Black History & Classical Music

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AfriClassical Blog
Companion to AfriClassical.com

Black History Quiz
(52 questions; 3 levels of difficulty)

William J. Zick, Webmaster, wzick@ameritech.net

Anna Julia Cooper
Black Heritage USA 2009
U.S. Postal Service Postage Stamp

Violin Concertos by Black Composers of the 18th & 19th Centuries
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
Chevalier de Saint-Georges
Joseph White
Rachel Barton, violin
Encore Chamber Orchestra
Daniel Hege, Conductor
Cedille 90000 035 (1997)

James DePreist, Nokuthula Ngwenyama & Julius Williams

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Black History & Classical Music

February is Black History Month in Jamaica and the United States, and African Heritage Month in Canada. October is Black History Month in the United Kingdom. The annual observance was founded in 1926 by the American historian Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson (1875-1950). He also founded the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), http://www.asalh.org/

The 2010 National Black History Theme is "The History of Black Economic Empowerment". The ASALH website explains the newest Black Heritage stamp of the United States Postal Service, which is now a "Forever Stamp": "During the 93rd annual ASALH convention in Birmingham, AL, a special unveiling was held to honor Anna Julia Cooper, an educator, scholar, feminist, and activist who gave voice to the African American community during the 19th and 20th centuries, from the end of slavery to the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. The Postal Service's Black Heritage stamp series is truly alive and well." The stamp was released in January 2009. A link to the Postal Service press release on the Cooper stamp can be found at: http://www.asalh.org/usps.html

Black History is part of the common record of humanity. It proves that people of African heritage have made enduring contributions to society throughout history. Classical music has been enriched by such contributions as long as it has existed. This page includes a link to a Black History Quiz comprised of 52 questions about composers and musicians of African descent. The Composers page leads to 41 individual biographies of composers. The Musicians page leads to 11 profiles on conductors and instrumentalists. Over 100 sound samples can be heard on the Audio page and at the pages of individual artists.

The primary emphasis of the Web site is on composers of instrumental music, but composers of opera, choral music and songs are also represented. The site does not sell CDs, but catalog numbers are included with CD titles, to help in finding recordings at music stores or at Web sites such as www.Amazon.com or www.ArkivMusic.com

For purposes of this site, African Americans are considered to be people of African descent who are born anywhere in the Americas. People born in Europe of African descent are called Afro-Europeans.

AfriClassical Blog is a companion to AfriClassical.com Visit often to learn of current issues involving Black composers and musicians. For a free subscription, leave your E-mail address in the Subscription box in the right column of the blog's home page.

Listen to audio of an 8-minute interview (mp3) from December 28, 2005: "WDET'S Craig Fahle recently spoke with Bill Zick, Webmaster for www.africlassical.com. His website has become one of the premiere resources for those interested in Black composers of Classical Music"

Africana Encyclopedia, Third Edition, has been an indispensable resource for the Web site and is probably quoted more often than any other reference work. The Center for Black Music Research is a research unit of Columbia College Chicago which publishes the International Dictionary of Black Composers. CBMR is devoted to research, preservation, and dissemination of information about the history of Black music on a global scale. Its Web address is: http://www.colum.edu/cbmr

The African American conductor Paul Freeman is Founding Musical Director of the Chicago Sinfonietta, an unusually inclusive orchestra whose mission is "Musical Excellence Through Diversity". Its Web site is: http://ChicagoSinfonietta.org Dr. Freeman is profiled among the Musicians of African Descent, as is violinist Aaron P. Dworkin. He founded the Sphinx Organization to introduce Black and Latino string players to classical music and the classical music profession. Its principal Web site is www.SphinxMusic.org The group also operates an interactive educational site for children at www.SphinxKids.org The Sphinx Chamber Orchestra and the Harlem Quartet are making an historic performance tour of the United States in 2008.

A decision to publish The String Students Library of Music by Black Composers was recently announced by the Rachel Elizabeth Barton Foundation, whose Web site is www.rebf.org

MMB Music of St. Louis, Missouri has issued the first in a series of sheet music of Black composers, Henry: A Ballad for Piano Quintet. The work was composed by George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower and arranged for piano quintet by Dominique-René de Lerma. It can be found in the Concert Music section of the MMB Music website, http://www.mmbmusic.com

The Dictionary of African Composers by Alexander Johnson began as a project of the Music Department of the University of Pretoria in South Africa, and was jointly sponsored by organizations in South Africa and Norway. "[T]he music of Africa itself remains poorly documented, with only a small number of its composers finding their way into the reference works that are most commonly found in the libraries of the world." The Nigerian composer Meki Nzewi is a Professor of Music at Pretoria University, with many compositions, books and articles to his credit. He is just one example of the many African composers who are scarcely known outside the African Continent.

Curriculum Standards
The following information is an example of the relevance of AfriClassical.com to curriculum standards. The assessment was made by the Michigan Teacher Network, relative to curriculum standards in Michigan, and can be found at: http://mtn.merit.edu/social.html

Relevant Michigan Curriculum Standards:
('bullet' symbols differ from original)

* Middle School
    * Standard ART.4 (Music)
       Arts in Context
           * Benchmark ART.4.M.MS.1
     * Standard SOC.I.2
        Historical Perspective: Comprehending the Past
            * Benchmark SOC.I.2.MS.4
* High School
    * Standard ART.4 (Music)
       Arts in Context
            * Benchmark ART.4.M.HS.3
    * Standard SOC.I.1
       Historical Perspective: Time and Chronology
            * Benchmark SOC.I.1.HS.3
    * Standard SOC.I.2
       Historical Perspective: Comprehending the Past
            * Benchmark SOC.I.2.HS.3
    * Standard SOC.I.4
       Historical Perspective: Judging Decisions from the Past
            * Benchmark SOC.I.4.HS.2

Bibliography
Banat, Gabriel. The Chevalier de Saint-Georges: Virtuoso of the Sword and the Bow. Hillsdale, New York: Pendragon Press, 2006.

Departmental Archives of Guadeloupe. Le Fleuret et l'Archet : Le Chevalier de Saint-George, Crèole dans le Siècle des Lumières [Foil & Bow: Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Creole in the Century of the Enlightenment]. Bisdary - Gourbeyre, 2001.

Everyman's Dictionary of Music; Compiled by Eric Blom; Revised by Jack Westrup, Professor of Music, Oxford University. New York: New American Library, 1971.

Guédé, Alain. Monsieur de Saint-George: Virtuoso, Swordsman, Revolutionary. New York: Picador, 2003.

Heddle-Roboth, Robert and Marciano, Daniel. De L'Epée à La Scène: A Book on Theatrical Fencing. Preface: Marcel Marceau. France: Thespis, 2005.

Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music; Edited by Don Michael Randel. Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996.

King, Reyahn et al. Ignatius Sancho: An African Man of Letters. London: National Portrait Gallery, 1997.

Marciano, Daniel. Le chevalier de Saint-Georges, Le Fils de Noémie. France: Thespis, 2005.

Microsoft Encarta Africana Encyclopedia, on CD-ROM and in a book published by Basic Civitas Books. Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Editors.

Nemeth, Luc. Un État-Civil Chargé D'Enjeux: Saint-George, 1745-1799. Annales historiques de la Révolution française, No. 339, January, 2005, pp. 79-97.

Ribbe, Claude. Le chevalier de Saint-George. France: Perrin, 2004.

Smidak, Emil F. Joseph Boulogne called Chevalier de Saint-Georges. Lucerne: Avenira, 1996.

This page was last updated on décembre 31, 2009