Face the music: Did Europe really lend an ear to Black composers?

When it comes to black composers and racial justice in the arts, Europe has been praised for its history of acceptance. This omits an important part of the story, says Kira Thurman

Rudolph Dunbar leads the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra in 1945 (Getty)

In early September 1945, amid the rubble of a bombed-out Berlin, the Afro-Caribbean conductor Rudolph Dunbar stepped onto a podium and bowed to an enthusiastic audience of German citizens and American military personnel.

The orchestra had gathered in an old movie theatre functioning as a makeshift concert hall in the newly designated American zone of the city. First on the programme was “The Star-Spangled Banner”. Then came a fairly standard set of orchestral pieces, with Carl Maria von Weber’s “Oberon: Overture” followed by Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique symphony. But one piece stood out from the rest: William Grant Still’s Afro-American Symphony. When it premiered in 1931 in Rochester, New York, it was the first symphony by a Black American to be performed by a major orchestra.

Still’s symphony received a robust round of performances in the United States in the 1930s. That decade was a watershed for Black composers like him, who finally managed to convince powerful American ensembles to perform their music. The Afro-American Symphony was quickly followed by Florence Price’s Symphony in E Minor, in 1933, and William Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony, in 1934. These works appeared frequently on concert programmes in America at the time – and then disappeared.

It was Dunbar, a clarinetist who had studied at the Institute of Musical Art (later the Juilliard School), who brought back Still’s music. In New York, the two had struck up a friendship before Dunbar set off in 1924 for Europe, where he studied and performed for more than a decade. A student of renowned musicians like conductor Felix Weingartner and clarinetist Louis Cahuzac, he was steeped in the world of European art music.

William Grant Still was one of the first African-American conductors of a major orchestra (William Grant Still Music)

But he was also a committed Black activist. Running in the same circles as Black Marxists and Pan-Africanists such as George Padmore, Dunbar had long made plain his loathing of white supremacy, whether in the form of Nazism or British imperialism. In fact, he’d already performed Still’s Afro-American Symphony for its European debut a few years earlier, on a concert with the London Philharmonic at the Royal Albert Hall to raise funds for Black soldiers fighting the Nazis.

Dunbar was invited to perform in Berlin by Leo Borchard, whom the victorious Allies had appointed the Philharmonic’s conductor, and was also an anti-Nazi dissident and resistance fighter who aided German Jews fleeing the Third Reich. The message of Dunbar’s debut could not be clearer: classical music could not be divorced from a global fight against racism.

The work of racial justice in the arts has always been a global effort. Europe’s role in this fight, however, deserves closer inspection. Spurned by the barriers white-dominated institutions placed on them in the US, Black American composers and musicians have long perpetuated the idea that European audiences were more welcoming. Writing to The New York Age newspaper while studying abroad in London in 1908, Black American composer Clarence Cameron White said as much: “On every side, you find the European musician and music-lover as well realises that music is too broad and too universal to be circumscribed by the complexion of the skin or texture of the hair.”

The recognition of black composers on any stage puts pressure on institutions to contend with their racist pasts and to imagine a better future

There is some truth to White’s claim. Some of the earliest performances of William Grant Still’s music had taken place in Paris. At the Theatre des Champs-Elysees in February 1933, the Pasdeloup Orchestra performed his symphonic poem “Africa”, led by Austrian conductor Richard Lert, who later fled to the US after the rise of the Nazis. Safely exiled in Los Angeles, in 1944, Lert invited Black American bass Kenneth Spencer to join him in a performance of Nathaniel Dett’s oratorio “The Ordering of Moses,” another work by a Black composer that would soon disappear for decades.

In Torino, Italy, in 1952, Black American conductor Dean Dixon introduced the music of Ulysses Kay – who was residing at the American Academy in Rome as a winner of the prestigious Rome Prize – to Italian audiences. “Once you secure the allied interest of Europeans according to the highest standards available, you will be heard,” Dixon said.

In the 1980s, pianist Althea Waites brought the music of Florence Price to German audiences (University of Arkansas Libraries Special Collections)

Later, during the Cold War, Kay toured Soviet Russia on behalf of the State Department. In the 1980s, pianist Althea Waites brought the music of Florence Price to German audiences – who eagerly applauded. “There they listen to my music instead of looking at me,” Waites said. In recent years, composers such as Tania Leon and George Lewis have also received premieres in Europe.

In June, one of the largest festivals outside the US to celebrate the music of Black composers took place in Hamburg, Germany. Initiated and led by the Hampsong Foundation and performer and scholar Louise Toppin, the three-day festival at the Elbphilharmonie showcased an array of contemporary pieces and historical works. (Full disclosure: I wrote programme notes for the festival and supervised the translations for it.)

Staging the festival was no easy feat. It involved translating dozens of Black American art songs from English into German. Moreover, historical negligence shaped what scores and parts the orchestra and singers could find. “This music was forgotten about,” conductor Roderick Cox said of Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony. “It was neglected; you couldn’t get access to this music through the publishers; the parts were in shambles.”

Indeed, Dawson’s symphony – once heralded as a brilliant success – had been dormant in the US for decades. Perhaps unsurprising, the only recent recording of it was made in Vienna.

Musicians celebrate the work of black composers at a three-day festival in Hamburg (Daniel Dittus/Elbphilharmonie)

But praising Europe for offering a platform for the music of Black American composers omits an important part of the story. White European support of and advocacy for Black American musicians has often come at the expense of their own Black populations. As many Black European intellectuals and activists have pointed out, Europeans know the names of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Trayvon Martin, but do they know those of Oury Jalloh, Stephen Lawrence and Jerry Masslo?

Europe has been lax about promoting its own historical Black composers and musicians, such as George Bridgetower, Amanda Aldridge, Chevalier de Saint-Georges and Avril Coleridge-Taylor. Many recent high-profile performances of Black European performers and composers can be attributed to the Chineke Orchestra in England – Europe’s first ensemble to have a majority of musicians of colour – rather than to white European musical institutions.

The recognition of Black composers on any stage puts pressure on institutions to contend with their racist pasts and to imagine a better future. Dunbar’s performance of Still’s Afro-American Symphony and Cox’s of Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony, nearly a century apart, suggest that efforts to advance racial justice go hand in hand with a commitment to embracing music’s power. Performing the music of Black composers is not simply or only an opportunity to correct historical wrongs. Nor should it be considered the equivalent of eating your proverbial broccoli. Rather, it is an invitation to dine on the most exquisite meals. To fight for the music of Black composers is to fight for a better world.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times