
passed
had conquered
ways since 1912
.
.
.
at the
Norman, had triumphed
it
in the clas-
by completely, and those who,
“as a sideline”
[and that]
make themselves heard
shadowed
it
the evening by pointing out that
all
have “proved themselves
those ways for
in the majority’s
like
members
of a mi-
musical culture were fore-
Clef Club.” 34
The Clef Club Concert
12
Cook
Will Marion
I
have been intrigued by Will Marion Cook, a catalytic figure and an angel
of black music
who seems
to
show up
for a short yet efficacious
notable African American music event, from the 1890s to
Dvorak
to
The sic
in
Duke
II,
from
Cook and bis association with symphonic mumind when he was preparing for his first appearance
conservatory-trained
Carnegie Hall: “[Cook] was
things he used to Black,
tell
me
Brown and
viser to countless Jessye,
World War
at every
Ellington.
was on Ellington’s
poem
time
I
a brief
but strong influence
never got a chance to use until
Beige.’” 1
American
music educator and
artists
.
...
.
I
Some
.
of the
wrote the tone
“Doc” Cook was mentor, guide, and/or besides Ellington.
Among them
original choirmistress for Porgy
ad-
were Eva
and Bess and Four
Saints in Three Acts; the composer Harold Arlen; and the jazz saxophonist
Sidney Bechet,
whom Cook discovered
in
acter in Josef Skvorecky’s historical novel
radio broadcasts spring
Cook
is
up every time he
Dvorak
in
is
the central char-
Love, 2 and articles and
rediscovered. 3
A full
biography of
long overdue, but here are some highlights.
After the success of Clorindy,
through the early
The
last
Cook
1910s, directing
songs for shows, and conducting. zation.
is
Cook
Chicago.
and arranging
He
also tried his
of the Williams and
(1907), featured Cook’s scena “T* Ain’t
Alec Rogers. In
it,
four
men
(a
rode out the wave of black musicals for choruses,
hand
at
composing
musical dramati-
Walker musicals, 4 Bandanna Land
Gwine Be No
male quartet) drop
in
Rain,” with words by
on Simmons’s house,
n5
sit
around the wood
stove,
and have
a
sung debate about signs of impending
“Any time you hear de cheers .an'
rain:
rheumatics dey last
words
also
performed
jints
on de rack
is
in four-part
tables crack
‘Look out
/
harmony). The scena,
at the 1912
/
An' de folks wid
fu' rain, rain, rain
retitled the
.
.
(the
!”
.
“Rain Song,” was
Clef Club concert and was warmly received
at
our
1989 re-creation.
Cook’s theatrical
sensibilities,
and
marriage of black ver-
in particular his
nacular text and music, are evidenced in some of his other works from
around the same time: “Exhortation: Alex Rogers
A Negro
Sermon,” again with words by
and “An Explanation: The Scene, the Charge, the Ex-
(1912);
Weldon Johnson (1914). These dramatic settings were as close as Cook would get to the Negro opera he was never able to complete. Besides “Uncle Tom's Cabin” and
planation,” a
scene with words by James
trial
“Saint Louis ’Ooman,” mentioned by
Cook
memoir, he was working
in his
with his son Mercer on an opera about the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint
L’Ouverture in his
last years.
Cook and Mercer must have
cannot help but wonder what inner conflicts
I
suffered
when Cook’s wife and
Mercer’s mother
world premiere of Gershwin’s “American folk opera,” Porgy
appeared
in the
and
Abbie Mitchell brought her sophisticated musicianship and
Bess.
time of stage experience
“Summertime” marks
No doubt the In
Dahomey.
to the role of Clara,
the opening
moments
whose sublime rockabye
Palace in 1903,” Abbie Mitchell
Dahomey company went
off to
tells
how Cook and
other
Buckingham Palace
London
at their
London production
of
memoir, “A Negro Invasion of Buckingham
day of nine-year-old Prince Edward, the future
remained behind
aria
of the opera. 5
highpoint of Cook’s career was the
In an unpublished
a life-
to
Duke
members
perform
of the In
for the birth-
of Windsor, while she
lodgings with Mercer, their
newborn baby,
disappointed and confused that she had not been included. 6
At the palace, King George let?
— referring to Mitchell
V
by the
first
‘Where
is
‘She ain’t no vio-
line of the song,
“Brownskin Baby
inquired,
Mine,” which stopped the show on opening night — and sent footman and
a private carriage to fetch her. “His Majesty, the
up the performance 1
until
I
in
In
Dahomey'
which “Brownskin Baby Mine” During
this
in twenty-two-year-old
London, who was moved
Cakewalk Smasher
time
King
(Where
is
Cook had
116
to
Duke
Ellington
.
held
is
a
for solo
to
compose what he
called his
piano (completed in 1909), in
freely quoted.
chance meeting
in
London with
his old vi-
“Wo
ist
die
Cook proudly told him he was now a comown music at the Shaftesbury Theatre. 8 Cook
tne violin?),
poser and was conducting his
Dvorak
.
Percy Grainger,
olin teacher, Joseph Joachim. In response to Joachim’s inquiry
Ceige?
.
arrived,” wrote Mitchell.
he show had another devotee
newly arrived
his liveried
New York
and Mitchell returned
to
London
might explain why he
success. This
1904-5 season
for the
felt
and White which opened
same
that spring at the
,
had only recently triumphed. Principal
high on their
on
safe to take
music director of The Southerners
controversial, project:
theater
A
:
his next,
Study
where
In
in
all-black chorus.
Black
Dahomey
were played by whites
roles
The Southerners bravely employed an
face, but
it
still
in black-
The New
York Times reported:
When .
.
the chorus of real live coons walked in for the cake
mingling with white members of the
.
night
there were those in the
who trembled in their seats. T he Negro composer of the Mr. Will Marion Cook succeeded in harmonizing the racial
audience score
cast,
last
.
.
.
.
.
.
broth as skillfully as he had harmonized the score. 9
Cook’s triumphs
Schirmer
Clef Club concert led
at the 1912
with G.
to a contract
choruses and scenas. In 1918 he or-
for the publication of his dialect
ganized the Southern Syncopated Orchestra, a jazz orchestra with
Whiteman’s hybrid orchestras by almost
string contingent that anticipated
The Syncopators
decade.
Cook and
his orchestra set out
jazz sh ies, this time with
bought
his first
a
also sang spirituals a cappella. In the spring of 1919
on
a
up where James Reese Europe
take
a large
European
left off,
Sidney Bechet
soprano sax while
in
he expected
tour. I’m sure
to
introducing the newest American
as the leading soloist.
Bechet also
London. T he Syncopators opened
at the
Royal Philharmonic Hall, impressing the Swiss conductor Ernest Anser-
met — “the astonishing ing”— and garnered
ham and
a
perfection, the superb taste, the fervor of
second
command performance
Palace featuring Bechet and
members
their
own.
Theater
A reorganized
in 1921.
Back
Cook
much
chestra that toured with a musical
show
Bucking-
Europe
of the tour, but
to
many
form small bands on
Syncopators appeared in Montmartre
in the LJnited States,
at
of the band. Internal bickering
a tragic boating accident literally scuttled
of the players, Bechet included, remained in
for
play-
its
Cook formed
at the
Apollo
Clef Club Or-
a
that included the singer
and actor
Paul Robeson. 10
Cook’s furiously guarded self-respect seems 1927. In a letter published in the tises
Carl
veals a
Van Vechten
broken
Men
like
not ours.
have suffered a setback
New York News on
for his controversial
October
29,
Cook
in
chas-
book Nigger Heaven 11 and
re-
spirit:
you can stop our habit of weak imitation. The
You
tell
us that Anglo-Saxon civilization
the only right one. evil.
to
Then you
You
expect
tell
11s
to
us that
all
white
is
is
good,
fault
is
yours,
the best perhaps all
black,
bad and
he proud of and develop something that
Will Marion
Cook
we have been
taught
is
Help us
inferior.
to
develop a race conscious-
ness, a pride of things Negroid.
Cook then names Negro artists who have “reached the heights” and those “unfinished artists who need heaps of study.” In a closing paragraph Cook gives vent to his bitter disappointment:
Too much
praise
years from
becoming
and too
I
came
end of his
fail
as has
.
.
earned
Now
a master.
humanity, of the Arts and does not
easily
Cook was
his pride.
He
and wrote pathetic
letters to
the
Jews,
responded with a special grant.
remark made
teristic
Americans
to
to
when he was remember him. There were
in the 1940s,
apparently quite
ill,
some
The
royalty
mostly alone,
letters
money coming
me
remind
in.
Along,”
a great
far cry
from the Clef Club Concert of
many
which
.
.
.
and
all
lilting,
press present,
and there was
a
stir
how
I
intend
and the en-
when
the or-
“Swing
the musicians, while playing their fiddle or jerking
tune in good four-part har-
swelling, thunderously bursting forth
and winding up
is
representative white musicians
their banjos, joined in singing this rousing
in a frenzy.
storm of applause, there
w-as
When
it
no one
once that he had heard the
.
.
.
on the big fermata,
had ended, followed by
in the
audience that did not
“real thing,” the true
a feel
Southern Negro
Idiom, worked out with clever musicianship and genial verve into a truly artistic manifestation. 13 j
Dvorak 118
to
AS-
of an uncharac-
chestra started to play the fascinating rhythms of Cook’s
for
toward the
American Society of Composers,
the hero of Carnegie Hall,
New York musical
mony,
race
into madness.”
1912,
tire
my great genius
me by John Lewis: “Our country drives many African
Cook’s disillusionment seems a
May 2,
as a lover of
lashed out at publishers, whites, and
Arrangers, and Publishers trying to keep
CAP
to see that
is
for thirty-five
Your job
late.
Cook wrote
maintain
to
too
me
kept
Will Marion Cook.
.
(he died in 1944). 12
and struggling
it is
as a critic,
across a series of letters that
life
money
Duke
Ell ington
D George Antheil’s Ballet Mecanique The scene
is
a beautiful theater of the
Champs-Elysees,
filled
among whom one
with an audience of more than 2,000 people
can distinguish James Joyce, Serge Koussevitsky, Ezra Pound, Darius Milhaud, Nadia Boulanger, Marcel
Knopf
.
.
.
Duchamp,
Alfred
each and every one buzzing with the excitement
and expectation of hearing
for the first
George Antheil! who proceeded
to
time anywhere
.
.
.
outsack the “Sacre”
with the aid of a Pleyela.
—Aaron Copland,
in
Aaron Copland and Vivian
Perlis,
Copland: 1900 through 1942
When
I
was
no small way intrigued by
in
set
out to re-create George AntheiPs 1927 Carnegie Hall concert,
rious" Ballet
Mecanique which
his avant-garde signature piece, the “noto-
started riots in Paris at the
,
Theatre Champs-
Elysees in June of 1926 and laid an egg the following year, April
New York’s Carnegie
Hall.
memoirs by musicians
I
Few American music
histories
10, 1927, in
and contemporary
mention the Ballet Mecanique
as well as others fail to
— and for the most part, derisively: Deems Taylor, “as a comedy hit
it
was one
of the biggest successes that ever played Carnegie Hall”; Gilbert Chase, “An-
made
theil
the headlines and reaped the ephemeral rewards of a succes de
Goldman
scandale ”; and Richard Franko
“The
(son of
greatest public sensation of the time.”
1
Edwin Franko Goldman)
Now
that
I
have studied, per-
formed, and recorded the immensely complex, original Ballet Mecanique, it
pains
me to see how the
music, in
my view a fascinating work of genius that
represents yet another strain in our jazz-age lineage, was eclipsed by the
hoopla surrounding
New York’s Ballet lines
half
dozen
Mecanique caused
began
at
daily papers its
to appear: “‘Ballet
Boiler Factory to
it.
Seem
as
Quiet
were fed
Paris debut.
stories
about the
Cartoons and provocative head-
Mecanique’ To Din Ears of New York / Makes as
Rural Churchyard”; “Seeks a Technic
Express Skyscrapers and Subways in Tone”; “A Riot of Music.”
placed in the fashionable
the
riots
New
[sic]
An
ad
Yorker magazine unblushingly declared
it
n9 *
Figure
13.1
Miguel Covarrubias sketch of George Antheil.
Courtesy of Maria Elena Rico Covarrubias.
New Yorker
would be “an event no in
America of George Antheil
can afford
to
in a concert of his
miss— the
own
Antheil was apparently determined to attract as sible,
good or bad — it didn’t seem
to
matter— even
The musical
ambitious and revolutionary work.
were forewarned. They were being invited
first
appearance
works.”
much
at the
publicity' as pos-
expense of his most
public and the critical press
to witness
and participate
in a
Dadaist cause celebre.
A
stellar array
opened with
a
new
of
artists
was assembled
for the concert.
The
first
half
performed by the Musical Arts Quartet.
string quartet
T his was followed by the Second Sonata
for Violin,
Piano and Drum, played
— immortalized in the Gershwins’ party song “Mischa, Yascha, Toscha, Sascha — with Antheil presiding at the piano and
by violinist Sascha Jacobsen
”
2
on the Arab drum. W. C. Handy’s “all-negro” orchestra, under the direction of Allie Ross, closed the
first
again with Antheil as piano the Ballet
half with another premiere,
soloist.
The
entire
A
Jazz
Symphony
second half was taken up with
Mecanique which employed an unusual ensemble of multiple ,
,
pi-
anos and sundry percussion instruments, including a so-called “aeroplane propeller,”
Dvorak 120
to
under the direction of the
Duke
Ellington
British
conductor Eugene Goossens,
with Antheil presiding over an especially constructed Welty-Mignon player piano.
AntheiPs erstwhile concert manager, the publisher and Broadway pro-
ducer Donald Friede, carried the ther by for
commissioning
Carnegie Hall! In
set
his
jazz-
and machine-age metaphors even
designer Joe Mullens to create two backdrops
book “F/op Mecanique
Friede describes the scene at the concert. For the entire
back of the stage was covered by
first
painted drop that showed
a
American
flag in
hand, while the
around the buttocks.
cally
suspended
a
71
,
half of the concert, the
Negro couple dancing the Charleston, the left
—
The Mechanical Angel
a gigantic
her
fur-
man
girl
holding an
clasped her enthusiasti-
For the Ballet Mecanique there was
...
cyclorama with a
futuristic city of skyscrapers as the
background. In the foreground was a
series of
enormous noise making
machines.
Add
unwieldy, overblown version of the Ballet Mecanique that
to this the
Antheil assembled. There were ten “live” pianists, eight more than had ap-
peared in
Paris,
engaged
at the
urging of the Baldwin Piano
Company, which
Among them
were two young
provided nine-foot concert grands for
all.
American composers, Aaron Copland and Colin McPhee. They were joined by eight xylophonists and four bass drummers from the
monic, and
at least four
read music)
who were
“mechanical
effects” persons
which produced an amazing
sat
at the
America
to
music.
edge of the
He
lost,
and thudding
clusters.
Goos-
Rochester Philharmonic and teach
to lead the
for his
performances of new and
stage.
to
on and
offstage.
This must have been anticipated by
judge by his description of the rehearsals:
The moment tailed
rolls,
led this ungainly collection standing atop a table at the
Mayhem followed, Goossens,
didn’t
variety of disembodied, wild, machinelike
Eastman Conservatory, was known
difficult
(who probably
Antheil overseeing his piano
sprays of sound, ragtime licks, long ostinatos,
who came
Philhar-
assigned to a battery of electric bells, a siren, and “aero-
plane propellers .” 4 Front and center
sens,
New York
the percussion instruments were added
teamwork [between the
“live” pianos
ensued.
complished only
According
to
I
tried to
temper
a tolerable
blew the audience into
disarray.
fray,
near pande-
this at the final rehearsal,
balance
some accounts
of the de-
and the player piano] was
and when the aeroplane propellers joined the
monium
much
but ac-
5 .
of the concert, the “aeroplane propeller”
Some responded
airplanes out of pages torn from their programs
and
in
kind by making paper
floating
them
George Antheil’s
at the stage.
Ballet
Mecanique
Drawn Figure
for the
Herald Tribune h\
J
.
.
S.
I
OUSCV
13.2
Cartoon of Ballet Mecanique concert. Drawing for the
An
New York
Herald by T.
S.
Tousey, April
out-of-control siren continued wailing
and the dignified walking
stick.
Deems
critic
is
away well
after the
Taylor raised a white
flag
Mecanique w as heard r
piece ended,
on the
affair as a
of his
tip
bad
joke,
persists.
Sixty-two years passed before
what
1927.
The reviews that followed treated the whole
and so began the legend, which
real Ballet
12,
my
restaging of the 1927 concert
again.
Two years
later
came
the
and the
first
CD of
arguably the most revolutionary American work of the twentieth
century. 6
The American filmmakers
Man
Ray and Dudley Murphy had been
shooting lengths of film in Paris in 1923-24, preparing a
Dvorak
to
Duke
Ellington
satirical
Dadaist
mon-
Ballet
Figure
Mecanique
13.3
Photograph of a Picabia sculpture entitled Ballet
Mecanique
tage with the intended
Francis Picabia.
The
Picabia’s Dadaist
made ring,
out of axle
resembled a
title
of Ballet Mecanique after an abstract sculpture by
sculpture,
which appeared
as a
magazine 39 1 (“Dessin de Machine," August 1917), was supports from a Model- Ford that, when formed into a ’
1
circle of curvaceous ballerinas leaning out
The filmmakers
ran out of money, but Ezra
film
name and
a
to the
rescue
Leger lent
his all-
Chaplinesque sculpture that was animated
for the
and — to the dismay of Man Ray and
film’s editing.
American film, to
and backward. 7
Pound came
by getting the French painter Fernand Leger into the important
photo on the cover of
act.
Murphy— also got involved
in the
At the same time Pound proposed that Natalie Barney, an
heiress
and patron of the
be composed by his
arts,
new young
underwrite a musical score for the protege, the
American composer
George Antheil. Born
in
Trenton,
New
Jersey, July 8, 1900, Antheil
can composer of avant-garde music
to
be taken
was the
at all seriously in
George Antheil’s
first
Ameri-
Europe.
Ballet
He
Mecanique 12 3
established himself as a singular concert pianist dapest,
and composer
in Berlin,
Bu-
and Vienna during the 1922-23 season — “he comes from the dance
and becomes, with the dance rhythms, In addition to his
He then moved to Paris. and Bach— his own pieces,
electrical/' 8
mainstays— Chopin, Debussy,
Sonata Sauvage “Mechanisms,” and the Airplane Sonata, which exploited ,
his
demonic technique, provoked welcome demonstrations among the
prone Dada
set.
With Ezra Pound’s
of the intellectual, literary, and visual
The
practice of
accompanying
became
help, he
riot-
“notorious,” a darling
arts circuit. 9
silent films with
piano music had long
been established, and ragtime was often the vernacular music of choice. was
a short logical step for Antheil
youth
— who
It
played for the “silents” in his
— to compose music for a player piano, or a Pianola,
10
some
of it in rag-
time, for this “American” film.
The Pianola
is
an instrument— some might say
a
machine — that can
convert any normal piano into a “reproducing” player piano.
about the
size
and shape of a small spinet but
it
powered by
The
when
front of the Pianola contains a player-piano
foot pedals, with the usual spools
fed “digital” information,
it
into a
mechanism,
and tracker bar exposed.
punched out on paper
is
positioned
normal concert grand or upright, convert
in front of a
player piano.
cabinet
has no keyboard or piano
works. At the back of the Pianola are eighty-eight levers that,
and secured
Its
rolls,
It is
that pneumatically sets
the piano keys in motion. For our purposes, the terms player piano, Pianola,
and the French Pleyela are interchangeable. Antheil's player-piano score was transferred onto
hand,
at the
Maison Pleyel
factory
jector
nine
rolls,
and Pianola speeds
who
collected
in a
new music, such
as
of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. u Since film pro-
are adjustable, an exact coordination
age and sound was theoretically possible, and to of the “silent” film Ballet
punched out by
and made available commercially
three-roll set for player-piano enthusiasts
Pleyel’s version, in
rolls,
Mecanique
this
between im-
day contemporary prints
retain the title credit
“Synchronisme
Musical de George Antheil.” The collaboration between the filmmakers and Antheil was short
lived.
The film and the music had already assumed separate lives by the fall of 1924, when they were premiered independently within five days of each other. 12 “ Ballet
Mecanique,
a film
by Feger,” was presented in silence
at a
Musik und
Theaterfest organized in Vienna by the architect, sculptor, painter, and stage
designer Frederick Kiesler on September
25.
13
Ballet Mecanique, the Pianola
music, was “played” (foot-pedaled) by Antheil on a single player piano, private hearing in Salle Pleyel
on September
16,
at a
before an audience that in-
cluded the James Joyces, the Hemingways, Natalie Clifford Barney, and
Dvorak 124
to
Duke
Ellington
other Paris intellectuals. Benoist-Mechin wrote an ecstatic revue for La revue
european. Janet Planner
summed
it
“Good but
up,
Antheil soon began searching for ways
hoped
to
awful.”
expand
At
his score.
he
first
pianos to a single player piano or Pianola mecha-
to attach sixteen
nism. Like several other of his ideas,
proved to be beyond the reach of the
this
available technology. Pie then wrote additional parts onto the player piano
score for electric bells and “aeroplane motors,” noisemakers that
company
would
ac-
the player piano: a version that was never performed.
Finally, in 1926 Antheil wrote out a
carefully scratched out in
driving force of the
pen and
new score, 399
densely packed pages
Above the old Pianola music — the
ink.
work which remained intact— he created
parts for a per-
cussion ensemble: two “live" pianos, three xylophones, and four bass drums.
The noisemaking machines were now
clearly identified as eleven electric
doorbells (of specific pitch) and three airplane propellers “large
wooden,” and “metal” — to which he added
was the scandalous score performed
in Paris in 1926
a fire
and
— “small wooden,” engine
in
siren.
This
New' York the
fol-
lowing year.
The
was radically 1952-53.
The Paris-NewYork player-piano version recomposed by Antheil when he finally had it published in
story does not
end
there.
By dispensing with the player piano and long
the work’s most original and novel far
more
practical to perform.
The
stretches of silence
concept— Antheil made
to disturb
upon by Antheil
or his publisher.
It
— was, for obvious
would be
One
ho did not have the
reviewer, w
with which to compare, wrote that with the creation of the
is
version
better not
any publicity value the 1950s revision might inherit from the “scan-
dalous” work of the 1920s.
“‘Ballet
new
extent of the revision— the rolls contain
twenty-seven minutes of music, the revised version sixteen reasons, not dwelled
the
—
Mecanique’
.
.
.
now sounds
like
an ebullient and
original score
new
version,
lively piece that
actually pretty in places.” 14
In the spring of 1988, a in
up
Blue ” concert in
made
it
West Coast
convenient
an abandoned church
for
tour of
me
“
The Birth of the Rhapsody
to visit the
in Berkeley, California,
scores of the Jazz
Symphony and
sion of the Ballet
Mecanique were
Antheil Archive, set
where the holograph
the 1926 Paris-New York player-piano verstored.
