TW/CW: disturbing imagery of Transatlantic slave trade and police brutality.
Anthony McGill
After the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, Anthony McGill, the principal clarinetist of the New York Philharmonic (and the only African-American principal in that illustrious orchestra), recorded himself in his living room playing a mournful, mixed-tonality version of “America the Beautiful,” and posted the video on YouTube.
In the last 15 seconds of the video, McGill knelt down with his head bent, holding his clarinet behind his back. His posture evokes many conflicting images: not only prayer, but also bondage:
And arrest:
McGill wrote:
The great tenor Lawrence Brownlee responded by singing the spiritual “There’s a Man Going Round Taking Names” on both knees, both the song and his posture an allusion to the death of George Floyd.
— Walter Barrett đșđž (@WaltTrombone) June 8, 2020
Taking a break from posting my normal videos this week after being inspired by @mcgillab 's (Principal Clarinet, New York Philharmonic) #TakeTwoKnees movement. Arrangement of Nina Simone's "Mississippi Goddam" #TakeTwoKneeshttps://t.co/16P1qUq5UM
Do you think classical music is an effective tool for protesting against injustice? Why or why not?
Season 3 of the Amazon Prime series Mozart in the Jungle featured an episode called “Not Yet Titled,” in which the fictional orchestra, based on the New York Philharmonic, plays a concert at Rikers Island under the direction of their charismatic Mexican conductor Rodrigo De Souza (Gael Bernal). The episode was filmed live at Rikers, and the audience was made up of real inmates. Watch it here. Do you agree with the inmates interviewed about the power of classical music?
In 2018, the city of Austin, Texas was terrorized by a bomber who, over the course of two weeks in March, murdered two people, and injured several more, with homemade bombs sent through the mail to residents of communities of color.
One of the dead was a 17-year-old classical musician, Draylen Mason, the only black member of the Austin Youth Symphony.
Classical music cannot save anyone. But I still find our discussions of its role in black lives too one-note, tone-deaf and flat. What is absent from conversations on black experiences in classical music and what is grossly underestimated in our debates is classical musicâs shocking power . . . Black popular music is not the only thing capable of moving the body irrespective of what the mind wants.
. . . I do not believe that the answer to criticsâ questioning of blackness and classical music is for black people to stop playing it. Such an argument allows only white people the freedom to enjoy a musical work for its own sake, and it dictates to black people not only what their social responsibilities are as artists, but the terms by which they are to fight against their own oppression.
. . . Held up as symbols of racial advancement, used to denigrate others who cannot or will not make the same aesthetic choices, or denounced as Uncle Toms, black classical musicians inhabit a liminal space. But it is a space that encourages us to consider the full range of experiences that should be available to people of color, including the pleasure of abstract, even Western, art music. It is a space in which Draylen Mason chose to thrive. And because of him and others, it is a space in which I choose to remain.
Dr. Thurman imagines Draylen Mason performing this concerto for his Oberlin audition:
Here is the music Dr. Thurman played at her own conservatory audition.
A Bach prelude: she doesn’t specify which one, so here are a few.
Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in F minor, op. 2, no. 1:
Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp minor:
Other pieces that Thurman says have moved her in particular:
You will notice that I was unable to find any videos of performances of the above pieces by black musicians. Why do you think this is? Is it important? How can this absence be addressed?
As a frequent attendee of new [classical] music events around the world, I often feel as though the presence of people who look like me is not wanted or is merely tolerated . . .this feeling arises mainly from observations of concert programming [whose absence of works by black composers sends] the message âblack composers have not composed music good enough for us to play or for this stageâ . . . Classical music did not escape the greater social construct of racism and patriarchy, which is why composers such as Ignatius Sancho, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Blind Tom, Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, William Grant Still, and plenty more are usually only studied in non-required specialized classes. . . There is also a trend that places the music of black composers mostly in themed concerts, more often than not related to social justice or for Black History Month. While this is not necessarily negative, the injustice arises when absolute music or music with non-social themes by black composers is overlooked. In sum, we are not one-trick ponies.
Some examples of new classical music by black composers referenced by Kira Thurman:
Cycles of My Being, a song cycle composed by Tyshawn Sorey, with texts by Terrance Hayes, performed by Lawrence Brownlee.
The Spark Catchers, by black British composer Hannah Kendall:
Anthony R. Nelson is himself one of the founders of a classical music ensemble with the beautiful name Castles of Our Skins, which is dedicated to fostering and performing works by composers of color. Here is video from some of their concerts:
Why do you think black composers are so rare in the worlds of classical music? (Or are they?)
