William Levi Dawson

William Levi Dawson PDF Author: Mark Hugh Malone
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496844831
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
William Levi Dawson (1899–1990) overcame adversity and Jim Crow racism to become a nationally recognized composer, choral arranger, conductor, and professor of music. In William Levi Dawson: American Music Educator, Mark Hugh Malone tells the fascinating tale of Dawson’s early life, quest for education, rise to success at the Tuskegee Institute, achievement of national notoriety as a composer, and retirement years spent conducting choirs throughout the US and world. From his days as a student at Tuskegee in the final years of Booker T. Washington’s presidency, Dawson continually pursued education in music, despite racial barriers to college admission. Returning to Tuskegee later in life, he became director of the School of Music. Under his direction, the Tuskegee Choir achieved national recognition by singing at Radio City Music Hall, presenting concerts for Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and performing on nationwide radio and television broadcasts. Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony, only the second extended musical work to be written by an African American, was premiered by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in both Philadelphia and New York City. Dawson’s arrangements of spirituals, the original folk music of African Americans enslaved in America during the antebellum period, quickly became highly sought-after choral works. This biographical account of Dawson's life is narrated with a generous sprinkling of his personal memories and photographs.

William Levi Dawson

William Levi Dawson PDF Author: Mark Hugh Malone
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496844831
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
William Levi Dawson (1899–1990) overcame adversity and Jim Crow racism to become a nationally recognized composer, choral arranger, conductor, and professor of music. In William Levi Dawson: American Music Educator, Mark Hugh Malone tells the fascinating tale of Dawson’s early life, quest for education, rise to success at the Tuskegee Institute, achievement of national notoriety as a composer, and retirement years spent conducting choirs throughout the US and world. From his days as a student at Tuskegee in the final years of Booker T. Washington’s presidency, Dawson continually pursued education in music, despite racial barriers to college admission. Returning to Tuskegee later in life, he became director of the School of Music. Under his direction, the Tuskegee Choir achieved national recognition by singing at Radio City Music Hall, presenting concerts for Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and performing on nationwide radio and television broadcasts. Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony, only the second extended musical work to be written by an African American, was premiered by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in both Philadelphia and New York City. Dawson’s arrangements of spirituals, the original folk music of African Americans enslaved in America during the antebellum period, quickly became highly sought-after choral works. This biographical account of Dawson's life is narrated with a generous sprinkling of his personal memories and photographs.

William Levi Dawson

William Levi Dawson PDF Author: Samuel D. Shingles
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : African American composers
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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William Levi Dawson (b. 1898) and an Analysis of His Negro Folk Symphony (1932 ; Rev. 1952)

William Levi Dawson (b. 1898) and an Analysis of His Negro Folk Symphony (1932 ; Rev. 1952) PDF Author: Jacqueline Kay Thompson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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William L. Dawson

William L. Dawson PDF Author: Gwynne Kuhner Brown
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252047141
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
William L. Dawson is recognized for his genre-defining choral spirituals and for his Negro Folk Symphony, a masterpiece enjoying a twenty-first-century renaissance. Gwynne Kuhner Brown’s engaging and tirelessly researched biography reintroduces a musical leader whose legacy is more important today than ever. Born in 1899, Dawson studied at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. He worked as a church, jazz, and orchestral musician in Kansas City and Chicago in the 1920s while continuing his education as a composer. He then joined the Tuskegee faculty, where for 25 years he led the Tuskegee Institute Choir to national prominence through performances of spirituals at the opening of Radio City Music Hall, on radio and television, and at the White House. The Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski premiered Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony in 1934. Engaging and long overdue, William L. Dawson celebrates a pioneering Black composer whose contributions to African American music, history, and education inspire performers and audiences to this day.

