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COPYRIGHT 2004 Center For Black Music Research
Harry T. Burleigh has been recognized primarily as the singer who introduced Antonin Dvorak to plantation songs and spirituals and as a pioneer arranger of African-American spirituals. In the past several decades, more and more singers have discovered the art songs that in the first quarter of the twentieth century earned Burleigh distinction as one of the most respected composers of American art songs. But other important aspects of his career are less well known, such as his more than thirty years as an editor at the New York office of Ricordi Music Publishing Company, headquartered in Milan, Italy. His role as vocal coach and mentor to a number of singers--including Roland Hayes, Marian Anderson, Paul Robeson, Carol Brice, Abbey Mitchell, Revella Hughes, and Ella Belle Davis--has been overshadowed by the greater fame of those he assisted. Even less understood is Burleigh's success as a recital performer, which drew these younger singers to seek his help in developing their own singing careers. His fifty-two-year tenure as baritone soloist at the wealthy St. George's Episcopal Church in Stuyvesant Square in New York City merely hints at the importance of Burleigh's role as a link between nineteenth- and early twentieth-century African-American concert singers such as sopranos Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, Madame Marie Selika, and Madame Sissieretta Jones; tenors Wallace King, Harry A. Williams, and Sydney Woodward; and baritones John Luca and Theodore Drury and the younger singers who followed him and have become established in our collective memory as "the first" generation of African-American concert singers: Roland Hayes, Marian Anderson, and Paul Robeson.
The Burleigh family papers hold programs and clippings of reviews of Burleigh performances that document a significant recital career along the eastern seaboard, particularly through New England, with a few appearances as far west as Minneapolis and Chicago and as far south as Nashville and Atlanta. In fact, Burleigh saw himself primarily as a singer, particularly in the first twenty years of his career in New York City. It was to become a serious classical singer that he left Erie, Pennsylvania, in January 1892 to audition at the National Conservatory of Music in New York City, where Antonin Dvorak would be director the following September. In an interview with A. Walter Kramer (1916) at the height of his fame as an art song composer, Burleigh declared, "I never even dreamed of being a composer--at least not out loud. I was going to be a singer and I am." As Kramer's article emphasized, despite Burleigh's modest protests, he was indeed a genuine composer as well as a singer. Burleigh's skill as a song composer was rooted in his thorough knowledge of German lieder and American song repertoire, along with Italian and French opera arias, and the vocal facility of his songwriting grew from a public singing career that began in his teenage years in Erie.
Burleigh described his January 1892 audition at the National Conservatory of Music in a 1924 interview with Lester A. Walton (1974, 83): "The late [Rafael] Joseffy, Romualso Sapio and Adele Margulies were among the artists of renown on the jury. I think I was given an ABA for reading and B for voice. I was told that AA was the required mark, below which I had fallen a little." When the conservatory registrar, Frances MacDowell (mother of composer Edward MacDowell), informed Burleigh that he had failed the audition, he told her of his ambition to be a professional singer and showed her a letter of recommendation from Mrs. Elizabeth Russell. "I told her my cherished longings, and she sympathized with me" (Walton 1974, 83).
Burleigh had first seen Frances MacDowell in Erie at a musicale played by Venezuelan pianist Teresa Carreno at the Robert W. Russell home, at which Burleigh's mother had assisted as a maid and Burleigh as the doorman. Carreno had been Edward MacDowell's teacher, and she introduced MacDowell's piano compositions to audiences in the United States and Europe. She and Frances MacDowell became lifelong friends, and Frances MacDowell was Carreno's traveling companion on the tour through Erie.
Frances MacDowell now interceded on Burleigh's behalf. He did not report whether there was a second audition, but a few days later he learned that he was one of the four successful applicants among the two hundred who had applied for a tuition scholarship that January (Kramer 1916, 25).
Burleigh immediately distinguished himself at the conservatory. Henry T. Finck reported that Burleigh, who had taken business courses in Erie and was reported to be the "best penman in Erie" at his high school graduation ("Another 'Grand Success'" 1887), copied his music history lectures down verbatim in shorthand. Finck (1971, 279) termed Burleigh "the best student I ever had" and his success was not limited to his study of music history. In October 1892, the Cleveland Gazette carried an item from the New York Age reporting that at the beginning of the new academic year, Burleigh had scored 100 percent on the reentry examinations ("Doings of the Race" 1892).
Burleigh also won respect for his singing and became a featured soloist at conservatory concerts. In February 1893, the Cleveland Gazette reported Burleigh's singing in a performance of the opera Faust ("In the Opera Faust" 1893), and the 1894-1895 conservatory catalog includes a sample program conducted by Dvorak on which Burleigh sang an aria from Ponchielli's Gioconda (Aborn 1965, 278).
