Ravinia 2022, Issue 1

STEPHANIE NOLT (HERSH) step and I made up my mind not to move”— gives the defiant first movement its title. Klap Ur Handz adds a handclapping groove to the funky string quartet playing. “Isorhythmicla- tionistic” creates an atmosphere that is at once desolate, timeless, and consoling. Roumain arranged this quartet for string orchestra with violins, violas, cellos, and double basses, a ver- sion known as the Rosa Parks Symphony . FLORENCE PRICE Juba Dance from Symphony No. 1 in E minor Scored for two flutes and two piccolos, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, cymbal, bass drum, triangle, large and small African drums, crash cymbals, wind whistle, celesta, cathedral chimes, orchestral bells, and strings Florence Beatrice Smith married Thomas Jewell Price in a simple civil ceremony in her hometown of Little Rock, AR, on Septem- ber 9, 1912. Unfortunately for the Prices and their growing family, Little Rock experienced a deterioration of race relations during the 1910s and 1920s. Thomas and Florence fol- lowed the Great Migration to Chicago in 1928 with their two daughters, Florence Louise and Edith Cassandra. Chicago offered famil- iar surroundings to Florence, who had spent the summers of 1926 and 1927 at the Chicago Musical College Summer Master School with an emphasis on composition. The Prices moved into the heart of Chicago’s Bronzeville district, where a vibrant stretch from 26th to 39th Streets, known as “The Stroll,” housed nightclubs, cabarets, dance halls, theaters, and cafés. Florence immersed herself in the multifaceted musical life of the city. She joined the R. Nathaniel Dett Club of Music, a branch of the National Associa- tion of Negro Musicians (NANM). Florence developed into a prolific composer of piano teaching pieces for children and also amassed a substantial catalog of popular songs and spiritual arrangements. A highly accom- plished keyboard player, Florence quickly earned respect as one of the most accom- plished silent-film organists on The Stroll. Thomas, by contrast, struggled to establish himself in Chicago as a lawyer, enduring fre- quent unemployment. The onset of the Great Depression only exacerbated this distressing situation. An angry streak, which Thomas first displayed in Little Rock, escalated into a pattern of verbal and physical abuse. Florence could tolerate no more and filed for divorce, which the judge granted on January 19, 1931, citing “extreme and repeated cruelty.” Price’s unimaginable personal turmoil coin- cided with the initial sketches for her Sym- phony in E minor. Further incentive to com- plete this orchestral score emerged one year later when The Crisis (February 1932), the magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), announced the “Fifth Annual Rodman Wa- namaker Contest in Musical Composition for Composers of the Negro Race.” Established in 1927 by the heir to the Wanamaker depart- ment store fortune, the contest recognized outstanding African American composers at the annual meeting of the NANM. Cash priz- es came from the Robert Curtis Ogden Asso- ciation, a philanthropic organization created by African American employees of the Wana- maker store in Philadelphia. At stake were $1,000 in cash prizes for com- positions in three categories: songs with words, piano, and orchestra. Price entered her Symphony No. 1 in E minor and suite Ethiopia’s Shadow in America in the orches- tral category and the Sonata in E minor and Fantasie nègre No. 4 in B minor in the piano category. When the awards were announced, Florence Price’s four entries received top hon- ors and shared Honorable Mention in both orchestral and piano categories, earning cash awards totaling $750. Her former student, Margaret Bonds, won the song category and a $250 award with “Sea Ghost.” News of Price’s virtual sweep of the Wana- maker awards spread nationally and attracted attention a short distance north in the Chi- cago Loop, where Frederick Stock, music di- rector of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, took note of her triumphs. The opening of the Century of Progress International Exposi- tion (a.k.a. the Chicago World’s Fair) was just eight months away, and the CSO was sched- uled to perform at the Auditorium Theatre within the first few weeks. Stock programmed two back-to-back performances of orchestral music written almost exclusively by Ameri- can composers. The world premiere of Florence Price’s Sym- phony No. 1 in E minor occupied center po- sition on the June 15, 1933, program. The per- formance proved a landmark event in music history. Never before had a major American symphony orchestra performed a composition by a Black woman. (Twenty months earlier, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Howard Hanson had premiered the Afro-American Symphony by William Grant Still on October 28, 1931.) Price adopt- ed the structural conventions of the Europe- an-American symphony with fast movements surrounding a slow, lyrical essay and dance. Antonín Dvořak’s “New World” Symphony in E minor left an indelible imprint on Price’s score, immediately evident in the key of the symphony. Price very likely encountered this work in her composition lessons with George Whitefield Chadwick, the director of the