It is simple courage that sets certain composers apart from others. Mentioned below are three of the most influential composers of African descent in the field of classical composition and performance. Composers of African descent were judged in every way to their contemporaries that were Caucasian, but still pursued their passion. Each has a different tale of success, and sometimes failure. Below there are in depth illustrations of the lives of the each composer, what music influences they experienced, their home life, and major events within their lives. It is also made mention how each composer reacted to set backs in their life based off of their race. There is no question that being a composer of African decent in a European or Caucasian poses problems to any composer. Each of these gentlemen had the courage and drive to pursue their passions as composers, even if it was not their first choice in career choice.
The paper starts with William Grant Still in a post reconstruction American South, and it works back to Samuel Coleridge-Taylor in England during late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century, all the way back to one of the most ground breaking composers of African descent, The Chevalier de Saint-Georges during the pre and post revolutionary France. William Grant Still has the goal of bringing “Negro” music and spirituals into the forefront of instrumental music. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor has the goal of incorporating traits and characteristics of the music from his father’s home country, Sierra Leone, into European music. The Chevalier de Saint-Georges had the goal of setting new standards for French composers throughout the future generations.
From humble beginnings to being titled by some, “The Dean of African American Composers” is the life and accomplishments of William Grant Still. Still was the only child of William Grant and Carrie Lena (Fambro). Born in Woodville, Mississippi on May 11, 1895, only had a father for the first three months of his life. Still’s widowed mother took her and her son to Little Rock to live with her mother, sister, and brother-in-law. She accepted a teaching position at the local school and remained in Little Rock until her death.[1] Both of Still’s parents were educated, a rare feat for an African American to obtain in the post reconstruction era of America. The family was fortunate to have separation between themselves and slavery; it also helped that both William Sr. and Carrie Lena had a light skin tone. This combination only helped to fuel the passion and desire that both Still’s parents had for a formal education. The desire for her son to pursue a degree in higher education from Still’s mother was a constant weight over young Still’s head make top grades in school throughout his teenage years.[2]
From an early age, Still was surrounded by music. As a young child, Still’s maternal grandmother would sing hymns and spirituals while working in around the house. From infancy and throughout his child and teenage years, Still was immersed in the music of “his people”.[3] But it was not just his grandmother that contributed to Still’s musical talents. Both of Still’s parents were musically talented themselves. William Still Sr. was listed as a farm hard on the family farm, but his traveled a far distance to take cornet lessons. Still Sr. also was able to organize a band. Still’s mother, Carrie, played the organ in Sunday church while she lived in Barnesville.[4] But, one of the greatest musical influences in Still’s young life was his stepfather, Mr. Charles B. Shepperson. His salary from working as a railroad postal clerk allowed the family to own a phonograph. He had a deep passion for music and would constantly add to the family’s collection of records. He also sought out to enrich his young stepson’s musical life by taking him to musical shows, singing with him at home, and discussing with his stepson the value that came from the performances they went to.3
After Still graduated high school at the top of his class, he attended Wilberforce University, one of the oldest African American Universities.[5] It was mainly by the persistence of his mother that he attended because after the influence of Mr. Shepperson and his grandmother, his true desire was to pursue a career in music, but it was against his mother’s wishes. Black musicians did not perform regularly and if they did have a performance, it usually took place in disreputable venues. Black musicians also were not pay well for the work they did. So, instead of pursuing his true passion, he went to Wilberforce and enrolled in a four-year degree program aimed at earning a Bachelors degree.[6]
Despite attending a university that he personally did not agree to go to, Still was able to find musical opportunities while enrolled at Wilberforce. He was a member of a student string quartet, playing the cello. This string quartet is where Still started to make his first arrangements. Another musical activity that Still was involved with on campus was the newly formed band. The new band on campus gave Still the opportunity to learn other instruments and add to his experiences with arranging. Some of the instruments Still learned to play were the oboe, clarinet, cello, saxophone, and piccolo.[7] Still also made a study program in music to replace the lack of a program Wilberforce offered to the student population. He spent any extra money he earned on opera scores, studying what he could to gain as much knowledge on the subject as possible.[8]
Still never finished his degree at Wilberforce after leaving his senior year. After leaving school and dashing all his mother’s hopes of getting a college education, Sill began to work as a professional musician.[9] During these years, Still went through an unsatisfactory marriage, played in various orchestras, and worked odd jobs for very little pay.[10] The musical ensembles he performed with were an orchestra that played in Cleveland’s Luna Park, the National Guard Band, and with a group of musicians that played for an Athletic Club.[11]
Still spent several months during the years after Wilberforce working in Memphis with W. C. Handy. W. C. Handy was know as the “father of the blues” and was already a very successful musician and businessman. Still was able to work with Handy because Handy knew William Still Sr.’s musical skills because he made arrangements for Handy’s bands. Handy had several bands that were touring and Still did some arrangements for the bands. It was during this time that Still published his first piece, No Matter What You Do.