It
w^as also the
home
Amirkhanian, avant-garde composer, Pacifica Radio new music theil’s I
of Charles
host,
and An-
musical executor.
my
re-
would be simple compared with the search
for
had naively assumed that gathering together the music
creation of Antheil’s concert
for
the Clef Club concert music, or the transcribing of old recordings for the Aeolian Hall concert.
The
revised score of the Ballet
Mecanique could be found
George Antheil’s
Ballet
Mecanique
in
any good music
library,
and
were available
parts
for hire
from Antheil’s
publisher, as was material for the other works on the program. All
would
it
take was a telephone call. After only a cursory score,
I
thumb-through of the Ballet Mecanique holograph
realized that the published revised score was but a distant relative of
the original before me.
We would
New York player-piano
version at our forthcoming concert.
The
of course have to play the 1926-27 Paris-
archive had neither a matching set of orchestral parts nor a set of the
all-important player piano rolls that corresponded with the wild music metic-
ulously laid out in the score.
New
parts for the “live” instruments
could be
extracted from the score, but the player-piano rolls were another story.
Locating an original
set
of
and
rolls
top priority, a search that soon had player-piano enthusiasts, piano roll
copiers
a proper player piano
me
became my
floundering in a netherworld of
roll collectors,
piano
roll
suppliers,
and piano
— the pirates and the legal ones. This arcane community was of
course divided into warring camps.
It
was not until Amirkhanian put
me
in
touch with Rex Lawson, a professional British “Pianolist,” and his partner,
Dennis Hall, president of the Friends of the Pianola both of whom I
live
and breathe Pianola
Institute of
history, science,
stopped being spun one way and another.
I
and
England,
repertoire, that
was particularly fortunate
ing led to Lawson, because he could coordinate piano
roll
in be-
performances with
a conductor. 15
When designed
to
Rex Lawson “plays” the Pianola, he actually humanizes what was be an automaton.
He
uses foot pedals to work the bellows,
with his knee he guides a speed controller.
make
it
He also works a series of levers that
possible to bring out particular passages in the high,
registers of the
concert,
piano
Lawson
at
medium,
or low
hand. During rehearsal breaks for our Carnegie Hall
entertained,
and exasperated, our eight
“live” pianists with
well-realized performances from rolls of the most difficult
adding expression and rubato with I
and
Chopin
etudes,
real artistry.
learned that there was a set of original Ballet Mecanique
rolls at
the
They had been presented by Antheil to his Mary Louise Curtis Bok. But the Curtis Insti-
Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.
American sponsor,
principal
tute librarian
would not allow the
belief that they were fragile
and
rolls to
that
leave the premises in the mistaken
once played on
a Pianola they
would be
compromised. 16
The Antheil one of the piano rolls
“live” pianists
rolls.
He had
we engaged
us.
Marc-Andre Hamelin of Canada,
to play for
our re-creation, also collected
only recently bought an original set of Ballet Mecanique
— for fifty cents! — at the annual deaccession sale held by the Music Di-
vision of the
Dvorak 126
gods were watching over
to
New York
Duke
Ellington
Public Library and was happy to lend
them
for the
concert.
me
I
immediately sought
whole subset of piano
to a
have a
to
set
of back-up
rolls
made, which led
computer
roll copiers: digital
copiers, photo-
graphic copiers and mechanical-transfer copiers, each one insisting that theirs
was the only reliable system.
off to
Lawson
London with
in
a
I
had
digital copies
photocopy of the
made and
sent
them
score so he cordd pre-
full
pare for the concert.
Lawson drew horizontal on the
lines
lines
on the
him
score, thus enabling
to follow
the middle of a roll during rehearsals.
how
glided past the brass tracker bar, which
hands
correspond with the bar
my beats and find his place in
By performance time
ends of tricky runs by peeking over
to catch the
pianist’s
rolls to
is
at the
had learned
I
moving
roll as
it
not very different from watching a
bring in the orchestra at the end of solo piano runs in the
to
Beethoven Fourth Piauo Concerto.
Vince Giordano had connections to
in the
Pianola world and arranged
have Randy Herr, a restorer of player pianos, run through the
worked up quite piano while I
sweat— on
a
made
I
for the startling
music the
music of a complexity beyond the playing
human hands
that
which separates
it
— he
foot-powered Steinway concert grand player
his
a cassette recording for study purposes.
was not prepared
rolls
stemmed from
rolls
17
produced, a
futurist
even four,
capabilities of two, or
Antheil’s unique “time canvas” concept,
from most music yet composed by
1924.
This was the
Pi-
anola music that captivated the Joyces and the Hemingways in Salle Pleyel.
As
a
“Synchronisme Musical,”
Dudley Murphy’s
Now that festations,
Antheil in
it
Man
would have overwhelmed
Ray and
film.
come to know the Ballet Mecanique in all of its maniI understand why both Virgil Thomson and Aaron Copland held awe. In his autobiography Virgil Thomson quotes from a letter he I
have
wrote about Antheil from Paris in the winter of 1926-27:
My estimate have been cility
let
of
him
justified
as “the first
had
it
composer of our generation” might
not turned out eventually that for
and ambition there was
in
him no power
Mecanique,” written before he was
of growth.
.
all his fa-
.
.
The
twenty-five, remains his
Bal-
most
original work. 18
Copland described
his reaction to the Paris
his friend Israel Citkowitz: “I
conviction
— the boy
which shows
it.”
is
am
a genius.
honestly
Need
I
premiere in a 1926
bound
to repeat
add that he has yet
my
letter to
unshakable
to write a
work
19
Despite the disclaimer, Copland carried his enthusiasm back from Paris to
New York
that
same year and, ever the supporter of patronage
for his fel-
low composers, talked up the idea among friends of bringing Antheil back
for
George Antheil’s Ballet Mecanique 12 7
a concert.
Copland
called
I
in 1989 to invite
him
to
while hoping that he would be a font of information.
memory of the Carnegie
tle
Paris
He
he had but
said
‘'lit-
Hall event,” but he did remark that “Antheil had
by the ear!”
At the archive piano concerto, a
onr re-creation, mean-
photocopy
was
I
titled
for
on the
ication that appears
an
earlier
title
page:
theiPs Carnegie Hall concert
By holding
up
an
earlier one.
tle
and dedication: “Americana
it
was already familiar with
I
through
it
perfomance 20 and recognized the ded-
“To Evelyn Friede
[wife of
Donald, An-
manager] with appreciation and affection.” But
with the actual manuscript in hand,
October
examine the holograph score of AntheiPs
A Jazz Symphony.
had used
I
also able to
I
saw that
to the light
for
I
this
dedication was pasted over
discovered the work’s original
Whiteman and
Paul
ti-
his orchestra, Paris,
1925.”
Antheil evidently composed his Americana for Whiteman’s second “Ex-
periment
in
Modern Music,” which was held
ber 29, 1925, hoping to follow,
“experiment.”
It
if
can be no coincidence that within
Rhapsody
Copland and Antheil began composing AntheiPs Americana was scored,
piano and
a
Carnegie Hall on Decem-
not overtake, Gershwin’s success at the
the enthusiastic reception given the
certos.
in
their
as
in
own
news of
a year after the
Blue reached
first
Paris,
both
jazz-inspired piano con-
was the Rhapsody
in
Blue
,
for solo
hybrid jazz orchestra. 21
For reasons unknown, Americana was not included on the Whiteman concert; the big
Monday
Blue
new piece
of the evening was a revised version of Gershwin’s
Blues under a
new
title,
135th Street.
only to be brought out for AntheiPs
shelf,
own
Americana went on the
1927 Carnegie Hall event un-
own new title, A Jazz Symphony. To go Whiteman, and Gershwin, one better, W. C. Plandy’s “all Negro” orchestra was engaged to perform it, with der
its
Antheil as piano
Handy too
soloist.
evidently found the mixed, Stravinskyesque rhythms of the work
complex and
enlisted Allie Ross, associate conductor of the
my own
phony,
to take over.
Tyers’s
and Jim Europe’s Clef Club dance bands, appeared
olin soloist with the to follow
Ross was a musician after
Harlem Symphony, and
Louis Armstrong
at
heart.
led a hot jazz
Harlem Sym-
He
played in
as a classical vi-
band good enough
Connie’s Inn in 1929. 22
Ross and Handy’s orchestra were allowed unlimited rehearsals, twentyfive in all.
of
Harlem
Most of the
later
millionairess
ones were held in the ballroom of the mansion
Madame
A’lelia
the hair-care entrepreneur, Ellington’s
comique Queenie
From theil
model
J.
Walker,
for the title role in his
opera
Pie.
reports, Ross
and the orchestra made the piece
their
own. An-
noted on the holograph that “‘A Jazz Symphony’ received an ovation
Dvorak 128
all
Walker, daughter of C.
to
Duke
Ellington
at
— a fact usually forgotten because of the scandal of the Ballet
premiere
its
Mecanique which followed
it.” 2
’
During the intermission of the premiere performance, Samuel Chotzinoff, critic for the
A
New
York World interviewed Gershwin and others about
Jazz Symphony, which they had just heard. Gershwin remarked,
compare
can't
sonance
.
.
.
Antheil’s jazz with mine.
He
deals in polytonalities
was
jazz
fine.” Gilbert Seldes
phony was simply grand. ”
than Stravinskv. J
The
loose use of the
New York to the
Gershwin and
to
word “jazz” was
word
music
better
noun, and
it
was
typical of the time. “Jazz”
was being tacked onto every
dance band or symphony orchestra that had the
or blues. Louis
said succinctly,
24
moving from verb for
dis-
was the most enthusiastic: “The jazz sym-
better jazz than
It is
and
and the French. His music has moments of
follows Stravinsky
humor.” The unusually gifted actor and singer Paul Robeson
“The
“I really
Armstrong had only recently,
fast
music
sort of
slightest hint of ragtime
introduced
in the fall of 1924,
the sort of open-ended improvisation for which
we now
reserve
jazz.
A Jazz Symphony
posed no unusual challenges
to Ivan Davis,
our
vir-
tuoso solo pianist, nor to our excellent orchestra of freelance jazz musicians
and studio players who played
for
ous maxixe played by the
orchestra and punctuated by raucous glissan-
full
dos on the slide trombones;
our re-creation concert.
could easily be mistaken
it
It
opens with a
for a
joy-
work by Gersh-
win or Ellington. But the piece quickly turns toward parody, quoting from Joplin’s “Entertainer”
and
Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring
as well as a long-forgotten rag
tune
that,
and
”
Lees was right about Antheil’s obsession with
tune shows up in three of the four works offered it
at
Symphony, and
denza of his Second Sonata
Toward
it
solo over a steady (four-four)
all
his
work
as
.
.
.
My
it
makes
a strong
show-
Symphony, Antheil
beat— not,
as
would-be jazz
writes a
would be expected,
upon the
to in his 1927
for the fea-
player to “emis
probably
program notes when he described
“an expression of the American Negro in symphonic music, a
action towards
sound
‘Oh
Baby.” This
the tricks of the trade.” This gesture toward authenticity
what Antheil was referring
.
and Drum.
tured solo piano, but for a (jazz) trumpeter, calling
ploy
.
can be heard buried in the hnal brutal ca-
for Violin, Piano,
the middle of A Jazz
“Oh My
.
the Carnegie Hall concert:
provides the principal motive for Ballet Mecanique,
ing in the Jazz
soldat,
according to composer Benjamin
Lees, former student and friend of Antheil, was “George’s favorite
Baby.
du
L’histoire
Negro
jazz as
like ‘In [By] the
away from ‘sweet
jazz’
which
in a
few years
re-
will
Shade of the Old Apple Tree.’”
What Gershwin, Robeson, and Seldes called “Antheil’s jazz” really boils down to whatever “tricks of the trade” Handy’s trumpet player came up with
George Antheil’s
Ballet
Mecanique 129
V.
'
that night, plus a few collages
the jungles of North
had
and quotes, anthropological
America and
cleverly
mounted up
stuff
gathered in
for display. Antheil
on Picasso and Stravinsky, not Sidney Bechet.
his sights
A Jazz Symphony does not deconstruct the rhythmic and tonal of jazz, as does Stravinsky in L’histoire du soldat, nor does jazz’s
and Sonata
joyed a brief affair with
music, Ending
Satie,
My Lady Jazz, Antheil
useful as parody
it
noble savage.
and Ernest Krenek
Antheil winds up
ennese waltz but of a
G Major (1931)
Violin (1923-27). Like most European composers
for
tivism, or the
lovingly recast
it
blues gestures, as does Ravel in his Piano Concerto in
elements
to
A
1
and
as a
trivializes
symbol of low
who
en-
African American exotic primi-
life,
include Claude Debussy, Darius Milhaud, Erik
in this category.
Jazz
Symphony with
a delightful caricature of a Vi-
be played mit Schwung which ,
far different variety.
The
last
literally
sound we hear
means “with swing,”
a snarling,
is
augmented
“joke” chord. It
was
Ezra Pound’s significant other, the American
for
Rudge, that Antheil composed the Second Sonata
Drum. The work was premiered 1923
at the Salle
Olga
violinist
and
for Violin, Piano,
du Conservatoire
in
December
and bears the dedication “For Ezra Pound, best of friends.” Copland de-
scribes
how Pound
“with his striking red beard
Pound was
ately turned pages.”
although the
latter
According
to
claim
is
much
said to have played the
drum
part in the coda,
probably apocryphal. 25
Charles Amirkhanian, the Second Sonata
what Antheil called
is
written in
his “synthesized jazz idiom,” a style of composition
work of the then-unknown Charles
iniscent of the
in evidence, passion-
rem-
Ives that quotes other
works. 26 Violinist Charles Castleman and pianist (and
drummer) Randall
Hodgkinson opened our Carnegie Hall concert with the Second Sonata. 27
The
am able to identify include “By the Shade of the Old Debussy’s Reverie “Come Back to Sorrento,” “Silver Threads
“quotations” that
Apple Tree,”
I
,
among the Gold,” and the aforementioned “Oh My Baby.” The work ends quietly with an evocative reference to the tune that made an enormous impression on the thousands who flocked to the Midway Plaisance in the summer of 1893. Over a haunting havanaise drum rhythm (da dadada-dada-dada) the violin plays scraps of the pervasive “Hootchy Kootchy,” y
transporting tre
not only back to the
11s
fair,
but also to the veiled danse du ven-
of Tunisia in North Africa, one of Antheil’s favorite vacation spots.
Antheil also brought to Carnegie Hall his String Quartet no. first
performed
tion of
130
on July
violinist
Dvorak
concert
titled
to
on the
Duke
7, 1924.
Olga
Mme. Ezra Pound” at Rudge (presumably Mme. Pound) was
quartet. Also
Ellington
It
was
“Musique Americaine (Declara-
Independence)” and presented by “M.
Salle Pleyel first
at a private
1.
et
on the program was
the the
a repeat of Antheil’s
Drum
Sonata and two pieces by Pound. “Fiddle Music” and “Strophes de
Villon.”
At onr re-creation concert, the Mendelssohn String Quartet 28 played Antheil’s quartet most earnestly. Like myself, they
me
confused by the music, which struck
composed by an ungifted academician
as
must have been
greatly
— a work that had
parody
been
trying to impress his colleagues,
tongue-in-cheeky, mildly modern, and frankly boring, unlike any other work of AntheiPs
have ever heard, seen, or read about. In a
I
can patron Alary Louise Curtis Bok, 29 founder of the Curtis
new
Philadelphia, Antheil explained the idea behind his It is
very radical
— and
it
desperate banality. But
sounds exactly
Matisse.
It
trying to
harmonize
it
I
with a
.
.
.
.
.
.
mongrel Hungarian
in
I
15,
June of 1987
district, off
and shrine
archive,
larger-than-life -sized plaster eratic
(November
at
.
.
.
hope, or a
I
Budapest
themes — but doing
1924)
her
home
in
Venice. She
the
Guidecca Canal, was
Pound, who had died there
to
head of the poet,
its
of age. Rudge’s small two-story
at ninety-three years
house, located in the “English”
museum,
quartet:
like a third rate string orchestra in
Olga Rudge
was then spry and lucid
table
the banality of Picasso
brilliant success.
visited with
Institute in
and perhaps offend you by
will surprise
it is
Ameri-
letter to his
a
a veri-
in 1972.
A
copy of the white marble “Hi-
Head” by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, dominated the
sitting
room.
asked about the violin sonatas Antheil composed for her. “Why, they’re
around here somewhere,” she
Without
replied.
a second’s
pause she jumped
up on the daybed and began opening overhead drawers and pulling down valises;
I
was encouraged
to sort
through stacks of paper in the
Holo-
attic.
graphs of the Second and Third Sonatas did turn up, as well as one for un-
accompanied allowed I
me
to
solo violin,
and some Antheil
have them
all
found no music
letters
and reviews. She kindly
in the attic, only a pile of old
newspapers emblazoned
photocopied.
with anti-Semitic and anti-black headlines. in
They had been mailed
to
Venice from America. Apparently Pound’s reputed remorse over
Axis broadcasts during tor of T. S. Eliot’s
World War
II
was
public consumption.
for
poem The Waste Land had comforted
Pound
his pro-
The
himself with
edi-
racist
trash in his last days.
Rudge described Antheil well scrubbed face
.
.
.
in the 1920s as “too funny, very small, with a
looked
like a virgin
choirboy or schoolgirl.” She
quoted then dismissed what must have been an Antheil epithet, “‘Young
American
in
poking fun
at
Montparnasse’
— a good
piece of advertising set up by Ezra,”
Pound’s characterization of Antheil
as
“America’s answer to
Stravinsky.”
George Antheil’s
Ballet
Mecanique
Rudge
she knew: the Russian aristocrat
and Nadia]
girls [Lily
ican heiress
my
De
violin case
Madame
career and the famous people
who
Boulanger,
Schumann
in order’'; playing
“kept those two
Amer-
sonatas with the
Polignac in Venice (“she sent her gondolier around to carry .
.
Stravinsky entered to turn pages”); playing Beethoven,
.
Mozart, and Veracini for Mussolini in talk English”). 30 let
own
preferred talking about her
To my
Mecanique and
surprise,
Rome on
Rudge had
the via Rasella (“he liked to
little
memory
of Antheil’s Bal-
glamorous Paris premiere even though Pound was
its
its
godfather.
would have
I
in 1927.
union directory,
I
in
New York
who had
three octogenarian pianists
formance
back
better luck
that
(1987) interviewing
fall
played in the Ballet Mecanique per-
With the Manhattan phone book and an old Local 802 located
them
in a matter of minutes.
Madeline Marshall, age eighty-seven, remembered “a and the audience throwing paper airplanes toward the
me
more, but she dismissed
lot
stage.
of nonsense”
pressed her for
I
she did the music.
as
Stephanie Shehagovitch, age ninety-one, remembered dancing with Paul Robeson at the party following the concert. AntheiPs music “was foreign to us
.
.
we grew up on Bach and Beethoven.
.
difficult for the
my
It
was unwieldy,
it
was
aeroplane propeller people to find their entry.” Her remark [
confirmed
...
)
impression that the “mechanical effects” people were not
reading musicians. “There were strange lapses ... an unholy mess.” Shehagovitch
remembered
that the
renowned
pianist Walter Gieseking
the Baldwin Piano Factory during a rehearsal. After listening for a
ments, he commented,
“I
Marion Morrey (Mrs. Adel
memory It
much
wish you
pleasure,”
and
Richter), age eighty-four,
came to few mo-
left.
had the most
vivid
of all:
was easy [rehearsing] with Goossens, not with Antheil. Gieseking
and Hindemith
visited rehearsals.
harmonic. Antheil played “in the
.
.
.
The
pit [sic].”
battery was
But
I
from the Phil-
could not hear the
Pianola.
There
down.
was played well. [There was] no disturbance or laughing dur-
It
are influences
from “The Rite of Spring”
We played to the
ing performance.
end with
.
.
.
boiled
a flourish!
Marion Morrey on the aftermath: It
was a one-time
P ork
stunt.
World called
it
.
.
.
The
piece dropped from sight.
“a quiet day in
the Deauville nightclub afterwards. liant blacks,
Sue
Dvorak
to
told
Paul Robeson, and
any Russian family.”
Ellington
We all went to
There were many celebs
Madame
Walker.
me she had once given a talk at Cornell
Duke
The New
It
.
.
.
bril-
was spectacular!
University and was able
to play excerpts
the rag theme, P.
from memory.
“Oh My
could have kissed her
I
she sang to
me
Baby.” Madeline Morrey and her old beau, Richard
Snow, who attended the 1927 performance, sat in aisle seats at ours. The Ballet Mecanique takes twenty-seven minutes to perform, too long
for a single
pauses
new
r
roll.
It is
— while the spent roll
roll is inserted.
perforce divided into three sections by short
rewound from
is
two and
formed into
A series roll.
at the
a
“Oh My Baby” (Dah Dah
roll,
Baby” appears again
where the ragtime tune
accompany looped images
to
an idea of Murphy’s. The him shows
a
washerwoman gaining the
cuts back as well.
in
trans-
is
in the
first
him,
top of a
tall
then “cuts back” repeatedly, and we see her climb-
ing again and again. Another loop shows a
During
girl
on
music
a swing. Antheil’s
several of these minimalist ostinatos, Antheil sub-
the time frame for a subgroup of instruments, an orchestra within
the orchestra, sending associate with Varese In a letter to the
it
off
and
on
its
own
metric voyage, a device
we normally
Ives.
music
critic
aud encyclopedist Nicolas Slonimsky on July
an unusually clear description of his conception:
1936, Antheil proffered I
My
of “minimalist” ostinato passages appears at the end of the
set of Paris street steps,
first
solo cadenza.
These were apparently meant
tly shifts
da Dah) dominates the
a
for solo Pianola, interposes itself shortly
beginning of the third
demonic
and
off the receiving spool
opening rush of glittering sounds. “Oh
after the roll
piano
but another jaunty ragtime tune,
roll,
21,
when
personally consider that the Ballet Mecanique was important in
one particular
.
.
.
that
it
was conceived in a new form, that form
specifically being the rolling out of a certain time canvas with musical
abstractions
and sound material composed and contrasted against one
another with the thought of time values rather than tonal values. ...
I
used time as Picasso might have used the blank spaces of his canvas. I
did not hesitate, for instance, to repeat one measure one hundred
times;
I
did not hesitate to have absolutely nothing on
for sixty-two bars [Antheil
twenty seconds in
is
my piano
rolls
referring to 62 eighth-note rests, over
real time];
I
did not hesitate to ring a bell against a
certain given section of time or indeed to do whatever
with the time canvas as long as each part of
it
I
pleased to do
stood up against the
other. 31
Antheil complains that he “was completely misunderstood by those morons
who
listened to the Ballet
critics,
Mecanique
conveniently forgetting his
in 1927,”
own
meaning the Carnegie Hall
collusion in the circus atmosphere
that prevented serious listening. Yet there could have
been method
in his
madness.
George Antheil’s
Ballet
Mecanique *33
I
one find
for
much
so
it
hard to imagine that the composer would have invested
and thought
care
work
into a
that
moment of fame. There
brief, if blazing,
was simply
be sacrificed
to
who wonld admire
are those
for a
a rev-
olutionary aesthetic that requires such elaborate sacrifice; for such people the
event later
am
is
On the other hand, here am more than seventy years
the work of art.
