Jan 21A COMPOSITIONAL COLLABORATION(?) BETWEEN MARGARET BONDS AND FLORENCE PRICE: “Sleep Song”Have you ever been in a crowd or out in public and heard a voice that you immediately recognize, even if you haven’t yet seen the person speaking? Most composers eventually develop a distinctive musical style — approaches to melody, harmony, rhythm, texture, and even choice of lyrics that collectively…Margaret Bonds7 min readMargaret Bonds7 min read
Jan 7JOLLY JINKS WITH FLORENCE PRICETwenty Years Down the Road, a Great Composer Revisits an Early Work and Asks, “What’s in a Name?” There aren’t many students of compositional process these days, but those who still appreciate the wonders that can come to light when we poke around in the composers’ workshop know that it’s always fascinating when composers return to a previously completed work after a period away from it. Among canonical…Florence Price7 min readFlorence Price7 min read
Dec 20, 2022FLORENCE PRICE’S MOTHER AND FATHER SUED THE RAILROAD FOR DISCRIMINATIONSpeaking Truth to Power In the late nineteenth century, the railroads were the primary means for shipping goods and materials quickly, efficiently, and cheaply from one part of the continent to another, and for people to traverse the great and narrow distances among urbanized areas. During the era from end of Reconstruction until 1956…Florence Price4 min readFlorence Price4 min read
Dec 12, 2022A MEMORIAL PERFORMANCE FOR FLORENCE B. PRICEThe Second Violin Concerto in 1953 It’s generally said that Florence Price’s moving and innovative Second Violin Concerto was premiered by White violinist Minnie Cedargreen Jernberg (1888–1957), who was frequently featured as soloist in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the early years of the twentieth century, and for whom it was written, in a Musician’s Club…Florence Price3 min readFlorence Price3 min read
Dec 11, 2022A MOST AUSPICIOUS OCCASIONThe world premiere of the “revised and extended” version of Margaret Bonds’s The Ballad of the Brown King (December 11, 1960) HISTORY WAS MADE on this day in 1960. On December 11 — also a Sunday, as it is this year- the revised and extended (nine-movement) version of Margaret Bonds’s and Langston Hughes’s seminal Christmas cantata The Ballad of the Brown King received its world premiere in the Clark Auditorium of…Margaret Bonds3 min readMargaret Bonds3 min read
Nov 19, 2022MARGARET BONDS: “NO MAN HAS SEEN HIS FACE” (1968)Fifty-one-year-old Owen Brady was found unconscious and riddled with bullets inside a wrecked and burning car that had crashed into the wall of a church school building in Los Angeles in the early hours of 10 August 1974; he was pronounced dead at 2:25 a.m. The coordinator of the Los…Margaret Bonds5 min readMargaret Bonds5 min read
Nov 11, 2022COALESCENCE, CULMINATION, AND EMANCIPATION:Four Early Performances of Margaret Bonds’s Spiritual Suite [This note is about Margaret Bonds’s Spiritual Suite — the surviving magnum opus of her piano output, and a groundbreaking composition in many ways. Although the Suite’s last movement was published separately in 1967 with the new title Troubled Water by Sam Fox Music (New York), the other two movements…Margaret Bonds5 min readMargaret Bonds5 min read
Nov 1, 2022J.S. BACH AND THE HARMONY OF THE SPHERES AT THE ROYAL OBSERVATORY GREENWICHPianist Elena Piccione and Romanian Astronomer Dumitru-Dorin Prunariu Enact the Composer’s Worldview on November 4 The notion that all sounding music was but a small-scale enactment of the cosmic harmony generated by the movements of the heavenly bodies was foundational to Sebastian Bach’s worldview. But modern audiences are conditioned to view music as an autonomous art, as entertainment, or as at most a sonorous analog…Bach3 min readBach3 min read
Oct 23, 2022A MOVING CLASSICAL TESTAMENT IN SUPPORT OF THE PEOPLE OF UKRAINEOlga Amelkina-Vera’s The Heaven’s Hundred We have been here before. And yet . . . The history of Russia’s oppression of the people of Ukraine — of their political autonomy, their freedom, and their artistic voice — is long and ugly, intense and inspiring. Ukraine’s history, and its language, are beautiful and distinguished — the…Classical Music4 min readClassical Music4 min read
Oct 21, 2022A GHOST NO MOREOn an Award-Winning Song by Margaret Bonds No Longer Lost Margaret Bonds’s 1931 song “The Sea Ghost,” which won a substantial prize in the Rodman Wanamaker Contest in Musical Composition for Composers of the Negro Race in 1932, has often been described as lost — and it and her earlier surviving song (which was written in 1928) have consequently never…Margaret Bonds2 min readMargaret Bonds2 min read