The time that Still spent with Handy and his bands touring exposed him to the different types of music in the South, more specific, the Delta region. It was during these tours that he was immersed in the culture of the blues. It was common for the blues to be looked down upon because they had a strong connect with the brothels. In Still’s Personal Notes, a set of notes written about his life for an biography that never came to be, Still writes, “But in the South, where I had gone around and listened to them at their source, I felt that there was something more in them than that. I felt that they represented the yearning of people who were reaching out for something that they’d been denied …” After his experiences in the South, it was his goal to transform the blues into a genre of dignity through major symphonic works.[12]
When Still became of age, he inherited the last of his father’s will. There was enough money in the inheritance for him to enroll as a music student at Oberlin University. Still studied both music theory and violin, but due to lack of funds, he did not study composition. His talents were noticed by some of the faculty, and he was given a special scholarship to study composition with Dr. George W. Andrews.[13]
It was after his years at Oberlin and then in the United States Military where Still’s arranging and composition careers took off.[14] But throughout his life and career, the comparison between Black and White was constant. While living in Little Rock as a child, there was less violence and better support for blacks in school. The city of Little Rock was considered to be “enlightened, cosmopolitan, and generally desirable … for African Americans.”[15] In Still’s later life was against the slogan, “Black is beautiful”, he specified that the term “black” just emphasized the separation of black and white humans because even the colors black and white are the opposites.[16]
Within in his own operas, Still incorporated experiences from his own life into each piece. His operas explore the injustices and prejudices within the country toward African Americans. In each opera that Still wrote, there are six core themes, conflicting values, betrayal and retribution, dreams of a new world, exploration of religion and spiritualism, love and friendship, and simple people caught up in tragic dramas. Still writes for one character has the personality where evil in constant throughout, and then has another character that is able to communicate the lesson that is being preached in the opera. Whatever the hardship or treachery that is presented in the opera, there is always justice and retribution for the characters that were targeted.[17]
Even from a young child, Still was presented with examples of his “people’s” faith through his maternal grandmother’s spirituals. Still was always interested in religion and how it could play into his compositions. In his opera, A Bayou Legend, Still mixes this interest of spiritualism and religion with the persecution of the innocent. Still makes mention in one of his diary entries that he had a discussion with a friend about the condemnation of spiritualism by many occultists, or those who divulge in knowledge of the hidden. He makes it known to his friend that spiritualism should be far from condemned to those whom practice these arts, but rather embraced.[18]
The storyline of the opera follows a tenor named Bazile. Clothilde, a woman desperately in love with Bazile, tricks Leonce, the town priest, and Bazile into thinking that she is carrying Bazile’s child. Bazile runs out into the Bayou and he meets Aurore, a spirit of the Bayou. They pledge undying love to each, while all along Clothilde over hears him talking to her. She demands that Bazile tell her who he was talking to or she will turn him into Leonce for witchcraft. He eventually does not telling her who he was talking to and she announces that he has been involved in witchcraft to the town. When Bazile tries to defend himself, he tells of Aurore and the love they have fore each other. The mobs of townspeople become enraged and hang him on the spot. Bazile’s spirit lifts from his body and meets up with Aurore. Leone goes to Clothilde and proclaims that a miracle has happened. Once he finds out the truth about her lies, he is disgusted with her and declares her to unappealing to any man now.[19]
