{"id":4482,"date":"2019-10-23T20:28:38","date_gmt":"2019-10-24T01:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/?p=4482"},"modified":"2019-10-23T20:28:38","modified_gmt":"2019-10-24T01:28:38","slug":"the-musical-musings-of-ht-burleigh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/2019\/10\/23\/the-musical-musings-of-ht-burleigh\/","title":{"rendered":"The Musical Musings of HT Burleigh"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Henry (Harry) Thacker Burleigh is often credited as one of the leading Black Art Musicians of the 20th century, if not of all time.\u00a0 He is known to be the father of the concert spiritual (which could be debated, as the Fisk Jubilee Singers had been performing concert spirituals for some time by Burleigh’s birth). as well as a competent composer and performer of art music in the European style.\u00a0 Burleigh is also known for his connections to several figures of the Harlem Renaissance, namely WEB Du Bois and Booker T Washington.<\/p>\n

For this post, however, we’ll be looking at a specific part of Burleigh’s art, his “Album of Negro Spirituals.”<\/p>\n

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The collection I reference was published in 1969, 20 years after his death, however it contains Burleigh’s original markings, as well as footers with Burleigh’s own edits made during the composition and revision process. I’ll look at 3 of his most famous arrangements, looking at them through a theory lens to try and deduce influences Burleigh had.<\/p>\n

Deep River<\/a><\/p>\n

This piece is the undisputed champion for “most famous spiritual.”\u00a0 If we look at Burleigh’s vocal line, it differs from most of the other songs in this collection, in that it does not use dialect.\u00a0 Burleigh is very specific about his use of dialect in singing, as we’ll see later on with “Wade in de Water.”\u00a0 While “Deep River” does not use the word “the” in it at all, which is an accomplishment in and of itself, and “the” is the most common dialectical word to change: we do still see “that” and “river,” both of which are commonly changed into “dat” and “ribber.”\u00a0 The accompaniment is sparse, with mainly rolled chords, however it does make use of some melodic material, reminiscent of some Schubert accompaniments.\u00a0 This can be seen most clearly in the last two measures of the first page.<\/p>\n

Wade In De Water<\/a><\/p>\n

This piece exhibits more of the stereotypical spiritual traits, with a fast, agitated, syncopated piano accompaniment.\u00a0 This style is often likened to drums or more rhythmic performances, which is commonly associated with spirituals here.\u00a0 The text is also in dialect, with words like “de,” “a-goin’,” and “dat.”\u00a0 Furthermore, we see a common them of spirituals, which is a reference to Moses and the Israelites.\u00a0 This make sense for a source material for spirituals, as Moses famously led the Israelites out of slavery, a plight the African slaves in the United States were all too familiar with.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child<\/a><\/p>\n

For our final piece, we have a bit of a hybrid in styles.\u00a0 This seems most in line with what we’ve talked about for Burleigh’s views on Black music as art music.\u00a0 It takes source material and performance stylings (dialect), and combines it with a European sense of harmony and texture.\u00a0 The piano texture would not feel out of place in a Brahms or Wagner lied, while the melody has a certain ebb and flow more reminiscent of a work song.\u00a0 The constant forward and back drives that home, while the crossing countermelodies in the piano, seen best during the refrains of “a long way from home.”<\/p>\n

As we can see from these three examples, Burleigh wrote in a predominantly European style, using spiritual melodies as inspiration, but not attempting to stick to a folk tradition of performance.\u00a0 There are times when he leans into the folk origins a little more, particularly on Wade in de Water, but this makes sense thematically.\u00a0 Wade in de Water is neither hopeful nor sorrowful, but provides specific instructions for escaped slaves on making it to freedom (wading in rivers helped to mask their scent from tracking dogs).\u00a0 Nevertheless, the piece is included alongside works closer in style to Burleigh’s secular art music, showing its pedigree as art music.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Henry (Harry) Thacker Burleigh is often credited as one of the leading Black Art Musicians of the 20th century, if not of all time.\u00a0 He is known to be the father of the concert spiritual (which could be debated, as … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3055,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[1170],"class_list":["post-4482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ht-burleigh"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jEhR-1ai","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3055"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4482"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4489,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4482\/revisions\/4489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}