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When the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and Principal Conductor Ken-David Masur return to the South Shore Cultural Center for a community concert on March 1, they will perform repertoire that reflects multicultural perspectives through music. Pairing works by three Black composers from the 20th century — Ulysses Kay (1917-1995), George Walker (1922-2018) and Florence Price (1887-1953) — with Antonin Dvořák’s Seventh Symphony, the program will be reprised in a performance at Symphony Center on March 2.
Dvořák, a 19th-century Czech composer, often drew inspiration from the folk music of his native region of Bohemia, following in the footsteps of his compatriot Bedřich Smetana. Having gained widespread recognition for his first set of Slavonic Dances in 1878, Dvořák infused Czech sensibilities into an even more ambitious format with the Seventh Symphony, which premiered in London in 1885.
“In the Seventh Symphony, we have a great example of Dvořák writing a work that brought his love for his country, and this pride in what it means to be Czech, on to the international stage,” said Masur in an interview earlier this season. In characterizing Dvořák’s approach, Masur said the composer was concerned with questions such as “How do I find a language in music that is not just copying the other nations, or the Germanic tradition, or the Russian tradition, but how do I find something that represents me, as a citizen of Bohemia?”
Later in his career, Dvořák spent several years living in the United States, where he composed his New World Symphony and served as the director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York. Hoping to foster American music in a similar way to his championship of Czech music, he encouraged American composers to find their own voices.
Though Dvořák wouldn’t live to witness most of their careers, Kay, Walker and Price each exemplified this creative mindset. “Even though they’re somewhat overlapping contemporaries of the 20th century, they have something very unique to say about that experience,” said Masur. “And they want to bring focus to different themes and different aspects of the African American experience in the United States.”
From Masur’s perspective, Florence Price was among the boldest composers of her era in this regard. Ethiopia’s Shadow in America, a 1932 work among the many Price scores rediscovered in 2009, is a tone poem that follows the spiritual journey of an enslaved man. “She wants to be very descriptive,” said Masur. “She wants to tell a story; there is a narrative to it.”
The titles of the work’s three movements indicate the arc of this narrative. Beginning with “The Arrival of the Negro in America when first brought here as a slave,” the piece continues with “His Resignation and Faith” and “His Adaptation, a fusion of his native and acquired impulses.”
“The music allows us to fathom her thoughts, or the feelings that she has, that she perhaps couldn’t entirely put into words,” Masur said. “But these titles allow us to at least start thinking in that direction, and then our imagination will allow us to have conversation about what it is that the African American is going through, in understanding what the heritage of the country is. And it’s not just the African American identity; she’s basically saying it should be part of the entire identity of the country.”
Ulysses Kay, whose Overture to Theater Set (1968) opens the Civic program, may not be as well-known as Price today, but the native of Tucson, Arizona, developed an international reputation during his lifetime. He lived in Rome for several years, supported in part by a Fulbright Scholarship, and later traveled to the Soviet Union as part of the first delegation of American composers in the State Department-sponsored Cultural Exchange Program.
In his Theater Set, which was premiered by the Atlanta Symphony in 1968, Kay pays tribute to the show music he grew up with in Arizona. “He wanted to create an American scene, kind of like what Copland would often do with scenes from theater, like Billy the Kid,” said Masur. “But he did it through his memory of his childhood in Tucson.”
Between the Kay and Price works, both of which are “quite stirring,” Civic will perform George Walker’s Lyric for Strings, offering “a moment of respite,” said Masur. Dedicated to Walker’s grandmother, Melvina King, a formerly enslaved person, the Lyric for Strings (1946) is his most performed orchestral composition. Walker based the piece on the second movement of his 1946 String Quartet No. 1, expanding the work for string orchestra in 1990. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra and then Music Director Riccardo Muti performed this orchestration in April 2018, just months before Walker died on Aug. 23.
From the fields of Bohemia to the music halls of Arizona, Civic’s program illustrates the power of music to express both individual memories and shared cultural experiences. For an ensemble that approaches music-making with a focus on community, as reflected in its very name, this theme seems particularly apt.
