Philharmonic celebrates black composers in lively, varied “Afromodernism” program
Modernism in the arts is hard to define, but in the words of a long-ago Supreme Court justice, we know it when we see it (or hear it).
“Afromodernism,” the title of the concert by the New York Philharmonic Thursday night, and related events around town, is no easier to pin down. And the world-spanning subtitle, “Music of the African Diaspora,” is about as unspecific as you can get.
Better, perhaps, just to sit back and enjoy the evening’s four excellent works by African-American composers of yesterday and today, and reflect on the rich culture that underlay them.
The Philharmonic may have only one black member—principal clarinetist Anthony McGill—yet the musicians responded with energy and commitment to the skill of the two African-American featured performers, conductor Thomas Wilkins and cello soloist Seth Parker Woods.
Melodies and rhythms from Africa were influencing European-American concert music long before Harry Burleigh sang black spirituals for his teacher Antonín Dvořák, and Czech symphonies started “Goin’ Home.”
If any black composer was situated to be the bridge between the Dvořák era and mid-century modernism, it was William Grant Still, who studied composition both with the American Romantic George Chadwick and with the formidable modernist Edgard Varèse.
If Still had become “the black Varèse,” that would have provided a pretty good definition of “Afromodernism” right there. But although Still’s study with Chadwick was brief, its influence seems to have been lifelong, as evidenced by the lush textures of his Symphony No. 4, “Autochthonous,” the last work on Thursday’s program.
If one takes “modern” to mean simply music of right now, the program opened with two fine examples: Carlos Simon’s Four Black American Dances, composed last year, and Nathalie Joachim’s Had to Be for cello and orchestra, a Philharmonic co-commission in its New York premiere.
These concise pieces were in multiple movements, and the audience applauded after each. One doesn’t have to be a purist about such things to wish that conductor Wilkins had been allowed to keep the music going instead of being continually interrupted.
Nevertheless, Simon’s dances came off as colorful vignettes from African-American history. “Ring Shout” celebrated an ecstatic religious dance that enslaved people brought to the new world, with a syncopated tambourine propelling the brash, brassy sound that is a Philharmonic specialty. “Waltz” recalled social dancing, although its symphonic rubato and barely perceptible 3/4 beat would make it hard to dance to, in this performance at least.
The scherzo-like “Tap!” of course bristled with wood block, slapstick and xylophone, although tuba-heavy scoring kept it from being light on its feet. Religious ecstasy returned, American style this time, in “Holy Dance,” a sassy, swirling toccata for orchestra that ended Simon’s suite with a bang. Composer Simon joined Wilkins onstage for bows.
In contrast with Simon’s vivid pictures, the subtle moods of Joachim’s Had to Be invited any number of philosophical or poetic interpretations of its open-ended title. Fatalistic, perhaps, in the loose-limbed funeral band music offstage that opened the first movement, with its Dvořákian title “Homegoing.” Assertive in the splash of big-band sound in the second movement, “Flare.” Reconciled in the serene cello melody of “With Grace,” memorably partnered by a distant piccolo.
For the record, the work’s title comes from a comment by the sprinter Tommie Smith, whose black-power salute at the 1968 Olympics made headlines around the world. And the composer herself has recounted the piece’s origins in conversations with cellist Woods about fashion, “the way we put ourselves together, harness our own power.” Accordingly, Woods performed Thursday in a flowing outfit with African-inspired geometrical designs, while Joachim acknowledged the enthusiastic applause in a white gown that was an explosion of ruffles.
As for the performance itself, Wilkins artfully steered the players through the nostalgia of the first movement, the kaleidoscopic changes of the second, and the third’s Ravel-like mix of sensuality and delicacy. Woods’s eloquent, creamy-toned cello was somewhat covered at first by the throbbing orchestra, but it emerged to swing and dance an off-kilter waltz, then soar free over a tinkling accompaniment in the closing pages.
Another definition of “modern” music might focus on the 12-tone school that ruled the academic roost in the 1960s. As the founder of the jazz studies program at Indiana University, David Baker had one foot in each world, citing the examples of Bartók and Villa Lobos as he composed swinging atonal music for a brass-rich orchestra. His scintillating 1973 piece Kosbro was perhaps the most literally “Afromodernist” item on Thursday’s program.
In a sort of solidarity with Tommie Smith, Kosbro is short for “Keep on Steppin’ Brothers,” and the piece declared its own black power immediately in a sprint of rattling snare drum and xylophone. Bernstein and Stravinsky flavors of sassy brass, thumping percussion, and surprisingly tender interludes for strings kept the pot bubbling, as the piece’s 13 minutes seemed to fly by in five.
Still’s Symphony No. 1, “Afro-American,” of 1930, has brought him renewed recognition over the last two decades. The 1947 “Autochthonous” Symphony, besides adding a word to concertgoers’ vocabulary—the title means indigenous, literally “from one’s own soil”—aimed beyond African idioms to a kind of pan-American sensibility, a symphony “from the new world,” so to speak.
Like Dvořák, Still helped himself to elements from all over: the impassioned fall of Native American melodies, pentatonic and syncopated “Negro” tunes, but most of all, as he said, “the spirit of optimism and energy,” expressed in striding strings and whooping horns. A nostalgic touch of “New World” English horn and a cowboy tune also slipped into the crisply executed first movement. Wilkins’s fluid conducting and skillful pacing made it all come together.
In the slow movement, rural American life inspired lonely wind solos over pensive strings, briefly relieved by a barn dance. The third movement’s outright laughter of woodwinds and pizzicato strings—“the American idiom,” Still called it—resembled the rib-tickling scherzos with which Chadwick mildly scandalized his Boston audiences, although Thursday’s performance was a little short of the razor-sharp ensemble that would have made the music really pop.
In Still’s words, the finale represented nothing less than “the spiritual love of mankind.” It opened with a stately chorale tune based on a pervasive three-note rocking motive, lightened up in the middle with a syncopated dance for bassoon, then broadened, layer by layer, into a Sibelius-like outpouring of patriotic feeling, fortissimo. Seid umschlungen, Millionen—black, white, indigenous, immigrant–Americans and humans all.
The program will be repeated 7:30 p.m. Friday. nyphil.org
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