It was momentous, Marian Anderson’s Lincoln Memorial Concert. On Easter Sunday, 1939, in response to being denied the use of DAR Constitution Hall due to her race, Anderson found herself standing before several microphones, 75,000 people and thousands more listening to the broadcast on their radios. The most popular clip from this performance is Anderson’s rendition of “My Country Tis of Thee,” an expression of patriotic solidarity and friendship denied her. But she also sang Donizetti, Schubert, Boatner, Burleigh and Price, sharing two significant genres of vocal music with her audience: art songs and concert spirituals.
But both call for a vocalist and a pianist, so what’s the difference?
Concert spirituals are arrangements of spirituals composed by enslaved African Americans set in a western classical harmonic style. The genre started with the arrangements of Ella Sheppard (1851–1914), pianist, arranger, and assistant conductor of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers. Fun fact: Sheppard studied music in Cincinnati, Ohio s a kid!
As spirituals were initially performed acapella, Sheppard needed to set these pieces to the group’s needs (voices and piano) and their performance style, which blended western classical and African American sacred techniques. In the next century, Harry T. Burleigh (1868–1949) would expand and codify the stylistic standards set forth by Sheppard the Fisk Jubilee Singers, which were then taken up by his contemporaries, like Florence Price (1887–1953) and Margaret Bonds (1913–1972).
Art song refers to vocal repertoire where the text is (typically) a setting of poetry, with original music by the composer. The genre, as we recognize it today, developed in the 19th century, defined by composers like Robert Schumann (1810–1856), Johannes Brahms (1833–1897), and Franz Schubert (1797–1828), who set poetry by famous German poets like Johann Goethe and Heinrich Heine. (NOTE: another term for German art song you may have seen is “lied,” “lieder” when plural). Burleigh and Price also contributed to American art songs, composing original themes to text by poets like Langston Hughes, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and others.
You’re probably thinking, “this is all good, Dr. Kori. But what are these stylistic standards Burleigh codified? And is there a sonic difference between concert spirituals and art songs?” My next blog post will have a more detailed look at art song and concert spirituals by Schubert, Schumann, Price, and Burleigh.
