World Premiere: This arrangement of traditional spirituals - November 19, 2020

Most Recent HSO Performance: This is the HSO's first performance of this work

Instrumentation: Strings: violin I, violin II, viola, cello, and bass

Duration: 7'

Spirituals for Strings

Henry T. Burleigh

(Born December 2, 1866 in Erie, Pennsylvania

Died September 12, 1949 in Stamford, Connecticut)

Arranged (2020) by Christina Dolanc

Henry Thacker Burleigh was a pioneer in securing a place for African-Americans in this country’s concert music. Burleigh’s father died soon after Henry (sometimes also known as Harry) was born in Erie, Pennsylvania in 1866, so his mother entered service to the city’s prominent Russell family, who encouraged the boy’s talent for music by hiring him as the doorman for their household musicales so he could listen in. Burleigh began taking piano lessons and singing as baritone soloist with several of Erie’s churches as a teenager. In 1892, at age 26, he won a scholarship to the new National Conservatory in New York City, where he met Victor Herbert and became a student of Antonín Dvořák, then directing the school, who was deeply influenced by his performance of spirituals and other traditional American songs. (“I am convinced,” Dvořák stated, “that the future music of this country must be founded on what are called Negro melodies. They can be the foundation of a serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States.” Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony shows their effect on his music.) Burleigh’s appointment as soloist at St. George’s Episcopal Church in Manhattan in 1894 met with controversy, but he quickly became much admired there for the quality of his singing and for his many arrangements of spirituals, and he held the post for the next 52 years. He toured widely through America and Europe (King Edward VII summoned him for a command performance when he passed through London), and wrote nearly 300 songs and made a like number of concert arrangements of spirituals for solo voice and for chorus that were programmed by such leading artists as Schumann-Heink and McCormack. He was also a soloist at New York’s Temple Emanu-El (1900-1925), an editor for the prestigious music publisher Ricordi (1911-1949), and a charter member of ASCAP. On May 16, 1917, Henry T. Burleigh was presented with the Spingarn Medal of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for the highest achievement by an American citizen of African descent during the previous year.

As a tribute to native son Henry Burleigh, Christina Dolanc, violinist and personnel manager of the Erie Philharmonic, arranged three of his spirituals for strings for the ensemble’s “Americana” concert, recorded in the pandemic-restricted month of October 2020 and broadcast on Erie PBS station WQLN on November 19th. Dolanc commented about her arrangements of these three selections — Wade in the Water, Deep River and Ride On, King Jesus — originally for baritone and piano, “I didn’t change any of the original compositions. They’re strictly Burleigh’s, note for note. I just rearranged the notes to fit a string orchestra.” “Burleigh was known for his elegant arrangements of African-American spirituals,” added Erie Philharmonic Music Director Daniel Meyer. “He thought he needed to create arrangements of spirituals that rivaled the finest art songs he sang by Schubert and other European song composers, and he did an elegant job of it.”