I
and writing about the
studying, performing,
still
and
intrigued by Antheil,
so
man and
his
music.
I
were Morton Gould and John Cage, who
attended our dress rehearsals. In fact, an elaborate sacrifice
when,
the piece
dramatized in the closing moments of
is
cadenza, the Pianola
after a fiendish
down. Antheil may very well have borrowed
this
— the machine — breaks
notion from his Third Piano
Sonata, Death of Machines (1923). T he Pianola stutters and
on
moment
followed by a is
and over again:
a single phrase repeated over
of silence. As the
According
music
that silence
Slonimsky,
is
used
own
theil did offer his
month
to
trill
and leaping
clusters,
7
“machine winds down, the phrase ’
and Antheil introduces increasingly longer
stretched out even more,
lences.
a
becomes stuck
this
is
the
first
si-
time in the history of Western
an integral part of a musical composition. An-
as
Pound
explanation in a letter written to Ezra
the very
of his Carnegie Hall concert:
The
Ballet
Mecanique here
stopped. Here was the dead line, the
I
brink of the precipice. Here at the end of this composition where in
long stretches no single sound occurs and time here was the ultimate fulfillment of ing without touching
it.
my poetry;
itself acts as
here
I
music;
had time mov-
32
To my relief, our audience
got the idea and did not interrupt the twenty-
second-long silence with applause. Ballet Mecanique ends with a
final parox-
The ensemble builds to a huge climax. The siren peaks, and the last sounds we hear, a final burst of the ragtime lick '‘Oh My Baby” hangs in the
ysm.
spent fireworks.
air like
Once
I
had the piano
rolls in
hand and had found Rex Lawson, the
creation of the 1926—27 Paris— New York Ballet
smoothly.
1
he Baldwin Piano
re-
Mecanique went quite
Company was happy
to
provide us with nine
concert grands (one for Lawson’s Pianola), especially after
I
told
them
that
Baldwins were used in 1927. given their parts in advance,
went without c. 1911 in
as
a hitch.
Our eight pianists and six xylophonists were and we came together for section rehearsals that
Lawson flew
in
from London with
Meriden, Connecticut) crated
his Pianola
safely in the cargo bay,
and
(made as
soon
he was squared away we had a maestro-soloist rehearsal.
By
this
time
Herr tape, but
Dvorak
to
Duke
it
I
nad learned
was
like
Ellington
to follow the
holding on
Pianola music from the Randy
to a kite in a
hurricane.
With Lawson
able to control speed and nuance, the Pianola music
when we rehearsed came together.
herent, and
quickly
became
more
far
co-
with the rest of the orchestra, the piece
Different challenges were posed by the eleven pitches of electric bells
and the enigmatic “aeroplane
propellers.”
It
seemed impossible
electric bells with the specific pitches that the score called for;
across a 1927
then
newspaper photograph of Antheil demonstrating
He had
bells before the concert.
settled for a rack of six
doorbells of different sizes, each with find in a well-stocked hardware store
its
own
— and
button
came
I
his electric
randomly pitched
— about all one can
had them
I
assemble
to
replicated.
still
That
left
the “aeroplane propellers.”
How does a propeller sound? The best propeller substitute Antheil devise in 1927 was a
huge hand-cranked ratchet the
beer barrel and
size of a
a whirring electric fan with a leather strap held across
its
could
blades. (His 1952 re-
vised version calls for recorded airplane sounds.) For our re-creation, the electric fan
gerous.
I
and
strap idea
was not about
was vetoed by the Carnegie Hall
to disappoint the critics
design a
mount
for a
percussionist,
concentrated his
we had
a scenic
shop
huge, real wooden propeller that activated a ratchet.
This contraption was twirled
man and
dan-
and those who read about An-
“aeroplane propellers” in the history books. So
theil’s
staff as too
efforts
at
appropriate points in the score by our prop
Ted Sommer,
for
its
Meanwhile Ted
visual effect.
on an assortment of hand-held
ratchets according to
cues in the music. Several of the ideas Antheil conceived for his Ballet
ahead of their time. For example,
his first notion, to
ing simultaneously from one set of
computerized player pianos. 3 to fulfill
An thed's unusual
electric bells thanks to
puter-age
skills.
— the new verb
He is
’
rolls,
Mecanique were
have sixteen pianos play-
can be accomplished today with
When it came time to record,
I
was
finally able
requirements for “aeroplane propellers” and pitched
Gordon
digitally
Gottlieb, a master percussionist with
“sampled” several
“MIDIed” — them
to a
then connected
electric bells,
keyboard.
Gordon
com-
did the
same
the aeroplane propellers again by sampling recorded sounds of vintage craft.
for air-
We could start and stop the propeller sounds instantly, and they could
be produced in three pitch ranges. At the mixing sessions keyboard, onto open tracks
instrumental tracks
I
played, via the
— they ran parallel with the “live,” already-recorded
— the exact pitches of electric bells and fistfuls of idling
asthmatic aeroplane motors, or an entire airfleet cruising and climbing. With the passage of more than theiFs
fifty
years,
computer technology made possible An-
machine-age conceptions.
Antheil,
umphs
who came
to
New York fully expecting he would
repeat the
tri-
of his concerts in Europe, never fully recovered from the disappoint-
George Antheil’s
Ballet
Mecanique
H5
ment of his Carnegie
He began
to see
Hall debut.
He
returned to Paris “heartsick and broke.”
himself as the “bad boy of music
”
34
and
in
time
moved
— endocrinology and lonely-hearts letters were among his areas of expertise — Hollywood, where he wrote film music and did magazine
to
but he also taught composition privately
articles
35 .
AntheiPs iconoclastic ideas and music furnish an unforeseen counterpoint to the “Dvorak to
Duke
Ellington” story.
It
was the
brilliant
and
brittle
instrument of ragtime, the piano, not the intoxicating effect of syncopation
harmony,
against a steady beat nor the seductions of jazz
that
occupied
his
genius. In ragtime Antheil found the material for one of the most unusual
works of the century; meanwhile he developed on his
him with
links
Ives,
own an
aesthetic that
Cage, and Morton Feldman rather than with
his con-
temporaries Gershwin and Ellington. I
inal
wish
I
could say that
my disinterment and
Paris-New York Ballet Mecanique led
work.
The
pression:
critics
who attended wrote
“Whether
‘Ballet
is
more fun
its
it
7
is
music or not
Page’s:
hear about than they are
to
New York Times found sequel;
Tim
to a revised evaluation of the
differing opinions. Bill Zakariasen’s im-
Mecanique
certainly fun” was countered by
exact realization of the orig-
“One
debatable, but
Allan Kozinn in the
and Varese,
yet “not without
angular, mechanistic and repetitive xylophone and piano lines
foreshadow some of Steve Reich’s music.” Susan
Elliot, writing in the
York Post, agreed: “The work’s use of pulsation,
slow harmonic
and
ever-so-subtly shifting meters
Reich or Terry Riley, For
Dvorak 136
to
it’s
of those works of art that
to actually hear.”
derivative of Stravinsky
is
now
who
its
would suggest
that
it
movement
was Antheil, not
invented minimalism .” 36
though, the “happening” continues to eclipse the music.
Duke
Ellington
New
H Mass
Bernstein’s
My
most
vivid
ducting the
image of Leonard Bernstein
New York
Philharmonic
panying Louis Armstrong in souls swinging in perfect ers
who completed
Harlem
hillside
1
harmony before
Art.
Lewisohn Stadium, accom-
— two happy
the sweltering masses of New York-
The Stadium Concerts
was
It
a time
when
took place on a
three exuded optimism and
all
The stadium could accommodate
7,500 people, and there were
“listened for free” while leaning
ment windows. Through
the
human mass
most particularly ald Early,
in the old
lnm con-
surrounded by the campuses of City College and the High
many more who that disparate
a 1956 film clip of
C. Handy’s “Saint Louis Blues”
the equation.
School of Music and opportunity.
W.
is
else
their tene-
power of music, Bernstein and Armstrong turned
into a congregation, a transformation
in jazz clubs. In the
“where
on pillows from
1
have sensed
words of the black social historian Ger-
have the races really
come
together, really syncretized
their feeling?” 2
A like
melding almost always occurs when
love-in finales,
one
what he once described
gets a girl.”
autos-da-fe,
No
to
me
I
conduct one of Bernstein’s
as “a Jewish
ending
.
.
.
every-
matter the cruel, unpredictable world of earthquakes,
and betrayals
that constantly greet Candide’s optimism; the
meaningless murder of Tony in the insane, unending gang wars of West Side Story; the Celebrant/Priest of Mass driven
that loved
Psalms
mad
by the very same community
and exalted him; the destruction of innocence
— in each
in the Chichester
instance Bernstein ends a tragic tale with a paean of hope:
137
“There’s a place for us/’ “Almighty Father incline
“Make your garden grow/’ Thine
Neh Maatov voo ma nahim” (“How good
“Hi
ear,”
it is
when we
live
together as brothers”). In each instance he calls forth the power of music on
behalf of universal peace.
my
Bernstein changed
life.
When
I
Erst
met
Bernstein,
even remotely heading toward the musical career
became friend.
my
me, over the next two decades,
for
When
my
he heard about
1
my
Lenny
side
when I
recited this prayer reaffirming
I
time
I
father gave
me
to
could count on
me
as his
Lenny was
in his Fairfield,
Symphony, which was
the
my
in the face of death. this
of music on his Arabic oud.
gift
whom,” could depend on he opened the door to a mu-
“without In turn,
grew up believing beyond
I
symbolically be by
my
I
my energizing any project he assigned. world
was the congre-
realized the impossibility of his ever being a “father” to
think
to
Lenny, who often referred
sical
It
for-
My real
“devoted son.”
my faith
my
kind of concern
was naive enough
ever. In
He would
mentor, and
He
sent a telegram in
phonetic Hebrew: “Y’heh sh’meh rab-bo m’vorach. ...” gational response to the mourner’s kaddish.
was in no way
have since enjoyed.
model,
father’s death,
1
my
reach.
Connecticut, studio working on his Kaddish
originally intended to
honor
his father (“while he’s
when the awful news came about the assassination of the president in Dallas. He immediately changed its dedication to John F. Kennedy. The Bernsteins knew the Kennedys. Miss Helen Coates spoke of play dates between their children, and I remember Lenny’s mischievous story about a still
alive!”)
dinner party
and we
all
at
the
went
Kennedy White House: dance the
upstairs to
In the spring of 1964
I
“Stravinsky
fell
asleep in his soup,
twist!”
traveled
my
up from
post in Texas to attend
Lenny’s rehearsals, performances, and recording sessions of his Kaddish
Symphony
with the
New
York Philharmonic. 3 The work was huge and
complicated: two choirs, extra-large orchestra, soprano I
left fired
up with the idea
must perform the work on,
that
my
soloist,
and
narrator.
Texas orchestra and Texan choirs
or close to, the
first
anniversary of the
Kennedy
tragedy. I
hoped
that Felicia Montealegre,
mances, would do the same at
Columbia
Artists,
skeptical about
in
Corpus
who
New York
Christi, but according to her
she was “unavailable.”
what might happen
narrated the
My
guess
is
perfor-
manager
she was probably
in the wilds of south Texas.
And
so
we
en-
who had made a distinguished career as a singer— she created the role of Magda Sorel in Menotti’s opera The Consul— but by that time she was appearing more often as a dramatic actress. The work required a big concert choir, and ours came from North Texas State gaged, in her place, Patricia Neway,
University, near Dallas.
Dvorak
D8
to
Duke
Ellington
I
formed and trained
a children’s choir in
Corpus
Christi. Like the city,
was
it
“Anglo” kids and included
a vibrant
mix of brown-skinned Mexican and
my daughter
Lorca.
1
fearing
them
com-
sing the
plicated rhythms, in Hebrew', by heart, their trusting eyes never leaving is
one of my treasured memories. The performance, on November
was our own Texas kaddish
Lenny and
it
16, 1964,
was transcendent.
Felicia were, for obvious reasons, curious to hear the tape of
our performance. fire in
Kennedy, and
for
We listened to
it
together while lying on rugs in front of the
Avenue penthouse apartment.
the library of their Park
My tenure as assistant conductor with the New York Philharmonic been shared with the impressively
charmed everyone with
and steady John Canarina, who
solid
his droll sense of
had
humor and impressed even
Bern-
h is encyclopedic knowledge of repertoire and conductors, and
stein wi th Seiji
me,
Ozawa,
young, and brilliant talent from Japan
a doll-like,
vated everyone.
was hard
It
to
ommended me lot project for
in
capti-
my Texas performance of KadHe began to call on me to conduct his
be noticed. But
dish got Lenny’s undivided attention.
music — Candide
who
Chicago, West Side Story
at
Lincoln Center.
for the co-directorship of a fascinating
the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
And
He
also rec-
music and dance
eventually, he asked
me
pi-
to
be his assistant conductor for the world premiere of Mass. In the early spring of 1971
gensburg lier at
the
for a guest
Vienna
was staying
conducting
State Opera.
in a suite that
room was dominated by manuscript paper.
was passing through Vienna on
1
a
stint. 1
my way to Re-
Lenny was conducting Der Rosenkava-
visited
him
Gustav Mahler
at the
Hotel Sacher, where he
said to have used.
is
huge Bosendorfer piano.
On
A double window' looked out over the
its
The
rack was
It
some
Karntnerstrasse and
the opera house where, in the love-’em-and-leave-’em scenario that thrives on,
sitting
Vienna
Mahler triumphed and crashed.
was Passover eve, April
next room, trying to get started quietly singing
me
9,
and while Lenny was on the phone
in the
a place at the Israeli Consulate’s seder table,
and playing from the manuscript.
It
was
a
I
song about
when he came back. He crossed his fingers, revealing a Lenny I had not yet known — afraid, unsure, curious about this thing he wrote, as if it had a life of its own. He said he didn’t know if it was lovely as of yet. “We’ll see. I’m writing a Mass ... for
a tree, delicate
and
sad. 4 “That’s beautiful!”
I
said
Kennedy.”
A few months passed. Lenny asked me to direct another Candide- to-endaW-Candides production, my fourth. The saga of Candide, a score in search of a libretto, is summed up in a remark made to me by Virgil Thomson. spent a memorable evening alone with him at a little French restaurant in the West Thirties. He was close to ninety. Nevertheless he insisted on walking back home to Twenty-third 1
Bernstein’s
Mass 139
Street, tripping over
catching himself I
mentioned
what seemed
The
just in time.
be every curb on Eighth Avenue and
conversation got around to Candide, and
John Latouche had worked on
that the poet
his teeter-tottering
to
it.
Virgil stopped
long enough to cackle, “Everyone worked on Candide.
It
didn’t help.”
Candide, the musical, has stubbornly remained in limbo ever since
Heilman withdrew her book following the show’s
lian
Lil-
on Broad-
short run
way. She believed the hard-hitting political satire she adapted from Voltaire
had been turned into
“Make Your Garden Grow” (and grow
hope of the grand
finale,
grow
final straw.
for
.
.
.
was the
),
She read
Voltaire’s
much from a world
that
is
message quite
Go
Heilman, “Make Your Garden Grow” meant:
and don’t expect too
The optimism and
a soft tits-and-ass entertainment.
off,
to stay.
Lenny had
inevitably going to disappoint his best to
while a small
cast,
lyrics
she
and no book.
a master score
There were some concert performances and tor telling the Voltaire story
and
.
find a quiet place,
Heilman would not be swayed beyond allowing the few
had contributed
.
differently;
and push you down, yet again. Yes, Lenny’s music was ravishing, date, but
.
a tour
“package”
— a narra-
accompanied by two pianos,
sang the delicious send-ups of Rossini, Puccini, and Gilbert and Sullivan.
Meanwhile
Candide ” became one of the most frequently
the “Overture to
performed American works
for orchestra.
This was the status of Candide
when Gordon Davidson and found a way of putting it back on stage in 1966. Gordon and I met on Broadway a few years earlier. I was playing trumpet in a stage band, and Gordon was second assistant stage manager for NorI
man
Corwin’s The Rivalry,
a
dramatization of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. 5
We struck up a friendship and became a director-conductor team, mostly doing operas together:
The
New York
Barrier in
in 1961 (libretto
by Langston
Hughes and music by Jan Meyerowitz, both of whom attended mances), and Carmen, La Boheme, and Cosi fan tutte in Corpus I
had permission from Lenny
do
to
the perforChristi.
a concert staging of Candide in
Cor-
pus Christi for the 1965-66 season. Gordon was of course going to direct. But the
Corpus Christi Symphony was going through
feast-or-famine cycle that
a
down phase
most small American orchestras experience. The
prospective Candide was canceled, but fate stepped in and
up
for
our
versity of California, in
— music
written for
Dvorak
Duke
Ellington
tell
excited.
Candide
that
summer season
of plays at the Uni-
We went to Bernstein for permission to do
Los Angeles instead of Texas.
Lenny was genuinely
140
to direct a
Los Angeles.
ing than he blurted out, “Don’t
to
more than made
loss.
Gordon had been engaged Candide
in the usual
No sooner did
Uncle
He
he give us
his bless-
Lillian.”
presented us with his “Pandora’s box”
had not made
it
into the
Broadwav show.
P erhaps some of it would help the
first
out our “concert version,” which
flesh
Los Angeles Candide would
understood that Gordon intended
tacitly
would be some dancing and was
It
to let the
O’Connor and
don on
new
a
7
script
character of
in the future, played the three
still
pessimist,
and Voltaire
the stage designer, Peter Wexler, worked with Gor-
based upon Voltaire. They tried
man’s book but inevitably a jokes.
Mickey and Judy
whom the
and the Narrator— optimist,
roles of Pangloss, Martin,
himself.
Family was
in All in the
was
piece “evolve.” There
version of
putting on an instant musical. Carroll O’Connor, for
Archie Bunker
it
a unit set.
summer— a grownup
miraculous
a
be called, even though
officially
what
is
little
slipped
in,
work around Hell-
to
some
especially
left-leaning in-
Wexler’s wife, Connie, did the costumes.
The
“Pandora’s box” contained several treasures, in particular the aria
“Nothing More than This,” which would strengthen the
Candide searches endlessly
for a w'orld of
Candide.
role of
peace and harmony and
for his
childhood love, the beautiful and pure Cunegonde. (Like those of Pangloss
and Candide, her name a
“grand vagina.”)
a
dream, the
ness.
new
When
Candide
“Nothing More than This” expresses at
once.
material myself, including “Nothing
I
dressed in a white linen
suit.
his
anger and
More than I
This.”
picked
As we drove
him up
Bacall).
He
for the
he remi-
On
the
Wa-
time with “Bogey and Bacall” (Humphrey Bogart and Lauren insisted
putting on the
The
at the air-
to the hotel,
nisced about his Hollywood days working on the film score for terfront, his
bitter-
orchestrated and copied the
flew out a few days before the opening.
He was
in this case,
he has been chasing
finally realizes that
Everyone was doing three jobs
Lenny port.
aria
wordplay reflecting her true character,
is
first
on serving
room
me my “last supper” before the dress rehearsal,
service waiter's apron
and
a Russian accent.
Los Angeles Candide w as a big success. 6 At the time, planning ;
Los Angeles Music Center w as underway, and our Candide produc7
tion played
director of
no small its
Gordon Davidson's appointment
part in
resident
as the artistic
drama company, the Center Theater Group
Mark Taper Forum. He
made an immense
has since
at the
contribution to the
-
American
theater.
Five years (and three Candide s) in
Los Angeles working on
scheduled
a
later, in
the
summer
of 1971,
1
new Candide-to-end-al\-Candides
for a cross-country tour. If this lavish production, with a
was back that
was
new book
by Sheldon Patinkin and choreography by Michael Smuin, passed muster with
New York producers,
reappearance there since
Candide would continue on
its
Broadway,
to
short-lived but glorious succes d’estime in 1956. 8
Bernstein was also in Los Angeles, ostensibly to oversee the dide, but
he was mostly hard
its first
at
work
in
what he called
his
new Can-
“M ass factory,” set Bernstein’s
Mass
H
1
I?'-
up
two poolside cottages
in
an idea only
months
six
at
the Beverly Hills Hotel.
when J
earlier,
piano rack in Vienna, was about
Gordon Davidson was on cist
to
the
What had been
mostly
spied one of Lenny’s sketches on the
go into production.
Mass team,
as
were the composer and
Steve Schwartz and his partner, the writer John Michael-Tebelak,
together had created Godspell. Alvin Ailey flew in to discuss
And
there
I
came and
was doing another Candide and green with envy.
we held
opening,
Just before the
run-through of the
a private
new Can-
dide for Bernstein, followed by a production meeting with the directors
Lenny gave
staff.
was the introduction of an
been up
for
and
ns notes until well past two in the morning, mostly about
the script. His few musical
instead of “air.”
who
becoming the
choreographer. Various candidates for musical assistant to Lenny went.
lyri-
comments were about
“OO” sound
Lenny grabbed me
diction; his favorite “fix”
“OOWhere”
before “W,” producing
at the elevator:
“We must
hours getting the show scrubbed clean. “Lenny,”
I
I
had
whined,
“it’s
talk.”
7 '
almost three a.m.”
need you on Mass, he whispered.
“I
A week or so after Candide opened in Los Angeles, the musical direction of the show was turned over to my assistant conductor, Ross Reimuller, and began working full time on Mass. Lenny explained my role: “We will be the I
two sides of a two-headed coin.”
We would share rehearsals, and
I
would
take
over after he conducted the opening gala performance in Washington, D.C.
No work of Bernstein’s expresses more dramatically than does John
F.
Kennedy Center for
M
is
a kaleidoscopic
composed
ass,
for the
The form
is
from
The
Arabic dances, and a Chilean folk ballad.
and children’s
choirs, rock
musicians of every stripe and
young
priest, a
beloved leader
death of the
tragic
style.
first
—a
and
Catholic liturgy; the 9 .
In Mass, folk-
jazz scat stand
Hebrew
jowl with Mahlerian meditations for orchestra,
ple,” liturgical
Roman
voyage from Harlem to the Rhine
song, blues, marches, rock songs, black gospel,
sic,
grand opening of the
the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., at the
behest of Jacqueline Kennedy.
music
his passion for universal reconciliation
prayer,
cheek by
chamber mu-
characters are “street peo-
and blues
singers,
and dancers and
T he story follows the rise and
metaphor
fall
of a
for the ecstatic elevation
and
Catholic president, John F. Kennedy.
The time was
“Vietnam.” I
quickly learned the music Bernstein had already
mostly in sketch form sessions with
Lenny
— and went through
talking
it
with Gordon. Even after several
and playing through the work, Gordon was
searching for a dramatic line that would thread pieces
mandated by the Roman mass
had recast the Gospel of stein as
Dvofak 142
he searched
to
Duke
for
Ell ington
St.
ways
composed — it was
Matthew
liturgy.
its
way through
the formal set
John Michael-Tebelak, who
into Godspell,
to transform the
still
ancient
was there
to
ritual into
help Bern-
musical the-
Bernstein sought out liberal Catholic scholars as well, including Daniel
ater.
