Classical music This article is more than 2 years oldPassion, power and the parting of the Red Sea: Dett’s The Ordering of Moses
This article is more than 2 years oldRobert Nathaniel Dett’s sweeping oratorio had its first broadcast cut short and has barely been heard in the eight decades since. Ahead of its UK premiere, tenor Rodrick Dixon explains its importance, and how the composer’s grandmother played a part
Eight years ago this May, I was standing on stage in New York watching the audience waving green festival banners. The air was filled with nervous anticipation. The occasion was the long overdue arrival at Carnegie Hall of The Ordering of Moses, an oratorio composed in 1932 by Robert Nathaniel Dett.
As a Black artist about to deliver the role of Moses in the Big Apple, I felt full of emotion. I was about to help free a piece that had experienced decades of bondage because of the race of its composer. Once the lights dimmed and the hall grew silent, maestro James Conlon signalled the bassoon to begin playing a slow, mysterious melody. Brass responded with shimmering bluesy chords. It wasn’t long before one of the most famous spirituals filled the hall. “Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt’s land. Tell Pharoah, ‘Let my people go!’”
Dett, the Black Canadian-American composer, pianist and poet had finally arrived at a world renowned New York concert hall, 71 years after his death aged 60. His oratorio depicts biblical scenes of the enslaved Israelites, Moses being called by God to lead them out of bondage, the parting of the Red Sea, the Egyptian pursuit and the Israelites rejoicing in their freedom. Dett had said that he wanted to create something for African Americans that would be “musically peculiarly their own and yet which would bear comparison with the nationalistic utterances of other people’s work in art form”.
His music was unapologetically African American, yet universally “classical”. You can hear influences of the likes of African-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Nadia Boulanger – with whom he studied in Paris at the American Conservatory (where I myself also studied decades later) – and Antonín Dvořák, particularly the Czech composer’s “American” quartet, Op 96. Its use of Negro spirituals reminded Dett of his grandmother’s singing, which inspired him to use the spirituals – born in America from the legacy of slavery – as thematic material and folk idioms in his compositions for the rest of his life.
Dett wrote The Ordering of Moses for his graduation thesis at the Eastman School of Music in 1932; but it remained unperformed until 1937. The work was premiered by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra at the Cincinnati May festival and the performance was broadcast live across the US on NBC radio. And yet the network inexplicably stopped the broadcast suddenly three-quarters of the way through, claiming a scheduling conflict.
In 1956 the work was revived and recorded by the Cincinnati May festival with soprano Leontyne Price and baritone William Warfield. Liner notes for this recording tell the story of that first broadcast: “Near the end of the original acetate disc, the announcer can be heard saying, ‘We are sorry indeed, ladies and gentlemen, but due to previous commitments, we are unable to remain for the closing moments of this excellent performance’.”
It has been suggested that these “previous commitments” were in fact a concession to objections voiced by callers to the network. The May festival’s performance of The Ordering of Moses might well have been the first network broadcast of a major work by a Black composer. Or maybe some callers had objected to the music itself: in the 1930s, some from the classical music establishment felt that homegrown music by African American composers lacked orchestral compositional complexity. This is of course preposterous! As well as Dett, composers such as William Dawson (try his 1934 composition Negro Folk Symphony) and Florence Price were writing enduring and complex works that should have been included in subscription-based classical concerts throughout the US and Europe. But all three names were absent from concert programmes for many decades.
Recent years have seen orchestras seeking out and programming works by Black, Indigenous and neglected composers. Just to give a few examples, in 2008, LA Opera’s groundbreaking Recovered Voices project under James Conlon produced Alexander Zemlinsky’s Der Zwerg (with myself in the title role) and Viktor Ullmann’s Der Zerbrochene Krug. The double-billed operas were produced to encourage greater awareness of music by composers whose lives, careers and works were disrupted and suppressed by the Nazi regime in Europe, and ArtHaus Musik released the two works on DVD. From 2015-2019, Philadelphia Orchestra’s then composer-in-residence, Hannibal Lokumbe (who is of both African American and Native American heritage) was able to express his cultural experience through orchestral and choral music, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. The Philadelphia Orchestra also released a recording of two Florence Price symphonies in 2021; her work is now played in concert halls around the world.
A critic once asked me, “How did you start singing opera …?” I told him my story of growing up in the church, singing in the choir, attending an arts high school, matriculating into Mannes College of Music in New York and attending the Lyric Opera Center for American Artists programme in Chicago. His response: “but why not rap (music)?”
I can only imagine what it must have been like for Dett and his contemporaries in the 1920s and 30s. To sing his music, one must approach his scores as one would any classical work. I’ve sung Dett’s oratorios, The Chariot Jubilee and The Ordering of Moses, and have found his works to be brilliant, passionate and powerful. Wednesday’s UK premiere of The Ordering of Moses will be a powerful commentary of freedom and a visceral, theatrical experience that I believe will leave us all inspired.
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra give the UK premiere of The Ordering of Moses at Symphony Hall, Birmingham on 23 February. It will be recorded by Radio 3 for future broadcast. More about Rodrick Dixon here.
This article was amended on 14 March 2022 because an earlier version overlooked the 1938 performance of The Ordering of Moses at the Juilliard School when referring to the 2014 Carnegie Hall performance as the oratorio’s New York premiere.
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