Still, William Grant 1895–1978

William Grant Still 1895–1978

Composer

Formed String Quartet

Symphony Premiered in Rochester

Wrote Opera to Hughes Libretto

Selected works

Sources

Often referred to as the dean of African-American composers, William Grant Still is noted in the history books for the series of “firsts” he achieved—he was the first black composer to have a symphony performed by an American orchestra, the first black composer to have an opera performed by a major company, and the first African American to conduct a major American symphony orchestra (the Los Angeles Philharmonic), among others. Also worthy of note were Still’s efforts in the sphere of popular music; his compositions and arrangements spanned the range of genres that formed the basis for the modern black popular music industry. In the whole history of African-American music, Still was one of the figures who thought most deeply about how to reconcile his African heritage with the European forms that dominated American concert life.

Still was born in Woodville, Mississippi, on May 11, 1895, into an extremely well-educated family by any standard. His father, William Grant Still Sr., a college-educated math professor and bandmaster, died in Still’s infancy. His mother, Carrie Lena Fambro Still, was a teacher. She took her son, her only child, to Little Rock, Arkansas, after the elder Still’s death, and there she married again. Her second husband upheld the cultured atmosphere and took Still to classical vocal concerts. In high school Still studied the violin, and at age 16, urged on by his mother, he enrolled at Wilberforce University as a pre-medical student.

Formed String Quartet

There his musical talents blossomed. He mastered several orchestral and band instruments, conducted the school’s band, organized a concert of his own compositions, and formed a string quartet featuring himself as cellist. He began to think about a career as a classical composer—an option not even on the horizon for African Americans at the time—after the Afro-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor came to Ohio on a U.S. tour. To his mother’s dismay, Still’s career at Wilberforce came to an end after he was accused of an improper intimate relationship with a female student, Grace Bundy. The two married in 1915 and had four children, but they were never really happy together; they separated in 1931 and divorced in 1939.

Making things even worse from Still’s mother’s point of view was that Still now began to make a living by

At a Glance…

Born on May 11,1895, in Woodville, MS; died on December 3, 1978, in Los Angeles, CA; son of William Grant Still Sr., a math professor, and Carrie Lena Fambro Still; married Grace Bundy, 1915 (divorced 1939); married Verna Arvey, a concert pianist, 1939; four children. Education: Attended Wilber-force College, Wilberforce, OH, 1911-15; attended Oberlin College, Wilberforce, OH; studied with composers George Chadwick and Edgard Varèse, 1920s. Military service: Served in U.S. Navy in World.

Career: Became staff arranger, Pace and Handy publishing company, 1919; associated with International Composers’ Guild, New York, mid-192Os; Afro-American Symphony premiered by Rochester Symphony Orchestra, 1931; moved to Los Angeles, 1934; wrote music for films, 1930s; opera Troubled island premiered, New York City Opera, 1949; wrote music for children later in life.

Selected awards: Guggenheim fellowship, 1933; numerous honorary doctorates

performing ragtime and jazz, which she despised. At first the young family struggled in various Ohio cities, but in Columbus Still impressed the great southern blues bandleader and arranger W. C. Handy. Still worked for Handy in Memphis for a time, toured with his band, and penned arrangements of the Handy standards “St. Louis Blues” and “Hesitation Blues.” Handy provided Still with employment on and off for several years.

Still spent a year in the Navy in 1918, and further musical studies at Oberlin College stimulated his interest in the classics once again. In 1919 he was drawn to New York by a steady job as a staff arranger for Handy’s Pace and Handy publishing firm. He found plenty of work writing arrangements for theater orchestras and performing—he was part of the original orchestra for the all-black musical hit Shuffle Along and worked as musical director for the Black Swan record label. But Still continued to seek out teachers who could challenge him in the classical field. He took composition lessons from the American nationalist composer George Chadwick when Shuffle Along went on tour to Boston in 1922, and from 1923 to 1925 he studied with the highly experimental French-born composer Edgard Vèrese in New York.