Berrigan, seeking information about obsolete or lesser-known elements of the
known
mass, such as the kiss of peace, and additions,
help
fulfill his
Once,
narrative
after a
could
10 .
long “listening” session, in exasperation and confusion one
“What are
of us ventured the inevitable question: ish
as tropes, that
boys doing, writing and working on a mass?”
three
.
.
.
four
.
.
.
Lenny welcomed
nice Jewthe ques-
own reasoning process: his search for an appropriate vehicle to inaugurate a new arts center named after our first Catholic president; the universal appeal of the mass, with its Roman, Greek, and Hebraic roots; and the possibilities it offered for dramatization. The choice, he tion
and took us through
seemed
said,
being able faith, that
his
he said he was comfortable with not
inevitable. Several times
to find
an explanation
for
everything— that one must accept, on
there are mysteries that cannot be understood.
Bernstein outlined his dramatic concept for the
Celebrant— the
central character
out hope for peace, yet he
“Dona
nobis
pacem”
is
section,
and
Like President Kennedy,
priestly leader of the
down by
struck
us.
his
own
followers.
During the
which grows from ceremonial chant
giastic rock-blues, all the well-established walls
into
an
or-
— between the rock and blues
bands and the symphonic wind and brass players, between the in
mass — holds
street singers
blue jeans and the robed liturgical choir— are breached, and the stage with a roiling mob.
filled
A pack
is
of protesters corners the Celebrant, threat-
ening and shouting, “Dona nobis pacem”
— “Give us peace now, not later.
Don’t you know you were once our creator?”
The Celebrant shrieks “Pa-a-cem” (“Peace”) and throws down the holy vessels. He is at once Christ being crucified and Moses smashing the tablets before the idolators. The Bernstein painted a picture of the final scene.
frenzied dancing, the blues shouting, the instrumental wailings, and the
tacking protesters are stopped cold. All
watch
in horror as the
stripping himself of
all
upon him. Pared down
fall to
Celebrant goes mad.
dances on the sacred
to his jeans
and
guitar strap,
he goes
Kennedy Center as he
to the rear of the
shouts,
and your War!” Lenny envisioned the scene on opening night about the
of the United States,
altar,
the encrustations of power his followers had heaped
bare stage and slams the door of the
cast spread
They
the ground, petrified.
He
at-
stage,
and the audience, Nixon and the
left sitting
there,
“Fuck you
for us: “the
entire Congress
abandoned, stunned. And
that’s
how
the piece ends.” I
knee-jerked, “Lenny, you can’t do that!”
next two months story to
than what
I
labored on
we had been
Mass with told.
I
He
only smiled.
blind faith, knowing no
And
for the
more
of the
was convinced that Bernstein, not one
be behind the trends, would ask Alan Titus (cast as our Celebrant) to bolt
Bernstein’s
Mass
H3
out of the set stark naked, nakedness having invaded the opera world at the
time
11 .
went
I
Tanglewood
to
to
audition young musicians for the stage band.
We needed no fewer than thirty-three players. They would enter from the audience
as a brilliant
marching band, playing, of all
happy
things, a strutting,
Kyrie (“Lord, have mercy”). Over the next hour and a half they would sub-
need
divide, as the
woodwind
and
sextets
tions, all the
and rock bands,
arose, into blues
churchy brass
trios,
band,
a gospel street
choirs, and/or big-band brass sec-
while being integrated into the drama and never leaving the
stage.
Putting only a few instrumentalists on stage for even a short scene trouble.
They have
to
be positioned so they can see the conductor and must
somehow be provided
with music stands and
outfitted with costumes. a
list
on
I
had
They
lights.
also
need
be
to
come back from Tanglewood with virtuosos of all races who moved well
was expected
of young, attractive instrumental
stage. Bernstein
means
to
recurring anxiety about a make-believe musician
this
he named “Burt Silverman” schlepping across the stage with
me
wearing one white and one brown sock. “Don’t bring
trombone
his
back any Burt
Sil-
vermans,” he admonished.
The elaborate stage band remains
Washington premiere
years after the
May Festival. A few days
cinnati
union had met and decreed
which
be no Mass." read in
all
arrived,
I
that “there
The town was
find a
was out of town this
of Mass
when
on
assumed
that
I
performers.
I
awaited the
first
come
all
choristers
and
march, carry
street people, lyres,
H4
to
up.
Duke
Ellington
all italiana reading of the piece,
of whom were prepared and refirst
musical run-through.
lyre, it
— the wind
Symphony— now surrounded
were themselves
visibly
and wear simple costumes. The
solo onto the stage floor so that
Dvorak
of
But by some coincidence, he
ended, the members of the stage orchestra
even freed himself from his
it
Sunday declaring the
Nick Webster, the general man-
together for a
and percussion players of the Cincinnati
making
had been
had more than once experienced the emotional impact
When the run-through
to
letter
12
hearsed separately, would
agreed
A pastoral
The Cincinnati Symphony,
to solve the ministrike.
the various choirs and orchestras,
weeping
lyres [with
.
time its
way
I
Two
was told that the musicians’
of the area’s Catholic churches the previous
would
By
I
already in an uproar.
course, sold out every ticket.
be overcome.
My response was, “Then there will
piece blasphemous and calling for a boycott.
ager,
to
would be no marching, no
music], and no costumes.”
to carry
challenge
did a production of Mass for the Cin-
I
after
a
by
moved. They
first
clarinetist
scratching out the notes for an important
would appear
to the
audience
as if
he were
The “ Mass factor) ” was moved from Los Angeles to New York for final casting. The company we were about to assemble would encompass a musical
and human
palette as diverse as
America
itself.
We auditioned dozens of
One day a young arrived wheeling along a speaker-amplifier. He plugged the
opera singers and Broadway belters for our Street Chorus.
man,
Tom Ellis,
power cord
into a wall socket
naivete, thinking,
and pulled out
"How does one make a
Bernstein was delighted. “After In our
first
all,”
he
a
Street
microphone.
grinned
I
Chorus out of ‘mike’
singers?”
said, “that’s his instrument.”
production of Mass the Rock Singers,
who come
out of the
Street Chorus, used hand-held, wire-cabled mikes for their solos, an
one
at his
image
associates with early rock singers. Ellis got the job. Like Ellis, every other
singer in the Street
Chorus had
our Street Singers, Louis his gospel
member
St.
somewhere
how we
of the tenor section, was also a male
descant for
him
One
of
in the entire
discovered that Carl Hall, a
with the highest and
falsettist,
ensemble. Bernstein wrote a solo
Confiteor (confession) sequence. 13
in the
Alvin Ailey’s
in the show.
Louis, serenaded us during lunch breaks with
piano magic. That’s probably
most piercing soprano voice
company
spread throughout the
Seven Ailey dancers were
Jamison
joined the Street Chorus.
Chorus singing
of superb dancers, mostly African American, was
cast.
“acolytes,” led by Judith
Street
a solo turn
We
in the role of the
ceremonial
cast as
High
Priestess.
The
rest
soon had some of the Ailey dancers in the
as well, thus creating
an ensemble with
a look
and
movement seldom seen on Broadway. The Street Chorus carries the bulk of the nonliturgical vernacular text of Mass. They ask questions and make commentary and are the heart of the show. From mid-July to early August, the Street Chorus of twenty-two singers and sixteen dancers, the thirty-three-member
stage
band (with
its
subsets), the
seven acolyte dancers, and the Celebrant, Alan Titus, rehearsed independently
and together using
several
rooms and one huge ballroom
sonic Hotel, around the corner from the Ansonia on
in the
Ma-
West Seventy-third
Street.
Time was gage people
to
flying,
and Lenny was
help orchestrate.
One
still
of
scores to various arrangers, principally
myself scored
on the stage
much
composing.
my
He was
jobs was to distribute his sketch
Hershey Kay and Jonathan Tunick.
of the Gloria before Bernstein took over. 14
logistics for the various
it
would send us
learned and “on
a
its
new
1
I
kept a check
instrumental groupings before sending
the orchestrations off to Arnold Arnstein, the master copyist. stein
forced to en-
section at the
Lenny
or Arn-
end of one day, and we would have
feet” the very next.
Arnstein was a beloved, respected, and feared character in the working lives
of composers of Bernstein’s generation, in particular Gian-Carlo Menotti,
Bernstein’s
Mass
H5
Samuel Barber, and William Schuman. He had a foul mouth and loved catching these giants of American music in mistakes. Arnstein’s “shop,” where he supervised the copying of musical
Mass was
parts for
modern
the
,
equivalent of a medieval monastery. In the hushed, smoke-filled room,
Pennypoints on semi-
scriveners, bent over their inkpots, scratched out with
transparent vellum paper the piano-vocal scores for the singers, dancers, and rehearsal pianists
and the
musicians in the
parts for the
and, in the case
pit,
of Mass those onstage. ,
was rarely able
I
away from
to get
a visit to Arnstein’s
down, from an endless shelf of oversized
composer— Menotti was
living
“How dumb can you
epitaph,
had rescued the piece from
get?,”
disaster
publication copies of works that
I
some work by
scores,
his victim of
— and with
choice
his favorite
how he, Arnstein, alone He would also slip me pre-
and oblivion.
was interested
in.
Mass among
were spread about, now more than one hundred and
members
a celebrated
demonstrating
Arnstein distributed the music for
four
without his pulling
the various forces that
fifty
strong.
The
twenty-
of the Berkshire Boys’ Choir were learning their parts at their
summer camp. The sixty-voice Scribner Chorale was hard at work in Washington. The New York contingent of seventy-eight dancers, singers, and musicians, three rehearsal pianists,
Seventy-third Street.
August
We all
and
a large production staff gathered daily
assembled
in
Washington the
two weeks of
last
begin rehearsals on the stage of the Kennedy Center’s
to
House. Arnstein followed the caravans
as well, setting
up shop
on
in
new Opera the Howard
Johnson Hotel, across from the Watergate, where he finished copying the parts for the
Washington-based freelance
players, a harpist, five percussionists,
and “Big
pit orchestra of thirty-one string
and two organists — playing
Al,” Allen electronic organs
— that would
“Tittle Al”
complete the musical
forces for Mass.
Even with the help he was creasingly clear that
time
getting from the orchestrators,
Lenny couldn’t be
in
two places
soloists himself, in particular
looks, Prince
destined
him
Hal
hairstyle,
little
told
me
that his ideal heroic
a catch. Lenny’s baritone, like
male voice was
West Side Story
Duke
Ellington
a baritone,
and cultivated tenor
voice.
But
Alan Titus, must he capable of deliv-
A in Mass
,
or Tony’s
15 .
Besides finding time to coach Titus and others, Bernstein
to
good
and capable of producing
ering a ringing high note, such as the Celebrant’s high B-flat in
tall
Celebrant.
clearer diction than the artificially extended
146
in-
innocent demeanor, and sweet, unforced voice
closer to the range of the natural speaking voice
Dvorak
He had
Alan Titus, the high baritone whose
to sing the role of the
Lenny once
is
once.
became
spend with the larger company, but he did coach several of the
to
there
at
it
still
had the
scene
final
Dona With
complete and the orchestrations
to
nobis pacem, and the final scene, which he had reserved for himself. a
work so
new
poser of a
and complex, the conventional wisdom
large
bound
how
music-theater work, no matter
or conductor, remain “in the house
during the
skilled as
com-
that the
an orchestrator
final stages of production
was
to prevail.
When
I
was given the awesome, delicious
sive structure
on opening
surely felt prepared.
and body.
My
night, of being
Mass had been
a glass!
task of
conducting
mas-
was about
I
I
my ear,
brain,
to enter the
world
drop by drop into
over.
this
heartbeat, of being Lenny, 16
its
filtered
journeyman days were
“Somebody, quick! Break
stage.
for all of the Sanctus, the
My fifteen minutes of fame are about
to begin!”
The announcement that would conduct appeared on I
the
New York Times on Labor Day. We were
was now
We were and
all
way.
opening on September
free to fine-tune the lighting, diction,
ance during our
the front page of
constantly mixing live and amplified sounds.
hand mikes
there were the ubiquitous
Once something at risk,
bal-
final rehearsals.
along with the rock band, which had
ement is
Lenny
and especially the sound
The Celebrant
the solo singers wore wireless body mikes, newly introduced
And
8.
or
its
someone on
and Mass was,
own
stage
for all intents
on Broad-
who
for the rock singers
sang
highly electrified sound system. amplified, every other aural
is
and purposes,
a
el-
sound-enhanced
production. Transitions from enhanced to acoustic sound hopefully went unnoticed, and both were perceived as “live.” But sometimes the contrast be-
tween
live
sound and patently
dramatic statement,
as, for
electric
example,
sound was used by Lenny
in tbe
to
make
a
opening sequence, which had
musical-political overtones.
Mass opens with
the house in total blackness. Disorienting sounds be-
gin to spew from four speakers that surround the audience.
1-
Running
at
painful levels, each speaker in turn blasts out a different twelve-tone Kyrie for
voice and percussion.
When
all
four Kyries are going full force, lights pierce
the blackness to reveal the Celebrant, who, with a single stroke on his folk guitar,
wipes out the
mad cacophony. Following
this acoustic miracle, the
Celebrant sings the gentle “A Simple Song”: “Sing Lauda, Laude”
to the
comments from
accompaniment of muted
his guitar
and
a
magical solo
At once Bernstein silences the toric
(chance)
music— with
strings
/
and harp, with quiet
enemy — overamplified
is
simple song
a
flute.
live folk-rock song.
Bernstein with mocking mastery,
God
Decadent
twelve-tone aleaart,
replicated by
vanquished by the even more
skillfully
conceived and crafted rock-based “simple” song. At the
last
New York
run-through, Bernstein and Alan Titus unveiled a
Bernstein’s
Mass
H7
surprise.
I
was looking forward
But he had been holed up
showing Lenny how well we were doing.
Corigliano
me
Jr.
was there and, sizing up the
down. Lenny turned the
pacem approached, the Celebrant
the
stick
moment when
I
his fa-
his piece.
Fortunately, John
felt.
me for a quick walk me as the Dona nobis
situation, took
back over
everything
threatened. Soon the
is
hands on
to get his
he took over the rehearsal, rather abruptly,
so,
to cool
composing away with
for days in hi$ studio,
Blackwing pencils, and could not wait
vorite
And
to
to
about
is
room was
come
to
apart
and
cast
was
and the
ablaze,
singing and dancing their protest to the band’s ten bar rock-blues:
We re
fed
up with your heavenly
silence,
And we only get action with violence, So if we can’t have the world we desire, Lord, we’ll have to set this one on
Dona
We
nobis
Dona
,
fire!
nobis.
reached the end of our music and Alan Titus, the Celebrant, cried out
“PA
.
CEM! PA
.
.
the holy vessels.
.
Lenny was
where they stood, and directors
staff,
CEMH PA
.
.
and
.
CEMH!” and
.
time
members
drop to the floor
of us— singers, dancers, musicians,
lived through Fraction, the
Lenny and Alan had been rehearsing pleads, with the cast
all
in secret.
mad
scene, which
The Celebrant
lying closest to him, with
music we have heard, ranging over two and
God. He exhausts
a half octaves
— don’t know — don’t no-bis mi this on the note E — mi in solfeggio] with so [on the note G — sol]. ...”
.
.
.Adonai
I
.
.
.
.
.
.
alone
is
only
|
mi
.
.
lost his
breath he keens a dirge: “Oh,
my legs
are lead
.
.
.
.
me
Mi-se
.
.
.
.
.
But
us
Celebrant, our all
I
mind,
his voice,
suddenly
and
his soul,
feel every step
and with
his last
Fve ever taken
/
And
How easily things get broken.” Lenny struck the (A major and C minor), which slowly faded into silence
Oh
deep polychord
as the left
in a
.
The Celebrant has
final
the
Dominum, ad
Miserere no-bis
Mi
.
all
and ending
babble of Latin, Hebrew, English, and solfeggio wordplay: “ad .
and
roars at
himself completely in a dazzling cadenza, a collage of fragments from
Dom.
down
feigned throwing
at the piano. Fie told the cast to
for the first
— heard
.
.
.
.
own Alan
Titus, walked out of the rehearsal area
splayed on the floor. Like the others,
I
asked myself,
and
“What have we
done? What now?”
We
found out
in
Washington, when Bernstein began, almost grudg-
ingly, to part with the final section of
Mass,
his “Secret Songs,”
breathed a bereft, leaderless, and fractured community back into rospect
I
realize that this
life.
which In ret-
manipulation of the company was Bernstein’s way
of protecting his message of peace from the inevitable criticism of the pessimists, the Voltaires
Dvorak 148
to
Duke
and Martins, of this world.
Ellington
end of Fraction the Celebrant makes
In the theater, at the
tonic descent into the orchestra pit
— no
slamming of doors
his cata-
or flinging of
— and the deep polychord fades ever so slowly into silence. me to hold the silence as long as dared — “You’ll know
curses at Congress
Lenny implored
I
when!”
A querulous
we
mirror image of the desolation entire
an earlier moment: the
flute breaks the silence, recalling
Mass community had
gether the “Almighty Father
and then listened
as a solo
first .
.
.
the
feel,
moment
assembled and, pleased with
Bless ns
and
all
when
of Epiphany,
who have
itself,
the
sang
gathered here
to.
.
oboe, from everywhere and nowhere, sounded
(over the four speakers) a cadenza, an Epiphany.
This time the music of Epiphany
sounded by
is
himself from where he was lying on the is
picked up by a child soprano: “Sing
is
the
The
of the stage. a secret
flutist,
The
song
/
who
raises
note
flute’s last
Lauda, Laude.”
A
It
harp joins
child passes the “kiss” in turn to a bass-baritone, thence to a
woman. Chains begins to
God
lone
of the “Secret Songs,” symbolizing the kiss of peace.
first
the flute.
lip
a
The
of “Lauda, Laude” canons begin to form.
The
filter in.
cast joins, helping
orchestra too
each other up, joining the “Lauda,
Laude,” one by one, two by two. Their rebirth gathers energy and power. As the music subsides, bassoonist and dancer, French horn player and Street
Singer are massed together downstage before the audience, forming a rain-
We hear the last “Lauda, Laude” sung from one side of the
bow of humanity.
rainbow by the unseen Celebrant and echoed from the other by an unseen child.
The mantle
puts forth the
has been passed.
hope
that
The
cycle can
now begin anew.
one of these voyages of faith
peace and redemption. As the
Bernstein
will transport us to true
final notes of the child
and the Celebrant
away, the cast sings, “Almighty Father, incline thine
ear:
/
Bless us
float
and
all
who have gathered here— / thine angel send 11s— / Who shall defend us all; / And fill with grace / All who dwell in this place. Amen.” The lights dim and we hear a voice, Lenny’s voice
The onstage
and
first
bringing together of
cast, choirs,
lights
members
(on tape): “The Mass
— was
all
is
ended; go in Peace.” 18
the elements of the production
and bands, and the
at a dress rehearsal for
pit orchestra
— the
with costumes, sound,
an invited audience that included
of the United States Congress. At the
end of the
first-ever
Mass
,
the
members of the company, and many in the audience, were shattered, in tears. The sadness and sense of loss — for the Celebrant, for our innocence, for John Kennedy— was palpable. That night Fed Kennedy came down the aisle to the pit to
thank
Every one of the
11s.
six
Fie
was deeply moved.
productions
emotional reaction. Mass proves
to
I
have worked on has produced
be greater than the
sum
of
its
this
parts.
Be-
cause the elements are perforce assembled only for an actual performance,
Bernstein’s
Mass 149
w*
the cast
how
has no idea
itself
deeply they will be affected.
A large part of the
power of Mass comes because the audience witnesses those onstage discovering their loss and confusion and giving themselves to the kiss of peace.
were told kiss
to fan out,
of peace, pass
it
touch a few of those on/’
The
sitting
previews. a
I
can
huge Coptic
how to
“pass
it
still
see Lenny,
cross dangling
on.”
Many
on the
conceit was that the
through the audience and hence into the world.
aisles,
kiss
We tried
in the
his neck, as
and
of peace
who had gradually become from around
The
audience.
to pass the kiss of peace into the
Lenny wanted
it
choirboys say,
he
1
would
pass
during one of the
possessed by
Mass
,
he showed the boys
audience shrank from their touch. His
final
gesture toward universal redemption was abandoned.
President Richard Nixon, though invited, did not attend the opening night.
According
to
columnist Jack Anderson,
it
was
Edgar Hoover who en-
J.
joined Nixon not to attend:
On
July
12,
1971,
Hoover wrote
to
White House major-domo H.
Haldeman and Attorney General John
R.
Mitchell, warning of “proposed
plans of antiwar elements to embarrass the United States Govern-
ment.” Composer Leonard Bernstein, Hoover correctly reported was
composing
a mass.
.
.
.
Daniel Berrigan had been asked
Latin verse to be sung to Lenny’s music.
words
will follow
officials,
an antiwar theme,” he
“The source advised the said.
“Important Government
perhaps even the President, are expected
mony and
it is
to write the
to attend this cere-
anticipated they will applaud the composition without
The
recognizing the true meaning of the words.”
source said the news-
papers would be given the story the following day that “the President
and other high ranking Government
officials
applauded an
government song.” Possibly because of Hoover’s
Nixon missed what the audience and
critics
anti-
hysterics, President
thought was a superb
performance. 19
Was the poolside
cottage of the Beverly Hills Hotel
pronounced the Celebrant’s
Mass
calls for the literal
so-called exit line,
Los Angeles.
We
1
“Fuck you and your War!”?
massing together of a universe of music and mu-
sicians in the cause of peace.
don Davidson and
Its
sheer size
is
mesmerizing. Yet
did a scaled-down version at the
dubbed
it
bugged when Lenny
“Mini-Muss.”
And
for
in 1973
Gor-
Mark Taper Theater
some
cast
in
members, the
magic, the message of universal peace, faded after several performances. In this
more intimate format— eight
instrumentalists onstage, three offstage,
twelve singers, three dancers, small children’s choir, and liturgical choir
—
it
was more play than pageant. Actors ask questions, and
Dvofak 15 °
to
Duke
Ellington
when
Bernstein
came
to see
it,
he had
a
sit-
down
with the company. Several of the performers expressed their frustration
with the ending. There was a leap of faith that science, conld not take.
They
tion at the end.
And
still
of them, in good con-
they found themselves having to act the emo-
hungered
Bernstein listened. Hard.
fest.
some
for
peace in onr time, but not
He came up
with an alternative ending: an
expression of doubt, a fragment borrowed from the Epistle section,
Word just
of the Lord,”
before
One
night
which was
to
hug-
a big
“
The
be sung by one of the doubters in the cast
we hear
Bernstein’s voice intone the “go in Peace” benediction.
we put
into the show, but
was dropped.
I
it
it
awkward,
felt
have Lenny’s holograph sketch.
So we wait
in silent treason until reason
and we wait
for the
season of the
Word
is
The
like
an “add-on,” and
text reads:
restored
of the Lord.
Bernstein’s
Mass
D Duke There
will
Ellington
one day come
Beethoven, burned
a black
to the
bone by the African sun.
