March 16, 2019 -- What I'm working on this weekend, part 1

I love Harry T. Burleigh's arrangement of the Negro Spiritual "Deep River." I sung it often as a vocal student, and once had the pleasure of performing it for a TV audience of 200,000 (potentially, because of course I don't know how many watched that episode of the program I was on). It will always have a special place in my heart, and deserves the honored place it has held among spirituals arranged for concert since it was penned in 1913.

All that said: after 106 years, there is room for a new take on "Deep River," and I am going to tackle it.

I love arpeggios and I love water, especially moving water. On a rainy day I love watching the water run down the gutter at the edge of the street by the sidewalk (even though rain, while lovely in the abstract, is not always as fun if you have to be on the concrete)! I enjoy going to both the ocean and San Francisco Bay just to watch the water there, and creeks are a delight too when I get out in the Bay Area.

That said, I have never seen anything like the rivers my ancestors had to contend with in their quest for freedom in the days when Africans were cruelly enslaved in this country. The Mississippi. The Red and Rappahannock. The Potomac. The Missouri. Many rivers to cross, as the saying goes. Those rivers are doubtless very beautiful, but they had to be a struggle to get across and thus became a worthy metaphor for the challenges of getting free, in this world and the next. And, my ancestors got across them. They were not merely standing and wishing. They made it to freedom, one by one, bit by bit, until finally all of them made it in 1865, with the help of the U.S. army and within that, 180,000 United States Colored Troops who not only made it to freedom but helped bring EVERYBODY left behind to freedom as well!

I want to capture all of that -- the beauty AND the struggle AND the striving AND the victory. So, basically, I'm going to set the spiritual for some mighty bass whose voice will stride into the rippling sound the piano accompaniment makes (and of course, baritones, tenors, my fellow contralto/mezzos, and sopranos are welcome to wade in the water too; I'll rearrange as necessary). If I succeed, the listener will hear and feel the journeys past and present. Given all that is going on in the United States, Black people are STILL having to struggle to maintain and expand our enjoyment of our full freedoms as citizens. The rivers keep running. We still have to get across them, and there are many of them. Not only that. To be human is to have to get across many rivers -- resistance and opposition come to all. The rivers must all be crossed in order to keep moving forward.

Now as a composer-arranger, the challenge is simple but not easy. H.T. Burleigh set a high standard for beauty in how he handled "Deep River." I don't flatter myself that I can match it, but I don't have to. I am not in Mr. Burleigh's league anyhow! Still, any new arrangement of "Deep River" cannot be shabby by comparison. It must compare well in beauty while contrasting in style. The energy and beauty and potential danger of a fast, deep river must all be there.

The solution may be found in adapting the style of figurations of an even older composer than Mr. H.T. Burleigh: Herr J.S. Bach, whose pieces with neat, flowing, repetitive arpeggios I used to play as rapidly as I dared. I used to also play those rare occasions when Beethoven used that kind of figuration -- the third movement of the "Tempest" Sonata comes to mind, along with the third movements of the "Waldstein" and "Appassionata" sonatas. The vast energies of near-perpetual motion, channeled and flowing onward to a final point of rest -- that is what I will borrow from the classical side of my experience.

Well, enough said ... I've started playing in the water... care to dip your toes in? It isn't that deep yet...