A. Kori Hill
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Editor’s Note: This account is written in first person and draws upon scholarship on Dorothy Rudd Moore. Some of the material includes direct quotes from interviews with Rudd Moore. If you want to learn more about her, check out Helen Walker-Hill’s From Spirituals to Symphonies and William Banfield’s Musical Landscapes in Color.
My home in New Castle, Delaware, was a musical one. My mother was a singer, and when I was a little girl, I used to make up songs, words, and music, and then sing them. I never knew a time when I wasn’t interested in music, even when I didn’t know that the word “composer” existed. But once I did, nobody could stop me.
I decided I would be a composer at sixteen. My parents were very supportive, and soon I had flown the coop to see what more I could learn.
My first stop was Washington D.C. That’s where I studied composition and music theory at Howard University. I wrote my Symphony Number One there. My symphony was entered into a contest where the prize was a performance by the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center.
After graduation in 1963, I was off to the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France. I went there to study with Ms. Nadia Boulanger, thanks to my parents’ support and the Lucy Moten Fellowship from Howard University. I didn’t yet know that people like Aaron Copland had studied there; I had seen Ms. Boulanger give a lecture in the States in 1962. I liked what I heard and decided I needed to study with her.
Ms. Boulanger typically gave lessons in a group setting. I was one of the few students who received private lessons. I also won an audition to be part of her madrigal choir. Madrigals are a vocal genre that were very popular in the Renaissance. Madrigals are typically written for four to six voices with secular text (words that aren’t from or related to a religious text or story). Performing madrigals was a great way to fine tune my technique; she wouldn’t let us move on until we were absolutely, perfectly in tune!
I really wanted to stay in Paris and write music there. But composers don’t get steady paychecks – and I didn’t want to starve making music. So, I moved back in with my parents. But I also didn’t want to live in Delaware!
Which brings me to my third and final stop: New York City. That was my happy place; the place where I could teach, collaborate, and of course, compose! I taught music to students at the Harlem School of the Arts, New York University, and Bronx Community College. And in 1968, I co-founded the Society of Black Composers with my husband, Kermit Moore, and our colleagues. It was hard to find other Black composers, so this society was an essential tool to connect with each other.
Opera Ebony commissioned me to write an opera, Frederick Douglass. A commission is where a group, institution, or person pays you to write a piece of music. I was honored to write something about one of the most important figures in American history. I also received a commission from the Brooklyn Philharmonic. This was to mark the first time we’dcelebrate Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday as a federal holiday. I decided to write a mixed octet in two movements, which the Brooklyn Phil performed in January 1986. You can listen to the Harlem Chamber Players perform it here.
Thank you for spending time with me. If you’d like to learn more about my music, come back next week to hear about two of my early compositions: Baroque Suite for Unaccompanied Cello (1965) and Modes (1968).
