Harry Burleigh Essentials

The singer and composer Henry “Harry” Burleigh is one of the most seminal musicians of the US in the decades immediately before and after the turn of the 20th century. He is most widely remembered as the Black music student who inspired Dvořák, when the great Czech composer was director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York. To make ends meet as a student, Burleigh worked as a janitor, and the Czech composer happened to hear him singing spirituals in the hallway while doing that job. At the composer’s invitation, Burleigh sang several spirituals in his office and so convinced Dvořák that such songs could be a vital element in creating an American national style of composition. From that encounter, Burleigh went on to even greater things. While Dvořák, inspired by the spirituals Burleigh sang, composed his “New World” Symphony and the “American” String Quartet, Burleigh began to collect many spirituals, writing down the words and music which he then arranged and published. Thanks to Burleigh, spirituals such as “Deep River” became known worldwide through his 1916 publication Jubilee Songs of the USA. Burleigh by then was working as a music editor at the renowned music publishers G. Ricordi, and had also co-founded the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) in 1914. As a singer, he coached a new generation of leading Black singers including Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson. Burleigh raised the profile of many of what are today among the most beloved spirituals, including “Steal Away”,“Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”, “My Lord, what a Mornin’” (performed on our playlist by the great Jessye Norman) and “Go Down Moses” (which you can hear Burleigh himself singing on this playlist). He also became a respected composer of his own original works, writing several songs including “The Grey Wolf”, and his powerful setting of Walt Whitman’s “Ethiopia Saluting the Colors” (1915).