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William Grant Still

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William Grant Still Jr. (May 11, 1895 – December 3, 1978) was an American composer of nearly two hundred works, including five symphonies, four ballets, nine operas, and more than thirty choral works, art songs, chamber music, and solo works. Born in Mississippi and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas,<ref name="Still, Dabrishus & Quin" /> Still attended Wilberforce University and Oberlin Conservatory of Music<ref name=":6" /><ref name=":3" /> as a student of George Whitefield Chadwick and then as a student of Edgard Varèse.<ref name=":1" /> Because of his close association and collaboration with prominent African-American literary and cultural figures, Still is considered to be part of the Harlem Renaissance.

Still was the first American composer to have an opera produced by the New York City Opera.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He is known primarily for his first symphony, Afro-American Symphony (1930),<ref name="NYT-20210827">Template:Cite news</ref> which, until 1950,Template:Explain was the most widely performed symphony composed by an American.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Still often is referred to as the "Dean of Afro-American Composers". He was able to become a leading figure in the field of American classical music as the first African-American to conduct a major American symphony orchestra, have a symphony performed by a leading orchestra, have an opera performed by a major opera company, and have an opera performed on national television.<ref name="NYT-20210923">Template:Cite news</ref> The papers of Still and his second wife, the librettist and writer Verna Arvey, are currently held by the University of Arkansas.<ref name="murchison" />

LifeEdit

William Grant Still Jr. was born on May 11, 1895, in Woodville, Mississippi.<ref name="Still, Dabrishus & Quin">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp He was the son of two teachers, Carrie Lena Fambro Still Shepperson (1872–1927) <ref name="whayne">Template:Cite book</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and William Grant Still Sr.<ref name="Still, Dabrishus & Quin" />Template:Rp (1871–1895). His father was a partner in a grocery store and performed as a local bandleader.<ref name="Still, Dabrishus & Quin" />Template:Rp William Grant Still Sr. died when his infant son was three months old.<ref name="Still, Dabrishus & Quin" />Template:Rp

Still's mother and he moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, where she taught high school English.<ref name="Still, Dabrishus & Quin" />Template:Rp In 1904,<ref name="whayne" /> She met and married Charles B. Shepperson, who nurtured the musical interests of his stepson William by taking him to operettas and buying Red Seal recordings of classical music that the boy greatly enjoyed.<ref name="Still, Dabrishus & Quin" />Template:Rp The two also attended a number of performances by musicians on tour.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> His maternal grandmother, Anne Fambro,<ref name="whayne" /> sang African-American spirituals to him.<ref name="Smith 2008">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp

Still showed a great interest in music and started violin lessons in Little Rock at the age of 15. He taught himself to play the clarinet, saxophone, oboe, double bass, cello, and viola.Template:Sfn At 16 years old, he was graduated as class valedictorian from M. W. Gibbs High School in Little Rock in 1911.<ref name="Smith 2008" />Template:Rp

His mother wanted him to go to medical school, so Still pursued a bachelor of science degree program at Wilberforce University, a historically black college in Ohio.<ref name=":6b">Template:Britannica</ref> Still became a member of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity. He conducted the university band, learned to play various instruments, and started to compose and to perform orchestrations. He left Wilberforce without graduation.<ref name="Still, Dabrishus & Quin" />Template:Rp

Using a small amount of money left to him by his father, he began studying at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.<ref name=":3">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Still worked for the school assisting the janitor and at a few small jobs outside of the school, but struggled financially.<ref name=":3" /> When Professor Lehmann asked him why he wasn't studying composition, Still replied that he simply couldn't afford to. When this became known, George Whitfield Andrews <ref name="GWAndrews">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> taught composition to Still, without charge.<ref name=":3" /> He also was able to study privately with the modern French composer Edgard Varèse and the American composer George Whitefield Chadwick.<ref name=":1">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp<ref name="whayne" />

File:1262 S. Victoria Ave., Los Angeles.jpg
2012 photograph of the historically-designated,
William Grant Still Residence, South Victoria Avenue in Los Angeles, California

On October 4, 1915,<ref name="whayne" /> Still married Grace Bundy, whom he had met while they were both at Wilberforce.<ref name="Still, Dabrishus & Quin" />Template:Rp They had a son, William III, and three daughters, Gail, June, and Caroline.<ref name="whayne" /> They separated in 1932 and divorced February 6, 1939.<ref name="whayne" />

Still had moved to Los Angeles after receiving his first fellowship in 1934.<ref name=":4" />

On February 8, 1939, he married pianist Verna Arvey. They drove to Tijuana for the ceremony because at the time, 'interracial' marriage was illegal in California.<ref name="Still, Dabrishus & Quin" />Template:Rp<ref name="whayne" /> They had two children, a daughter, Judith Anne, and a son, Duncan.<ref name="Still, Dabrishus & Quin" />Template:Rp<ref name="whayne" /> Celeste Headlee, a broadcast journalist, an author, a classically-trained soprano, and daughter to Judith Anne, is Still's granddaughter.

On December 1, 1976, Still's home at 1262 Victoria Avenue in Oxford Square, Los Angeles was designated as Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #169.<ref name=":0">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

He died in Los Angeles in 1978.