William Levi Dawson

William Levi Dawson PDF Author: Vernon Edward Huff
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : African American composers
Languages : en
Pages : 73

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Book Description
William Levi Dawson (1899-1990), director of the Tuskegee Institute Choir from 1931 to 1956, was one of the most important arrangers of Negro spirituals in the twentieth century. He is also remembered as an outstanding composer, conductor, speaker, and leader of festival choruses. His arrangements are still sung by choirs all over the world. Save a small number of dissertations and various articles, however, very little has been written about him. In fact, almost no significant writing has been undertaken utilizing the Dawson papers held at the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Books Library at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. This study utilizes that collection in examining four areas of Dawson's life: his work as a composer, his work as an arranger of Negro spirituals, his work as a choral conductor and music pedagogue, and his life as an African American man living in segregated times. Dawson is shown as a thoughtful, deliberate practitioner of his art who built his career with intention, and who, through his various activities, sought both to affirm the traditional music of his people and to transcend his era's problems with the definitions, associations, and prejudices attached to the term "race." Using a diverse selection of letters, notes, and speeches held in the archive, it is possible to develop a fuller, more nuanced portrait of Dawson. Through a thorough examination of a select few of these documents, his growth can be traced from a young composer living in Chicago, to a college choral director dealing with the realities of racial inequality in the mid-twentieth century, to a seasoned, respected elder in his field, endeavoring to pass on to others knowledge of the music he spent his life arranging and teaching.

Morris V. William L. Dawson Nursing Center, Inc

Morris V. William L. Dawson Nursing Center, Inc PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Legal briefs
Languages : en
Pages : 30

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William L. Dawson's Programs to Help the Disadvantaged

William L. Dawson's Programs to Help the Disadvantaged PDF Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Government Operations. Special Studies Subcommittee
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : People with social disabilities
Languages : en
Pages : 24

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William L. Dawson's Programs to Help the Disadvantaged

William L. Dawson's Programs to Help the Disadvantaged PDF Author: United States. Congress. House. Government Operations
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 20

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William Levi Dawson

William Levi Dawson PDF Author: Emory University. Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : African American choral conductors
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Internet exhibition commemorating the life, work, and legacy of composer and conductor William Levi Dawson. Highlighting a collection of materials ranging from letters and books to film and radio broadcasts, the exhibition details Dawson's life from early childhood to the posthumous symposium celebrating his life, work, and lasting contributions that was hosted by Emory University on March 3-5, 2005, "In Celebration of William L. Dawson: An Exploration of African American Music and Identity at the Dawn of the 21st Century." Included are digitized maps, photographs, correspondence, manuscript music, and sound excerpts of Dawson interviews, compositions, performances, and field recordings in Africa, as well as photographs and video clips from the symposium and other materials. The site was prepared by a collaborative effort of Emory University's Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL) and the Digital Programs and Systems Division of the Robert W. Woodruff Library with funding from the Ford Foundation.

Negro Musicians and their Music

Negro Musicians and their Music PDF Author: Maud Cuney-Hare
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
ISBN: 1465604782
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
In offering this study of Negro music, I do so with the admission that there is no consistent development as found in national schools of music. The Negro, a musical force, through his own distinct racial characteristics has made an artistic contribution which is racial but not yet national. Rather has the influence of musical stylistic traits termed Negro, spread over many nations wherever the colonies of the New World have become homes of Negro people. These expressions in melody and rhythm have been a compelling force in American music Ð tragic and joyful in emotion, pathetic and ludicrous in melody, primitive and barbaric in rhythm. The welding of these expressions has brought about a harmonic effect which is now influencing thoughtful musicians throughout the world. At present there is evidenced a new movement far from academic, which plays an important technical part in the music of this and other lands. The question as to whether there exists a pure Negro art in America is warmly debated. Many Negroes as well as Anglo-Americans admit that the so-called American Negro is no longer an African Negro. Apart from the fusion of blood he has for centuries been moved by the same stimuli which have affected all citizens of the United States. They argue rightly that he is a product of a vital American civilization with all its daring, its progress, its ruthlessness, and unlovely speed. As an integral part of the nation, the Negro is influenced by like social environment and governed by the same political institutions; thus page vi we may expect the ultimate result of his musical endeavors to be an art-music which embodies national characteristics exercised upon by his soul's expression. In the field of composition, the early sporadic efforts by people of African descent, while not without historic importance, have been succeeded by contributions from a rising group of talented composers of color who are beginning to find a listening public. The tendency of this music is toward the development of an American symphonic, operatic and ballet school led for the moment by a few lone Negro musicians of vision and high ideals. The story of those working toward this end is herein treated. Facts for this volume have been obtained from educated African scholars with whom the author sought acquaintanceship and from printed sources found in the Boston Public Library, the New York Public Library and the Music Division of the Library of Congress. The author has also had access to rare collections and private libraries which include her own. Folk material has been gathered in personal travel.