From Spirituals to Symphonies: African-American Women Composers and Their Music. (Book Reviews: Composers).(Book Review)

From Spirituals to Symphonies: African-American Women Composers and Their Music. By Helen Walker-Hill. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002. [xvi, 401 p. ISBN 0-313-29947-1. $94.95.] Illustrations, bibliography, index, discography.

Helen Walker-Hill's new book is the result of half a lifetime's work. For years she has pursued composers and their kin, hunted down missing scores, and transcribed and performed dozens of works that otherwise might have disappeared. Evidence of the integrity and thoroughness of her effort leaps from virtually every page of this monumental, yet practical, volume. From Spirituals to Symphonies deserves a place in many collections, from public libraries and school shelves to research universities.

Walker-Hill faced no small task in limiting her book to four hundred pages and a representative handful of composers. African Americans working in classical music remain a marginalized group, beset with new obstacles in each succeeding generation, and now, the dwindling attention paid to classical music in general--and its virtual extinction in many school curricula--will severely test the resolve of many twenty-first-century composers, regardless of gender or ethnicity. For African American women who create art music, the path remains steeper still. Yet Walker-Hill cites "scores of black women composers ... active in the United States since the late nineteenth century" (p. xiv). While some gained national and even international recognition, many more remained unknown and unperformed except in their own churches, schools, and homes. These women inhabited a world largely unknown to whites--the Negro middle and uppermiddle classes, a group often dismissed as "dicties" by blacks outside the circle. Their stories , musical and otherwise, shed light on a significant but often ignored aspect of American history.

Walker-Hill has wisely chosen to highlight the lives and work of Undine Smith Moore (1904-89), Julia Perry (1924-79), Margaret Bonds (1913-72), Irene Britton Smith (1907-99), Dorothy Rudd Moore (b. 1940), Valerie Capers (b. 1935), Mary Watkins (b. 1939), and Regina Harris Baiocchi (b. 1956). Absent from this list is Florence Price (1888-1953), subject of a forthcoming book by Rae Linda Brown (The Heart of a Woman: The Life and Music of Florence B. Price [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002]). Together with Price, two of these composers--Perry and Bonds--received detailed examination in an earlier study of black women composers by Mildred Denby Green, Black Women Composers: A Genesis (Boston: Twayne, 1983). Many of the others are now included in various encyclopedias and textbooks; some of the older women have even been the subjects of dissertations. Nevertheless, WalkerHill's cast features some enlightening surprises. Capers and Watkins are better known in the jazz world, while the modest, reclusive Sm ith would have vanished from the historical record if not for Walker-Hill's diligence. All are representative, because their very diversity provides a more accurate picture of those black women, past and present, who dared to create symphonies and string quartets.

The author contextualizes these women's achievements in an exhaustive introductory history of African American music. Much of this material will be familiar to students of black culture, but Walker-Hill refigures it to demonstrate that the work of persons such as Annie Pauline Pindell (concert singer and songwriter, ca. 1834-1901) and Emma Azalia Hackley (singer, teacher, and "race leader," 1867-1922) was an enduring factor in the making of American musical culture. Readers who think they already know something about the role of music in the Harlem Renaissance or the Black Power era will gain fresh insights by considering Walker-Hill's more inclusive view of those moments. A final section, "Music of the Post-Civil Rights Era," consists largely of ...