George Walker: A Twentieth Century Black American Composer

Throughout the twentieth century, music in America has played a significant role in defining its culture, and Black composers have made significant contributions towards shaping American music.1 Beginning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Black composers produced primarily ragtime, jazz, spirituals and blues rather than classical compositions because Whites considered Blacks to be inferior and undereducated.2 These ideas could be seen in reviews of newspapers and magazines that discussed Black performances. One example is an article in an 1873 issue of the Dwight’s Journal 3 which discussed the performanc

Antonín Dvořák was a composer during the late nineteenth century and his views about Black music were very different. He left his home of Czechoslovakia in 1892 to fill the position of music director at the New York National Conservatory of Music. In a letter to a friend, he replied, “The Americans expect great things from me. I am to show them the way to the Promised Land, the realm of a new, independent art, in short a national style of music!”7 After he arrived in America, he began to search for basic material for a characteristic style. While at the Conservatory, he met Black students Will Marion Cook8 and Henry Burleigh.9 The National Conservatory, unlike many schools, admitted Blacks and provided them with scholarships. During the early twentieth century it was The Juilliard School of its time, and Cook and Burleigh were the first to introduce Dvořák to Black music. Dvořák asked Burleigh to sing some southern spirituals and plantation songs for him. Dvořák was so taken by the songs that the next three pieces10 he wrote, employed themes based on Black spirituals and folk songs. Of their music he claimed:

On reading this statement, one who has seen, heard or performed Walker’s song “Mother Goose,” (1992) would be confused. It is atonal and contains obscure rhythms and tonal structures particularly in measures 12 and 13. There are also tone clusters at the end of measure 3 and the beginning of measure 4 which contribute to the song’s tonal weakness. There seems to be no harmonic texture in the music, which contradicts his statement. These obscure rhythms and tonalities can be seen throughout the piece in both the voice and the accompaniment.

This technique has developed through the twentieth century, and today there are still Black composers and White composers who use this technique of combining Black traditional music with classical music. Black composer, George Walker, has used traditional Black music in many of his pieces, however, his use is not as noticeable as in the works of Burleigh and other earlier composers such as William Grant Still,13 Howard Swanson,14 and Ulysses Kay.15 In the early twentieth century, Still actually traveled with a blues band which had an obvious impact on his style. Of it he states:

19 An American poet born in West Hills, N.Y. Considered by many to be the greatest of all American poets. Walt Whitman celebrated the freedom and dignity of the individual and sang the praises of democracy and the brotherhood of man. His Leaves of Grass, unconventional in both content and technique, is probably the most influential volume of poems in the history of American literature, see "Whitman, Walt." The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia © 1994, 2000, 2001, 2002 on Infoplease.com

11 Dvořák made this statement sometime between 1892 and 1895, see Russell 15.

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