Ravinia 2021 - Issue 4

by a major American company, to have a sold-out classical recording, and to receive an invitation to the White House, among oth- er accomplishments. He received honorary degrees from Wilberforce College, Howard University, Oberlin College, Bates College, University of Arkansas, Pepperdine Univer- sity, New England Conservatory of Music, Peabody Conservatory, and University of Southern California. Still’s parents both possessed musical ability: his father was leader of the brass band in Woodville, MS, and his mother played piano. The family moved to Little Rock, AR, after his father’s death. There, young William studied violin and attended performances of traveling vaudeville shows. Still entered Wilberforce College (Ohio) in 1911 for pre-med studies, but he inevitably gravitated to musical activi- ties, playing in the university string quartet, conducting the band, and composing. He lat- er attended Oberlin College before pursuing private composition studies with George Whitefield Chadwick and Edgard Varèse. Still became involved in a variety of mu- sic-related pursuits. During the 1910s, he played in dance orchestras and arranged for W.C. Handy. Still joined the pit orchestra for the Noble Sissle/Eubie Blake musical Shuffle Along , and soon after he became recording di- rector for the Black Swan Phonograph Com- pany, whose artists included Ethel Waters and Fletcher Henderson. A growing number of musicians—Paul Whiteman, Artie Shaw, and Sophie Tucker—performed Still’s arrange- ments on radio programs. From 1934 until his death, Still and his second wife, the pianist and writer Verna Arvey, lived in Los Angeles. His credits included musical contributions to the films Pennies from Heaven (1936), Lost Horizon (1937), and Stormy Weather (1943) as well as the television series Gunsmoke and the original Perry Mason Show . Freelance work for Hollywood studios pro- vided income for Still’s family but it did not curb his production of concert music. In fact, William Grant Still (1949) the late 1930s and early 1940s witnessed an up- surge in “serious” composition—works such as the opera Troubled Island (1937), the cantata And They Lynched Him on a Tree (1940), and In Memoriam: The Colored Soldiers who Died for Democracy (1943), inspired by a report that the first American soldier to die in World War II was African American. Commissions and requests for compositions multiplied. Still composed the Three Visions for solo piano in 1935 while living in Los Angeles. J. Fischer & Brothers published the complete score the following year; the second move- ment, Summerland , was published separately. Still later arranged Three Visions for chamber orchestra (1938). These pieces, which follow a spiritual journey from death into the after- life, are “Dedicated to my friends who have departed this life.” Dark Horsemen is a terri- fying representation of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse in Revelation 6, who bring pestilence, war, famine, and death. The de- parted souls experience the beauty and peace of heaven in Summerland . Radiant Pinnacle offers a brilliant vision of the afterlife. Each movement of the Suite for Violin and Piano, composed in 1943 in Los Angeles, draws inspiration from a sculpture by an Af- rican American artist. African Dancer (1953) by Richmond Barthé (1901–89), which cap- tures the dancer mid-step, arms stretched to the side and eyes cast trancelike toward the sky, inspired Still’s first movement. The theme of “mother and daughter” appears in several sculptures and paintings by Sargent Johnson (1888–1967), any or all of which provided the subject of the second movement. Still evoked Gamin (c.1929) by Augusta Savage (1892–1962) in the third movement. “Gamin” is the French word for “street urchin.” Savage modeled this sculpture on her young nephew, Ellis Ford. NORA HOLT (c.1885–1974) Nora’s Dance , op. 25, no. 1 The photograph of Nora Holt snapped in 1955 by the writer and photographer Carl van Vechten captured a calm, simple grand- motherly figure—a striking contrast to her complex and often sensational earlier life. She was born Lena Douglas in Kansas City, KS, the daughter of Rev. Calvin N. Douglas and Gracie Brown Douglas. Sources differ on her exact birth year (1884, 1885, 1890, or 1895), but 1885 is the generally accepted date. Gracie en- couraged her daughter to begin piano lessons at age 4; Lena later picked up organ to accom- pany church services. Lena entered Western University in Quinda- ro, KS, as a music major in 1914. Almost 30 years of age, she had already married and di- vorced three times. [Western University was founded in 1862 as the first historically Black institution west of the Mississippi River, re- nowned especially for