We always hear this phrase “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” The phrase refers to how certain people will think something is beautiful or not and that opinion can differ from person to person. I find this idea is particularly interesting when looking at paintings of people and other forms of portraiture.

As I’ve been researching Lillian Evanti and her life, I have come across some beautiful photographs of her like this:

She has many photographs of her in costume for the roles she has performed and there are a few presumably candid ones like this:

As someone who has a small amount of background in photography, one thing we are constantly asked about is staging of photographs and what we think the photographer had in mind when they took said picture. Every portrait of this amazingly talented woman is beautiful, but I personally don’t feel like her artistry truly comes across as much as it could. As I was scrolling through the internet to try and find more sources about this woman, I came across this painting:

This is a painting of Lillian Evanti in the main female lead, Rosina, in Barber of Seville. This was the role she had before she took on Violetta in La Triviata. When I first came across this painting, I couldn’t believe it was her. This work of art looks like it could be of a renaissance woman or someone from decades before Evanti was alive. When I learned who was the subject, I was instantly intrigued who painted it and the answer surprised me.

This is one of the most well known portraits from the Lois Mailou Jones, a Black female painter (1905-1998) who was very active during the Harlem Renaissance. This is what some of her other work looks like:

Lois led a very interesting career. She was active in both America and France and held her first solo exhibition when she was 18. She was a very accomplished painter, focusing mostly on portraying other people of color, specifically Black people in the Harlem renaissance.

I can’t find any confirmation of when the painting of Evanti was done (there is no date for the painting that I could find), but it was likely when both the women were in Europe in the 1930s. I find her depiction of Evanti to be ethereal – she doesn’t look like a real person and yet she was. Here is where we get into beauty being in the eye of the beholder.

At the time this work was done, America in particular was not very friendly (putting it mildly) to anyone that was not white. I think if a white painter had tried to paint the same scene, the painting wouldn’t look as much like a work of art as it does here. Here is what Lois had to say about the painting:

“A very unusual thing happened while I was doing the finishing touches. The Barber of Seville, the opera, came on over the radio. Of course, when the music came on, Lillian began to sing. There was the sparkle in her eyes and the gestures and everything. It was just what I needed to finish the portrait. I caught the spirit of her, which was just marvelous.”

I feel like the simple existence of Evanti in this painting would be overshadowed by her Blackness if anyone besides a Black painter made this work of art. Because of Lois, Evanti was allowed to exist both as a person and a character in this painting and nothing feels forced. Her nature as a singer, the sparkle in her eye as Lois said, is easy to see in the painting.

So often in art we feel like we have to pick something to focus on about an artist – their race, their gender, what they do, how they do it, when they do it, etc. Highlighting what makes certain artists stand out from their colleagues is important, but can we let their artistry be outside that categorization as a way to highlight what an amazing creator that artist is? Lillian Evanti’s poise and power are also easy to see in the painting, and depending on the lens of who is looking at her, they might’ve chosen her Blackness to focus on over the beauty, grace, and talent she brought to the world of opera.

Works Cited:

https://www.whitehousehistory.org/lillian-evanti

Lois Mailou Jones

Aaron Copland, as most of us know, is one of the famed American composers of the late 18th-early 19th century. He is one of the big names in the American music canon.

In all honesty, I don’t know very much about Copland’s life or his collaborations. One of the pieces I knew a little bit about was Appalachian Spring, a ballet he composed the score for in collaboration with a friend of his, Martha Graham. Martha Graham was a famous American dancer whose choreography had a significant impact on the modern dance world. She is pictured below.

Copland and Graham began writing back and forth when she commissioned him to write a ballet with “an American theme.” They toyed with several ideas and until she suggested the name, Copland referred to this work as “Ballet for Martha”. I was looking for letters about this piece when I came across this one. There is no date for the letter, but it talks of hiring a choreographer, so one could assume its from during the beginning/middle stages of working on the ballet.

One thing I was not expecting to find in this letter at all was a summary of the Scarlet Letter.

I wasn’t sure why she included it at first, but then I read the beginning of the letter again and maybe it was a preliminary bouncing off point for a possible storyline of the ballet. I think they scrapped this idea because I tried to find a source that confirmed that this was the subject matter of the ballet but had no luck. The thought that something like the Scarlet Letter was even talked about as potential inspiration for Appalachian Spring is incredibly surprising to me. We usually don’t think to tie music, dance, and literature together because of the fact that these art forms are so different.

The Scarlet Letter came out in 1850 and this ballet premiered in 1944. Both of these pieces of work carry huge significance in the cannons of which they are a part. When thinking of quintessential American literature, the Scarlet Letter usually comes to mind. When thinking of iconic American classical music, Appalachian Spring usually comes to mind. This potential piece of information brings to mind more questions – why was this idea scrapped? How much of it remains in the way the ballet is performed today? Why does no one bring this up when talking about this piece?