After writing parts of the opera, Still sent a score to Charles L. Wagner after his solicitation for a new American opera. Wagner viewed Still’s operas to subpar with operas of Europe. Still held onto the sting of the rejection from Wagner and a year later responded with that composers of opera should write for their audiences. From Still’s years of traveling with W. C. Handy and his band across the country, Still had a first hand experience with what the people of American wanted from their entertainment. Still writes, “My creed regarding drama with music is very simple. It is that opera is primarily entertainment.” It is the job of the composer to interpret what the desires of the American people were and turn them into an opera. Still’s Bayou legend was based off the knowledge that if the opera is “rich harmonically and interesting dramatically” the composer with never be in short supply of an audience.[20]
Within Still’s Personal Notes, a collection of writings from Still about his life that were eventually to be assembled into biography that never transpired, Still writes about meeting one of this role models in the composition world, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Still was able to meet him while enrolled that Oberlin University. Still was able to meet and talk with Coleridge-Taylor about some of his compositions and arrangements. Coleridge-Taylor was impressed and insisted that Still continue with a career in music.[21]
Unlike Still, Coleridge-Taylor embraced the differences in blacks and whites and embraced them in his compositions. Many of Coleridge-Taylor’s compositions have titles that include “Africa” or “Negro” and the rhythms and harmonies that play out in his compositions match the titles.[22] His father, Daniel Taylor was from a British colony in Sierra Leone known as Freetown. Coleridge-Taylor’s father lived amount over 84,000 newly freed slaves and British soldiers who protected the colony. Daniel Taylor left for England after attending the Church Missionary Society’s grammar school for four years. In England, Taylor enrolled in Wesley College and after graduation was qualified as a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons (MRCS). It was during these years at Wesley College that Taylor would be Alice Hare, a white English-woman; Coleridge-Taylor’s future mother. After no financial success in parts of England as a black doctor, Daniel Taylor left to practice in Sierra Leone after his son had reached the age of one.[23]
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born on August 15, 1875 at the home of the Holman family. Coleridge-Taylor wrote that he remembered little, if nothing of his father.[24] But Coleridge-Taylor had a mother that loved her son unending and possessed an artistic natural ability that she pasted to her son.[25] Mr. Joseph Beckwith, Coleridge-Taylor’s music teacher, was very fond of him and purchased the boy a child’s violin at the age of five. And Mr. Holman, the owner of the house the boy and his mother lived in, taught Coleridge-Taylor the basic hand positions on his new violin. The combination of Mr. Beckwith and Mr. Holman were Coleridge-Taylor’s first introduction to music lessons and proved to leave a monumental impression on the young boy.[26]
Coleridge-Taylor enrolled in the old British School in Tamworth Road, Croydon after the remarriage of his mother and a move from the Holman family he grew up with. The teachers at the school saw the young boy’s talents in music and greatly encouraged him to continue in his musical studies as much as possible. His class-master, Mr. Forman, was a musician himself and was a great influence and encouragement to young Coleridge-Taylor while enrolled in the school. It was in Mr. Forman’s classroom that Coleridge-Taylor started to experiment with composition and arranging. At the request of the class-master, Coleridge-Taylor wrote an original setting for God Save the Queen, he also lead the class in singing with his exceptionally pure treble voice. While leading the class in singing, Coleridge-Taylor also played his violin. When special guests visited the school, Coleridge-Taylor would be asked to perform and show off his talents on violin for the guests.[27]
Coleridge-Taylor did not fully become called to the career of a composer until he enrolled in The Royal College of Music in the fall of the 1890. His studies in college started in violin performance, but after three terms going from fair to bad in class and his boredom in his harmony class, Coleridge-Taylor started studying composition with Charles Villiers Stanford. It was after starting his studies in composition that Coleridge-Taylor switched from violin performance to a composition degree. Coleridge-Taylor studied for four years under Stanford, and during those four years he composed at least eleven chamber works for various combinations of instruments.[28] Coleridge-Taylor used common practices of the Romantics, but his sense of skill and craftsmanship went far above fellow students at the university.[29]
