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NOTES ON THE PROGRAM
By James M. Keller, Program Annotator
The Leni and Peter May Chair
IN THEIR FOOTSTEPS: GREAT AFRICAN AMERICAN SINGERS
AND THEIR LEGACY
T
his program focuses on four groundbreaking African American vocalists, the history
these artists shared with the New York Philharmonic, and the influence their performances
have had on the generations of vocalists who followed in their footsteps. Curator and Host Eric
Owens begins his tenure as The Mary and James G.
Wallach Artist-in-Residence for the 2015–16 season by selecting works that the honorees performed with the Orchestra. He explained:
I wanted look back at some of the African
American singers who have, in many ways,
paved the way for me, and had wonderful
relationships with the New York Philharmonic. Marian Anderson, Betty Allen,
George Shirley, and William Warfield were,
and are, amazing artists and pioneers of
amazingly powerful character. They brought
a lot of heart, soul, and intellect to their
music-making and in how they let their light
shine. I wanted to honor and thank them.
Scott Joplin was the most notable African American “classical” composer at the turn of the 20th
century. Although information about his early
life remains scarce, it is known that his father
was a freed slave from North Carolina and his
Selections from Treemonisha
Scott Joplin
Born: sometime between July 1867 and January 1868,
in northeast Texas; historical research has demonstrated
that the oft-cited birth date of November 24, 1868,
cannot be correct.
Died: April 1, 1917, in New York City
Work composed: completed 1910, to Joplin’s own
libretto, after perhaps 15 years’ work
World premiere: in an unstaged reading in 1911; the
first full production was given January 27, 1972, at the
Atlanta Memorial Arts Center, Atlanta, Georgia, in a joint
production by Morehouse College and the Atlanta
Symphony Orchestra, Robert Shaw, conductor, and
Katherine Dunham, director
New York Philharmonic premiere: these performances
Estimated duration: ca. 19 minutes, combined
The original edition of Treemonisha, self-published
by Joplin in 1911
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Angels and Muses
Scott Joplin set the action of Treemonisha in an
area near his home town of Texarkana, Texas, circa
September 1884, leading to speculation that the
opera was based on his own life. Joplin’s second
wife, née Freddie Alexander, is cited as a particular
inspiration for the title character and story. In the
opera, 18-year-old Treemonisha, a former slave, is
taught to read by a white women, and then fights
back against the conjurers who use superstition and
mysticism to take advantage of her community,
demonstrating to neighbors the importance of education. Alexander, born in September 1884, was a
well-educated woman and an advocate for the rights
of women and African Americans. She met Joplin in
Sedalia, Missouri, when she was 19, and they married in 1904. Tragically, Freddie died only ten weeks
later, of complications from pneumonia. Joplin biographer Edward A. Berlin wrote that the opera was “a
tribute to the woman he loved, a woman other biographers never even mentioned.”
— The Editors
mother a free-born black woman from Kentucky.
He grew up in a poor but music-loving family in
Texarkana, straddling the Texas-Arkansas border. After studying music with a German immigrant, he embarked on a peripatetic performing
career that took him for a while to Sedalia, Missouri, where he became an experienced practitioner of ragtime, the new syncopated style that
entranced ears in the 1890s.
In Sedalia, Joplin continued music studies
and worked as a pianist in such venues as the
Black 400 Club and the Maple Leaf Club. It was
in honor of the latter that he composed the
breakout success of the ragtime era, the Maple
Leaf Rag. While continuing to compose a
stream of masterly, subtly detailed piano rags,
Joplin also essayed works in larger forms. In
1899 he composed a ballet, The Ragtime Dance,
which was staged in Sedalia, and in 1903 he
completed an opera, A Guest of Honor, on the
subject of a dinner Theodore Roosevelt hosted
at the White House to fête Booker T. Washington. (The opera was produced and presented in
multiple tour performances but has since been
lost.) In 1907 Joplin moved to New York, where
he continued to compose rags (including Pine
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Apple Rag and Euphonic Sounds), and embarked on his ambitious three-act opera
Treemonisha. He completed it in 1910 and, unable to find a publisher, issued it himself in
1911. That same year the composer led its performance in an unstaged, piano-accompanied
reading at the Lincoln Theatre in Harlem. The
work’s finale received a staged performance in
Bayonne, New Jersey, in 1913, and in 1915 an orchestral concert included the music of the
opera’s Act Two ballet. Joplin announced plans
for staged productions on several occasions,
but in every case they went unfulfilled
The work, set in backwater Arkansas in 1884,
deals with the self-actualization of the title character Treemonisha and, by implication, the community that surrounds her. A foundling
educated by her foster parents, she stands up
to the local “conjur men” (whose superstitions
limit her community’s advancement), is kidnapped by them, and is eventually rescued by
her friend Remus. He gives the superstitious
kidnappers a stern lecture, after which
Treemonisha forgives them and is proclaimed
her people’s leader. In these performances, the
work’s elegant, ragtime-infused overture is followed by the Act One aria “The Sacred Tree,”
in which Treemonisha’s adoptive mother, Monisha, explains how she discovered the infant girl,
and then Remus’s Act Three lecture-aria “Wrong
is Never Right,” (with a chorus of onlookers),
which calls for ethical behavior from all.
The Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of
a Wayfarer) date practically to the beginning of
Gustav Mahler’s composing career. He wrote
the four songs in late 1884 and early 1885, when
he was 24 years old and working as assistant conductor in Kassel, Germany. Mahler was smitten
at the time with Johanna Richter, a singer who
was his piano pupil. His infatuation did not lead
to a happy ending. On January 1, 1884, the composer reported his breakup in a letter to a friend:
Last night I sat alone with her and we were
both almost wordless awaiting the New Year.
Her thoughts were not with her companion,
and when the clock struck, and the tears