Symphony Premiered in Rochester

Along with these varied influences, Still was very much aware of the ideas of Harlem Renaissance thinkers who had begun to investigate the links between African and African-American culture. Now Still had the musical tools to fuse all these influences into major classical works. Varèse’s International Composers’ Guild provided Still the opportunity to have some of his works performed in the 1920s, and in 1931 the Rochester Symphony Orchestra performed Still’s Afro-American Symphony —the first performance by a major orchestra of a symphony composed by a black American. The work remains Still’s best known; it featured a mosaic of African-American motifs that included not only spirituals but also blues, jazz, and call-and-response elements. It was also the first symphony to use the banjo as part of the orchestra.

According to the Duke University Library website, “Still’s Afro-American Symphony was, until 1950, the most popular of any symphony composed by an American.” It touched off a period of sustained success for Still; works such as his orchestral suite The Deserted Plantation found performances at major venues (the Paul Whiteman Orchestra performed that work at the Metropolitan Opera House). His ballets La guiablesse (1927) and Sahdji (1929, with a story by Harlem Renaissance writer Alain Locke) were danced by both black and white artists. Nor did Still abandon popular forms; he wrote the score for the Bing Crosby film Pennies from Heaven after moving to California in 1935.

Supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship and other prestigious awards, Still was able to spend more and more time composing. In 1939 he remarried; his second wife, Verna Arvey (who later wrote a biography of Still), was a Jewish concert pianist, and he wrote the piano collection Seven Traceries and other piano music as a result. Several of Still’s works of the 1940s were rooted in serious events of the day and gained wide renown; his 1940 choral cantata with narrator, And They Lynched Him on a Tree, evoked the violence directed at the Southern black population, and the orchestral In Memoriam: The Colored Soldiers Who Died for Democracy (1943) was one of several World War II-themed works he composed.

Wrote Opera to Hughes Libretto

Still’s most ambitious undertaking of the 1940s was the production of his opera Troubled Island, with a libretto by Langston Hughes. Still worked on the opera for several years, and its premiere at the New York City Opera on March 31, 1949, marked the first time an opera composed by an African American had been performed in a major house. In the 1950s and 1960s Still’s music fell out of favor as academic musicians prescribed the adoption of strict modernist styles. Although Still’s music was considered too crowdpleasing by some critics, Philadelphia Orchestra conductor Leopold Stokowski called him one of America’s greatest composers.

Still wrote mostly instructional music and music for children in the later stages of his career, expressing the hope that he might thereby foster intercultural understanding. He died of a stroke in Los Angeles on December 3, 1978. A reawakening of interest in his music was signaled by a Public Broadcasting Service telecast of his opera Bayou Legend in 1981 (another first for a black composer). In 1987 National Review critic Ralph de Toledano wrote that “in his great outpouring of music—some two hundred compositions in every category—Still expressed the sweep and melody of this country, the pounding heart of jazz, the surging human protest of the blues, and the attenuated sensibility of popular song.” By the end of the twentieth century, new recordings and performances of Still’s compositions were bringing his music to light once again.

Selected works

La guiablesse, ballet, 1927.

Sahdji, ballet, 1929.

Afro-American Symphony, 1931.

And They Lynched Him from a Tree, cantata, 1940.

In Memoriam: The Colored Soldiers Who Died for

Democracy, for orchestra, 1943.

Troubled Island, opera, 1949.

Sources

Books

Arvey, Verna, In One Lifetime, University of Arkansas Press, 1984.

Sadie, Stanley, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., Macmillan, 2001.

Smith, Jessie Carney, ed., Notable Black American Men, Gale, 1998.

Slonimsky, Nicolas, ed. emeritus, Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of American Music, centennial ed., Schirmer, 2001.

Southern, Eileen, The Music of Black Americans, 3rd ed., Norton, 1997.

Periodicals

National Review, March 13, 1987, p. 57.

On-line

http://allclassical.com

http://chevalierdestgeorges.homestead.com

http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/sgo/exhibit/captions/caption1.html (Duke University Library)

http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/sgo/texts/borroff2.html

—James M. Manheim