In 1895, Coleridge-Taylor received the Lesley Alexander prize for composition and would win it the following year. After he received the awards, almost every college concert thereafter performed one of his compositions and received praise from the audience each time they heard one of his pieces. One of the concerts had his Fantasiestücke on the program. It was a five-movement work consisting of a Prelude in E minor, a Serenade in G, a Humoureske in A minor, a Minuet in G, and a Dance in G. All of the movements were written for string quartet. The audience praised and cheered him for this work commenting on the “oriental style and colouring of the work”.[30]
Freetown, where Coleridge-Taylor’s father was born and raised in Sierra Leone, was a very well known port for trafficking salves needed in the Americans and throughout the world. This dark history was before the town’s name was changed to Freetown. The town was littered with trading posts that would trade any English or European goods for humans. Coleridge-Taylor took this history of his father’s birthplace and incorporated it into his compositions through songs of slavery.[31]
Coleridge-Taylor had a goal to blend his father heritage into Euro-English forms. The style of most of his works were European because European or English music was considered by musicians of the time to be the peak of excellence in composition, but Coleridge-Taylor was able to masterfully blend his African heritage with popular forms of music in Europe.[32] An example of this style of composition can be found in his opus 63, Symphonic Variations on an African Air. Coleridge-Taylor was inspired to write this piece after a visit to the United States, where he learned and found a new appreciation for his African heritage. The composition goes the opposite way from the burdens of slavery and tragic times in African history, but instead gives the listener “twenty minutes of genial invention ranging from feather-light scherzi through boisterous march and gentle lullaby to a peroration of glittering splendor.”[33]
Symphonic Variations on an African Air is based on a slavery spiritual that portray the life of slavery across the world. The song that Coleridge-Taylor based his variations off of was called, I’m Troubled in Mind. A phrase or two of the original song precedes each of the melodies in the piece. Coleridge-Taylor states, “What Brahms has done for Hungarian folk-music, Dvořák for the Bohemian, and Grieg for the Norwegian, I have tried to do for these Negro Melodies.”[34] Below, in example 1, is an excerpt from the piano reduction of the score.
In the trombone and tuba parts the main tune of I’m Troubles in Mind is introduced. Here, it is in what would be the tenor voice. It is after the lower brass voices introduce the tune that the horns add on, and then eventually the first variation starts at “B”. In total, there are nine variations on the one spiritual throughout the entire piece, all beginning with a recurrence of the main theme from the spiritual. It is similar to a call and response action within the orchestra that is based off of chants and spirituals that African Americans used as slaves.
During Coleridge-Taylor’s career as a composer, he was given the opportunity to conduct the Ballade at the Crystal Palace. This is the first of many times Coleridge-Taylor would be in the Crystal Palace; he would later teach as a professor of music there during his last years. It was in that very same year, 1898, that Coleridge-Taylor continued on his college work based off Longfellow’s poem “Hiawatha”. [35]
In his copy of Longfellow’s poem, it can be seen that Coleridge-Taylor had mapped out the entire cantata before he had even began composition on the piece. While sketching and composing the piece, Coleridge-Taylor comments that, “The music is only justified if it speaks in the language of the poem.” Coleridge-Taylor work feverishly to justify the music through the expression shown in the orchestra, and it was premiered in 1898 by the choir and orchestra of the Royal College of Music. The piece went on to become one of the most famous pieces Coleridge-Taylor ever composed.[36]
The last composer of the three is Joseph Boulogne. Boulogne was the first musician with African ancestry to break from African music and move into the European world of music. Without Boulogne’s influences within the black music world, it would be hard to imagine if the first two composers would have been able to make the advancements that they did in their own careers. There always has to be a first and Joseph Boulogne set the bar high for African composers throughout the world.
