Author Archives: Grayson Michael Broesch

Two of my favorite composers… “corresponding”?

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Florence Price (1887 – 1953)

I am a huge fan of both Florence Price’s and Serge Koussevitzky’s works, having played and listened to a number of them myself. I (with the generous help of Professor Epstein and Karen Olson) tracked down a letter from Price to Koussevitzky dated 5 July 1943 in a scholarly edition of Price’s Symphonies 1 and 3, edited by Rae Linda Brown and Wayne Shirley1.

Price opens this letter by writing:

“To begin with I have two handicaps – those of sex and race. I am a woman; and I have some Negro blood in my veins.”

She writes about her cultural heritage and how she’s worked to incorporate her culture into her music. Price goes on to say she “truly understands the real Negro music.” She finishes her letter by directly asking Koussevitzky, “will you examine one of my scores?” Over the course of nine years (1935 – 1944), Price wrote seven letters to Koussevitzky. She never got a personal response back. On two occasions (17 November 1943 and 31 October 1944), his secretary responded to her, but we do not know what the response said. In October 1944, Koussevitzky looked at one of her scores, but did not program any of her works.

Serge Koussevitzky (1874 – 1951)

Serge Koussevitzky was the conductor of the Boston Symphony, composer, and world-renowned double bass virtuoso. He was known for not only supporting and programming works by living American composers, but commissioning new works for the Boston Symphony as well. Florence Price knew this, and knew her works were being perceived through a number of lenses by her audience. She admits this in her letter, and asks Koussevitzky to look past it and program her work anyway. Unfortunately, he never did.

We could view this as a concrete example of something that is indicative of the available sources about female composers, and composers of color. Clearly, there is significantly less information out there about marginalized groups. Even in our own music library, the imbalance between sources is obvious. When I searched for scores by Florence Price in our library database, I found that the library has 29 physical scores. When searching for a white male composer of similar dates, Jean Sibelius, I found the library has 119 sources. Well, maybe that’s because Price is American and Sibelius isn’t? What about Charles Ives? 115 scores in the library. I don’t think we can dodge the real reason any longer. Florence Price said it herself: she is a female composer of color, and that is why her work is lesser known today. People like Koussevitzky who claim to want to support American composers, but only if the composer fits a certain mold, are the reason these composers are lesser known today. We can start the work to fix this problem now, and great work is already being done to bring underrepresented works to light, but it should’ve started a long time ago.

Works Cited:

[1] Price, Florence, Rae Linda Brown, Wayne D. Shirley, and Florence Price. “Symphonies nos. 1 and 3 ” Middleton, Wis: Published for the American Musicological Society by A-R Editions, 2008.

St. John’s Mission, or, a Tricky Research Process

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While browsing the “American Indian Histories and Cultures” database, I came across this picture:

“Girls musical club”. Photograph. 1916. From American Indian Histories and Cultures. St. John’s Mission photographs.

This picture is of the “Girl’s Musical Club” of the St. John’s Mission. The picture was taken in 1916. I noticed quite a few interesting things about this picture, notably the instruments the girls are holding (lutes and guitars), and the caption on the top of the photograph. It reads as follows:

“Girl’s musical club. All instruments are donated. You yourself made a kind donation to the Sisters in charge.”

And immediately I had more questions than answers. Who is this caption addressing? What is the girl’s musical club? Who made the donations and why? Who wrote this caption?

I did some digging, and found a bit of information. According to the Arizona Memory Project1, the St. John’s mission was located in Komatke Arizona, on the Gila River Indian Reservation. It did not appear to be hugely long-lasting or successful, but seemed to value a Western music education as important. In fact, after her appointment to missionary teacher, Mrs. Stout wrote a letter that drew attention to this fact. In 1872, she said,

“Let me thank you for sending us the organ and things for the children…The organ is such a nice one and pleased the children so much. It will be a great comfort to us also, for I don’t know what it is to live without some kind of a musical instrument…2“

It seems that the St. John’s Mission education recognized the innate human need for music. However, in the research I did, I found no discussion or report of Indigenous music from the missionary’s perspective. In the future, I think it would be interesting to try to locate sources that explicitly talked about Indigenous music from white people (especially missionaries’) perspective.