CareerEdit

In 1916, Still worked in Memphis for W.C. Handy's band.<ref name="whayne" /> He then joined the United States Navy to serve in World War I in 1918, and eventually moved to Harlem after the war, where he continued to work for Handy.<ref name="whayne" /> During this time, Still was involved with many cultural figures of the Harlem Renaissance including the likes of Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, Arna Bontemps, and Countee Cullen.<ref name="murchison">Template:Cite journal</ref>

File:William Grant Still by Carl Van Vechten.jpg
William Grant Still 1949 portrait by Carl Van Vechten

He recorded with Fletcher Henderson's Dance Orchestra in 1921,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp and later played in the pit orchestra for Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake's musical, Shuffle Along<ref name="Still, Dabrishus & Quin" />Template:Rp and another pit with Sophie Tucker, Artie Shaw, and Paul Whiteman.<ref name=":5" /> Under Henderson, he joined Henry Pace's Pace Phonograph Company, known as Black Swan Records.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Later in the 1920s, Still served as the arranger of Yamekraw, a "Negro Rhapsody", composed by the Harlem stride pianist, James P. Johnson.<ref>Template:Cite Grove</ref>

In the 1930s, Still worked as an arranger of popular music, composing works for popular NBC Radio broadcasts such as Willard Robison's Deep River Hour and Paul Whiteman's Old Gold Show.<ref name=":5" />

Still's first major orchestral composition, Symphony No. 1 "Afro-American", was performed in 1931 by the Rochester Philharmonic, conducted by Howard Hanson.<ref name="whayne" /> It was the first time the complete score of a work by an African American was performed by a major orchestra.<ref name="whayne" /> By the end of World War II, the piece had been performed in orchestras located in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Berlin, Paris, and London.<ref name="whayne" /> The symphony was arguably the most popular of any composed by an American to that time.<ref name=":7">Borroff, Edith, "Biographical Sketch of William Grant Still". Duke University Libraries.</ref> As a result of his close professional relationship with Hanson, many of Still's compositions were performed for the first time in Rochester.<ref name="whayne" />

In 1934, Still moved to Los Angeles after receiving his first Guggenheim Fellowship,<ref name=":4" /> allowing him to start work on the first of his nine operas, Blue Steel.<ref>Southern, Eileen, and William Grant Still. "William Grant Still." The Black Perspective in Music, vol. 3, no. 2, 1975, pp. 172–173</ref> Two years later, Still conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl, the first African American to conduct a major American orchestra in a performance of his own works.<ref name="loc">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name=":5" />

Still arranged music for films such as Pennies from Heaven, starring Bing Crosby and Madge Evans, and Lost Horizon, starring Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt and Sam Jaffe,.<ref name="whayne" /> For the latter, he arranged the music of Dimitri Tiomkin. Still was also hired to arrange music for the 1943 film Stormy Weather, but left because "Twentieth-Century Fox 'degraded colored people.'"<ref name="whayne" />

For the 1939 New York World's Fair, Still composed Song of a City for the exhibit "Democracity,"<ref name="npr">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> which played continuously during the fair's run.<ref name="npr" /> Despite writing music for the fair, he was unable to attend the fair without police protection except on "Negro Day".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

A decade after its original composition, his opera Troubled Island about Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Haiti, was performed in 1949 by the New York City Opera.<ref name="whayne" /> It is the first opera by an American to be performed by the company.<ref name="shirley">Shirley, Wayne, "Two Aspects of Troubled Island", American Music Research Center Journal, 2013.</ref> It also is the first opera by an African American to be performed by a major company.<ref name="loc" /> Still was, however, upset by the negative reviews it received.<ref name="whayne" />

Still's works were performed internationally by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, and the BBC Orchestra.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Still was the first African American to conduct a major orchestra in the Deep South, doing so in 1955, where he conducted the New Orleans Philharmonic Orchestra.<ref name="loc" />

He died in Los Angeles in 1978. Three years after his death, A Bayou Legend became the first opera by an African-American composer to be performed on national television.<ref name="mpr">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Legacy and honorsEdit

  • Still received three Guggenheim Fellowships in music composition (1934, 1935, 1938),<ref name=":4">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref> at least one Rosenwald Fellowship,<ref name=":5" /> and a Mu Phi Epsilon Citation of Merit.<ref>Template:Cite AV media</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

  • In 1949, he received a citation for Outstanding Service to American Music from the National Association for American Composers and Conductors<ref name="whayne" />
  • In 1976, his home in Los Angeles was designated a Historic-Cultural Monument.<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>Template:Sfn<ref name="UR-2021">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Selected compositionsEdit

Still composed almost 200 works, including nine operas,<ref name="Kirk">Kirk, Elise Kuhl (2001), American Opera, pp. 200–204. University of Illinois Press. Template:ISBN</ref>Template:Rp five symphonies,<ref name="Kirk" />Template:Rp four ballets,<ref name=":2" /> plus art songs, chamber music, and works for solo instruments.<ref name="whayne" /> He composed more than thirty choral works.<ref name=":5">Template:Cite journal</ref> Many of his works are believed to be lost.<ref name="whayne" />Template:Rp Template:Div col

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See alsoEdit

ReferencesEdit

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SourcesEdit

Further readingEdit

  • Reef, Catherine (2003). William Grant Still: African American Composer. Morgan Reynolds. Template:ISBN
  • Sewell, George A., and Margaret L. Dwight (1984). William Grant Still: America's Greatest Black Composer. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi
  • Southern, Eileen (1984). William Grant Still – Trailblazer. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press.
  • Still, Verna Arvey (1984). In One Lifetime. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press.
  • Still, Judith Anne (2006). Just Tell the Story. The Master Player Library.
  • Still, William Grant (2011). My Life My Words, a William Grant Still autobiography. The Master Player Library.

External linksEdit

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