Margaret Bonds was one of the first black composers and performers to gain recognition in the U.S. Born in Chicago on March 3, 1913, she is perhaps best-remembered for her collaborations with Langston Hughes and for her piano work “Troubled Water.”
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll pay tribute to Bonds and her notable teachers, Florence Price and William Levi Dawson, both of whom were also important figures in the history of African American art music.
Price is considered the first African American woman to have composed symphonies. She wrote three of them (one was performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra). She also wrote orchestral works, chamber music, instrumental music, and numerous choral and vocal pieces. She and Bonds shared not only a teacher-student relationship, but also became very good friends. Tonight, we’ll hear Price’s “Fantasie Negre.”
In addition to his many, many fine works for chorus, Dawson is notable for having written one of the most successful symphonies by an African-American composer, the so-called “Negro Folk Symphony.” The work was composed in 1934 and given its first performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra, under Leopold Stokowski. Dawson revised the piece in 1952, following a trip to West Africa, where he was influenced by the indigenous rhythms he encountered there. Stokowski later recorded the piece, as did Neeme Jarvi with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. I have a preference for the latter recording.
In 1933, Bonds appeared as a piano soloist with the Chicago Symphony. She performed Price’s Piano Concerto with the Women’s Symphony Orchestra of Chicago the next year. In 1939, she moved to New York, where she continued her studies at the Juilliard School. She also studied privately with Roy Harris.
For all her accomplishments, her collaborations with Langston Hughes, her establishment of a cultural community center in Harlem, and the composition of two ballets and several theatre works, the Bonds discography is woefully thin. She’ll be represented tonight by her cycle of four songs, “Ah! Love But a Day,” and by her most-recorded piano work, “Troubled Water.”
Shortly before her death in Los Angeles in 1972 (at the age of 59), Bonds’ “Credo” for baritone, chorus and orchestra was performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, under the direction of Zubin Mehta. Would that they had recorded it!
I hope you’ll join me for “Educational Bonds” – music by Margaret Bonds and her teachers – this Sunday night at 10:00 EST on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.
