Deep River: Songs & Spirituals

In January of 1892 when Harry T. Burleigh, the 25 year old African-American baritone from Erie, Pennsylvania, arrived in New York City to audition for a place at the National Conservatory of Music, few could have guessed how significantly this young man would affect the course of American music. His influence on Antonin Dvorak, who served as Director of the conservatory during three of Burleigh's four years of study, is reflected in Dvorak's use of African-American musical elements in his New World Symphony and his other American compositions. Burleigh's vibrant singing of plantations songs and spirituals, alongside the traditional recital repertoire, gave Americans accustomed to minstrel performances new aural images of African-American culture. By the second decade of this century, his secular art songs were being sung by some of the most distinguished international artists. And when he began to publish choral and solo arrangements of spirituals (in 1913 and 1916, respectively), he pioneered in bringing a distinctive African-American voice into the American choral and art song repertoire, making these sorrow songs accessible to singers of all national and ethnic backgrounds. Although he did not formally study with Dvorak, he spent many hours in Dvorak's home singing the songs he learned from his grandfather. The composer often interrupted him to ask about specific music idioms such as the flatted seventh, and asked "hundreds of questions" about the lives of slaves. The hours Burleigh spent discussing music with Dvorak and working as his music copyist profoundly affected him. Dvorak's interest in African-American music, his personal encouragement of Burleigh's own composition, and his demonstration of a sophisticated approach to the use of folk music as a creative resource, inspired Burleigh to work throughout his career to preserve the slave songs. Ultimately, he committed himself to fulfilling Dvorak's challenge to "give those melodies to the world."