Boulogne, most famously known as The Chevalier de Saint-Georges, was born on the island of Guadeloupe near the village of Basses Terre. It was first a Spanish colony, but then became a French after the Spanish abandoned it. Saint-Georges was born in 1739 to Georges Boulogne de Saint-Georges and a slave woman named Nanon. Right after his birth, Saint-Georges and his parents moved to Santo Domingo on the island of Hispaniola. In Santo Domingo, the priest of Saint Mark’s baptized him.[37] It was in Santo Domingo, where the young Saint-Georges starting his violin studies under Joseph Platon. By the age of ten, de Saint-Georges moved with his father to Paris and was joined later by his mother.
Boulogne was not known for his music in the beginning. He was involved in his first fencing match at the age of twelve. After showing talent in the fencing world, Saint-Georges’ father arranged for him to take lessons from fencing master, La Boéssiére. Saint-Georges would become one of his most famous students in the fencing world. Because Saint-Georges’ father was a French citizen, he was not only trained in fencing, but in all of the social graces of eighteenth-century France. So, Saint-Georges continued his studies in music along with his lessons in fencing with La Boéssiére and never let his skills in violin falter because of fencing.
After Saint-Georges’ father’s death in 1760, he started studying music under Jean-Marie Leclair and François Gossec. Gossec was to become the teacher that had the most lasting impression on Saint-Georges’ musical career. Gossec was a Belgian composer that had conducted concerts for Le Riche de La Poupliniére. Gossec was also appointed the director of music to the court of Prince de Condé in 1763.[38]
After a fencing match with Giuseppe Gianfaldoni, in which he lost his only match in the length of his life, Saint-Georges started to experiment with mixing music and poetry. It was another giant step in the history books for a black composer and for French music. No composer with African descent had mixed the two works of art together before in the European world. It was during this time in his life, around 1769, that Gossec appointed Saint-Georges concertmaster to the Concert des Amateurs. The ensemble was made up of amateur musicians, not meaning they were less talented, but did not make their living off music. There were more than seventy amateur musicians within the ensemble and Saint-George was the principle violinist in the ensemble.[39]
In 1773, Gossec left the Concert des Amateurs, and it was Saint-Georges who set into his role. Saint-Georges continued to play first violin for the ensemble, as well as filling the role of the conductor. In that same year, Saint-Georges’ first publication of six string quartets came out. The genre of string quartets was still fairly new in the eyes of the French audiences. Saint-Georges is credited as one of the first French composers to write a set of string quartets, along with Pierre Vachon and Gossec.[40] Not only was his set of six string quartets new to French composers, but also they offered some unusual differences from German string quartets that were popular in France at the time. All the string quartets are in two movements, unlike the usual four, and quartets numbers 3, 4, and 5 were all in a minor key. Saint-George also used all four instruments in a more equal fashion than that would have been expected from French audiences.[41] Saint-Georges’ continued to compose while working with the Concert Des Amateurs. During the year 1775, Saint-Georges was able to publish his opus two through six. Within these are some of his first sonatas. Again, these sonatas are in two movements unlike the usual four movements. They resemble duo sonatas by Joseph Casanea de Mondonville and Michel Corrette. Despite his contemporaries still writing sonatas in a high-Baroque or pre-Classical style, Saint-Georges was onto writing sonatas in full Classical form. Saint-Georges never wrote any figured bass in any of his sonatas farther breaking him from the Baroque and establishing him in the Classical era. His three sonatas from this period are for two violins, but it is really a violin solo with a second violin accompaniment.
