Abstract
Under the direction of Thomas Souza, the Brandeis Wind Ensemble and the Metropolitan Wind Symphony (MetWinds) present a virtual performance of William Grant Still's "Folk Suite for Band."
A full list of performers is available at the end of the video. To learn more about the Brandeis Wind Ensemble, please visit https://www.brandeis.edu/music/ensemb....
A note from the conductor:
Thank you to MetWinds for contributing their outstanding musicianship to this virtual ensemble. Not only are they made up of some of the area’s finest musicians, but wonderful people as well. To learn more about the MetWinds, please visit https://www.metwinds.org/
Still's inspiration for this work is derived from authentic folk tunes. This is different from his other works which are mostly original tunes. In our Fall 2020 Brandeis Wind Ensemble performance of "From The Delta," we discovered that Still's creative tunes could very well be folk songs themselves.
As written in the program notes provided by the publisher:
"The major part of William Grant Still's creative work has been in the field of original compositions, yet in his FOLK SUITE FOR BAND, he has made one of his rare excursions into the realm of traditional American melodies, this time in building several of the most widely loved and often sung Negro Spirituals into a larger work. Wherever American music is known, "Get on Board, Little Children", "Deep River", "The Old Ark's a Moverin' " and "Sinner, Please don't Let This Harvest Pass" are favorites. The Suite was first performed in Los Angeles on August 18, 1963, by one of the Bureau of Music's symphonic bands, Dale Eymann conducting."
What sticks out to me is the "rare excursion." He rarely used authentic melodies as his base material. In a biography of William Grant Still written by Catherine Parsons Smith, she mentions how his grandmother sang these and other songs to him growing up. This was a personal work for him. One website resource, on African American history in a contribution by Robert Fikes, implies that Still had a push and pull between his cultural roots and classical training though his life. He studied at Oberlin, then after his studies there and upon leaving the Navy, he toured with W.C. Handy playing blues, ragtime and jazz and arranging a number of his songs. He then shifted toward more classical music as a musical director of the Black Swan Record Company and studied with George Chadwich (Born in Lowell, MA and Founder of the Music Teachers National Association, Director of New England Conservatory) and Edgard Varese. It was this struggle back and forth that formed his compositional style. In 1931, he wrote his most famous work, "Afro-American Symphony." I see it as a settling of both sides, classical and cultural and led to more compositions for many years to come.
For more information on the history, composers, songs, and singers of spirituals, please visit https://www.negrospirituals.com/histo...
Here is a link to William Grant Still's biography from the website his family maintains: http://www.williamgrantstillmusic.com...