“I knew I wanted to write a symphony,” said William Grant Still. “I knew that it had to be an American work; and I wanted to demonstrate how the blues, so often considered a lowly expression, could be elevated to the highest musical level."
Still’s childhood and teen years were filled with music. Still’s stepfather Charles introduced him to classical music through recordings and live operetta performances in Little Rock, Arkansas. Still studied violin in his teens and taught himself to play a number of other instruments before he graduated high school at 16. He attended Wilberforce College and Oberlin College and studied composition with George Whitefield Chadwick. In 1919, Still joined the pit orchestra as an oboist for Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake’s pioneering musical, Shuffle Along. Throughout the 1920s, Still rarely lacked for gigs – he played regularly with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra – and for two years he also studied privately with the French modernist composer Edgar Varèse. Under Varèse’s mentorship, Still met influential musicians and conductors, had his own works performed, and expanded his compositional horizons.
Ironically, Still’s busy schedule left him little time to concentrate on a long-form composition. “It was not until the Depression struck that I went jobless long enough to let the [Afro-American] Symphony take shape,” Still observed. “In 1930, I rented a room in a quiet building not far from my home in New York, and began to work. I devised my own Blues theme (which appears in varied guises throughout the Symphony, as a unifying thread), planned the form, then wrote the entire melody. After that, I worked out the harmonies, the various treatments of the theme, and the orchestration.” Still completed his first symphony in just five weeks, during the autumn of 1930.
In his program note for the premiere, Still laid out his intentions: “The Afro-American Symphony is not a tone picture of the ‘New Negro.’ It portrays that class of American Negroes who still cling to the old standards and traditions; those sons of the soil who differ, but little, if at all, from their forbears [sic] of antebellum days. These are a humble people. Their wants are few and are generally childlike. Theirs are lives of utter simplicity. Therefore no complex or elaborate scheme of harmonization would prove befitting in a musical picture of them. ‘Tis only the simpler harmonies, such as those employed, that can accurately portray them. From the hearts of these people sprang Blues, plaintive songs reminiscent of African tribal chants. I do not hesitate to assert that Blues are more purely Negroid in character than very many Spirituals. And I have employed as the basic theme of the symphony a melody in the Blues style. This theme appears in each movement.”
Still gave each of the symphony’s four movements a descriptive title as well as a tempo marking: Longing (Moderato assai); Sorrow (Adagio) Humor (Animato) Aspiration (Lento, con risoluzione — Vivace), and also included lines from Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poetry. As Still mentioned, each movement features a prominent blues melody. In Longing, displaced former slaves yearn for a homeland of their own. Sorrow speaks through the medium of a Negro spiritual, while Humor uses popular tunes of the day and a banjo accompaniment to conjure up happier times. Aspiration combines memories of a painful past with hopes for a dignified, optimistic future.
Howard Hanson led the Rochester Philharmonic in the first performance, on October 28, 1931. The Rochester Evening Journal’s review noted, “The symphony has life and sparkle when needed and a deep haunting beauty … It laughs unrestrainedly, it mourns dolefully.”
© Elizabeth Schwartz