During Saint-Georges composing years, the design of the violin bow went through a radical change, which greatly influence French violin playing. Saint-George composed in an advanced style of violin technique because of these changes to the bow. Bow makers like Thomas Dodd changed the curve of the wooden part of the bow. Before the changes were made to the bow, the wooden part of the bow had been flattening, but after Thomas Dodd was finished, the wooden part took on more of a concave form. The concave form of the bow allowed the player to apply more pressure to the string and therefore, allowed the player to produce rapid strokes to the strings more firmly. The sound produced by this technique had a stronger, more aggressive tone in the center and upper part of the bow. Saint-Georges used this new bow and tone color to compose in a more rapid style and exploring the highest ranges of the fingerboard on the instrument.[42]
Saint-Georges composition techniques for the violin based on the improvements to the bow set the foreground to Beethoven’s violin parts. Below are two examples of a violin part, one written by Chevalier de Saint-Georges and the other by Ludwig van Beethoven.
Example 2.a: Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Violin Concerto in D Major, op. 2, no. 2, Rondeau, mm. 193-194.
Example 2.b: Ludwig van Beethoven, Violin Concerto, op. 61, mm. 174-175.
The example from Saint-Georges was written before Beethoven composed his opus 61 string quartets, but as you look at the two examples you see the similarities in violin composition technique displayed by the two composers. Saint-George is ahead of his time while composing for violin due to his mastery skills on the instrument and the radical improvements to the wooden part of the bow. Without these improvements and Saint-Georges’ experiments in violin techniques, it could be possible that Beethoven would have not had the knowledge to be able to write his opus 61 string quartets.
It was in the late 1770s that Saint-Georges started his opera career, which ended up not lasting as long as he would of hoped. His first opera was called, Ernestine.[43] Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, author of the novel, Les Liaisons dangereuses, wrote the story of the opera. But despite all the efforts put into the opera, it was not a success. Most of the blame for the failure was put on the libretto, while the music was praised. The opera only had one performance.
Saint-Georges took the failed opera as a starting block and began work on his next opera, La Chasse, in 1778. La Chasse seemed to do a little better with four performances, just a little below average. Over the next ten years, Saint-Georges wrote five more comic operas, and only one survives in whole to this day. By the end of the decade, Saint-Georges realized his failure in the opera world and moved on to look for a wealthy patron to help support him after stressing his finances in opera.[44]
During his years writing opera, Saint-Georges became the co-director of the Opéra in Paris. But in a twist of fate, the first noted act of prejudice towards those of African descent is presented. Some singers and dancers in the company sent a petition to the queen, “their honor and the delicate nature of their conscience, could never allow them to submit to the orders of a mulatto”. The petition clearly stated that they would not take orders from a man that had a white parent and a black parent, no matter how much talent he processed. Eventually the Opéra was taken over by the king and was administered by the Superintendent of the Royal Entertainments, Papillon de la Ferté. It was a sly gesture that Saint-Georges did not miss from the performers and realized that he had been a victim of politics. Saint-Georges took the racial prejudice and kept moving forward in the field of opera. Unfortunately, it was during this time period that he almost completely abandoned the genre of instrumental music, even the violin.[45]
In 1777, Saint-Georges was appointed Lieutenant de Chasses de Pinci and was in charge of arranging the production of theater pieces for Madame de Montesson, the second wife of the Duke of Orléans. But all the while, Saint-Georges was still busy composing his own works like his opus nine, Symphonies Concertantes and his opus twelve, Symphonie Concertante.[46] It was also during this time, under Madame de Montesson, that Saint-Georges was conducting and writing for at least two orchestras and still composing his operas.
After the death of the Duke of Orléans in 1785, Saint-Georges was out of steady employment and became involved in the political life of the new duke, Philippe Égalité. Saint-Georges became increasingly involved in the ideas of the upcoming revolution in France. Most men of color in the time period agreed with revolutionary opinions based upon the idea that no man is another man’s property. After the incident with the singers and dancers of the Opéra, Saint-Georges was able to agree with a lot of the opinions that came with the revolution because of the prejudice shown to him. Saint-Georges friendship with Égalité caused problems in his life because he was accused of being revolutionary and on more than one instance had to flee the city the two were in because suspicion of being an agent of the young Duke.
