America at 250

The history of music in America — even classical music — is so vast, rich, and colorful that one concert alone could never capture its full, glorious diversity. Naturally, such a program could include composers from many different eras and cultural backgrounds. It could explore how these same composers have tried to write music that sounds American — not an obvious task. Bold, brash, vivacious? Folksy, multicultural, patriotic? Expansive and awe-inspiring, like the land itself? Or it could foreground music that doesn’t sound especially American. But one thing is certain: the music would show that, for 250 years, a monumental creative spirit has animated this country across every victory and defeat, every challenge and opportunity, and every moment of our shared past.

Two pieces on tonight’s program — The Star-Spangled Banner and an arrangement of Charles Ives’s Variations on “America” — tell the story of contested musical patriotism. Before 1931, the United States had no official national anthem. Over the previous century and more, various tunes had vied for the honor: “Yankee Doodle,” “Hail Columbia,” and “America the Beautiful.” Each one is so different — in musical style and lyrical subject matter — that no one could agree on the best fit. On more than one occasion, wealthy donors joined efforts to sponsor national anthem contests to solve the problem once and for all! Perhaps ironically, both The Star-Spangled Banner and “America the Beautiful” have musical roots in Britain, the very imperial power Americans overthrew. But, in this new context, they show that Americans can remake music from elsewhere into something distinctly their own.

Three selections on this program explore the rich musical contributions of enslaved Africans: Carlos Simon’s Ring Shout (from his larger work Four Black American Dances) and the spirituals “Witness” and “Give Me Jesus.” Their inclusion on this program can be attributed in part to Antonín Dvořak, who, in 1893, urged American composers to integrate African-derived folk music into classical frameworks, openly acknowledging the creativity of people who had long been dehumanized. Simon’s 2023 work hearkens back to colonial history with its evocation of the ring shout, a lively group dance with clear African roots. The music at times brings us into the dance itself with hand clapping and shouting from the orchestra, whereas at others we get a more picturesque scene with a driving melody underscored by colorful percussion.

“Witness” and “Give Me Jesus” show two separate sides of the spiritual as a genre. “Witness” is upbeat, whereas the other is fully contemplative. One of Dvořak’s students, the gifted baritone and composer Harry T. Burleigh, popularized the use of arranged spirituals on concert programs in a performance tradition that has included Roland Hayes, Marian Anderson, Leontyne Price, and, more recently, Karen Slack and Lawrence Brownlee.

A distinctly international multiculturalism marks four more pieces: the two selections from Leonard Bernstein’s stage works Candide and West Side Story, George Gershwin’s An American in Paris, and John Williams’s Sound the Bells!. In their own way, the Overture to Candide and Gershwin’s tone poem followed Dvořak’s prescription with their obvious jazz and big band influences, demonstrating that composers have long used the energy of jazz to communicate a vivacious American spirit. That one depicts a tourist visiting the equally vibrant city of Paris in the 1920s makes sense; that the other has origins in an 18th-century French play may not!

Both “America” from West Side Story and Sound the Bells! engage more directly with music from outside the United States. Famously, the rhythmic profile of Bernstein’s song evokes Latin American dance as two characters argue over the merits of the United States and Puerto Rico. Williams wrote Sound the Bells! for a more unifying purpose: celebrating the Crown Price of Japan’s marriage while the Boston Symphony Orchestra was touring the country. Unlike the Bernstein song, Williams took no stylistic inspiration from Japan save for the use of tubular bells as a nod toward bonshō, the giant bells of Buddhist temples.

The last two pieces share a hidden history. A few weeks after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in April 1968, the National Symphony Orchestra led a memorial concert in which his widow, Coretta Scott King (herself a classically trained vocalist), narrated Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait. When Florence Price’s daughter learned about the concert, she tried unsuccessfully to engage a performance of her mother’s cantata on a similar theme, Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight. Today, Price’s expansive catalog is finally earning international recognition while Copland’s moving work retains its due place as a transcendent reflection on democracy.

Stylistically, Price’s String Quartet No. 1 and Lincoln Portrait could not be more different. Though Price occasionally based pieces on preexisting melodies like spirituals, the quartet’s second movement — arranged here for string orchestra — is an abstract but prayerful Andante with a quirky interlude, all drawing from the grand Romantic tradition. The Copland, in contrast, directly quotes two songs from Lincoln’s era, Stephen Foster’s “Camptown Races” and an old American folk ballad, “On Springfield Mountain.” Yet both pieces speak a fully American musical language.

With composers as the centerpiece of any concert program, it can be easy to forget that performers bring music to life and are just as much a part of music history as anyone else. The vocalist originally scheduled to perform on tonight’s concert, tenor Limmie Pulliam, tragically passed away in May at age 50. And while the sounds of American history are woven through this concert in the compositional voices of Bernstein, Copland, Price, Gershwin, and others, Pulliam’s distinctively resonant voice would have provided the through-line connecting the various strands of American music history on display into a unified whole — out of many, one. Instead, as Pulliam joins these composers in the rich tapestry of American music history, Russell Thomas will bring their music to life. Indeed, the unique voices of everyone on stage — instrumentalists, vocalist, and narrator — form a sonic and visual reminder that democracy is at its best when we offer our distinctive gifts for the common good.

— Douglas W. Shadle

Douglas W. Shadle is an associate professor of musicology at Vanderbilt University and the author of two highly regarded books: Orchestrating the Nation and Antonín Dvořák’s New World Symphony. A leading authority on composer Florence B. Price, he sits on the board of the International Florence Price Festival.