“Roots and Branches” - Music - University of California, Irvine

• Ground-breaking accomplishments and performances (1900 – 1940) include:
1912 – Composer Will Marion Cook publishes A Collection of Negro Songs;
1916 – composer Harry T. Burleigh publishes an arrangement of the Spiritual Deep River,
thus beginning the development of the Art Song Spiritual repertoire;
1917 – Harry T. Burleigh composes the song cycle Passionale (published by G. Ricordi;
1919 – The National Association of Negro Musicians is founded. Throughout the 20 th
century chapters emerge across the country, and the organization becomes an essential
supporter of African American singers and composers.
1923 - Concert by Roland Hayes, featuring lieder and a concluding section of Spirituals;
1923 – Paul Robeson stars in All God’s Chillun Got Wings;
April 19, 1925 - concert by Paul Robeson at the Greenwich Village Theatre in New York
City – the first vocal concert to present a repertoire devoted entirely to the Spiritual;
1926 – Quinn Chapel A.M.E. Church of Chicago develops the June Rose Concert;
1926 – Hall Johnson composes the art song Mother to Son using the poetry of Langston
Hughes;
1926 – Roland Hayes gives a distinguished performance at Carnegie Hall;
1929 – Contralto Marian Anderson gives her debut recital at Carnegie Hall;
April 1931 – Baritone Jules Bledsoe gives his debut recital at Carnegie Hall;
January 31, 1933 – Contralto Etta Moten Barnett performs at the White House;
June 15, 1933 – Roland Hayes performs excerpts from Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s
Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast at a program presented by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra;
September 1933 – April 1934 – Marian Anderson concertizes throughout Europe (Denmark,
Finland, Norway and Sweden);
1934 – Soprano Lillian Evanti performs at the White House
August 1935 – Marian Anderson gives a recital in Salzburg after which conductor Arturo
Toscanini describes her voice as a voice like yours is heard once in a hundred years.
December 30, 1935 – Marian Anderson’s historic New York Town Hall concert;
March 8, 1935 – Dorothy Maynor and Todd Duncan perform for Franklin and Eleanor
Roosevelt at The White House;
1936 – Marian Anderson gives a private recital at the White House for President and Mrs.
Roosevelt;
1937 – Soprano Ruby Elzy performs at The White House;
1939 -- Paul Robeson performs Earl Robinson’s Ballad for Americans(and records it in
1940)
April 9, 1939 - Easter Sunday concert by Marian Anderson before 75,000 people at the
Lincoln Memorial
• Opera and The Art Song (1900 – 1940)
African American singers and composers of Art Songs continue to be active within the genre of
opera. Several singers audition for major American opera companies. They are not hired,
largely because of discrimination practices. The African American community responds to the
void, establish ensembles for the performance of opera.
Concurrently, African Americans are active in the composition and production of Creole shows
and early 20 th century Broadway musicals. These early shows have not become staples of the
repertoire, but songs from them have been preserved and, increasingly, are performed. Within
this repertoire, the coon song of Ragtime and Tin Pan Alley evolves into an artistic show tune of
the American Song Book. By the end of the 20 th century, the songs of the American Song Book
form part of the Americana art song concert repertoire.