The U.S. composer and conductor William Grant Still, whose maternal grandmother had been a slave on a plantation in Georgia, attended Wilberforce University in Ohio from 1911 to 1915 after attending high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, where his mother taught English literature. Still learned to play the violin, cello, and oboe and wrote his first arrangements and began to compose as an autodidact. In 1917, he enrolled at Oberlin Conservatory, where he studied composition and theory. After eight months of service in the Navy during World War I, Still briefly resumed his studies but in 1919, went to work in New York as an arranger for the Pace and Handy Music Publishing Company, for which he arranged, among other things the song Saint Louis blues, which was recorded by James Reese Europe’s Hellfighters (369th Infantry Regiment Band). In 1936, he conducted the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra and in 1955, the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra. In both instances, Still was the first African American conductor to do so.
As many of the titles reveal, nearly all of Still’s work reflected African American life. His first orchestral compositions were Darker America (1924), From the journal of a wanderer (1925), and From the Black belt (1926). Two major orchestral pieces, Africa (1930) and the popular Afro-American symphony (1930), established his wide reputation and helped him earn a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1933. At this time, Still turned his attention to the stage with two ballets for the Ruth Page Company of Chicago: La guiablesse (1927), set in Martinique, and Sahdji (1930), with an African background. A third ballet, Miss Sally’s party, dates from 1940. In 1934, Still received another Guggenheim Fellowship for composition and moved from New York to Los Angeles, where he completed his first opera, Blue steel (1934).
This marked the beginning of a series of stage works characterized by close collaboration with Verna Arvey, a white Jewish pianist, librettist, and writer, and Still’s second wife, which became high points of his career. Almost all these works addressed racial problems in the U.S., with Troubled island being the most notable example. Created in collaboration with Langston Hughes, it premiered in 1949 at the New York City Center. Still’s dedication to African American themes resulted in three notable text settings: And they lynched him from a tree (1940); Plainchant for America (1941), and Pages from Negro history (1943). He was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship again in 1935 and 1938. During this time, Still composed for film and television while also pursuing his aspirations as a composer of serious music.
This according to the Dictionary of American classical composers (2005). Find it in RILM Music Encylopedias.
Listen to two of William Grant Still’s better known compositions below.