It’s so interesting, too, to see how the potential usage of the Scarlet Letter as subject matter for this iconic American composition is leaning into such a white narrative and seemingly rejecting other cultural influences. Copland in his catalog has taken influences from other cultures to further his compositions, but I think the desire to stick with “American traditions” and the title of piece being what it is and it not being very reflective of what Appalachia looked like during the time period the piece was set in is very interesting.

Regardless of why this idea didn’t go any further, the ballet was worked on and there were more drafts – all the while Aaron and Martha kept in touch. Here is a letter she wrote him from right before the ballet premiered:

It is clear how much this work meant to the both of them, and other people were even able to pick up on it.

Collaboration is the bread and butter of the music and performing art world – without it, we wouldn’t have works of art like this. People might not want to go looking for how the sausage gets made (so to speak), but if you do, you might find a clue you never thought to factor in.

Works Cited:

Cassidy, Claudia. On the Aisle Martha Graham and Aaron Copland Good Companions in Superb “Appalachian Spring”. Chicago Tribune, Chicago, 1946. Pdf. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200153644/>.

Kraft, Victor. Aaron Copland by candlelight, studio in the Berkshires, September. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/copland.phot0017/>.

Letter from Martha Graham to Aaron Copland, n.d. Manuscript/Mixed Material. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200154125/>.

Letter from Martha Graham to Aaron Copland, May 1. Manuscript/Mixed Material. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200154119/>.

There are some who love the idea of jazz borrowing from classical and there are some who hate it. I’m not sure which camp I personally fall into, but I love to see what arrangers and other instrumentalists do with older ideas that seem taboo to touch.

On this record titled Desecration Rag (A Classic Nightmare), Felix Ardnt takes us through several rags that use themes from western classical canon composers like Dvorak, Chopin, and Liszt. The record is a 10-inch vinyl pressing so it doesn’t have that many tracks, but the ones that are there are intriguing. The above listening selection is one of the tracks from the record and unfortunately the source doesn’t say which one it is. My best guess as a listener is that this track is the Dvorak track.

Recently, topics of discussion in class have revolved around how certain kinds of music grow and change to stay with the times and the benefits and drawbacks that has. With our recent discussions of what makes up the American Music Canon, I think this is a great artifact with which to tango.

This record raises some questions – is this music truly American or is it an Americanized interpretation? Is the music being transformed here truly European or were there some American elements in it? In the case of Dvorak specifically, that was the case.

Ragtime was one of the early stepping stones of jazz and to bring composers who didn’t write jazz into that realm of music through sampling their melodies likely raised some eyebrows in the audience that heard this record. At the time, there might have been a few that were familiar with the names of Dvorak and Liszt, but for those at the time who were purist of musical forms, they probably didn’t think very high of the sampling that was done on this record. Be that as it might have been, I think transforming music like this can make certain pieces that might seem stuffy to some more accessible and enjoyable – not everyone who likes jazz likes classical music and vice versa. This record could’ve been a cool way to bridge that gap and start conversations that might not have been had previously.

This recording from YouTube is a more recent recording that I thought would be cool to put beside the record. You can hear much more of Dvorak’s original sample in the YouTube recording, but the question remains the same: is this “American Music?” I think in the case of Dvorak in particular, it’s hard to not call his music American (at least what he wrote while in the country) because he was taking themes from local music that he heard and used it for his compositions. I think there are arguments for both sides, but with this being a ragtime jazz interpretation of a theme Dvorak wrote, I’m more inclined to call it American music than to try and call it something else.

Work Cited:

Arndt, Felix, and Felix Arndt. Desecration rag A classic nightmare. 1914. Audio. https://www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-134701/

Song collections can be made for multiple reasons. For memory, for keeping record, or just to have as a collection. For BIPOC musicians and composers it can be a way to get their music to a wider audience and make sure that their music lives on.

Ronald Hayes (1887 – 1977) is a notable American lyric tenor. He studied for four years at Fisk University in Nashville and spent 12 years in London and Paris after school. It was in Europe that he met other African musicians and his meeting them led him to discover the importance of the African-American folk songs that were sung by enslaved people in America around this time. He eventually obtained some recordings of African music and decided he wanted to put a song collection together for the general public as well as other Black musicians at the time.

This collection is called My Songs: Aframerican Religious Folk Songs and it is organized into several panels to make choices of what to sing from it easier. He notes a specific panel to look at if you are planning to sing any songs for an Easter service in the forward of this collection. As the collection goes from panel to panel of songs (of which there are 30 total) he writes a few paragraphs about singing these songs in concert as well as their cultural importance.