New England Conservatory of Music. The dance- like third movement is a brilliant recreation of the African American tradition of “pattin’ juba,” a complex combination of foot-stomp- ing, hand-clapping, and thigh-slapping. Sol- omon Northup, a free Black musician who was captured and enslaved in Louisiana, de- scribed this practice in his book Twelve Years a Slave : “striking the hands on the knees, then striking the hands together, then striking the right shoulder with one hand, the left with the other—all the while keeping time with the feet, and singing…” Price incorporated several folk-inspired melodies, bearing the influence of Dvořak, into the rondo finale. NICHOLAS HERSH, arr. “We Shall Overcome” / “Lift Ev’ry Voice” Scored for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, two trombones and bass trombone, tuba, timpani, drum set, bass drum, chimes, cymbals, tam-tam, strings, and optional chorus, vocal solo, vibraphone, harp, and piano The Chicago Sinfonietta commissioned Nich- olas Hersh’s combined arrangement of “We Shall Overcome” and “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” as an encore for its annual Martin Lu- ther King Jr. Day Tribute Concerts on Janu- ary 16 and 17, 2022, under the direction of Mei-Ann Chen. Attentive to the variable con- ditions of live performance during the COVID pandemic, Hersh fashioned a medley that can be performed exclusively by orchestra or that can involve a solo vocalist, chorus, and audi- ence sing-along. In this arrangement, two verses of “Lift Ev’ry Voice” are inserted in the middle of “We Shall Overcome,” the two tunes weaving together in the final section. The Civil Rights anthem “We Shall Overcome” traces its origins back through the 1940s to a somewhat murkier past in gospel hymns and work songs. Tradition holds that “I’ll Overcome Someday,” a hymn by Methodist Episcopal minister Charles Albert Tindley of Philadelphia (published in 1901), was its im- mediate precursor. While this might be accu- rate for the text, the hymn bears little musical relationship to “We Shall Overcome.” Schol- ars have focused on other possible melodic sources, including “No More Auction Block for Me”—a “secular spiritual” sung by Afri- can American soldiers serving in the Union Army during the Civil War—and “If My Jesus Nicholas Hersh Wills,” written between 1932 and 1942 by Lou- ise Shropshire, who was friends with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the “father of gospel music,” Thomas A. Dorsey. The song’s first documented use dates from October 1945, when unionized workers launched a strike against the American Tobac- co Company Cigar Factory in Charleston, SC, demanding increased wages and non-discrim- ination against African American workers. To end each day of the strike, workers under the leadership of Lucille Simmons sang “We Will Overcome,” vowing that “wewill win our rights someday.” Simmons later introduced the song to Zilphia Horton, director of the Highlander Folk School, an educational center for union organizers and civil rights activists located in Monteagle, TN. When Horton traveled to New York City in 1947 on her annual fundrais- ing expedition, she shared the song with folk musician Pete Seeger, who began teaching it to his audiences. The following year, Seeger pub- lished the music in the quarterly People’s Songs newsletter as “We Shall Overcome.” Seeger returned to the Highlander Folk School for its 25th anniversary celebration, and performed “We Shall Overcome” for Dr. King on September 2, 1957. The song became a fixture within the Civil Rights Movement when Guy Carawan, the director of the folk school, introduced it at the initial gather- ing of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee on April 15, 1960. After signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law on July 2, President Lyndon B. Johnson drew upon this powerful anthem in his address to Congress: “This great, rich, restless country can offer opportunity and education and hope to all: Black and white, North and South, sharecrop- per and city dweller. These are the enemies: poverty, ignorance, disease. They are the ene- mies and not our fellow man, not our neigh- bor. And these enemies too, poverty, disease, and ignorance, we shall overcome.” Dr. King delivered his stirring “We Shall Overcome” speech on March 31, 1968, at the National Ca- thedral in Washington, DC—four days before his assassination. “We shall overcome. Deep in my heart, I do believe, we shall overcome.” The remarkably talented Johnson brothers, James Weldon and John Rosamond, created “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” for a celebration honoring AbrahamLincoln’s birthday on Feb- ruary 12, 1900. A group of citizens in Jackson- ville, FL—where James served as principal of Stanton School, the state’s first public school for Black students—requested a speech for the occasion. James responded with song lyrics. Writers often cite the Intermezzo from Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana as the inspiration for John’s music. However, the graceful melody, triplet rhythms, and jubilant text of the opera’s Easter Hymn (“Inneggia- mo, il Signor non è morto”) offer a more plau- sible model. RAVINIA MAGAZINE • JUNE 15 – JULY 3, 2022 28