— Will
Marion Cook, from
interview of
Mercer Cook
by Josef Skvorecky
For
my teenage dance combo, the “Mood
Ellington’s
heard on
my 78
Starlighters,
I
wrote arrangements of Duke
Indigo” and “Caravan,” trying to imitate the voicings
r.p.m. records.
It
was the
late 1940s,
ton’s music, along with that of other big hands.
I
and I was
a fan of Elling-
didn’t have a recording of
Black Brown and Beige, which had been premiered only a few years ,
in 1942.
But
I
might have heard
unconscious the provocative it
at least
title
some
I
part of
it
somewhere,
was stored away, together with
earlier,
for in
my
a sense that
was an important, serious work.
Duke Ellington and his Black, Brown and Beige entered my life in the summer of 1965 was settling in as music director of the Corpus Christi Sym.
phony.
I
was also “covering” — working
New York Ballet
as
an
assistant
conductor for— the
Philharmonic summer concerts and conducting
whenever they could
afford to
for the Joffrey
work with an orchestra. In June of 1965,
White House
the Joffrey Ballet was invited to represent
American dance
Festival of the Arts, hosted by President
and Mrs. Lyndon Baines Johnson,
and
in July, the
New York Philharmonic held a
Lincoln Center.
Duke
into a
museum,
walls of the public
Festival at
14,
1965, the
White House was
sculpture court, theater, and concert stage.
trans-
On
the
rooms hung paintings by Franz Kline, Ben Shahn, and
Marc Rothko, among Ray,
French-American
Ellington appeared at both.
For one jam-packed day, June
formed
at a
others,
and photographs by Stuart Eisenstadt,
Edward Steichen, and Alfred
Stieglitz.
Man
There were sculptures by Alexan-
F3
der Calder, Louise Nevelson, and Isamu Noguchi. selves
were
Many of the
artists
them-
in attendance.
The daytime performances began with an event titled “Prose and Poetry.” Mark Van Doren introduced readings by Saul Bellow, Catherine Drinker Bowen, and John Hersey. Robert Lowell, who declined to appear, a protest against the festival
was outside leading
because
it
was being held
while the nation was in the grip of the Vietnam War. American music, set apart from jazz, was represented by a short afternoon concert given by the Louisville Orchestra
mental pieces by
and introduced by Marian Anderson.
We heard
instru-
Ned Rorem and Robert Whitney and vocal works by Gersh-
win and Bernstein sung by Roberta
Peters.
A
program of drama followed,
with scenes from Tennessee Williams’s Glass Menagerie and Arthur Miller’s
Death of a Salesman, introduced by Helen Hayes. The daytime presentations ended with film clips from Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront and Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, introduced by Charlton Heston. I
recall the prevailing
mood
many luminaries appeared polite
exchanges
The
self-conscious, in
around,
all
of that marathon day as
little
more. But that was about
White House lawn. Gene Kelly was the
let
performed Gamelan
Shadows
to the
but
festival,
to
first
and formal. The
awe of one another. There were
upon
evening’s entertainment took place
event for the entire
stiff
to
title
bers of the United States
Joffrey Bal-
by Lou Harrison and Sea
second movement of Ravel’s Piano Concerto I
in
G; Gilbert
conducted an orchestra recruited from
Marine Band.
on the
be the culminating
came American dance. The
music of the same
Kalish was the piano soloist.
change.
a stage erected
was
host. Jazz
to
mem-
Polite applause covered our exit; then
Kelly began reading his next introduction: It’s
a long road
musical way tails
of
still.
Duke
artists of his
from Congo Square
But jazz made
Ellington
and put her
there
had never been
A wall
And
so
Carnegie Hall, and a longer
Riding on the well-tailored coat
some twenty-two
years ago,
he and the great
ensemble, took lady jazz out of her off-the-racks cotton
dress
him.
it.
to
it’s
in a
long velvet gown. Ladies and Gentlemen, a
Duke
Ellington, jazz
with pride that
I
present the
would have had
“Duke .”
if
to invent
1
of applause rose in greeting as Ellington stomped out the tempo.
band kicked poets, actors
off with
“fake the
and dancers,
A Train,”
politicians,
were loosened, shoes and jackets came
The
and the motley crowd of artists and
and off.
glitterati I
melted into one. Ties
remember
smiles and dancing.
We
were caught up
sic.
Ellington followed with “one of our latest compositions”: selections from
the Far East Suite.
Dvorak
U4
to
Duke
in the delicious, delirious
He
embrace of Ellington’s mu-
then introduced portions of the featured work from the
Ellington
Carnegie Hall concert that Kelly referred
historic
the history of the Negro in America, Black the work for the
The band
time.
first
still
to:
“our tone parallel to
Brown and
,
Beige."
I
listened to
featured Ellington veterans Johnny
Hodges, Ray Nance, Lawrence Brown, and Harry Carney.
I
was
in orbit, car-
ried along by the audience’s obvious pleasure in Ellington’s music, in par-
haunting
ticular the
Nance
“Come
in
saxophone and
alto
Sunday.”
Having spent considerable time since scoring,
that magical evening studying,
and performing Black Brown and Beige, ,
I
now
performed and displayed work, no matter
when
fans
it
was
the Festival, Ellington was reaffirming his faith
at
than enthusiastic greeting by most
less
its
force behind the festival, thanked to
would not
mained onstage course, the I
to play
“Mood
let
set,
its
and
Lady Bird Johnson, the
real
the performers and
all
enjoy refreshments and view the
the audience
critics
presented.
first
After the Ellington Orchestra finished
everyone
realize that in choos-
American masterworks
ing to place his “tone parallel” alongside the other
in the
Hodges and Ray
violin solos of
art
artists
and sculpture on
Ellington and his orchestra go.
many
and invited display.
But
The band
re-
of his celebrated compositions, including, of
Indigo” and “Caravan” of my youth.
was bred up, wondering
take part in this important
how a symphony conductor like
music — music that spoke
to
me
as
myself could
profoundly
as
any other, music that reached out and embraced everyone. Later that evening
I
met
Ellington’s collaborator, Billy Strayhorn, at a reception in the
Room. To my
East
pleasant surprise, Strayhorn had heard of
ductor with some jazz in his soul.
asked
I
him
if
ceeded
“Why to
don’t you ask
me
introduce
ton countered, “What’s his
music and
chestra
and wanted
had no more I
jazz
and
When
wrong with
the
it
I
way
symphony
or-
and pro-
repeated the question, Ellingit
is?”
I
explained
how
I
loved
I
was
to offer.
New York
six
weeks
Philharmonic
later,
in his
on July
29, 1965,
own music
for
symphony
the experience disappointing.
when he came
Festival of the Arts con-
orchestral This time, however,
The
to
work The Golden Broom and the
Green Apple. Here was the hero of the White House ducting his
con-
now conducting my own symphony orsome of his bigger works. He was charming but
that
to play
for
yourself?” Strayhorn responded,
to Ellington.
met Ellington again
direct the
him
as a
Ellington or he, himself,
had ever thought about scoring Black, Brown and Beige chestra.
me
I
found
orchestration was four-square. 2 Jazz
— “oo-shoo-bee-doos” that any musician of my generation could scat with ease — were blurred by awkward bowings. And despite having the maslicks
ter jazz
drummer Louie
istically
uncomfortable in front of the
Bellson at his side, Ellington seemed uncharacter-
New York
Philharmonic. Louie Bell-
Duke
Ellington *55
son
the story of “playing a piece
still tells
New York
and there was no part
Phil,
Ellington never wrote out to
drum
improvise their own. But
for
the
me!’” Louie of course knows that
freedom
parts, giving total
this,
Duke and
never heard with
I
he was saying, went too
to his
far.
I
drummers
never figured
out what The Golden Broom and the Green Apple was doing on a French
American concert, but
women, one try)
his tonal essay (about
an encounter between two
worldly-wise and citified, the other a fresh naif from the coun-
enjoyed no more than a lukewarm reception.
ton and for his music, with which
symphonic
program
jazz
Jazz Quartet as guest
MJQ
The
for the
the
artists,
I
was frustrated
strongly identified.
Corpus first
I
Christi
I
for Elling-
began planning
Symphony with
the
a
Modern
of many collaborations to come.
was a very disciplined group with a repertoire of highly
or-
ganized pieces created by the erudite composer and swing and blues pianist
John Lewis. Behind the formally structured
settings, John’s sparse yet in-
tensely rhythmic urgings at the keyboard, in combination with the swinging,
and percussion work of Percy Heath and Connie Kay,
crystal-clear string bass
MJQ
gave the
The
bop.
one of the
beneficiary of all
genius Milt Jackson.
and
rhythm sections
this, their star soloist,
The dramatic
in the history of be-
was the vibraharpist and jazz
tension between John’s formal designs
Milt’s fighting to break free, with swinging flurries
fectly
placed punctuations,
knew
I
all-time great
large
that the
MJQ
is
what made the group
so singular
would work well within the more
symphony orchestra and
that
and leaps and and
per-
attractive.
rigid confines of a
John had already composed pieces
for the
quartet with orchestra.
Their
was
earliest availability
agreed to compose a
new
February 1967
reaching
tried
,
orchestral
ing and was given a forwarding
he was when he apologized
to
1967-68 season. Billy Strayhorn
for the
work
for this
him by phone
to see
concert as well. Around
how I
in the hospital for the Ellington Orchestra,
Green Apple.
felt
I
ceived from the the
Corpus
season.
office, set
up
I
in
decided
deserved
New York
Christi
When
it
I
far
his
to tackle
D6
to
be his
last
work.
The Golden Broom and justice
than
to present
it
it
had
at
the re-
one of
Symphony’s Young People’s Concerts during the 1968-69
went
to pick
up the score and
parts at Ellington’s library/
an elegant town house on Riverside Drive near noth Street I
met
Ellington’s
sister,
Ruth,
who was
publishing company.
hey were doing
Dvofak
to
composed
his illness,
Philharmonic and decided
In February 1970, with Ruth’s help, I
was
more symphonic
(since designated Ellington Place),
running
com-
number— at a hospital. had no idea how sick me for not being able to finish the MJQ piece.
“Blood Count,” Strayhorn’s musical commentary on
Around the same time,
the piece was
Duke
I
tracked
a one-nighter at a college
Ellington
down Duke and
on Staten
Island. 4
I
his band.
went back-
and announced myself
stage during intermission
wants you
and
have
I
We met at the White House
Black Brown and Beige.
to orchestrate
,
performed your Golden Brooml” This
just
unlocked the door, and Duke invited
me
conductor who
as “the
of information
last bit
He was
into his dressing room.
wearing only a towel and a stocking cap. Ellington was, of course, interested in hearing
and
the
Green Apple went
touched up the scoring “But why,”
nosebleed
in
was ready I
was
come
that
cleaned up the bowings and
I
had come
it
and might more
territory
“When
I
if
to the
it is
easily
be given
to a
very high but there
is
rehearsed the work in Cincinnati,”
we would
start
podium during if
the part
is
a break
He
way around
it.”
a
Duke
explained,
the second section at measure
and ask
too difficult,
It's
saxophone.”
the horn player had worked up the part, he’d raise his
musician’s feelings could be
me why
no one
hand
cut out his solo.
I
17,
On
embarrassed.”
is
more important than
actly in the maestro tradition.
much
guru. There was so to
The
logic
was Talmudic.
Duke went on
to learn.
the music I
itself
wasn’t ex-
had found
to explain that
a
new
he did not
introduce the saxophone into his symphonic works since the orches-
had so many wonderful colors of its own. The saxophone question would
come up
again,
and sooner than
me a
Ellington gave
ride
Duke was was
light.
in I
I
back
tone saxophonist Harry Carney,
thought. to
back with Joe Morgan,
man. ” As
I
About
next to the driver: bari-
sat
in the
band since the
man. The conversation
Joe about
“No chick wants
making such
to share
a big
her favors with
“You do
said,
it.”
“What?”
I
asked.
“You
my Black, Brown and Beige.” a
week
later,
we met
tration. His trusted assistant
at
Duke’s apartment
Torn Whaley
sat in.
to discuss the orches-
Whaley, who joined the
Ellington organization in 1941, had recently taken over responsibilities that told
1920s.
was getting out of the car on the corner of Sixty-
and West End Avenue, Duke
orchestrate
I
his publicity
remember Duke’s bantering with
a seventy-year-old sixth
Manhattan.
who had been
deal over Duke’s seventieth birthday:
He
off beautifully.
never found out what happened in Cincinnati, but the notion that a
I
tra
that
asked, “did you give such a high solo to the French horn?
the other hand,
want
him
told
few places, and that
in a
the orchestra that
knowing
I
for the question. “Yes,
all ears.
“I told
or
I
over.
how The Golden Broom
some
of the scoring
once were Strayhorn’s. Ellington talked about the music.
me the story behind the second section, “Come
Sunday,” about black
people standing outside a white church they could not enter and harmonizing with the beautiful music they heard from within, realizing that they
shared the same God.
He
supplied
me
with a tape of the January 23, 1943,
Carnegie Hall concert, an archival “location recording,” and full
scores for Black,
Brown and
all
Beige, published in 1963 by
a set of seven
Tempo
Duke
Music,
Ellington *57
his
own company. These were 5
the only
full
scores (jazz
band
orchestrations)
of his music that Ellington allowed to be published in his lifetime. Elling-
ton
composed almost
exclusively for his orchestra of hand-picked players,
and, like most big-band leaders, he guarded his scores from peering eyes.
Black Brown and Beige was the rare exception. ,
Duke
suggested that
I
band play at the White House day/’
same three
orchestrate the
Our
balked
at
I
had heard the
“Work Song,” “Come Sun-
Festival of the Arts:
and “Light.” These three sections made up the
Black.
sections
original
first
movement,
conversation turned to the scoring of “Come Sunday.” Ellington
the idea of using alto saxophone for the haunting solo that brings
“Come Sunday”
This time his reasoning had nothing
to a close.
Duke
using the available symphonic colors.
do with
did not want “to tempt anyone”
performance of Johnny Hodges.
into imitating the extraordinary original
Hodges had an uncommon,
to
bluesy, conversational
way of bending and
slid-
ing through a melody, reaching the true center of a pitch only at the resting
point of a principal note or phrase.
me, he would assign the solo in order to
We
encourage
met again
La Boheme
that
I
a
a
to
left
the band,
an instrument other than the
new and
few weeks
Hodges ever
If
alto
Duke
saxophone,
fresh interpretation.
later
was conducting
when Duke
for the
attended a performance of
Washington Opera
Society.
The
perb cast included Alan Titus as Marcello and the soon-to-be movie
Madeline Kahn, who
all
told
sustar
but stole the show with her comical interpretation of
Musetta. At the after-performance reception, Ellington was a center of attrac-
When
tion.
it
came time
evening was young
to leave,
who was
keyed up by the performance.
still
We
Duke.
as well for
bara Kheen, a friend of his
was
I
ended up
felt
the evening brought
me and
with Ellington on Queenie Pie had
While Beige was
my
orchestration of a
in the
still
planning
apartment of Bar-
a ballet consultant for the National
dowment for the Arts. High on Puccini and I
in the
the its
wine,
Duke
we
La Boheme
My later work night. 6
Symphonic Suite from Black, Brown and
stages,
an engagement
to
conduct the Chicago
Symphony at the Ravinia Festival in July 1970 came through. The management welcomed the idea of an Ellington premiere (my new tration)
on
a
program
Gershwin. With
this
that
En-
talked through the night.
closer together.
roots in that
The
festival
orches-
would include music by Bernstein, Copland, and
deadline
now
staring
me
in the face,
I
was bound
to
finish the score.
The Chicago Symphony
played the
new
orchestration amazingly well.
My trumpet-playing days were not that far behind aware of how
stylishly the orchestra’s
me, and
I
was particularly
legendary principal trumpeter, Adolph
Herseth, led the bra^s section, swinging the phrases and working away with his
plunger mute in the
Dvorak 158
to
Duke
Ellington
final
measures of “Light.”
Ellington,
tened July
I
am happy
to report,
to a private taping of the
5,
1970,
and made no
approved of
my
orchestration.
He
lis-
Ravinia performance, which took place on
fuss over
my orehestrational
decisions, nor did he
my using the alto saxophone in “Come Sunday.” His one caveat, into my memory— take a more deliberate tempo, especially for the
object to drilled
opening of “Work Song” — I have respected ever
Not long River
8 ,
after,
and Queenie
Duke Pie.
I
called
upon me
to
since. 7
work on
his ballet score,
The
was becoming one of Ellington's “symphony men.”
Duke
Ellington *59
*>
V
'
«
i6
Ellington’s
In the late
man
fall
of 1970, at Ellington’s insistence,
I
was engaged by Peter Her-
Adler, director of the National Educational Television
Duke
pany, to help for
Queenie Pie
prepare a piano-vocal score and eventually orchestrations
Queenie Pie what he ,
sion.
I
Opera Com-
slyly referred to as his
“opera comique,” for
did this periodically for the next three years, through the
of Ellington’s
summer
life.
NET Opera had given advance, after hearing sitting at the
last
televi-
him
Ellington a commission, and the requisite cash sing, play,
keyboard — the Duke
and
at his
tell
the story of Queenie Pie while
most charming
But the vocal
self.
score and script were slow in coming. Ellington was busy, on the road, keep-
ing his orchestra working in a shrinking market.
He was
getting ready to fo-
cus his creative energies on the Third Sacred Concert. Perhaps he
was running out of time.
and pry I
a score out of
My task was to bring Ellington
back
to
knew he
Queenie Pie
him.
caught up with Ellington and the band
in
January 1971 while they were
playing a two-week engagement at the Shamrock-Hilton Hotel in Houston,
Texas.
1
I
looked somewhat contrived, as nie Pie set-up.” Betty
if
McGettigan,
typing away at the script. uscript.
Duke had
said,
his traveling
Duke was on
to his suite.
The scene
“Quick, get out the Quee-
companion and
secretary,
was
the bed, surrounded by sheets of man-
He showed me where he stood
dozen or
and went up
arrived early in the afternoon
with the score and handed
so parodical television jingles
me a
half-
he had composed about Queenie’s
161 *
beauty products
(for
businesswoman
Queenie was
a highly successful
queen).
was EIJington’s idea
as a celebrated beauty'
It
to “interrupt” his tele-
commercials and news bulletins about Queenie’s
vision opera with
as well
and
life
times:
you are agreeable
If
Of your
favorite
guy
You can make him
hit the sky
apply some Queenie Pie
Just
And
try,
I
The most an
when
1973,
.
.
one trumpet,
Ellington was appearing at the
sixty-fifth floor
drums, two
bass,
vocalists,
Rainbow
NBC Building in Rock-
of the
band was scaled down:
efeller Center. Ellington’s tion,
.
.
work on Queenie Fie took place during the summer
intensive
deco heaven on the
art
.
.
mean, BUY.
months of 1972 and Grill,
eye
to the
a full (five-man) sax sec-
and the maestro
at the
concert
grand. 2 set
I
brought list I
up shop Pinned
in.
Duke’s dressing room, and we had a small piano
to the wall,
we had
of the tunes
would
in the
where he couldn’t miss
sets
drawn
so winningly in his
around three o’clock
Duke was one symphonic tone poem
wee
tween
into the
“dummy”
lyric,
counterthemes and orchestration.
his ideas for
and
my long check-
was
already committed to paper and those yet to be done.
write as he played: the tune, the
sometimes
it,
hours.
in the
the chords, and
We
worked be-
of those “night creatures”
of the
same name. Once,
morning, Ellington decided we should take
a
break and go to the Stage Deli, then an after-hours gathering place for showbusiness people.
waving
act.
When we
Ellington told
got to the street,
me
to relax
I
went
into
my New York
and quietly walked
taxi-
to the curb. In a
matter of seconds three cabs careened over, vying to pick us up.
was
It
Once
the
a
heady time.
word got around
pressing notes on cians, both I
me
as
down-at-the-heels
Duke cat.
creetly peel off a bill in the
Rainbow
that
in the catbird seat, backstage with the I
high,
flames and
wannabe flames — began
Miles Davis was
who came
to
many musirespects. More than
among
pay their
the
signaled his son, Mercer, to give “a taste” to
Mercer,
who was then managing the
from a large
Grill,
Duke.
passed unchallenged in and out of the great
to pass on.
humble and
watched
was
women — old
man’s dressing room,
once
I
Duke
roll
he carried and
slip
it
some
band, would
to
dis-
him. Out front
unobtrusively initialed table checks for his
friends.
One August night in
1973, Richard
Burton came
to the grill
with his teen-
age daughter, whose birthday was being celebrated. Ellington coaxed
on
stage,
Dvofak 162
to
and he began
Duke
Ellington
to recite
Shakespeare while the band played.
him up “I
usu-
ally get a big fee for this,”
quipped Burton." The audience wanted more. Bur-
poem of praise for Duke and the band. During the break Burton came backstage. Duke explained my presence and all the music paper strewn about. “It’s for a new opera comique, Queenie Pie," Ellington told Burton. “Here’s a number you could sing.” Ellington pulled out “Women,” a bluesy, slow’, swinging ballad, and before he ton finished with an “improvisation,” a talking blues
could think, Burton was reciting
to Ellington’s piano:
Women B
Women
eautiful
Coinin’ on like crazy Will she stay or go? Ellington began envisioning his plans for Queenie Pie. Lena his
choice for Queenie.
which was
ton’s orchestra,
and
Duke himself would to
I
would conduct
Elling-
be supplemented with French horns, a harp,
Queenie
a small string section.
narrate.
Horne was
Pie’s fantasy
scenes would especially
benefit from a broader orchestral palette: Synopsis: street in
The
first
scene opens on a beauty' pageant being held on a
Harlem. Mendelssohnian hymns of praise, sung by an assem-
blage of dignitaries, are being offered in Queenie’s honor, and there
an immediate response of affirmation, by “second-line”
style,
We soon
in jazzy
New
Orleans prance
street people.
Queenie barely scraped through
learn that
is
as the
winner. Clearly
her days on the beauty' queen’s throne are numbered.
The scene
shifts to
her boudoir. As she studies herself in the mirror,
the reassuring voice of her paramour, Big Daddy,
You Make
that
man, reminds Li’l
Daddy
Hat Look
her,
“
t
hose
has a solution.
land,” where,
little girl
He
Moon
on “Full
But
Pretty.”
Li’l
is
heard:
“Oh Gee,
Daddy, her trusted house-
competitors are cornin’ too close.”
conjures up a vision,
Midnight,”
“My
Father’s
a singing tree unfolds
Is-
its
arms and releases a magic potion.
Here Ellington
takes his inspiration
Hair Straightening Cream. Li’l this
Daddy: There’s
Li’l
from
Daddy
a thing that
Madame
C.
J.
Walker’s celebrated
confides in Queenie:
grows
in the heart of the tree,
thing someday will be the basic ingredient for every
product— medical, cosmetic, needs
is
for
someone
to
industrial
go and get
it.
and
modern
and physical energy. And
It’s
called the
NUCLI, and
all it it’s
yours for the taking.
Ellington's Queenie Pie l6 3
Queenie: Li’l
Daddy,
Li’l
Daddy: Two inches
Queenie: Will Li’l
Daddy: Daddy:
it
it
make
hair grow?
a day.
freckles go?
remove
A touch
a wrinkle?
in a twinkle.
