Some of the artists that will be featured on tomorrow morning’s “Sweetness and Light,” complete with a couple of Princeton Record Exchange stickers (green price tags) and an Adolphus Hailstork autograph (obtained at the premiere of his Symphony No. 4)! It’s the first of two newly-recorded light music programs for Black History Month. Part 1 of “Black and Light” will air this Saturday morning at 11:00 EST/8:00 PST, with Part 2 to follow next week. It’s music calculated to charm and to cheer, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
I’ve been a fan of Adolphus Hailstork since the 1980s. That’s when I first heard “Done Made My Vow,” as part of a concert broadcast over the radio.
“Done Made My Vow” (1985) is often described as a gospel oratorio, inspired in part by speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. So uplifting is the marriage of words and music, I hoped for years that it would be recorded. Then one day I stumbled across a copy in the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra gift shop.
Hailstork has been part of the fabric of American music since at least the 1970s. Born in Rochester, New York, in 1941, he earned his BA from Howard University, his MA from the Manhattan School of Music – where his teachers included Vittorio Giannini and David Diamond – and his doctorate from Michigan State, where his studied with H. Owen Reed. Then he was off, like so many of his great American forebears, to study at Fontainebleau with Nadia Boulanger.
For many years, Hailstork was composer-in-residence at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, where he taught. He is perhaps best known for his choral music, though it was the wistful slow movement of his Symphony No. 1, composed for a summer music festival in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, that next caught my ear.
I was elated to finally hear “Done Made My Vow” live with the New York Philharmonic last season, with the composer in attendance. A week later, I actually got to meet him at the premiere of his Symphony No. 4 at Alice Tully Hall. As succinctly as I could, I tried to express how much I admired his music and for how long. He listened graciously and as he signed a few of my CD booklets admitted that it’s good to be appreciated. It seems his music has always been performed, but in recent years, with arts organizations increasing their efforts to be more inclusive in their programming, Hailstork, now 82, is finally receiving some much-deserved high-profile recognition.
The text for “Done Made My Vow” was tweaked for the New York Philharmonic performance, but to my knowledge that version has yet to be recorded. Enjoy the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra recording at the link. The music is hale, but the sentiments are King.
A Hailstork miscellany:
Symphony No. 1 (1988): Mov’t II, Lento ma non troppo
“Sonata da Chiesa” (1992), inspired by the composer’s love of cathedrals (especially the one he sang in as a boy in Albany, New York)
“Motherless Child” (2002)
“Celebration!” (1974)
“Epitaph for a Man Who Dreamed: In Memoriam Martin Luther King, Jr.” (1979)
Happy Easter, everyone! I’ve been all wrapped up with Easter activities for most of the day, so I’m only just getting around to extending the invitation for you to cap off your Sunday by joining me on “The Lost Chord” for an hour of pieces inspired or influenced by cathedrals.
We’ll hear Jennifer Higdon’s “blue cathedral” (all lower-case), from 1999, commissioned by the Curtis Institute of Music in honor of its 75th anniversary. The work is dedicated to the memory of Higdon’s younger brother, Andrew Blue. In the writing of the piece, she imagined a journey through a glass cathedral in the sky, with transparent walls and crystal pillars, through which clouds and endless expanses of blue are visible.
Guitarist-composer Agustin Barrios wrote “La Catedral” (“The Cathedral”) in 1921, after having heard music of Johann Sebastian Bach performed on the organ of the cathedral of San Juan Bautista de las Misiones in his native Paraguay.
Englishman Joby Talbot composed “Path of Miracles” in 2005. The work – dedicated to the memory of his father, Vincent – was written on a commission from the vocal chamber group Tenebrae. Its four movements reflect stops along the medieval pilgrimage route to Santiago. The third of these, an evocation of León Cathedral, is imagined as a kind of “Lux Aeterna,” the interior of the space bathed in light.
Finally, American composer Adolphus Hailstork recollected his experiences as a child chorister at the Cathedral of All Saints in Albany, New York, when he came to write his “Sonata da Chiesa” (“Church Sonata”) in 1992. Hailstork, composer-in-residence at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, conceived the work’s seven vibrant sections – “Exaltation,” “O Great Mystery,” “Adoration,” “Jubilation,” “O Lamb of God,” “Grant Us Thy Peace,” and “Exaltation” – for string orchestra, providing a joyous conclusion to the hour.
I hope you’ll join me for “Master Builders” – architects of cathedrals in sound – this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
The next time I get an attack of the “contemporary music blues,” I need only think of this amazing concert. Left to right: Zhou Tian, Adolphus Hailstork, David Hayes, and Jennifer Higdon. So wonderful to finally meet Adolphus Hailstork, whose music I have admired since the 1980s, to reconnect with Jennifer Higdon, who is one of the nicest people (and who used to live two blocks from me in Philadelphia), and to catch up with Zhou Tian, a former radio guest and now something of a friendly acquaintance. David Hayes I remember from when he was still a student at Curtis, the kid who went on to conduct the Philadelphia Singers. Of course his career has only continued to blossom. A truly memorable evening, and a concert chock-full of good and even great things!
Well, I hadn’t intended to head in to New York today, but I can’t resist this program: the world premiere of Adolphus Hailstork’s Symphony No. 4, alongside Zhou Tian, composer’s spectacular Concerto for Orchestra and Jennifer Higdon’s flute concerto “The Light We Can Hear,” with Valerie Coleman the soloist. As an added bonus: only the second performance ever of John Thomas Douglass’ “The Pilgrim: Grand Overture.”
Douglass, a highly-regarded violinist, was the first Black American to write an opera (“Virginia’s Ball” in 1868). He settled in New York in the 1880s. Among his pupils was David Mannes, later concertmaster of the New York Symphony Orchestra, one of the root organizations that became the New York Philharmonic.
Mannes cofounded the Colored Music Settlement School in his teacher’s honor. He was also a founder of what is now known as the Mannes School of Music.
The Mannes Orchestra will be conducted by David Hayes, tonight at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center.
The price of a ticket (before disproportionate service charges)? $6.50. Sign me up!