its music program. It closed in 1943, and all the buildings were de- molished over time. The remains of Quindaro and Western University are now part of a his- torical site in Kansas City.] After graduating two years later as valedictorian of her class, Nora moved to Chicago. In 1917, she complet- ed an undergraduate degree at Chicago Musi- cal College, married her fourth husband (the wealthy hotel owner George W. Holt), and changed her first name to Nora. The follow- ing year, Nora Holt became the first African American to earn a master’s degree, submit- ting an original rhapsody for string orchestra based on the spiritual “You May Bury Me in the East” to Chicago Musical College as her thesis composition. Over the next few years, Holt pursued quite incongruous career paths: one as a classical music advocate and critic, and the other as a ravishing, vivacious, and occasionally bawdy cabaret singer. She co-founded the National Association of Negro Musicians in 1919 and remained active in the organization for many years. Holt served as music critic for the Chi- cago Defender (1917–21)—the first female crit- ic in the country—and subsequently founded and edited the monthly magazine Music and Poetry (1921–22). Her singing career earned her even greater fame: one of her standards was the salacious “My Daddy Rocks Me (With One Steady Roll).” One London critic described her vocal style: “[She] has a pres- ence and manner similar to Sophie Tucker … but her voice is even more astonishing. She can produce sounds not comparable to or- thodox singing, ranging from deepest low voice to a shrilling high, often unaccompa- nied by words.” George W. Holt died in 1921 and left his for- tune to Nora, providing financial freedom for the rest of her life. She moved to New York City and thrust herself into the bustle of the Harlem Renaissance. Nora married a fifth and final time in 1923 to Joseph L. Ray, an assistant to Charles M. Schwab, president of Bethlehem Steel. The stodgy Ray proved an absolute mismatch for his carefree bride, and Nora Holt (1955) the marriage ended badly. Travel occupied Nora for the next few years as she performed widely in cities such as Paris, Monte Carlo, Shanghai, Los Angeles, and New York. Before leaving the US, Nora placed her musi- cal manuscripts in storage only to find them missing upon her return. Two works pub- lished in Music and Poetry —a setting of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “The Sandman” for voice and piano and the ragtime-influenced Negro Dance (here titled Nora’s Dance ), op. 25, no. 1, for solo piano—are the only survivors of her estimated 200 compositions. Later in life, Nora alternated between Los Angeles, where she taught public high school, and New York City, where she became a radio personality and resumed her work as a classi- cal music critic. Nora wrote for the New York Amsterdam News and New York Courier and became the first Black member of the Music Critics Circle of New York in 1945, after being nominated by Virgil Thomson. On the air, she hosted the annual American Negro Artists program on WNYC and the weekly half-hour show Nora Holt’s Concert Showcase on WLIB. She retired to Los Angeles in 1964 and died there a decade later. FLORENCE PRICE (1887–1953) Sketches in Sepia Andante con espressione Piano Quintet in A minor Florence Price grew up in Little Rock, AR, the youngest of three children born to elementary school music teacher Florence Irene Smith and dentist James H. Smith. Coincidentally, young Florence attended the same schools as another future African American composer—William Grant Still—and reportedly published her first composition at age 11. After graduating as class valedictorian at Capitol High School three years later, Florence enrolled in the New England Conservatory of Music, where she excelled as a pianist, organist, and composi- tion student of George Chadwick. Florence returned to Little Rock after com- pleting her degree in 1906, working as a pri- vate music teacher and faculty member at Shorter College. For two years (1910–12), she chaired the music department at Clark Uni- versity in Atlanta before marrying Thomas J. Price, an attorney in Little Rock. The Prices had two daughters, Florence Louise (b. 1917) and Edith (b. 1921). Florence continued to teach music privately and compose, winning second place twice in Opportunity magazine’s Holstein Prize competition (1925 and 1927). In 1927, Thomas and Florence Price and their children relocated to Chicago, where Flor- ence resumed her studies, musical and other- wise, at several schools, including Chicago Musical College and the American Conserva- tory. She composed prodigiously (even writ- ing radio commercials) and taught several RAVINIA.ORG • RAVINIA MAGAZINE 41