Do you think the western art music traditions offer meaningful opportunities for self-expression for black musicians and audiences? Explain.
APPENDIX:
The trailer for a forthcoming documentary about tuba virtuoso Dr. Richard Antoine White, who was a homeless child in West Baltimore (Freddy Gray’s neighborhood), and later became the first African-American to earn a doctorate in tuba performance. I will get hold of the documentary for class as soon as it’s available.
Throughout 2018, the New York Times has been running a series of stories called “Overlooked,” which are the obituaries of notable women from the past who the paper declined to acknowledge at the time of their deaths. In August, the Times published an overdue obituary for Sissieretta Jones, the first black opera singer to appear at Carnegie Hall. Jones was marketed as “The Black Patti” — i.e., the black counterpart to the reigning opera diva of the day, Adelina Patti, below.
Jones was the daughter of former slaves. The obituary notes that, while Jones performed opera excerpts in concert widely across the United States and Europe, as a black soprano she was prohibited from appearing in fully-staged opera productions with white singer colleagues. An interviewer at the time suggested that she “whiten up” with makeup, but Jones refused.
âTry to hide my race and deny my own people?â she responded in the interview, which was published by The San Francisco Call in 1896. âOh, I would never do that.â She added: âI am proud of belonging to them and would not hide what I am even for an evening.â
Among the musical novelties of the day, the public are soon to be astonished by the debut of a young lady of African extraction, by the name of Eliza[beth] Greenfield. We had the pleasure last evening in company with a party of Musical Amateurs, of listening to her performance and must confess we were completely surprised and delighted.
Miss Greenfield possesses a voice of great purity and flexibility, and of extraordinary compass; singing the notes in alto, with brilliancy and sweetness, and descending to the bass notes with a power and volume perfectly astonishing. She sang among other pieces “When the gloom if night retiring,” with a degree of artistic finish that many of our celebrated Prima Donnas might envy.
The critic undoubtedly meant Sir Henry Bishop’s “Like the Gloom of Night Retiring”; there is documentary evidence of Greenfield having sung the piece in Buffalo.
May we not hope that her music may tend to soften the hearts of the free and lighten the shackles of her race enslaved.
When Greenfield appeared in Cleveland, the music critic for the Cleveland Plain Dealer noted the astonishment of the audience as they heard “white” sounds emanating from a black body:
Sadly, there are no recordings of Sissieretta Jones or Elizabeth Greenfield; the latter died before the advent of recording, and the former, tragically, though she died as late as the 1930s, apparently chose not to record.
We have the examples, however, of many great black sopranos who have followed in the course laid down by these pioneering prima donnas.
Jessye Norman, for instance, is my absolute favorite singer in my aboslute favorite composer, Johannes Brahms — not to mention being unsurpassed in Wagner and other operatic repertoire.
In spite of the success of the success of black women singers, black men have traditionally fared less well in opera. A 1972 New York Times article, “When Will the Black Male Make It in Opera?”, describes the predicament of
Therman Bailey, a tall, goodâlooking man in his early forties, [who] was signed by the Cologne Opera a few years ago. After he arrived there he was assigned a large number of roles to prepare in German. As the weeks went by, he was given more and more to learn but never a performance. He complained and finally worked up the long chain of bureaucracy to the artistic administrator, who said, âReally, we’re not sure how you’re going to look onstage.â Bailey said, âThen why the hell did you hire me? I haven’t suddenly changed color!â
Inspired by his anger, Bailey reached over and pointed to a list of the company’s repertory. âLook at these operas! Almost every one is set in a Mediterranean country where blacks have always lived, Why can’t I do one?â
And George Shirley, the first black tenor to perform a leading role at the Metropolitan Opera, suggests that
white men erroneously see the black male âas a sort of superhuman sex machine. Maybe because of this, we’re a threat in all areas. No white man is threatened by a black woman, but when a black man is raised into a position of equal competition, the white man doesn’t like it. He says to himself, âWhy should I open my world up to this guy when I al ready have to deal with so many white guys?â
This has been especially true for tenors, who sing the romantic male leads in opera, and thus are paired with (usually white) sopranos, which, in the United States especially, has been perceived as threatening and unsavory by (predominantly white) opera audiences.
Fortunately, things are changing, but opera is not only tradition-bound; it’s also not especially woke.
What does it mean to sound black? To sound white?
UPDATE, October 2019:
Opera has lost one of the greatest sopranos of the twentieth century, Jessye Norman. Read Kira Thurman’s appreciation of the diva here.