By 1791, Saint-Georges was ordered to leave the city of Tournai and never step foot in it again. He left with a close friend Louise Fusil and toured the country giving public or subscription concerts. During this time of travel, Saint-George was able to compose both the text and music of a large number of pieces. Saint-Georges was also asked to perform programmatic pieces that were popular in literary salons of the eighteenth century. Despite his travels, Saint-Georges continued to become more and more involved in the revolutionary politics that were circulating through France. He especially showed interest in the French colonies of his home, where there was a revolution of its own with the black slaves. He made continued visits to his home in Santo Domingo trying to keep things at bay with the fighting, but also supporting the idea of freedom in the region. He eventually died in 1799 from a kidney condition.[47]
William Grant Still’s mother helped him escape his birthplace to Little Rock where there was less violence towards African Americans, and were Still could receive an education and continue to higher education. He made it clear that the more humans use the words “black” and “white” the more we will be separated because those two colors are the exact opposites of each other and only reinforce what people already think of the two races. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor made it clear that African music can be made into masterpieces just like pieces from Hungry, German, Norway, etc through his Symphonic Variations on an African Air. He was able to prove that African music had a place in the high society of European music. The Chevalier de Saint-Georges took the prejudice that was presented towards him by singers and dancers from the Opéra because he had a black and a white parent and kept moving forward in the genre. It was able to show what a man of African descent can do when given the chance to compose and he took the race and French music to new heights. Despite their lack of fame in the history books, these three gentlemen have earned the respect of music historians and music theorists with their brilliance.
[1] Haas, Robert Bartlett. William Grant Still: And the Fusion of Culture in American Music. (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1972), 3. [2] Smith, Catherine Parsons. William Grant Still. (Chicago University of Illinois Press, 2008), 4-6. [3] Haas, 3-4. [4] Smith, William Grant Still, 5-6. [5] Smith, Catherine Parsons. “William Grant Smith in Ohio (1911-1919),” American Music 22, no. 2 (2004): 206. [6] Smith, William Grant Still, 12-13. [7] Smith, “WGS in Ohio”, 209. [8] Smith, William Grant Still, 15. [9] Smith, William Grant Still, 18-19. [10] Haas, 5. [11] Smith, William Grant Still, 19. [12] Smith, William Grant Still, 20-21. [13] Haas, 5. [14] Haas, 6-7. [15] Smith, William Grant Still, 7. [16] Still, Judith Anne. William Grant Still: A Voice High-Sounding. (Flagstaff: The Master-Player Library, 1990), 191-193. [17] Soll, Beverly. I Dream a World: The Operas of William Grant Still. (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2005), 37-38. [18] Soll, 129. [19] Soll, 127. [20] Soll, 132-133. [21] Haas, 5-6. [22] Green, Jeffrey. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: A Musical Life. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011). 4. [23] Green, 5-6. [24] Sayers, W. C. Berwick. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Musician: His Life and Letters. (London: Augener LTD., 1927). 2-3. [25] Sayers, 4. [26] Sayers, 5. [27] Sayer, 7-9. [28] Carr, Catherine. “From Student to Composer: The Chamber Works,” Black Music Research Journal 21, no. 2 (2001): 179-180. [29] Carr, 183. [30] Sayers, 29-30. [31] Green, 4-5. [32] Self, Geoffrey. “Coleridge-Taylor and the Orchestra,” Black Music Research Journal 21, no. 2 (2001): 268. [33] Self, 273. [34] Coleridge-Taylor, Samuel. Twenty-four Negro Melodies, xi (Forward). [35] Sayers, 56. [36] Sayer, 57-58. [37] Lerma, Dominique-Rene de. “The Chevalier de Saint-Georges,” The Black Perspective in Muisc 4, no. 1 (1976): 3. [38] Lerma, 4-5. [39] Lerma, 6. [40] Lerma, 7. [41] Banat, Gabriel. “The Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Man of Music and Gentleman-at-Arms: The Life and Times of an Eighteenth-Century Prodigy,” Black Music Research Journal 10, no. 2 (1990): 188. [42] Banat, 192. [43] Lerma, 8. [44] Banat, 194-196. [45] Banat, 194. [46] Lerma, 8-9. [47] Banat, 207-209.