We’ve talked in class a lot about how when looking at a collection of anything, it’s vital to take into consideration who made it, what’s in it, how old it is, and observe any other bias that might be present in the collection. For this one specifically, it is interesting to think about what wouldn’t be there if a white person had put it together. There probably would not be notes about the notation or markings and how those stem from African music traditions. The collection would also probably not be categorized the way it is in this book. There is also no negative light around this being Black music – he praises the tradition because it was what he grew up with. I don’t think a white person during this time period would’ve done the same.

Collections like these are vital to the preservation of music. No matter where they come from or what kind of music is in them, it is vital that these collections live on so that musicians for generations after can learn from them and have these traditions within arms reach.

Works Cited:

Hayes, Roland. My Songs: Aframerican Religious Folk Songs. Atlantic Monthly Press. Alexander Street, https://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/bibliographic_entity%7Cbibliographic_details%7C355608. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Hayes

It was no secret that enslaved people in America had their own traditions and practices outside of their labor. What can be surprising about these traditions held is who has anything to say about it.

Thomas Jefferson, this country’s third president and one of our founding fathers, was a consistent opponent of slavery. He once said, “I hope in all my soul that the day will come when slavery is a word without meaning in the English language…” The paper this quote comes from is one from the Fredrick Douglas Paper and this specific publication had his eulogy printed.

In Notes on Virginia with an appendix by Thomas Jefferson (1801), he openly praised them for being “equal in memory to the whites” and in the same sentence also claimed Black people were inferior in reason to white people. In terms of their music, however, Jefferson called Black people “generally more gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune and time, and they have been capable of imaging a small catch.” This book is a collection of thoughts from Jefferson himself and a fair number of his colleagues wouldn’t have praised Black people this highly during this time. He was a liberal thinker for his time, though, but seeing this made my eyes go wide. It’s rare to see a white person praising Black people like this from this time period.

When we were reading sources from this time in class, we didn’t see a lot of white people talking about Black and enslaved people this way. Most white people who wrote about them at the time were quick to judge them for anything they saw or didn’t see. Opinions like Jeffersons are incredibly important because it shows that there were powerful people who did appose slavery and praised the enslaved people for some of the faculties they were trying their best to express. It shows that people saw them for more than property and in the sea of awful racist language (which some of his comments do have, mind you) it’s comforting to see those pockets of good.

Works Cited:

“Eulogy.” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, vol. I, no. XIII, 24 Mar. 1848, p. [1]. Readex: African American Newspapers, infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANAAA&docref=image/v2%3A11BE9340B7A005AB%40EANAAA-11D0A375F6CC4A30%402396111-11D0A376083F6788%400-11D0A376375BB120%40Eulogy. Accessed 12 Dec. 2022.

https://infoweb.newsbank.com/iw-search/we/Evans/?p_product=EAIX&p_theme=eai&p_nbid=Y4EJ4EGBMTY3MDg5NDM0OS40NDI1ODE6MToxMjoxOTkuOTEuMTgwLjU&p_action=doc&p_queryname=3&p_docref=v2:13D59FCC0F7F54B8@EAIX-147E02D7E1F80B80@5280-14B3FF2F6A857B98@218

There can be multiple definitions of what “American Music” actually is. There are so many cultures that exist in this country and in its history that it can be difficult to pinpoint an exact genre that is strictly “American.”

Let’s rewind a little bit in history. When the colonizers from Europe first came to this land mass initially, they were bringing a multitude of cultures with them – Spanish, French, German, etc. In addition to the cultures that already existed before they got here, the newer artistic cultures melded (both by force and by accident) to create new kinds of art and music that was a beautifully twisted combination of the two.

In the Andes in the 16th century, there was a son of a Spanish conquistador and an Incan princess – Garcilaso de la Vega. He was a poet himself and he is known mostly for his writings about Incan history, culture, and society. In those writings, he wrote about the history of both of the musical traditions from which he is descended. He brought to light how many different instruments they used in both types of music (commonly flute and organ), how each kind was distinct and how there were certain songs for each occasion, and where most of the songs were performed.

His writings were particularly special because they were the first literature by an author born in the Americas to enter the Western Canon. Without his writings, there would’ve been much less written down knowledge about the Incan culture and their cultural practices.

Writings like this are important in our work in this class for the purpose of following how cultural traditions move. The musical influence of both of these cultures can be seen in places like New Spain and later on when the territories dissolve and become the country we know and exist in today. While the flute and organ usually are not played together in early music performance practice anymore, we have records of what early court music sounded like to inform the performance practice early music groups do today.

Understanding history is vital to understanding where we come from and knowing where our short comings are so that the mistakes and disappointments of the past are not repeated.

Work Cited:

“Garcilaso De La Vega: Description of Inca Music (1609).” The American Mosaic: The Latino American Experience, ABC-CLIO, 2022, latinoamerican2.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1541276. Accessed 3 Oct. 2022.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inca_Garcilaso_de_la_Vega