228 PART 2 | FROM THE CIVIL WAR THROUGH WORLD WAR I
An important handful of black musicians in the post-slavery period benefi ted
from training at music conservatories like Oberlin, the New England Conserva-
tory in Boston, and the short-lived National Conservatory in New York. Among
their numbers were composers who wrote music in the classical European
genres that was inspired by the African American experience. By imbuing their
music with melodies and rhythms drawn from black folk music, these compos-
ers participated in the nationalistic movement advocated by Dvorˇák during his
tenure at the National Conservatory in 1893–95. Among these black nationalistic
composers were two students at the National Conservatory in those years: Will
Marion Cook (see chapter 10) and Harry T. Burleigh.
Born in Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1866, Burleigh developed musical tastes that
were shaped in part by performances that took place in the wealthy home where
his mother worked as a domestic ser vant, performances that at fi rst he was able to
hear only by standing outside the window. As a young man he sang professionally
as a baritone soloist in churches and synagogues in Erie until, at the age of twenty-
six, he became a scholarship student at the National Conservatory. In his second
year there he worked as an assistant to Dvorˇ á k, who became acquainted w ith spir-
ituals through Burleigh’s singing; that acquaintance is evident in the New World
Symphony, in which one theme reworks “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” Burleigh
sang at St. George’s Episcopal Church from the 1890s until not long before his
death in 1949, and also for many years at Temple Emanu-El, both in New York. He
also worked as a vocal coach and as a music editor for the Italian-based publisher
Ricordi. As a composer he produced songs and instrumental pieces and a signifi -
cant body of spiritual arrangements, beginning with the 1916 collection Jubilee
Songs of the United States of America, arranged for solo voice and piano.
Before Burleigh, published spirituals were presented either as unaccompanied
melodies or in simple hymnlike harmonizations. In contrast, Burleigh’s arrange-
ments, whether for chorus or for voice and piano, use more sophisticated, varied
textures and the rich, chromatic harmonies of late Romantic European music—the
harmonic language of Dvorˇák. In the choral arrangements, voices are sometimes
divided into more than the usual four parts, and the melody may be comple-
mented by an upper countermelody, or descant, in the sopranos. In the solo
arrangements, the piano accompaniments have the variety of texture and pat-
tern found in the art songs of Schubert or Schumann. The fi nished product—the
concert spiritual—is an expression of African American experience that incorpo-
rates the manner of European classical music. Moreover, the performance of spiri-
tuals before Burleigh was the domain of groups devoted primarily or exclusively to
that repertoire, such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers. By creating his arrangements on
commission for various choral organizations and vocal soloists, Burleigh did much
to add the concert spiritual to the repertory of classical vocal music.
Spirituals come in a variety of moods and styles, and so do Burleigh’s arrange-
ments. The rhythmic propulsion of “Go Tell It on the Mountain” and “Ride On,
King Jesus!” breathes confi dence that life’s trouble can be surmounted and
heaven lies within easy reach. “Deep River” (LG 9.3), in contrast, which begins
with a drawn-out descent on the fi rst syllable that can make the beat ambiguous,
invites a performance that is freer in rhythm. The text views the Jordan River
as a boundary between a life of toil and an afterlife of rest in heaven’s “camp-
ground.” The opening melisma and the energ y required by the octave leap on
“over” suggest a tough journey ahead, for the river is an abyss and the way homeLG 9.3Harry T. Burleighthe concert spiritual172028_09_205-230_r3_ko.indd 228 23/01/13 11:29 AM