One thing that made this particular photograph initially interesting to me was not only the photograph itself, but the handwritten caption that goes along with it. To try to figure this one out, I generalized my research focus to try to find out about who would’ve donated instruments to schools or missionaries. Unfortunately, after many databases (including plain old Google), many search terms and phrases, and lots of frustration, I was unable to find much concrete evidence about this. My best inference is that these instruments were donated by either wealthy patrons/supporters of the missions, or were made cheaply for the express purpose of being a “school instrument”. I think the instruments were mass-manufactured (factory-made) in some way, because they all appear fairly similar, with the same body shapes, colors, and details.

It is still unclear to me who might’ve written this note and to whom it was addressed, and I want to try to do some more digging into this (look forward to my last blog post!).

While I still have many questions, one thing that is clear to me is the importance of music education to missionary schools, which also points to the high value white Europeans still placed on music even when they were geographically elsewhere.

 

Works Cited:

[1] “St. John’s Mission, Komatke, Gila River Reservation, AZ: Papago Indian Children.” Arizona Memory Project. https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/digital/collection/asufras/id/170.

[2] “Among the Pimas, or, the Mission to the Pima and Maricopa Indians – American Indian Histories and Cultures”. Adam Matthew (Digital).” 1893. https://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/Ayer_267_P81_A52_1893.

What’s a Cakewalk?

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Last class period, we briefly talked about cakewalk dances and songs, and I decided to do some digging. I was very intrigued in the origin and history of cakewalks, as well as what type of music makes it a cakewalk.

According to Grove Music, a cakewalk is a “social and theatrical dance of African American origin, developed from a competitive “prize walk” done by slaves on antebellum plantations in southern states.1”

There are musical similarities between the cakewalk and ragtime, and I noticed this while I was perusing the Sheet Music Consortium database. Of the numerous results for “cakewalk”, most of the sources are also listed as “two-step”, and some are categorized as a ragtime also. See for example this image below the entry2 for “Raz ma taz” by William H. Smith.

The source fits into quite a few categories, and I also think it’s interesting that ragtime and the cakewalk are so similar, yet I had never known the cakewalk to be anything but an elementary school carnival game.

Admittedly, my source-searching-and-locating process felt a little random this time. Eventually, I found a source titled “Raz-Ma-Taz”, which is shown below. This piece was composed in 1901 by William H. Smith, and was intended to accompany a two-step dance. 

Something that immediately struck me was the obvious rhythmic similarities to some of the famous ragtime pieces we have all heard before.

Looking at arguably one of the most well-known pieces in a ragtime style out there (above), we can see the rhythmic and structural similarities between these two pieces. From the left hand stride pattern prominent in both pieces to the syncopated melodic figures and flourishes, it is pretty clear that these styles are closely intertwined.

 

Works Cited:

[1] Conyers, Claude. “Cakewalk.” Grove Music Online. 23 Feb. 2011; Accessed 26 Oct. 2021. https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002092374.

[2] Smith, William H. “Raz ma taz; Cake walk & two-step; What it is?.” Duke University Libraries Repository. Last modified , 1901. Sheet Music Consortium (B-912). https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4hh6hd6n.

Laura M. Towne

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While reading Dena Epstein’s book Sinful Tunes and Spirituals1, the various diary entries and letters stuck out to me, and I was curious to learn more about who was behind those entries, as well as find primary sources by and about the writers. In April 1862, a woman named Laura Towne described a shout she witnessed during her teaching in the Sea Islands (a chain of islands off the southeastern coast of the United States).

A quote from a letter written by Laura Towne, describing a shout she witnessed2.

One small detail really stayed with me throughout this reading, and it was that Towne was a teacher on the island. This is the information I used to guide my primary source searching. I found an article from a Black newspaper called the Broad Ax4. The Broad Ax was a popular African American newspaper published by Julius F. Taylor from 1895 to around 1930. As one historian noted, the newspaper was “the most controversial black newspaper in Chicago in the late nineteenth century5“.

In this edition, there was an article commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Penn School, which was the school Towne founded and taught at for the majority of her life, and also the oldest learning institution for people of color in the south.

In all my 15 years of education, I have never once learned or read about this school, or its female abolitionist founders. I was surprised when reading about this, and even more surprised to learn it was among the first of its kind AND founded by women.  Prior to reading Epstein’s book, I did not know about the Sea Islands, Laura Towne, or the Penn School. Finding little bits of information like this makes me wonder what else is missing from our education. How can we as scholars and students work to make history less biased and more inclusive?

Works Cited:

[1] Epstein, Dena. “Reports of Black Folk Music, 1863-67” In Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War. University of Illinois Press, 1977.