Queenie: What about Li’l
Will
wipe ’em away.
Just
Queenie: Will Li’l
make
it
NUCLI?
this
a blister?
Daddy: She’d think her sweetheart
kissed her. 4
Queenie Pie boards her speedboat and lands on the
moon
midnight, and a
of tree sirens sings “Smile As
trio
nie and the boat crew dash off with the
“Hey Now,
nie strut-sings,
wrecked
I
and
You Go
sail
It is full
By.”
Quee-
into the sea.
Quee-
Don’t Need Nobody Now,” but they are ship-
as the first act ends.
The second changed
and grabbed
into skins,
beach
to see
island.”
We meet the hip
turned off their
air conditioners,
on “another uncharted
act opens
Harlemites from Act One. They have
to the
NUCLI
island.
just
their spears
and drums
as they
head down
what has washed up on shore. Queenie wakes up
to the
poke of a spear and the eerie chanting of “Eenuff, Iinoof, Angalong, Dangalong. ...”
They
sing a war song:
STICK IT IN JAB IT
PULL IT OUT GRAB IT
AND STICK IT RIGHT BACK ... IN AGAIN DON’T BE AFRAID TO WEAR WAR PAINT GOTTA LOOK MEAN, EVEN THOUGH YOU AIN’T (End of first part of the
synopsis)
Harlemites “going native” had already surfaced in Ellington’s plan for a 1940s musical he called “Air Conditioned Jungle,” and again in (194 1 ).
Jump
for Joy
5
These ironical send-ups of nativist cliches have a long history in black minstrelsy, as well as in early black
there
is
a similar
scene in
homey— and one can
full
Broadway
theatricals
jungle regalia in
find a parallel in the
— as already noted,
Cook and Dunbar’s
In
Da-
whooping and feigned scalping
in
American Indian Wild West shows. At the end of our second summer’s work on Queenie Pie, a progress-report-cum-audition for Ellington
Herman Adler and
his assistants),
on West Fifty-eighth
Dvorak 164
to
Duke
Street. Betty
Ellington
and the
which took place
I
put together
NET Opera folks (Peter
at
Duke’s
summer sublet
McGettigan provided an up-to-date
script.
I
prepared a vocal score of lead sheets. With a few of the singers from Mass
and myself chording
at the piano,
I
demo
prepared a rough-and-tumble
tape
of some of the best songs. I
assumed
and
that Adler
opera pros, would
his assistants, all
fill
in the
gaps as they listened to the tape while following the music, but Adler did not
have a jazz bone in his body. They
sat stone-faced,
words of the “keep up the good work”
and
left.
beauties in this score
swinging sexy
— the
struts for
royal family
his
moonlight and magic
blue
to
there
no such thing
is
my orchestra
the late spring
for a “serious”
demo tape. By this
I
London,
people ap-
time Ellington had checked I
was not on the short I
sent
him
list
seventy-
engaged three wonderful singers — Robert Guillaume, Lee
make
new demo
the
a terrific jazz trio, with
died on
May 24,
1974, be-
new music director for the news came. The Modern Jazz Quartet
Kansas City, being introduced
as well,
Duke
tape.
Tom Pierson at
the sessions.
Kansas City Philharmonic,
and we
when
all
the
cathedral, located
as the
took the same flight back to
the funeral, held at the Cathedral of
The
NET Opera
We spoke by phone a few times, and
we could schedule
was there
tape!”
(blue being his favorite color) for his birthday on April 29. In
the keyboard, to
in
demo
in Texas. Ellington left for
midwinter the
24, 1973. In
Hooper, and Ernestine Jackson — and
was
as a
Third Sacred Concert in Westminster Abbey before the
visitors.
irises
not hear the
kind. All he
himself into the Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. of permitted
in front
Queenie and Big Daddy? Duke was very
on October
proved a budget
I
was mortified
music, the
soon headed back
where he gave
fore
few awkward
tree
exotic
“Remember, Maurice,
said was,
five
I
a
How could they, despite the unpolished performances,
of Duke.
I
variety,
mumbled
uptown
St.
New York to attend
John the Divine.
just
south of Columbia University and
on the edge of Harlem, has become the ecumenical heart and soul of cre-
New York.
ative
I
attended several of David Amram’s magical American In-
dian Thanksgiving concerts als
and memorial
at the cathedral
and have since attended funer-
services given there for Virgil
Roach’s African
drum
John Lewis; but
it
was
The huge crowd arranged a place for
Thomson, Alvin
Ailey
(Max
processional was awesome), Leonard Bernstein, and for
Duke
Ellington that
I
made my
first
pilgrimage.
of mourners overflowed into the streets. Ruth Ellington
me
near the family.
I
carried a rose in Duke’s honor. As
the casket was taken out, Alice Babs’s soprano soared to the highest reaches of the cathedral, and I
made
a
vow
to
their rightful journey.
A few months meeting
at
broke down.
I
help get Duke’s symphonic works published and on I
couldn’t imagine what would happen to Queenie Pie.
after
Duke’s passing, the
which they decided
that
NET Opera directors had a big
Queenie Pie without Ellington was not
Ellington’s Queenie Pie 165
a
good
idea. Fortunately,
There was no way
had gone ahead and recorded the new demo
I
could know'
I
lead to a full stage production.
It
at the ‘time,
American Music Theater
would take twelve
that
I
and principal
demo
brought the
of the theater
mained
orchestrator.
tape and
were
re-creation,
work
in 1973, a
It
Up
I
was engaged by
Band and
the
to serve as
mu-
was while working on that project
TV script of Queenie
festival’s artistic advisor,
as they
years.
Festival of Philadelphia to help reconstruct
Gershwin’s 1929/31 Broadway musical Strike sic director
but the tape would ultimately
on the strength of my Aeolian Hall
In 1985,
the
it
tape.
The
Eric Salzman.
and
in progress,
Pie to the attention
tape and script re-
was
it
my hope
that the
AMT Festival would be interested in a workshop production, along the lines of what they were doing at the time for
Anthony
Salzman was quite taken with Queenie a
new work by
and score
sic
and
The workshop
full
idea was
A young unknown writer,
responsibility for the book.
orchestrator, but
difficult negotiations, a deal
production
X.
and the notion of presenting
into a full stage production.
my first task was to
from the huge body of Ellington’s work
and
Malcolm
AMT Festival set out to expand the one-hour narrated tel-
George Wolfe, was given sic director
,
Ellington was extremely tempting.
scrapped, and the evision script
Pie
Davis’s opera
to flesh
I
would again be mu-
compile additional muout the score. After long
was struck with Mercer Ellington giving the
access to Ellington’s published and unpublished works, ex-
cept for those in the Broadway show Sophisticated Ladies. Mercer also relin-
quished
artistic
chestra be the
allow
me
Duke
add
to
control over Queenie Pie, with the proviso that the pit or-
a
Ellington Orchestra, which he was then leading.
French horn and
He
did
a synthesizer but balked at including
strings for the projected orchestrations.
Mercer provided
me
with photocopies from a huge cache of sketch-
books and loose sheets of music manuscripts that could find “new” music
for the
expanded Queenie
cess to the composer’s hideaway,
wondrous sea of sketches,
scraps,
I
felt
Duke Pie.
At
hope
left,
in the
first,
given free ac-
I
discomfited, then boozy, afloat in a
phone numbers, and more-or-less com-
pleted compositions. T here were countless melodies to blues changes and
dozens of Duke’s idiosyncratic scores, complete arrangements
for the
band,
written out in his peculiar shorthand system, ready to be copied.
Ellington laid out his scores in concert pitch on four staves. Four of the
saxophones, two alto and two tenors, are grouped together on the top ten with particular players’
stands alone
sounds.
On
trombones,
names
on the second
the third staff
is
staff,
166
to
attached. Harry Carney’s baritone sax line in treble clef,
in bass clef, share the fourth
Duke
Ellington
one octave higher than
the music for four “cors,” the trumpets.
are also frequently assigned by
Dvorak
staff, of-
and bottom
staff.
The
it
Three
brass players
name. Sometimes Ellington adds
a string bass
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16.2
Ellington anagrams on hotel stationery.
Courtesy of Mercer Ellington.
line to the
trombone
Rarely are there any indications for the
staff.
or for himself at the piano
There were some
6 .
surprises in the sketchbooks: a score for a full sym-
phony orchestra — something Ellington was never known double column of anagrams, printed stationary, represented
in block letters
to
do himself 7 ;
for “Polka,”
On another sheet of hotel
a
on Detroit Hilton hotel
an evening’s worth of tunes Ellington was planning
have the band play— KLOP stands
Wisconsin .” 8
drummer
UWIZ”
stationery (the
to
for “University of
Shoreham Hotel and
Motor Inn of Washington, D.C.) Ellington scribbled out an
entire tune us-
ing but one line for a
clef. It
ically Ellingtonian
amazed
Dvorak 168
at
to
how
Duke
staff:
the E, or bottom, line of the treble
— maximum
well
it
was
expression through minimal means.
I
worked. There were poems, some quite personal.
Ellington
typ-
was
Figure
16.3
Ellington one-line staff on hotel stationery.
Courtesy of Mercer Ellington.
I
among the sketches: a end of Act One titled “Beautiful”;
did find interesting material for Queenie Pie
Queenie
soaring ballad for
to sing at the
three blues choruses that worked in counterpoint with one another that cast into a
canonic song called “Style”; and a blues
former trumpeter with Ellington and veloped into a show-stopper, “Blues
a brilliant
for
lick that Barry
Beige,
also established a
I
Two Women.” The
Queenie
Hall,
composer and arranger, de-
“new” songs were by George David Weiss. Using what
Brown and
Lee
re-
I
I
lyrics for these
learned from Black
leitmotif that
I
laced through-
out the work as transitional music and in dream sequences.
The producers
felt
there
still
remained
a
problem with Ellington’s non-
ending. Ellington had never really resolved Queenie’s tain her title as
When we
Queenie left
Pie, the reigning
dilemma
of how to re-
beauty queen of Harlem.
the story of Queenie Pie,
Queenie was
lying
on the shore
of “another uncharted island”:
Synopsis (continued): She wakes up on the beach to find herself sur-
rounded by “natives” and quickly
sizes
up the
situation.
Queenie
se-
Ellington’s Queenie Pie
169
duces the King with a
trilly
“Come
Mozartian parody,
My
into
Boudoir, Your Majesty,” only to erherge minutes later announcing her
triumph with
a growling, funky,
Ding the Gong, His Majesty's Queenie operatic style
— “Just lucky, “Then
I
fate
guess, just lucky”
decided
I
life. It
begins again in a breezy
— and builds to a false climax
should be a
real
Queen
circumstances thrown in-n-n-n.” Queenie holds the
mask comes ally
where the King's belong.”
at,
sings a soliloquy, the story of her
with the ironic,
pomp and
enigmatic shout, “Blow the Horn and
mean,
I
off,
and “in-n-n-n” turns
know where
wouldn't
into “n-n-if I
to begin.”
were
Woman
in
A
sion says, ‘No
re-
I
Wanna Be
the
a two-part form, a
transformed into jazz revelation.
rescue boat arrives but
Madam,
what
Town.”
classical aria
“Sorry,
The
Queenie then pours out her
For both of the above examples Ellington employs parody of a
the
all
last note.
to tell you,
soul in a heartachingly slow, slow, confessional blues, “I Don’t
Lonely-est
with
Crown
Prince, the King's son, intercedes:
but the Supreme Constitutional
Crown Head must
EVER
Document
of Deci-
leave this Islandin'"
Ellington ended his “opera comique” with Queenie imprisoned on the land.
She would never return
George Wolfe was
find herself
still
Harlem
brilliant.
characters, conceptions,
the ending. Wolfe has
to
to face the inevitable.
His book incorporated most of Ellington’s
and choice pieces of dialogue, and he reimagined
Queenie wake up from her magic-island “dream”
in her
is-
to
boudoir in Harlem. Queenie has acquired wisdom. to
her
new
competitor, Cafe O’Lay, taking comfort in the idea of living out her
life
with
She accepts the truth of her situation and turns over her crown
Big Daddy, the storyteller and Queenie’s paramour. Big Daddy, a composite
invention of Wolfe’s, serves throughout the play as the Ellingtonian figure.
Garth Fagin's dance troupe was incorporated into the company and pro-
movement that drew a
vided
vernacular
art.
fine line
In a matter of months
between Broadway cliche and precious
we
delivered an opera
comique
that re-
ceived critical acclaim everywhere except in the eyes and ears of the tough
Broadway oligarchy
that decides
Queenie Pie was moved Roger it
L. Stevens,
to
what shows book space
in their theaters.
Washington, D.C., by one enthusiastic producer,
chairman of the board of the Kennedy Center, where again
was well received. By that time, the winter of 1986-87, both George Wolfe
and
I
had
please the a full
to
other projects. Garth introduced
some changes, hoping
Broadway crowd, but Queenie Pie closed
house
Dvorak 170
left for
in early 1987, the
Duke
Ellington
same year I returned
to
in
Washington, D.C.,
to to
Black Brown and Beige. ,
*7
Ellington’s Black
Brown and Beige
,
My first hands-on
experience with Black, Brown and Beige had been the
chestration of the
Symphonic
and
his
band play at the White House
come
a
then
suffered
I
proponent of the work
work available
As with a
in
no doubts when for
symphony
The Symphonic
I
its
for
aesthetic,
of a jazz work
is
music
heard
I
Duke
Over time I would be-
original form, for jazz orchestra, but
players
to
make
back
at least a part of the
and audiences.
Suite
symphony
some
Festival in 1965.
plunged ahead
literary translation or a
composition
and
Suite, the extraordinary
or-
screen adaptation, recasting a jazz band
orchestra raises several issues,
practical.
some philosophic
many jazz purists, a symphonic adaptation in terms. Some Ellingtonians reject any kind
For
a contradiction
of re-creation, believing that the Ellington Orchestra died with him, and only
the archival location recording or Ellington’s later studio recordings and air
checks of excerpts can represent Black, Brown and Beige. Nevertheless, Ellington conceived his large-scale programmatic work for
the concert hall, and he had
Moreover, Ellington gave
it
published in 1963 so that others could play
his blessing to the idea of a
Perhaps he remembered the review of
who wore two hats for the
its
symphonic
it.
version.
1942 premiere by Irving Kolodin,
occasion, critic for the
New York Sun and
program-
171 *
“One can
note annotator for Carnegie Hall: ideas [Black,
only conclude that the brilliant
Brown and Beige contained would count
for
much more
if
]
scored for a legitimate orchestra, augmented by the solo instruments indi-
among the
cated for certain specific passages.” Kolodin’s encouraging review 1
many naysayers low
me to suspect that he got closer to the work than his fel-
leads
and gained respect
critics
for
by attending rehearsals and interviewing
it
Ellington in preparation for writing the program notes.
What, then, provised passages
some of
are is
the
first
to
the challenges
come
I
The handling
faced?
of im-
mind. But Black Brown and Beige has
to
,
no purely improvised passages. In Ellington’s autograph score of the work,
now
in the collection of his
music
at the
Smithsonian
Institution, the “im-
provised” solos, even the celebrated ones for tenor saxophonist
Most of these
are written out by the composer! to
symphonic instruments, and
ers
who cannot reproduce In
intact.
my
orchestration,
The
rarely
I
come
solos
horn sections.
I
also
I
and
a jazz
I
leave most, but not
all,
orchestral play-
of Ellington’s brass parts
freely
reworked
“call
for the string,
and respond”
woodwind,
or
keep intact the unifying jazz rhythm section
drummer — but drop I
remain part of the
the all-but-inaudible
As we know, Ellington rarely wrote out a drummer’s
Sonny Greer’s
be transferred
the improvisatory flavor of the original.
lightly amplified jazz bassist (the other basses
tion)
modern
across
blend rich harmonies so magnificently, and can
—
easily
saxophones — which whisper countermelodies and
parts for
toe with the brass
can
Ben Webster,
playing,
ing throughout, and
I
on
traps
part.
toe-to-
French
— a single string sec-
rhythm
But
I
guitar.
transcribed
and timpani, from the 1943 location record-
found many opportunities
for other percussion in-
struments as well.
My
single greatest challenge
was
to
capture the inflections, phrasing,
and coloring of Duke’s own magnificent orchestra. Informed by
formance
tradition, these sonifications
through notation. Nevertheless,
cannot be adequately conveyed
carefully transcribed dynamics, durations,
I
and rhythms, turning swinging eighth-note passages essary.
And added bowings I
that
a living per-
make
it
into triplets
where nec-
possible for a large string section to
swing.
Common
sense
tells 11s
that
an ensemble of seventy or more players
spread out on a big stage cannot be as rhythmically tight as a fifteen-piece jazz
band gathered around
a
swinging drummer.
monically rich, sweeping music such
as that of
On
the other hand, har-
“Come Sunday”
profits
from
the delicacy and sheen of massed strings.
For alto
“Come
I
went against Ellington’s wishes and used
saxophone. This decision was not
version, the alto
Dvofak 172
Sunday,”
to
Duke
saxophone makes
Ellington
made
lightly. 2 In
a solo
the original jazz-band
a dramatic entrance after a heaving, train-
— a splendid example of Albert Murray’s favorite Ellinglocomotive onomatopoeia’ — to which Ellington adds a few
musical figure
like
ton metaphor,
my symphonic
church-piano chords." In
and the ensuing silence
into the distance,
keening
alto
this perfect
humming
song over a
its
orchestration the train music fades is
broken by the entrance of the
thirteenth chord.
To deny
confluence of moment, melody, and instrument, an essential part
of Ellington’s genius, would in
One exchange
I
my view be
a sacrilege.
me
had with Ellington gave
a
glimpse of the loose
boundaries between composer, performer, and arranger that comfortable with.
When
I
to his attention
my feeling
When
protested that
I
I
Duke seemed
that “Light,” the last
ended abruptly. Duke agreed and
suite,
‘Come
ply said, “Use did.’’
brought
ending.
to write a bigger
it
I
new
section of the
than
ourselves
me
blithely told
wasn’t a composer, he sim-
made more money new ending to him over
Sunday.’ That tune should have
my
sang and played
ideas for a
me to stretch out and go even further, emWas this scenario in its own way similar to
the phone, Ellington encouraged
powering
me
outdo myself.
to
what happened between Ellington and Strayhorn? Duke’s inclusive way of introducing his music to audiences
— “one
of our latest compositions”
—
is
not purely self-effacement. In the
of 1987 John Lewis asked
fall
version of Black
me to conduct the original
jazz-band
Brown and Beige with the American Jazz Orchestra,
,
a
York-based repertory ensemble founded by Lewis and the author and
Gary Giddins.
I
had not forgotten Duke’s response
ception twenty-two years earlier,
symphony
for
orchestra: “What’s
when
I
at the
New critic
White House
re-
suggested that the work be rescored
wrong with
it
the
way
it
is?”
And
I
took on
the assignment with a large measure of curiosity' and as an act of personal re-
demption,
having ignored Duke’s original conception.
for
Original Jazz
Band Version
Ellington shied away from playing Black, Brown its
Carnegie Hall premiere.
He might
large
critics
seemed unprepared
movements — the
first
ever,
continue
Brown. the
title
to
perform
Of Beige he played
all
a
and extensive
six shorter sections,
rise
entirety after its
mixed
re-
a work: three
the
last
an un-
master of short forms. Ellington did, how-
or parts of the
first
two movements, Black and
only excerpts: the opening jungle-style music under
“War” and an evocative slow dance, “Sugar
With the
its
much too long.” 4 The 1943 au-
for so serious
two comprising
broken twenty-minute essay— from
in
have been intimidated by
ception: “brilliant, complex, highly original, but
dience and
and Beige
of the jazz repertory
movement
Hill Penthouse.” 5 in the early 1970s
Ellington’s Black,
came
a
Brown and Beige
m
renewed
Black Brown and Beige. Alan Cohen, a British jazz sax-
interest in
,
ophonist and arranger, edited Ellington's
me with — and performed and
one he had provided 1972.
tory
Tempo Music
score
recorded
it
— the
in
same
London
in
Hyman presented the same version with the New York jazz ReperCompany at the Smithsonian Institution in the mid-1970s. Jazz audiDick
ences were becoming more accustomed to hearing their music in concert halls,
and
in
symphonic proportions; Ellington’s “tone
of the Negro in America”
parallel to the history
over forty-four minutes long, as lengthy as
is
Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony.
The American
Jazz Orchestra performance of the original Black,
and Beige took place dation Building. that
I
would
It
in the historic Great Hall of the
was the
Cooper Union Foun-
of five such engagements, plus a recording,
first
direct over the next decade. 6
formance from backstage.
Brown
Dizzy Gillespie listened
He was brought to the
to the per-
concert by his protege, John
Faddis, the orchestra’s “power lead” and high-note trumpet specialist, literally
and
figuratively elevated the
Ellington’s spoken introductions,
AJO trumpet section. Bobby
which
I
who
Short read
had retrieved from the archival
cation recording of the 1943 Carnegie Hall premiere.
A year later,
lo-
in 1989
,
re-created that entire concert.
Ellington’s Carnegie Hall
Concert of January I
began by poring over
23, 1943
a
copy of the original program booklet. Ellington’s
concert took place on a Saturday, sandwiched between a pair of
Philharmonic subscription concerts led by Bruno Walter. And
my disbelief in
The evening was Russian
War
appearance
just to
mock
coincidence, the featured soloist was the Philharmonic’s con-
certmaster, John Corigliano
to
New York
billed as a
Relief,”
in music’s
to
imply there had been an earlier
mecca. But Ellington was purposely conflating
his
New Yorkers heard his music and
his
“Washingtonians” orchestra to
“Twentieth Anniversary Concert, Proceeds
which seemed
Carnegie Hall debut with the
The “Proceeds
Dvorak’s Violin Concerto.
Sr., in
first
time
at the
Russian
Hollywood nightclub.
War
Relief’
is
harder to explain. Like most
musicians of his generation, especially musicians of color, Ellington
made
sure he was perceived as apolitical. His fiercely held political concerns were
expressed in his music, not with speeches. Relief, a nonprofit corporation that
would
The (United
States) Russian
War
collect over $50 million by 1944,
was a broad-based organization that included highly politicized garment workers, black civic and political organizers,
Dvorak
m
to
Duke
Ellington
churchmen, and other union-
-
Many of these were
ists.
with the Nazis wore out
may have been ers
old lefties happily back in the fold after Stalin’s pact its
jazz devotees
were more apt
USSR joined the Allies. There
usefulness and the
among them,
but Russian
War
Relief support-
enjoy singing workers’ songs such as “Joe Hill” (by Earl
to
Robinson and Alfred Hayes) or tunes from the old country while strumming
on mandolins and
guitars.
On
the other hand, Ellington had every right to
expect that his frankly political work, a musicalization of the “history of the
Negro
in
America,” would
Besides the war-relief
fall
on sympathetic
activists,
ears.
there were also musical notables in
at-
tendance— among them Benny Goodman, whose presence was meaningful.
