William Grant Still

William Grant Still

William Grant Still (born May 11, 1895 in Woodville , Mississippi , † December 3, 1978 in Los Angeles , California ) was an American composer .

Life

William Grant Still was of African American descent (although he also had Native American ancestors). His father died when he was 3 months old. Still grew up in Little Rock , Arkansas and attended high school there. From 1911 to 1915 he studied at Wilberforce College in Ohio and initially intended a medical degree. Self-taught, he began to compose songs and attended composition courses at Oberlin College of Music from 1917 to 1919 and with George Chadwick at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston , interrupted in 1918 by military service in the United States Navy . Subsequently, Still worked in New York City primarily in the field of jazz and popular music and worked as an arranger for a music publisher. At the same time he took private lessons from Edgard Varèse , one of the leading avant-garde composers of the time.

Still felt attached to the Harlem Renaissance movement. In 1935 the New York Philharmonic (under the baton of Istanbul-born German conductor Hans Lange ) played its 1st symphony, the Afro-American Symphony . Up until then, no leading orchestra had played works by an African-American composer. In 1936 Still conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra as the first African American to conduct a major American orchestra. Still continued to work as a valued arranger. In 1940 he arranged for Artie Shaw's biggest hit, Frenesi . He has also written, for example, for Willard Robinson's "Deep River Show" and Paul Whiteman's "Old Gold Show," both popular shows on NBC Radio. He later moved to Los Angeles , where he also composed film music, for example for Lost Horizon (1937) and Stormy Weather (1943).

In 1939 he married Verna Arvey , a musician of Russian-Jewish origin. In 1949, Still's opera Troubled Island was the first African American opera to be played by a major opera house (the New York City Opera ). With the direction of the New Orleans Philharmonic Orchestra in 1955 he was finally the first African-American conductor of a large orchestra in the US-American southern states.

Still received two Guggenheim Fellowships , honorary doctorates from Oberlin College, Wilberforce College, Howard University, Bates College and the University of Arkansas. In 1978 he died of heart failure.

plant

Still is considered the old master of Afro-American composers. In his music he fused melodic-rhythmic elements of his origins (including the blues and negro spirituals ) with traditional forms of European character. He wrote more than 150 compositions, including 5 symphonies, 8 operas, ballets, one solo concerto each for piano and harp, as well as chamber music and songs. Still's best-known work today is the Afro-American Symphony .

Selected compositions

• Levee Land (1925)
• From the Black Belt (1926)
• Sahdji (1930)
• 1st symphony "Afro-American" (1930)
• Africa (1930)
• 2nd Symphony in G minor "Song of a New Race" (1937)
• Seven Traceries (1939)
• Troubled Island, Opera (1941)
• In Memoriam: The Colored Soldiers Who Died for Democracy (1943)
• The Little Song That Wanted to Be a Symphony (1954)
• Little Red Schoolhouse (1957)
• The American Scene (1957)
• "They Lynched Him on a Tree", cantata for narrator, alto, choir and orchestra

literature

• Reef, Catherine. (2003). William Grant Still: African American Composer . Morgan Reynolds. ISBN 1931798117
• Smith, Catherine Parsons. (2000). William Grant Still: A Study in Contradictions. University of California Press. ISBN 0520215435
• Still, Verna Arvey. (1984). In one lifetime . University of Arkansas Fayetteville Press.

Web links

• Biography, works
• JP Franke William Grant Still's Vision for American Music
• Jeffrey Fleishman: Black composer William Grant Still drew from the blues. Forty years after his death, he still fights to be heard. February 13, 2019, accessed on February 14, 2019 .