[2] Towne, Laura M. Letters and Diary of Laura M. Towne: Written from the Sea Islands of South Carolina, 1862-1884. Edited by Rupert Sargent Holland. United States, Massachusetts: Riverside Press, 1912.

[3] “Penn School Celebrates Fiftieth Anniversary. Occasion of Joy For All – General Robert Smalls Speaks.” Broad Ax (Chicago, Illinois), May 18, 1912: 2. Readex: African American Newspapers. www.infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANAAA&docref=image/v2%3A13364E8FB5DF2117%40EANAAA-1336BA799F666420%402419541-1336B28ED337D0A8%401-137DDDBAA98EB125.

[4] “About The broad ax. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1895-19??.” Library of Congress and National Endowment for the Humanities. Accessed October 11, 2021. www.chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024055/.

[5] Ibid.

Sometimes, Maps Don’t Tell All

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The Context

As I was (somewhat blindly) perusing the Library of Congress prints and photographs database, I came across a collection1 of maps showing various demographic data about African Americans living in Georgia around the year 1900. The first map I came across (Figure 1) initially caught my attention because of a striking similarity to a source we looked at in class. Have you guessed what yet?

Figure 1. The very first map I came across. Look familiar?

Yeah. It’s George Pullen Jackson’s book titled “White and Negro Spirituals: Their Life Span and Kinship2.” More on that later. I decided to look at this collection of maps and the more I read about them, the more interested I became. Continue reading →

One Man’s Perception of Music in America

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Having your own opinions is a good thing. Feeling the need to make your opinions heard is sometimes a good thing. When looking through stacks of newspaper articles from the mid-19th century, sometimes what you really want is a good opinionated article to take you inside the mind of a minister from 1838. 

Portrait of Rev. John Todd.

Rev. John Todd

Take Reverend John Todd from Philadelphia. He has a lot of opinions, but the one he felt the need to publish in Christian Register and Boston Observer on October 6th, 1838 was this one: Music is good.

Well, that’s cool.

But why does Todd feel so emphatic about music? What would a minister from Philadelphia in 1838 have to say about music? Probably that it’s a glorious gift from God so therefore must be used to praise God in worship, right? Well, yes, but he says more too.

As I read through this article, I realized that it’s essentially an opinion piece with a clear argument and a bit of rambling.

In his article, Todd brings up religion, as well as national pride and status, as things music can fortify in one’s life. I thought it was interesting that he spent so much time discussing one’s status and national price, especially because the title of the article would lead me to believe that it would be entirely about religion. Just look at the opening line:

“God has created the soul for music, and made provision to supply its desires1 ”.

 

A few paragraphs later, Todd says: “Any price will be paid for exquisite music”. 

He goes on to describe how a famous violinist would make more money in a year than “eighty of our ordained missionaries”. According to Todd, these examples show the strong love we all have for music.

Next, Todd discusses how music contributes to one’s sense of national pride and identity. He talks about “Yankee Doodle” and how the song “will probably create an American feeling as long as our nation exists”.

However, the point which Todd focuses on the most is how music is innate to children. He demonstrates his point by describing instances where music was included in school teachings. According to Todd, German schools commonly taught singing and music, and every child was expected to read, write, and perform music.

In Todd’s view, this has been widely successful, and in the few cases in which it has not, was most likely because the songs were too lengthy or complicated. This can be connected with Eileen Southern’s descriptions of the movements led by Elias Neau at Trinity Church in New York to educate servants in psalmody. According to Southern, Neau at one point taught over one hundred servants in the singing of psalmody2.. However, Todd never explicitly mentions Black musicians – in fact, he never mentions race at all.

Elias Neau

Elias Neau

An interior view of Trinity Church, New York.

An interior view of Trinity Church, New York.

I would like to compare this source with some primary sources from Black musicians at the time to see where and how they differ. I wonder how the perception of music would differ by author, and if it does, why? Does it have to do with social status, race, location, occupation, or all of the above?

 

[1] Todd, John. “RELIGIOUS MISCELLANY.: VALUE OF MUSIC. SINGING IN SUNDAY SCHOOLS.” Christian Register and Boston Observer (1835-1843), Oct 06, 1838, 1, https://www.proquest.com/magazines/religious-miscellany/docview/89774473/se-2?accountid=351.

[2] Southern, Eileen. The Music of Black Americans : a History 2nd edition. New York: Norton, 1983.