During the same period, Burleigh was making his mark in the African-American concert community. A survey of the correspondence from communities throughout the country in black newspapers such as the Cleveland Gazette, the New York Age, and the Washington Bee reveals an active concert life among middle- and upper-middle-class African Americans. Local musicians often performed recitals and concerts in black churches, but occasional appearances by star performers such as sopranos Sissieretta Jones and Madame Marie Selika featured local singers alongside the visiting performers. These concerts often drew large audiences (black and white) that filled concert halls rented for the occasion.
In August 1892, at the end of his summer stint as wine steward at the Grand Hotel in Saratoga Springs, New York, Burleigh was a featured singer in "the summer school for Christian workers" in the Adironacks, at North Hudson, New York ("Erie, Pa., Echoes" 1892). A month later, only nine months after he had arrived in New York City, the Washington Bee reported that Burleigh, "the celebrated Western baritone," appeared in two Grand Encampment Concerts at the Metropolitan Church in Washington, D.C., with the great African-American soprano Sissieretta Jones, tenor Sidney Woodward, violinist Joseph Douglass (grandson of Frederick Douglass), and conductor John T. Layton (who in 1903 would direct the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Society's first performance of Hiawatha's Wedding Feast in Washington, D.C.) (1976, 196). The New York Age reported that he had sung with Madame Marie Selika, the other reigning African-American concert soprano ("Doings of the Race" 1892). When Cleveland Gazette editor H. C. Smith visited Burleigh in New York City in November of 1892, he reported, "Our people in New York City and Brooklyn appreciate Mr. Burleigh, too, and show him every attention, social and otherwise. He is in constant demand for concerts, etc., possessing a strong, broad and yet sweet baritone voice which he uses artistically" (Smith 1892).
Two years later, in October 1894, shortly after he was hired as baritone soloist at St. George's Episcopal Church, Burleigh appeared in a Bergen Star Concert featuring soprano Florence Batson (later Batson-Bergen) at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. The advertisement bills Burleigh as the "Celebrated Baritone and Teacher in the National Conservatory of Music" ("Bergen Star Concert Program" 1894). Burleigh had moved immediately into the highest ranks of African-American concert singers. How did the black art music elite of Washington and Philadelphia know enough about this young student in New York City to "celebrate" him so soon after he began his study at the National Conservatory? What was it in Erie that prepared him to move immediately into the top echelon of black concert singers?
A survey of the Cleveland Gazette, a black newspaper that began publication in 1883, and several papers in his hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania, shows that even before he studied at the National Conservatory, Burleigh had earned public recognition as one of Erie's best classical singers. By the time he left Erie on January 3, 1892, he was appearing with the city's most accomplished singers (all of them European Americans) at numerous church and civic events and was earning strong affirmation for his vocal skill. His reputation reflected not only his natural gifts but also significant formal vocal and instrumental training.
Burleigh's family was known in Erie for its singing, and in the earliest newspaper reports, Burleigh sang baritone in a family quartet. On June 10, 1881, the Erie Morning Dispatch reported that the choir of Grace Mission "gave a pleasant entertainment at the church, at which there was a very large audience present." It featured the fifteen-year-old Burleigh, his older brother Reggie, and his younger sisters Ada and Eva Grace, singing "Beautiful Sunset" ("Grace Mission Entertainment" 1881). Ada died of consumption several years later (James 2003). In November 1883, the Cleveland Gazette reported that the ladies of St. James A.M.E. Church had given a supper and concert at Grand Army Hall. The music was under the direction of Professor Lawrence, an ancestor of Miss Ada Lawrence, a retired school teacher still living in Erie. The quartet--Burleigh's mother, now Elizabeth Elmendorf; his sister, Eva; Burleigh; and Mr. Lawrence--sang "Sweet and Low," in a rendition that was pronounced "especially fine" (Boz 1883).
In 1884, the eighteen-year-old Burleigh had begun his high school studies and was a featured soloist at meetings of the High School Literary Society. The following February, the high school's Washington's Birthday celebration featured Burleigh singing "The Day" ("His Little Hatchet" 1885).
During his high school years, Burleigh also attended Clark's Commercial College, where he gained the stenographic skills that later stood him in such good stead as a student at the National Conservatory and as Antonin Dvorak's copyist. H. C. Clark, the college's founder and director, espoused a liberal view of business education and promoted an active literary society that presented frequent public programs. In March 1885, Burleigh was featured on Longfellow Day at the Clark College literary society meeting at which members "responded to the roll call by sentiments from the writings of the poet." But this time, Burleigh played guitar--in a duet with George Dinkey. The paper reported that "the programme proved to be a highly seasoned intellectual fest, and those who braved the storm in order to be present were rewarded" ("Longfellow Day" 1885). Burleigh was featured in guitar duets on a number...
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