Goodman had hoped his
to
have the Ellington orchestra
start off the
landmark “Sing, Sing, Sing” concert, which had been held
Hall
on January
six years earlier,
best players:
finally
in
for
Carnegie
Ellington sent a few of his
16, 1938. Instead,
Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, and Cootie Williams. Duke was
wise to wait, and his sense of propriety
band
evening
played Carnegie Hall
days,” according to the
New Yorker8
won
The program
“pianist-leader”
Hammond,
Jimmy Lunceford
and
and
his
as
were Count Basie
with Jack Mills.
listing ran for three pages, starting
Ellington’s sixteen-man orchestra
Ellington and his
— “practically a social obligation these — the “King of Swing” was seated among
the “honored guests” in a box with John
with Marian Anderson and
When
out.
two
with the
members
vocalists. Ellington
is
of
listed as
Billy Strayhorn as “ass’t arranger.”
Program I.
Ellington-Miley
Black and Tan Fantasy
Ellington-Carney
Rockin’ in
Mercer Ellington
Blue Serge
Rhythm
Jumpin’ Punk ins II.
Ellington
Portrait of Bert
Williams
Portrait of Bojangles Portrait of
Florence Mills III.
Ellington
Black Brown and Beige ,
(A Tone Parallel to the History of the Negro in America) Intermission IV.
Ellington
The Flaming Sword
Ellington’s Black,
Brown and Beige 175
Dirge
Billy Strayhorn
Nofcturne
Stomp V.
Are Yon Stickin’
Ellington
(Chauncey Haughton,
clarinet)
Bakiff
Tizol
(Juan Tizol, valve trombone; Ray Nance, violin) Jack the Bear
Ellington
(Alvin Raglin, string bass)
Blue Belles of Harlem 9
Ellington
(Duke
Ellington, piano)
Cotton Tail
Ellington
(Ben Webster, tenor saxophone)
Day Dream
Ellington-Strayhorn
(Johnny Hodges,
saxophone)
alto
Rose of the Rio Grande
Warren-Gorman-Eeslie
(Lawrence Brown, trombone)
Trumpet
Ellington
in
Spades
(Rex Stewart, cornet) VI.
Don’t Get Around
Ellington
Performing
this
epochal
list,
Goin’
Up
Mood
Indigo
Much Anymore
veritably Ellington’s musical autobiogra-
phy, took over three and a half hours; the concert ended at midnight.
was
I
to find parts
Brown and
and scores
for all this
Beige. For the rest,
I
went
Smithsonian Institution archives In a truly important
in
music?
I
had the materials
Washington, D.C. act,
and with the help and support of
the Congressional Black Caucus, Duke’s son, Mercer,
He
turned over
for Black,
held in the
to the Ellington Collection,
and generous
agreement with the Smithsonian
Where
Institution’s archives
to their care the vast library of
had worked out an
during the
late 1980s.
autograph scores, manuscripts,
arrangements, and other materials that his father had saved and collected over the half century of his career (the sketchbooks
I
perused
were not included), thus making them forever available sicians. T
Queenie Pie
to scholars
he Smithsonian’s Duke Ellington Collection contained
half the music to
for
I
needed.
Some
pieces were incomplete.
The
rest
a
and mu-
little
over
would have
be transcribed. Fortunately, Carnegie Hall had installed a recording studio by the time
Dvorak 176
to
Duke
Ellington
The
Ellington played there, and acetate discs of the concert were made.
equipment was
by today's standards, and the single microphone
low-fidelity
employed was often overwhelmed by a booming location recording
brought
made
bass
drum; nevertheless,
possible transcriptions of the missing material
to light several deviations
this
and
from the printed program. 10
Transcribing, whether of a single-line jazz solo or of a complete arrange-
ment, has long been a cottage industry Paul
Whiteman acknowledged
Many
in the jazz
and big-band community.
transcribers as early as 1926:
conductors and arrangers can adapt an orchestration from hear-
ing a record played.
I
am
told that
when
a record
is
made by
certain
Eastern orchestras, arrangers of orchestras in the West and Middle
West gather
for the first playing with
paper and pencil.
have heard
I
[bands playing] some of our arrangements obtained in that way. 11
Young arrangers-to-be side the
learned their craft by transcribing and getting deep
work of Bill Challis, chief arranger
for
derson, and, of course, the Duke.
Some
wear out an old 78 with repeated
listenings.
has changed.
The accuracy
Others
of a transcription
Our
still
Hen-
or Fletcher
transcribers used a piano
of the recording and the good ears, listening transcriber.
Whiteman,
sat at a desk.
in-
and could
Not much
depends upon the quality
skills,
and musicianship of the
12
masterful transcriber was tenor saxophonist
Mark Lopeman.
I
took
additional passes at the recording and wrote phrase markings, dynamics, and expressive details into Mark’s transcribed scores before the parts were copied. After hours of close listening,
I
began
instrumental coloring had changed in the 1943 concert,
and how subtle was the
how much
to realize
Almost every long, sustained note
of
Duke and
as
Duke’s
to edit.
sax,
and gil
lifts
and when
Thomson
The
to
sax
and
rises
clarinet players
add portamento
and
end of a
who knew
falls;
exactly
they breathed
knew where
(tiny slides)
between
to
add
notes.
to-
little lilts
And,
as Vir-
lamented, the world was softer back then. Ellington’s guitarist
and bass player were the only band members using
These days everyone sax
band.
trumpet, and trombone sections phrased
one, shaping melodic lines with nuanced
gether and blended.
his
that Ellington wrote at the
phrase was snipped off in perfect unison by his players,
when and where
and
years that passed since the
fifty
artistry
jazz phrasing
gets a
microphone, even
mouthpieces and reeds are
edge sound of modern
mouthpieces and
brasses.
softer reeds,
“set
But
up”
to
in
‘Tight amplification.”
Carnegie Hall. Modern
match the power and
in the 1940s the saxes
which enabled them
to
cutting-
used hard rubber
produce
a
humming
“subtone.” Ellington’s players were working together
fifty
weeks
a year in the 1940s.
Ellington's Black
,
Brown and Beige *77
They learned scratch.
and complicated Black, Brown and Beige from
the long
But the
rest
of the program was put of their current “book/’ which
they could play practically from memory. For the Carnegie Hall re-creation 1
had
a
band of New York freelancers facing three hours’ worth of manuscript
music, only a small amount of which was familiar. eral old-time Ellingtonians
among them
the style,
Ellington’s clarinetist,
Roland Hanna,
a
engage
to
sev-
and younger aficionados who purportedly knew
from the Caribbean; Milt Hinton, rock-steady rian; Sir
was able
I
Jimmy Hamilton, flown up bassist
swinging virtuoso pianist
and
jazz
photo
who had made
histo-
a study
of Ellington’s keyboard style; Frank Wess, master big-band saxophonist;
John Faddis, trumpet genius. 13
We
were about
holy ground.
to visit
I
and pro-
vided the players with copies of the location recording, and the results were gratifying.
“Trumpet in Spades,” one of Duke’s eight mini-concertos, exploited Rex Stewart’s a
unique “half-valve” technique. Normally, when
trumpet or cornet valve
to
full
its
depth, the air stream
an extra length of pipe. But someone somewhere jazz history discovered that
in
by depressing the valve
entire vocabulary of buzzes, bends, groans,
and
is
our
less
a player depresses
redirected through
rich,
than
still
its
rusty whispers
uncharted
full
depth an
can be coaxed
out of the horn. Stewart was the undisputed master of the half-valve.
seemed
solos with “ghost” notes that
ment. John Faddis, best known
trumpet playing, came down
to
come from deep
inside the instru-
to earth
and recreated Stewart’s
solo.
which
It
was ob-
valve,
and
at
find a given sound.
asked Frank Wess to share the conducting and rehearsing duties with
I
me,
his
for his pyrotechnical altissimo (piccolo range)
vious he had spent long hours studiously analyzing with
what depth, he would
He humanized
partly to avoid
my being cast in the role of Duke
Ellington, but
portant to have the input of a highly respected veteran.
swinging jewels
like “Cottontail,”
Wess
led
more im-
most of the
and “Jack the Bear,” Duke’s homage
to the
legendary stride pianist which enigmatically features the bass; our soloist was Milt Hinton.
I
conducted the opening and closing sequences and of course
Black Brown and Beige. Frank also played the iconic Johnny Hodges ,
“Come
Sunday” solo using Johnny’s horn, which he had purchased from Hodges’s widow. Ours was
a reverent,
if
With the approach of the I
reserved, re-creation.
fiftieth
anniversary of Black,
proposed that Music Masters make a
original.
Unbeknownst
to
digital
Brown and
Beige,
recording of the jazz-band
me, the master drummer and composer Fouie
Bellson had been talking with Music Masters about recording his Ellington-
Strayhorn Suite, written while he was playing in Duke’s band in the 1950s.
We
were brought together and our projects merged. Fouie’s big band was
Dvorak 178
to
Duke
Ellington
augmented with Ellington alumni, among them trumpeters Clark Terry and Barry' Lee Hall and trombonists Britt Woodman and Art Baron. 14 As an added bonus, Joe Williams agreed
to sing his interpretation of
“The
Blues.”
For the American Jazz Orchestra and the Carnegie Hall re-creation,
had used the score and
were prepared by
parts that
British arranger
hen. Since Ellington had published only a fragment of Beige version of “Sugar Hill Penthouse”) the rest of the
minutes of
music— was
on
Alan Co-
truncated
movement— over
painstakingly transcribed by
tated a great deal of educated guesswork
(a
Cohen. This
his part, try ing to
I
fifteen
necessi-
hear around the
drum on the location recording. 15 By good fortune, Ellington’s sketches and his autograph score for Beige had come to light at the Smithsonian Archives just as I was getting ready to record. The highly respected and sorely missed Ellington scholar Mark bass
Tucker helped organize the collection and kindly provided
me
of the autograph, enabling
to correct the
Cohen
me
with a copy
time for the
parts in
recording. I
was particularly
ics alike, to a
at the hall
gratified
performance
on January
21,
by the reception given, by audience and
did with John Faddis’s Carnegie Hall Jazz
I
1999
(later
Brown and Beige have the wherewithal
better.
to
make what
I
now
perpetuate
I
“Did Black,
test.
itself as a fertile
The circumstances could
had the time and the resources
I
Band
broadcast on National Public Radio).
privately considered this “full circle” return the ultimate
of art and not just a historic oddity?”
crit-
work
not have been
and
to revisit the score
parts
and
consider a definitive edition, beautifully rendered by a
computer engraver. 16 The Carnegie Hall Jazz band,
a
superb ensemble of
who know their jazz history and revere Ellinghave been more dedicated. And by this time Ruth Ellington
musicians, led by John Faddis, ton, could not
Boatwright had introduced
me
to
an amazing document,
a thirty-three-page
double-spaced typescript by
Duke
Ellington titled “Black,
Brown and
a narrative
poem
that evidently
preceded the music and gave
me
Beige”:
consider-
able insight into his thinking about the piece.
George Wein, the
jazz warrior impresario
Hall Jazz series, warned
me
he remembered Black, Brown and Beige
that
be overly long and suggested that cut one measure.
When we
I
consider
finished he
pleasure, as was most of the audience,
The
critics
—
all five
and producer of the Carnegie
— concurred:
some
cuts.
Of course
came running backstage
which
rose as
‘“Black,
one
did not
wild with
end of Beige.
at the
Brown and
I
to
Beige’ brims with
gorgeous music and should be played more often.” “The Carnegie audience
jumped
to
its
feet
and cheered.
“Would have made third
and
least
.
.
.
That’s the sign of a living piece of music.”
the Maestro’s eyes moisten with gratitude
.
.
.
‘Beige,’ the
performed segment, offered more mysteries and
Ellington’s Black,
far
more
Brown and Beige 1
79
rhythmic complexities than the others.
themes
.
.
.
A
and
near-frantic welter of motifs
handled with unflagging authority and crispness by the Carnegie v
band.” ‘The dark familiar colors were beautifully reconstructed, and the
band approached the musical
narrative with reverent unity.’’ “Peress
and the
Carnegie Hall Jazz Band proved \Black, Brown and Beige] deserves
be
to
heard on concert stages throughout the world, during [Ellington’s] centen-
and
nial
for
many years
to
come.” 17
Black Brown mid Beige ,
to the
— “as
it
is”
— has “legs.”
I
music and Ellington’s fascinating poem. And
sciously following the “program” in
turn the audience, intuitively
felt
my mind
as
we
had grown ever closer I
believe that by con-
played, the band,
and
in
the signifiers in the work. 18
The Poem The poem the
first
Tucker
is
divided into three sections, titled movements “Black” takes up :
half while
“Brown” and “Beige” together share the remainder. Mark
writes that the
handwritten draft
lier
poem was finalized in the early 1940s, although an earmay date to the mid-i930S. 19 The poem traces the life
of Boola, a mythical African, through three centuries, beginning with his en-
slavement and painful crossing
bondage on It
a plantation
to
America on
a slave ship.
It tells
and how he regains strength from music and
of his faith.
follows Boola the soldier, fighting against America’s enemies, even while
enslaved;
and Boola the newly freed man,
and learns about the
as
he experiences emancipation
blues. “Beige,” the last part of the
in
Harlem, the “Black Metropolis,” during World
in
music alone was the immense
compose
about the history of Africans in America It
II.
To convey this
life
saga
task Ellington set for himself.
Ellington had been planning to
Carnegie Hall appearance.
War
poem, describes
a significant concert
for at least a
decade before
was known that he had an opera
in
work
his
first
mind. In
a
New York Times Magazine article just before the 1943 Carnegie Hall concert, Howard Taubman wrote: “Ellington’s most elaborate composition is an opera, still unproduced, called ‘Boola.’ ... He has taken some of the music from this opera and turned it into a half-hour tone poem for his band.” 20 Did Ellington intend this sprawling poem to serve as a libretto? Given the absence of set pieces (arias) and choruses, the poem initially seems more appropriate as a text for an oratorio. But the reality of the
date
was
may have
forced his hand. Ellington adjusted his plans, and his
finally expressed in
music by
Ellington musicalize his text?
Dvorak
Duke
180
Ellington
poem
his orchestra of marvelous jazz artists alone.
How did
to
impending concert
First
movement: Black, section one “Work Song.” ,
The opening
lines of the
A message
is
poem
read:
shot through the jungle by drums.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Like a tom-tom in steady precision. Like the slapping of bare feet across the desert wastes.
Like hunger pains ...
21
The opening section does indeed begin with kettledrums “in steady precision.” The poem goes on to describe Book’s catastrophic experiences with the torture
and displacement of
slavery for six pages before actually
men-
tioning the work song:
Out
of this deep
dream of freedom
Evolved the only possible escape
Freedom of expression
Out
of this great need for freedom
The work song was Not
in song.
born.
song of triumph. Not a song
a
Of burden. A song punctuated By the grunt of a heaving pick
Or axe. A song punctuated by And thud of a sledgehammer.
The “Work and saxophones
the swish
Song,” a pounding seven-note theme stated by the trumpets in unison,
is
distinguished by a quickly falling
ing third that outlines the tonic triad of E-flat. pears throughout Black at
Emancipation Day
,
Brown and
It
and
ris-
serves as a leitmotif that ap-
Whether
Beige.
fifth
the music depicts slaves
fearful of leaving the plantation, folks in their
Sunday
best singing a spiritual, the discovery of the blues, or sophisticated Elarlemites
going off to war, the “Work Song” theme shared by
Crouch,
all
in, a
and Ellingtonian, adds bone
development of the “Work Song”
tone saxophone explore the leitmotif of Harry Carney, for
whom
at
reminder of the
it
Stanley
22 .
section, Ellington has the bari.
Ellington was writing, the solo sounds improvised
motif is further transformed into of trumpets, and
— to which
roots
length In skilled hands, like those
even though Ellington wrote every note
tet
woven
African Americans, black, brown, or beige
writer, critic,
In the
is
shows up
a tightly
in
in his
manuscript score. The
harmonized
leit-
jazz fanfare for a quar-
another solo “improvisation” for the string
Ellington’s Black,
Brown and Beige 181
For
bass.
hammer rhythm hues from sounds
“Work Song” formulation, Ellington
his final
recasts the sledge-
of the leitmotif, selecting perhaps the most extraordinary of
spectrum, an evocative “plunger” trombone, which
his orchestral
human
like the cries of a
voice.
The plunger technique was first developed in Ellington’s band by “Tricky Sam” Nanton. Nanton placed a trumpet straight mute deep into his trombone bell. He then compressed and released the mostly high-pitched sounds (sometimes raucous gut-bucket growls) by manipulating
crown — a plumber’s
toilet
easy, but trombonists for
decades with
little
have been trying
marked
bell. It
sounds
emulate Nanton’s “plunger”
to
style
section closes with a softly held incomplete cadence.
saxophone reaches
alto
rubber
no success. 23
or
The “Work Song”
An
plunger— across the opening of the
a
out, introducing itself with a fragmentary tune
Religioso in anticipation of the second section of Black
,
“Come Sun-
day.”
“Come Sunday”
was made famous in
ton) by the great spiritual it
ensemble — in
1958.
by Elling-
and gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, who recorded
— the
with the Ellington orchestra
jazz
a vocal rendition (text
But
it
was
only time she agreed to appear with a
first
conceived
as a
purely instrumental
work, albeit one inspired by Ellington’s poetry:
Came
Sunday, Boola was
To
that pretty white
So
tall,
Who And
house with the steeple
shining there in the sun. Everyone
all
dressed up.
How
happy they seemed!
the white voices inside rang out
triumph
Subdued
Were
drawn
entered there was scrubbed and polished
When In
irresistibly
.
.
.
the blacks outside
approval.
When
would grunt
the white voices inside
raised in joyous song, the blacks outside
Hummed along, adding their own touches. Weaving Gorgeous melodic, harmonic, rhythmic
Thus
patterns.
the spiritual was born.
Highly emotional Worshipping of God Short, lyrical statements by solo
in song.
trombone and trumpet introduce the
“song,’ rendered not by voices, but as a collection of Religioso instrumental
“Come Sunday” follows the traditional thirty-two-measure AABA but there the similarity ends. The A section begins unusually on the
testimonies. pattern,
dominant seventh chord with an added thirteenth a series of abstract
Dvorak 182
to
Duke
harmonies.
Ellington
The music
slowly
in the
rises,
melody, the
first
in
“Weaving Gorgeous
melodic, harmonic, rhythmic patterns,” resting on nonchordal tones: a
and
ted fifth
A
a ninth.
In
/
breath: “the blacks outside
bones
down an octave and a half: triumph.” The music holds still, catching
closing phrase swoops
‘white voices inside rang out its
.
grunt
. .
Subdued
/
“amen” church cadence
slide a spiritual
flat-
Muted trom-
approval.”
into place, establishing
home,
the tonic chord.
When
I
“Come Sunday”
recorded
ored Duke’s admonition not
keeping
in
mind how
to
and Hodges’s poignant
Hodges
hon-
allow anyone to imitate Johnny Hodges.
And
poem with gentle insermons by Ray Nance’s warm and sweet violin
alto sax
—
I
asked Clark Ferry, a treasured jazz creator
with Ellington for almost a decade, to interpret what had been the
on
alto sax solo
Terry played the slow phrases tenderly
his flugelhorn.
and without an apparent breath, using circular breathing. One to this
I
Ellington realized the text of his
strumental colors— veritable
who was
with the Louie Bellson band,
“Highly emotional
/
Worshipping of God
in song.”
I
listens in
awe
suspect Ellington
would have approved.
The music titled
of Black closes with a joyous release, a hard-swinging section
“Light” after the poem:
Oh,
something new
well, here’s
lightens
But the
.
.
our song
.
spiritual slips in
And And
learn
The
slave
new
things.
dwelt in song
.
.
.
and out
.
Let’s sing
.
soft
.
.
.
Of color, complete
On
their
About
this.
Our work
.
as
we
see
Boola worked
.
song broadened, covering
Sometimes
To come.
.
lifts
.
sometimes loud.
all
things
A rainbow
with pot of gold. Paradise
way
to
heaven
in
tempo.
The pulse, the beat was ever present. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Second movement: Brown,
The poem “Brown”
section one,
“ West
Indian Danced
describes the historic battles fought by African Ameri-
24 cans on behalf of America. In each case, “Boola was there”: the Indian
bellion of 1652
on the
side of the colonials;
on the Boston
Commons
re-
along-
who “shed his black blood in the birth struggle / Of this in the War of 1812, his “heart was filled when came the great republic! seven hundred free Haitians / Of the Fontages Legion to descend / Upon the side Crispus Attucks,
British at the Siege of
the
Savannah”; with Nat Turner and the Abolitionists, on
Underground Railway and the
Civil
War battlefield,
in the
Ellington’s Black,
long struggle
Brown and Beige l8 3
that led to emancipation;
and
San Juan
finally, at
Hill in the
Spanish-Amer-
ican War, soon after which “Boola got the blues!”
The poem “West Indian Dance”
depicts Book’s reaction to Haitian
drums: the echo of Africa
Was
loud here
Tropical jungles. Savage drums Religious
This the
drums
.
.
more
.
.
Sexual drums
.
.
.
music of “West Indian Dance,” breaking away from
reflected in the
is
.
.
serious “tonalizations” of Black as Ellington unleashes the
drum-
driven island rhythms of the corrida (dash or sprint), exposing another facet of the jazz diadem, the “Latin tinge.”
The music of “Emancipation Proclamation,” the second section of Brown, slows down the pace a bit in order to celebrate the ultimate victory for African American soldiers, “His God-given rights
[sic]
to
be free!” In the
poem
Ellington tempers this elation, reminding the reader that while
sweet
to
be one’s own!
/
A sad note was sounded
plantations
where they had spent
was
in the hearts of old folk.” In-
would be thrown
stead of enjoying their retirement, they
“it
and
off the farms
their lives.
Ellington musicalizes these conflicting emotions by juxtaposing a swinging celebrational music, “Boola
elegant
jumped
for joy!”
humor by cornetist Rex Stewart— with
two of the older
folks.
— originally depicted with
a string of worrisome duets for
Their raspy voices are represented by a “plunger” trum-
pet and “plunger” trombone; they blend, they bicker, and finally totter
off,
shaking with age and resignation.
The poem “Brown”
new kind of music: the blues, a rewhen black soldiers returned from the
also describes a
sult of the love triangles that surfaced
Spanish-American
A
War
to find their ladies
medal hung proudly from
But where were her arms
his chest,
for his
head
And soon he learned someone had That’s how Boola got the blues. The Blues The Blues ain’t .
.
with other men:
to rest?
to lose
.
.
.
.
For “The Blues,” the third and
final
musical section of Brown Ellington
turned to his vocalist, Bette Roche. Only the
,
first
two
lines of the
song come
from the poem. Ellington expands upon them, creating an entirely new
Could
this
Dvorak
to
184
text.
be a model of how an operatic libretto would have evolved from
Duke
Ellington
poem? Note
his
opening three
that the
lines are
mirrored
at the
end of the
song:
The The The The And
Blues Blues ain’t—
Blues
ain’t nothin’
Blues ain’t nothin’ but a cold grey day all
nite long
it
stays that way.
