A New Live Release Features Works by American Composer Greats William L. Dawson and George Walker

By A. Kori Hill

The music of George Walker and William Levi Dawson is a microcosm of Black classical composers’ stylistic diversity. Each draw upon African American music idioms for different settings, characters and functions. And yet, the works connect through the importance of programmatic and emotive narratives within the Black classical practice. Whether quoting or arranging spirituals, or using blues notes or serialism, the music of both Walker and Dawson tells a story, be it enormous internal journeys or a massive historical epic.

George Walker was born and raised in Washington, D.C., one of many American cities with a self-sustaining, diverse and culturally impactful Black community. His mother got him started on piano at the age of five; his musical interests eventually blossomed out to composition. After graduating from Oberlin College at the age of 18, he studied composition with Samuel Barber and piano with Rudolf Serkin at the Curtis Institute of Music. He earned a doctorate from Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester in 1956 and in the late 1950s, studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris.

Walker straddles the line between American neo-romantic and modernist traditions. You can hear it in the lush textures, brittle timbres, non-linear direction, African American folk tonalities, jazz harmonies and tonal dissonance. Some of these features are put to stunning use in his Lyric for Strings (1946). A reworking of the second movement of his first string quartet, Lyric is an elegy to Walker’s grandmother, Malvina King, a woman who was born enslaved, took her freedom and died free. Walker considered her one of the most important figures in his life.

Lyric for Strings opens solemnly. Each section is layered upon the one that preceded it, a textural staple of Walker’s later works. The melody slowly unspools, set in a call-and-response texture that extends across and between each part (or section for the orchestral setting). The violins are shrill, the cellos and bass bellow, and the violas do both, taking full advantage of their ability to make rich and aching timbres. Lyric for Strings is a meditation on what is lost, what is shared, what is remembered and what is carried on; a piece that is gorgeous, tragic and hopeful all at once.

Walker would continue to explore the emotive power of the bittersweet in his music. Another example is his Folksongs for Orchestra (1990). Each of the four movements are built upon a Negro spiritual: Going to lay down my sword and shield; And they crucified my Lord; My Lord, what a morning; and O, Peter, go ring dem bells.

Going to lay down my sword and shield opens meditatively, the textures lush and clear. The spiritual theme is first heard clearly in the oboe, a prickly and upbeat polyphonic section that contrasts with the return to the meditative and solemn opening. And they crucified my Lord is shrill, painful; a solo trumpet blasting over brittle strings, laying bare the spiritual’s emotional roots. My Lord, what a morning is a balm for the angst that preceded it. Again, woodwinds and brass are centralized. Through brass chorale and call-and-response textures, Walker draws out the spiritual’s quotation to the point that it sounds like a brand-new theme. O, Peter, go ring dem bells opens with piano and strings, growing to glittering timbres and bittersweet harmonies. Walker transforms these staples of African American sacred music by placing them within an inventive and electrifying new context, building upon a 100-plus-year-old tradition of Negro spiritual arrangements.

Walker’s Lilacs for Voice & Orchestra (1996) is a return to the themes of Lyric for Strings, an elegy of public and personal grief that earned Walker the 1996 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Commissioned and premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Lilacs for Voice & Orchestra is set to the Walt Whitman poem, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” (1865), itself an elegy to President Abraham Lincoln. Walker uses the first, second, third and 13th stanzas for the first, second, third and fourth movements, respectively, pulling out some of Whitman’s most evocative imagery.

In the first movement, brass, woodwinds and strings put the beauty and the pain front and center; but it is not overt, leaving room for the impassioned entrance of the vocalist (“When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d”). Sudden fortissimos, vocal melisma and high registers on the line “I mourn’d” follow the swift changes in emotion and perspective that come with loss. The second movement cannot keep the emotional darkness at bay. Walker shows this through descending motives, low brass figures and abrupt climbs to high registers.

The orchestra creeps along in the third movement, falling back as the vocalist’s line leads the direction and development. Short motives, eerie tonalities and sudden dynamic changes create the impression of tumultuous stasis; this is not an emotional journey with a clear start and finish. The fourth movement opens with a pokey, almost cheerful theme. But its character is skewed, with a layer of uncertainty at its foundation. This theme reappears in subtle fragments, a directional contrast with the vocal line, which is more forward moving and determined. However, like mourning, sometimes you fall back to where you started. The first movement’s main theme returns, between lines of the stanza that again highlight painful irony of beauty existing at a time when something heartbreaking has occurred:

“You only I hear—yet the star holds me, (but will soon depart,)
   Yet the lilac with mastering odor holds me.”

An Alabama son, William L. Dawson studied at the Tuskegee Institute, graduating from the high school division in 1921. Completing his B.A. in Composition in 1925 and his master’s in 1927, Dawson returned to his alma mater to serve as music director of the Tuskegee Institute Choir. Through this position, Dawson would become a major figure in the world of choral music. His settings of Negro spirituals are so distinct and technically stunning that some scholars have argued they should be considered original compositions; and his pedagogical approach made the Tuskegee Institute Choir a global sensation and a major interpreter of choral repertoire in the 20th century.

But a few years into his tenure at Tuskegee, another creative project drew his attention: his one and only symphony. Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony was premiered by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1934. In the words of composer-critic Shirley Graham (later Dubois), Dawson and his contemporaries, Florence B. Price and William Grant Still, constituted a Black symphonist trinity. Dawson illustrated that Romantic aesthetics — programmatic narrative, folk expressions of national identity and the symphony itself — were still ripe for personal expression and modern innovation. Through three movements, Dawson charts the history of African Americans, using the symphony’s expressive power and large scope to make a distinctly African American articulate of history, place and culture. “I’ve not tried to imitate Beethoven or Brahms, Franck, or Ravel,” he shared in an interview, “but to be just myself, a Negro. To me, the finest compliment that could be paid my symphony when it has its premiere is that it unmistakably is not the work of a white man. I want the audience to say: ‘Only a Negro could have written that.’”

One of the major ways Dawson achieves this is by centering African American idioms through his approach to thematic reference, as well as his use of rhythm and polyphony as form and harmonic progression. The first movement, The Bond of Africa: Adagio—Allegro con brio, is based on the Negro spiritual (or as Dawson referred to them, Negro folk songs), “Oh, My Little Soul Gwine Shine Like a Star.” Fragmented and polyphonic textures cradle and push the main theme through different orchestral sections and melodic development. The second movement, Hope in the Night: Andante—Allegretto (alla scherzando), evokes the tragic terror of enslavement and hope of freedom through lyrical, haunting passages. The third and last movement, O Le' Me Shine, Shine Like a Morning Star: Allegro con brio, is built upon the Negro spirituals “O Lemme Shine” and “Hallelujah, Lord, I Been Down into the Sea.” Rhythm and polyphony once again drive the finale’s melodic development; the embrace of instruments’ distinctive timbres create another layer of tension and resolution with the harmony. Dawson charts the journey from Africa to America, a powerful sonic expression of Black American history and modernity as well as the continued emotional power of the symphonic form.