An Introduction to America’s Music

CHAPTER 9 | SPIRITUALS AND THEIR COLLECTORS: FROM CONTRABAND TO CONCERT HALL 229

date: 1913

performers: The Howard University

Chamber Choir

genre: concert spiritual

meter: duple

form: AABA'

timing section text comments

0:00 A Deep river, my home is over Jordan,

Deep river, Lord, I want to cross

over into campground.

Melody in the altos, over a lush homophonic

texture in tenors and basses; the lower voices

sing only a few of the words.

0:47 A Deep river, my home is over Jordan,

Deep river, Lord, I want to cross

over into campground.

Solo alto sings the melody, sopranos sing

wordless descant.

1:38 B Don’t you want to go to that gospel

feast,

That promis’d land where all is

peace?

Louder, more rhythmically emphatic contrasting

section in a minor key. For the fi rst time, all voices

declaim the words. The melodic apex, and the

piece’s climax, arrives on the phrase “that promis’d

land”; the music then slows and subsides to a soft,

inconclusive sonority on the word “peace.”

2:16 A' Deep river, Lord, I want to cross

over into campground.

A return to the opening texture and mood, with

the fi nal phrase featuring the solo alto.

Listen & Refl ect

1. What stylistic features does this arrangement of “Deep River” share with the antebellum
   black music studied in chapter 4?


2. What features are different?


3. How do the differences affect your response to the music?

WHAT TO LISTEN FOR

• pentatonic melody


• rich harmonies


• varied choral textures

CD 2.1 Listening Guide 9.3 “Deep River” ARRANGED BY HARRY T. BURLEIGH

strenuous. Burleigh’s arrangement for mixed chorus (sopranos, altos, tenors,

and basses), one of several he made of “Deep River,” emphasizes blended cho-

ral timbre and rich harmony over rhythm. The pentatonic melody is sung over

an accompaniment of lush chords, then repeated by a solo alto voice with the

addition of a descant. A vigorous contrasting section follows—“Don’t you want to

go to that gospel feast?”—before the hushed, reverent-sounding opening mood

returns to end the arrangement.

In the early years of the twentieth century, the concert spiritual represented

the social progress made by African Americans in the decades following the

172028_09_205-230_r3_ko.indd 229 23/01/13 11:29 AM