Ain’t somethin' that leaves
Ain
t
you alone
nothin’ you should want to call your
Ain’t somethin’ with sense
enough
to get
own
up and go
Ain’t nothin’
Like nothin’
The The
know
I
Blues don’t Blues don’t
Ain’t
know nobody
as a friend
been back nowhere where
they’re
welcome back again
The low ugly mean Blues. The Blues ain’t somethin’ that you Sing in rhyme
The Blues ain’t nothin’ but a dark cloud markin’ time The Blues is a one way ticket From your Love to nowhere The Blues ain’t nothin’ but a black crepe veil ready to wear Sighin’
Cryin’ Feels most like Dyin’!
The The The
Blues ain’t nothin’ Blues ain’t—
Blues
Most of
Ellington’s musical
blues, a matrix
of ideas. Ain’t his
he never
tired of
gems
and one
“The Mooch,” “Creole Love
What They Used
to
Be” are
“extended concert pieces”
are formulations of the twelve-bar
all
for
which he would never run out
Call,” “Transblucency,”
twelve-bar blues.
and “Things
Even what he
— Grand Slam jam and Harlem — contain long
sections of twelve-bar blues. Yet, for the “Blues” section from Black,
and
Beige, he follows his
“First
you find the
called
mentor “Dad” (Will Marion) Cook’s
logical way,
and when you find
it,
avoid
it,
Brown
proscription:
and
let
your
in-
ner self break through and guide you .” 25 Starting with structure,
its
abstract,
almost atonal introduction, the harmony, bar
and melodic contour of “The Blues” section are
a jazz world
Ellington’s Black,
away
Brown and Beige l8 5
from the standard blues. Well into the piece,
after the singer finishes the first
chorus of the song and steps back
Ellington calls
bones
demonstration chorus of the twelve-bar blues
to wail a
and developed
A
Blues.”
to listen,
into a separate instrumental
upon
his trom-
— later recycled
work called the “Carnegie Hall
tenor sax interlude leads us back to the song,
its
final lick
quote of the “Work Song” leitmotif. Ellington’s song “The Blues”
being a
is
a
mas-
terpiece about the blues.
Beige Beige
one
the longest and the most enigmatic of the three
is
most
experience.
The
the
from the poetry. The poem “Beige” reveals
that departs almost entirely
Ellington’s
movements and
heartfelt philosophic testimony
about the African American
focus shifts from the metaphoric world of Boola to Harlem,
from the mythical
autobiographical
to the
26 .
Boola becomes Ellington:
Harlem! Black Metropolis!
Land of mirth! Your music has flung
The story of “Hot Harlem” To the four corners Of the earth! “Hot Harlem”
is
aptly expressed by the
we
Beige a tom-tom-driven music ,
days.
The
gle style
opening jungle-style music of
associate with Ellington’s
distinguished critic and author Albert
was
notion that
satire, is
wordplay— the asphalt
Cotton Club
Murray argues
jungle, not the
that the jun-
Congo; 2 ” an urbane
not supported by Duke’s descriptive words and phrases in the
opening stanza of “Beige” the poem: “primeval beat of the jungle ing
.
.
.
primitive jungle calls
wild
joyous
.
.
.
scorch-
.
exciting as Stravinsky!”
turns bitter, but Ellington’s
music does not follow.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
[sic].
The poem’s mood The poem asks: But did
it
[Harlem’s music] ever speak to
Of what you
really are?
Did
them
it
“The Is
say to
.
.
.
joy I’m giving,
the
foil
I
use to lose
my blues
And make myself an honest Did
it
That
Dvorak 186
to
speak to them
all
your striving
Duke
Ellington
living!”
them
To make your rightful place with men Was more than jazz and jiving!
How could
they
fail to
hear
The hurt and pain and anguish Of those who travel dark, lone ways The soul in them to languish .
Later in the
poem
.
.
Ellington welcomes the end of black minstrelsy and
Harlem’s newfound community pride and self-esteem: Yes,
Harlem!
Land of valiant youth, You’ve wiped the make-up from your
And shed your borrowed
face,
spangles.
You’ve donned the uniform of truth,
And
hid the hurt that dangles
In heart
You’ve
and mind. And one by one your shoulders straight
set
To meet each
unto you
Till justice
If
challenge and to wait is
done!
the music of Beige cannot be reconciled with the
pride found in the
poem, what, then,
is its
mix of anger and
story?
We know that Ellington originally intended that somewhere toward the end of Beige, the very
Once more,
last lines
of his
poem were
you’ve heard your country
Patient, willing to give your
Once more,
the
word
is
to
be sung:
call.
all.
sent to you
[sung from here on]
And Is
the black, the brown, the beige
ready for the chance to wage
The
fight for right ’neath the red,
Why not remind of Russian
War
white and blue!
the gala audience assembled in Carnegie Hall
Relief!
— in support
— that African Americans were again fighting for their
country while awaiting true emancipation?
The sung High School
section was tried out at a preview performance held in Rye
in
Rye,
formance, which
is
New
York, the night before the Carnegie Hall per-
where, according
to
one of Ellington’s admirers,
Barry Ulanov, “the ‘flagwaving’ finale featuring vocalist cut .” 28 Nevertheless, Ellington to the
made
Jimmy
Britton was
sure his message was heard.
He
Carnegie Hall audience before each of the movements, and
Ellington’s Black
,
critic
spoke
his ver-
Brown and Beige *
bal introduction to Beige, preserved
ends with a paraphrase of the
chance
for the
text:
to fight for the
on the archival “location” recording, 1
“The' Black, the Brown, the Beige
Red, White and Blue!” This serves
is
ready
one of
as
several clues to Beige’s musical narrative. 1
believe that the music of Beige
diers in
World War
Penthouse” party
II.
in
They are on
a
tells
a story
weekend
about a group of Negro
leave, attending a
teens, “Bitch’s Ball,” gaily
we hear
“Sugar Hill
Harlem. Following the excitement of the opening jun-
gle music, a stride piano belts out a tune that Ellington
turns sad as
sol-
announcing an
a dirge
composed
in his
But the
mood
all-night social affair.
based upon the four notes of the jungle theme.
Ellington then introduces a series of party dances, each again derived from the jungle theme, beginning with a slow seductive waltz. 29 Ellington’s written into the score, suggest a scenario as well. After the “Waltz,” a fox-trot,
“Cy-Runs,”
is
interrupted, by a fire siren or a vixen or both.
followed by a swinging “Rok
[sic]
titles,
medium
These are
Waltz”; a ballad, “Last of Penthouse”; and
“Sugar Hill Penthouse Reprise,” 30 a slow version of “Waltz.”
As the
last
slow dance, “Sugar Hill Penthouse Reprise,”
pered by closely harmonized saxes, a fanfare interrupts.
is
A morning church bell
nostalgia.
slowly expanded by the piano,
becoming a powerful cadenza
themes from the to
introduce the final shout-chorus. 31
day” and
“Work Song.”
ming with
I
“amen”
The “amen”
is
and trombones
entire score. Ellington’s piano returns in a
to go.
that explodes
anthem
into a patriotic, flag-waving, orchestral finale; a stirring
the trumpets above, while below the baritone sax
final
its
sounded.
is
time
It is
Gospel piano chords introduce a reprise of “Come Sunday”; cadence aches with
being whis-
is
sounded
strut
in
through
“medium
stride”
We hear bits and pieces of “Come Sun-
envision the
young
soldiers
and
their ladies brim-
the emotions of love, of God and country; and as they part, a final
trumpet scream
blots out all fears
and doubts.
This rich mix of jungle music, party dances, Sunday church atmosphere, and patriotic bombast reflects the complexity of the
munity described
in Ellington’s
poem. Ellington
is
Harlem com-
telling us that the
Amer-
ican Negro, black, brown, and beige, arrived here out of great suffering, built
enemies, gained freedom, and gave
this land,
fought
and
which reached out
jazz,
its
is,
spirituals, the blues,
to the “four corners of the globe.” Nevertheless,
while they march off again to of Beige, like the poem,
it
fight, true equality
after all, a political
is still
withheld.
The music
work — Ellington’s musical
ex-
pression of words later to be eloquently spoken by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:
“How
Dvorak 188
to
long,
Duke
O Lord?”
Ellington
Ellington the
Composer
The autograph and
copyright scores of Black, Brown and Beige reveal
fascinating information about Ellington
s
composing
on the opening pages of the Beige autograph there different high-pitched vertical chords
notes) identified by the in
its
The numbers
For example,
practices.
are asterisks indicating six
— clusters (seven or eight interlocking
numbers 1 through
highest register, function as “hits”
the wild jungle
some
These
6.
by a clarinet
clusters, led
— short, sharp chords that punctuate
theme being grunted out by low trombones and baritone
are a shorthand for the clusters
when
sax.
next they appear, reliev-
ing Ellington from having to write out the seven or eight interlocking notes
On
every time.
the bottom margin of the
ton identifies the asterisks as “Piano
ano Theme”? The
page of the autograph, Elling-
Why are the clusters called “Pi-
Theme.”
clarinet notes at the top of the clusters spell out
first five
minor) a variant of the theme from “Work Song,” with
(in
and
falling fifth
Thus, its
first
new
characteristic
its
rising third. 32
at the very
moment Duke
is
introducing us to “Plot Elarlem” and
jungle-music leitmotif, a reflection of Boola, of the
past, shines
down
from above. Furthermore, the clusters are an example of “secret voicings,” the “Ellington sound,” which has often been explained away as the result of individual
musicians adding their
encouraged
this
own
quaint notion of collaborative composition through his con-
stant use of the first-person plural:
“Our impressions of the Far
cal of the musician’s stories that perpetuate this
and composer Thad Jones from the time he called, but the part
nearby player’s
Duke himself
dissonant, accidental harmonies.
myth
first
is
East.” Typi-
one about trumpeter
joined the band.
A tune was
was missing from Jones’s band book. Looking over
part,
he began blowing along, making up harmonies
went, only to hear Cootie Williams growl, “Get offa
The most remarkable
discovery,
as
he
my note!”
one already noted, was
the improvised-sounding solos in Black,
at a
that nearly all
Brown and Beige were
written by
Ellington himself, the most striking example being a long solo cadenza by
Ben Webster
in Beige. 33
Eleven chords are struck and held by the orchestra. Above each of these “stop chords,” the tenor sax plays a short solo. In the archival location record-
ing ing,
own after-licks and impeccable phrascritical notes are Duke's. And what notes! Above the first and the tenor sax quotes “Work Song.” Above the second chord we
we hear Ben Webster adding but the
third chord,
his
hear the tune from “Sugar Hill Penthouse.” Above the sax begins with the jungle that
is
about
theme and unwinds with
to follow, “Last of
a
final
chord the tenor
preview of the melody
Penthouse.” 34
Ellington’s Black,
Brown and Beige ,
l8 9
Here Ellington does
for his solo-filled
works what Beethoven did
piano concertos: composing cadenzas rather than leaving them,
had
it,
to the
improvising
skills
and good
would approve of my bringing attention his
taste of soloists.
I
for his
as tradition
doubt that Duke
to this parallel. In stark contrast to
contemporary Gershwin, who sought acceptance by the musical estab-
lishment
as a “legitimate”
Whenever we
composer, Ellington rejected the notion
talked about his music, he spoke of feelings or images
entirely.
— about
people standing outside a church they could not enter and harmonizing with the beautiful music they heard from within,
God.
How then
can
I
justify
knowing they all shared the same
analyzing his compositional secrets?
The answer lies in the realization that do this for myself, to legitimize my own passion for this music and that of others like me who, despite brainI
washing by the academy of our youth, have been drawn Ellington’s music. I
find myself
Not withstanding my sense
compelled
to
demonstrate
that
to
Duke would
how complex
is
music— a
not approve,
the compositional
process that creates his seemingly happy-go-lucky music, fining idea of jazz-inspired
and nourished by
how even
the de-
tenor saxophonist “taking off ” on an
improvised flight— was controlled, bent, premeditated by Ellington in the service of his
Dvorak 190
to
muse, and how he crafted
Duke
Ellington
his
music from
his
own
poetry.
Afterword
My own Thanks
story continues.
to
Duke
I
Ellington,
make I
all sorts
of joyful noises whenever possible.
have learned that what
I
believed to be separate
— the European world of Dvorak, Ellington's African American macrocosm, and Bernstein’s conflation of the two — are really one. All
worlds of music
the stories in
my
from Europe
to
book are about the
transfer of the center of creative
America, Dvorak being the prophet and Ellington
power
its fulfill-
ment.
Dvorak’s Neighborhood
I
have re-created Dvorak’s America,
in part,
by reading crumbling old news-
papers and playing his “American” works and those of his pupils. in his moccasins,” so to speak, here
In the
in
Czech Republic found everything
Prague not
I
far
from
also
“walked
and abroad. lovingly preserved
tained. Besides his country house, Vysoka, there
seum
I
his last
is
a
and main-
charming Dvorak Mu-
apartment. His archives are splendidly
preserved, and his birthplace, Nelahozeves,
is
now
a state-supported tourist
attraction.
In America, only a few vestiges of Dvorak’s are fast disappearing.
The Midway Plaisance,
Old World remain, and they
near the University of Chicago,
U *
1
55 66, 108-112, 202 n. 13, 225 n. 28
Oberlin Conservatory, 49
O’Connor,
“Oh My
Carroll, 141
Rainbow
Baby,” 129, 133, 134
“Old Folks 45
>
at
Home”
(Foster, arr.
Dvorak
Rainey,
Ma,
Rattle, Sir
1 5 °> 5
>
),
Grill,
Orchestration,
162-163
111
Simon,
112
Original Dixieland Jazz Band, 88, 108
Ravinia Festival, 158
Osborne
Rawlins, Ruthabell, 76
79-80
Ovington, Mary White, 36
Ray,
Ozawa,
RCA Victor,
Seiji, 81,
139
Man,
122-123, 153 76, 83, 85
Redman, Don,
87,
111,
200
Page, Tim, 136
Reich, Steve, 136
Paine, John Knowles, 25
Reimuller, Ross, 142
Pareles, Jon, 113
Reiner, Fritz, 72
Paris Herald, 24-27, 206 n. 24
Remick
Parker, Charlie, 67
Resenweber’s Cafe, 107-108
Pasztory, Ditta,
Rettenberg, Milton, 73, 85, 91-92, 96
74 Patinkin, Sheldon,
Payne, Elizabeth, 101
Peress,
3,
(publisher), 68,
Rice's
Summer Nights,
Ezra),
3,
138
Riley, Terry, 136
Peress, Lorca, 139
Ring Shout, 10
Performance practice, 65, 94-95, 106,
Roach, Max, 165
108-112
Roberts, Charles Luckeyeth, 68
Peters, Roberta, 154
Robeson, Paul,
Pianola, 124-127, 133, 134-135
Robinson, Faye, 76
Picabia, Francis, 123, 227 n. 7
Roche, Bette, 184
66
Pickett, Jessye, 37
Pierson,
Tom,
58
Richter, Hans, 26
100
Henry (Heskel ben
Picasso, Pablo,
69
Rice, Ed, 58
141
Peress, Elsie Tygier,
>
Ravel, Maurice, 130
74-75
(building),
.
165
Rock and
117, 129, 132
roll, 112
Rogers, Alex.,
101, 115, 116
Rollins, Sonny,
67
Pingatore, Mike, 88, 95
Roosevelt, President Franklin Delano, 194
Place Congo, 10
Rorem, Ned, 154
Plato, Desiree, 33
Roseland Ballroom, 87
Pleyela. See Pianola
Rosenthal, Moritz, 84
Index 252
Ross, Allie, 120, 128-129
Spillville, Iowa, 27, 31,
Rothko, Mark, 153
Bili
Clock House
Royal Poinciana Quartette, 101
Spirituals, 10-11
Rubinstein, Anton, 24, 25
St.
Rudge, Olga (Madame Ezra Pound),
St. Philip’s
39—40
A.M.E. Church
45, 101, 102,
,
223 n. 6
Rumshinsky, Joseph, 74
204
Relief, 174-175, 187
Free African Church, 21-22,
St. Philip’s
Russell, Sylvester, 51
War
in,
Louis, Louis, 145
130-132
Russian
39-40
n. 10
Staten Island, 156-157 Steichen, Edward, 153
Sachs, Kurt, 9-10, 94
Steinert, Alex, 72
Saint-Saens, Camille, 24
Stevens, Roger L., 170
Salzman, Eric, 166
Stewart, Rex, 176, 178, 184
Sandpaper blocks, 48
Stieglitz, Alfred, 153
San Francisco World’s
Fair (1894), 36
Sarabande, 9 Sardi,
Still,
William Grant, 87
Stokowski, Leopold,
Vincent
Sr.,
83
81, 84, 111
Maurice Arnold. See Arnold,
Strathotte,
Maurice
Satie, Eric, 81, 130
Sbarbaro, Tony, 108
Stravinsky, Igor, 67, 84, 123, 129
Scandals of 1922, 68
Strayhorn, Billy, 155-156, 173, 210 n.
Scandals of 1924, 85
Strummers, 104-105,
Schindler, Kurt, 226
n. 13
5
106, 107
Stuckenschmidt, H. H.,
110
Schoenberg, Arnold, 72
Stuyvesant, Peter, 192
Schroeder, Alwin, 196
Svorecky, Josef,
Schuller, Gunther, 87, 112
Swing, 111-112
Schwartz, Charles, 92
“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” 23-24
115, 153,
212-213 n 2 § -
Schwartz, Steve, 142 Scott, Sir Walter,
“Talented Tenth,”
11
Scribner Chorale, 146 Seidl,
Anton,
41,
Taubman, Howard, Taylor,
45
51,
Deems,
53—59
180
84, 119, 122
Seldes, Gilbert, 66, 83, 84, 99, 129
Tchaikovsky, Piotr Ilyich,
Shaftesbury Theatre (London), 36, 116
Terry, Clark, 183
Shahn, Ben,
Shehagovich, Stephanie, 132
Theater Guild, 73 Theatre Champs-Elysees
Shipp, Jessye A., 36
39 L
Shirley,
153
Wayne,
(Paris), 119
12 3
Third Street Settlement School, 63
102
Short, Bobby, 174
Thomas, Theodore,
Shuffle Along, 12-13, 70, 99
Thomson,
Sissle,
5
Noble, 12-13 10 5 ,
Virgil, 73, 79, 96, 127, 139-140,
165
Four Saints
Slide whistle, 94
21, 31
in
Three Acts, 73
205-206
Slonimsky, Nicolas, 133, 134
Thurber, Jeanette,
Smallens, Alexander, 73
Tibbett, Lawrence, 76
Smetana, Bedrich, 6
Titus, Alan, 145, 146-149, 158, 232 n. 15
Smithsonian Institution, Duke Ellington
Tizol, Juan, 176
Collection, 172, 176, 179, 232 n. 4
Smuin, Michael,
Sommer, Ted,
141
135
Sopranino saxophone, 90, 94-95
Town
Hall,
21, 26, 51,
n. 22
95-97
Troy, Henry,
13, 15
Tuck, Anthony, 107 Tucker, Mark, 179, 200, 236
n. 19,
237
n.
30
Index 2 53 *
Tunick, Jonathan, 145
Wess, Frank, 103, 178
Tyers, William H., 15-16, 101, 105, 106, 107,
Wexler, Peter,
141,
230 n. 7
Whaley, Tom, 157
128
White House Ulanov, Barry, 187
158, 171
White, John, 212
Urban, Heinrich, 44
Whiteman,
Van Vechten,
Festival of the Arts (1965), 153,
Carl, 84, 117-18
Paul, 66, 69, 73, 83-90,
107-108
Versatile Entertainers Quintette, 100, 101,
Wild West shows, 164 Wilder, Joe, 103 Williams, Bert, 36,
107
55, 115
Williams, Cootie, 189
154
Vincent Lopez band, 83
Williams, Henry
Vinding, Terkild, 68
Williams, Tennessee, 154
Vodery, Will, 68, 69
Wilson, President Woodrow, 195
Voltaire, 140, 141
Witmark and Sons, 49 Wolfe, George C., 166, 170 Woodward, Sidney, 33
211 n. 15
Walker, George, 36,
Walker,
F.,
16
Woolford, Hugh, 100
55, 115
Madame A’lelia,
128, 163
Walter, Bruno, 174, 195
World Peace Jubilee World’s
Waltz, 55
(1872),
16-17
Columbian Exposition
Warfield, William, 25, 76, 103
“Bohemian Day,”
Washington, Booker
“Colored People’s Day,”
T.,
208
31
29, 31,
Dahomey Village,
29,
Waters, Hamilton, 22-23
Daily Columbiaii,
33, 34, 51,
Wa Wan
Haitian Pavilion, 29, 32
Washington (D.C.) Opera
Press, 25 172, 176, 189
Society, 158
Midway White
Webster, Nick, 144
City, 29
Wein, George,
Index
112,
179
George David, 169
Zakariasen,
Bill,
136
Z arabanda, 9-10
32-34
34-37 207
Plaisance, 34, 38, 191
Weill, Kurt, 72, 75
Weiss,
of 1893, 27,
29-40, 47
Webster, Ben,
128,
Whitney, Robert, 154
Versatile Entertainers Quartet,
Vysanka, Bertha,
111,
200, 221 n. 14
Varese, Edgard, 74
Vietnam War,
26
n.
n. 5
*
BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY
3 9999 04930 180 5
BAKER & TAYLOR
in Blue,
James Reese Europe’s Clef Club (the
al, '-black
first
concert at Carnegie Hall), and Elling-
ton’s Black,
Brown and Beige were
first
presented.
Concluding with an astounding look
at Elling-
Duke
Ellington
ton and his music, Dvorak offers
to
an engrossing, elegant portrait of the
Dvorak
and the
legacy, America’s music,
timable African American influence
Maurice Peress teaches at the
resides in
New
upon
York
inesit.
City.
He
Aaron Copland School of Music
and the Graduate School of the City University and guest conducts
in the
United
States
and
abroad.
Jacket design: Emily Kolp Jacket art: duke Ellington photo by Parks, courtesy of
Gordon
Parks,
© Gordon
the photographer. Duke Ellington orchestra
SCORE COURTESY OF MERCER ELLINGTON.
OXEORD UNIVERSITY PRESS wtvw.oup.com
Advance
Praise for \
Dvorak
to
Duke
Ellington
.
“In this lively account of his distinguished career as conductor, arranger, and music historian,
Maurice Peress connects the dots of American cultural history
in a novel yet plausible way.
establishes a convincing link
between the time of Dvorak
Unexpected
as
and our own
it
might seem, he
era as represented
by Duke Ellington. Mr. Peress s
role in recovering
and per-
forming forgotten American music, particularly that of African Americans, makes
for
fascinating reading.”
— Dick Hyman,
“Understanding the sweep from Dvorak to Ellington
jazz pianist, conductor,
calls for a scholar,
a musician,
astute reader of human circumstances if we are to grasp the circumference
American music
Peress took
in pursuit
on the
of
itself
responsibility
during the
first
is
and the gravity of
that
much
aesthetic bacon; he
better because of him.
—
0000
9
780195 098228
ISBN
0-1
and an
half of the twentieth century. Maurice
and the obligation of bringing home the
succeeded, and our understanding of our music
and composer
9-509822-6
Stanley
Crouch