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John Thomas Douglass
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John Thomas Douglass (1847–1886) was an American
composer, virtuoso violinist, conductor and teacher. He is best known
for composing Virginia's Ball (1868), which is generally regarded as the
first opera written by a black composer. The work is now lost, however,
and his only extant composition is The Pilgrim: Grand Overture (1878)
for piano. His biography from James Monroe Trotter's Music and Some
Highly Musical People (1878)—from which The Pilgrim survives—suggests
that he wrote many now lost pieces for piano, orchestra and particularly
guitar, which he was known to play.
A highly regarded violinist, he led a solo career and traveled with
various groups, including the Hyers Sisters. He taught David Mannes in
his youth; Mannes would found the Colored Music Settlement School in his
memory.
John Thomas Douglass was born in New York in 1847. Virtually nothing
else is known about his early life, though it is thought that during his
youth—due to a wealthy patron—he was able to study in Europe.
He settled in New York by the late 1860s. His 3-act opera Virginia's
Ball premiered in New York, at the Stuyvesant Institute on Broadway; the
music is now lost. The work was registered with the United States
Copyright Office in 1868, and had presumably been performed the same
year.
In the 1870s he began performing widely, because, as musicologist Eileen
Southern explains, "like many concert artists of the time, Douglass
could not earn a living solely with his violin." As such, he toured with
different Georgia Minstrels and the Hyers Sisters. With the Hyers
Sisters, the sisters's father, Samuel B. Hyers, organized a company
which included, Douglass, tenor Wallace King, John W. Luca and pianist
Alexander C. Taylor. He returned to New York in the 1880s, where he
conducted a music studio and a string ensemble, the latter of which
played for various public entertainments, such as dances.
Contemporary sources describe Douglass as "very justly ranked with the
best musicians of [the United States]"; "the master violinist"; and "one
of the greatest musicians of the race". The Encyclopedia of African
American Music (2010) notes that Douglass, along with his contemporaries
Walter F. Craig and Joseph Douglass—all active in New York—joined Edmond
Dédé in the pantheon of major black violinists of the time. Craig and
Douglass in particular obtained a "high level of virtuosity". He was
also known to have played guitar.
Douglass also managed a teaching studio, where he taught violin to David
Mannes (1866–1959) in his youth.[1] Mannes was later a violinist and
then concertmaster of the New York Symphony Orchestra, founding the
Colored Music Settlement School in 1916 in the memory of Douglass.
Douglass did not live to see the creation of the school and died in
1886.
He has a short biography in James Monroe Trotter's Music and Some Highly
Musical People (1878), written while Douglass was in his thirties.
Only two works of Douglass's are known, Virginia's Ball and The Pilgrim:
Grand Overture—the former is lost, while the latter has survived. He is
thought to have written many other works; in Music and Some Highly
Musical People (1878), Trotter says "He has also composed many fine
pieces for orchestras and for piano." Trotter also reports that arranged
and composed a "great deal of music" for guitar.
The lack of surviving works for black composers of the time is not
uncommon. Like Douglass, Frederick Elliott Lewis [scores] (1846–18?)
and Jacob J. Sawyer [scores] (1856–1885) only have a single surviving
keyboard work, all published in Music and Some Highly Musical People.
Virginia's Ball was an opera in 3 acts by John Thomas Douglass. It was
premiered in 1868 at the Stuyvesant Institute on Broadway and is only
known to have been performed once; it is now lost. Douglass's authorship
of Virginia's Ball makes it generally considered to be the first opera
by a black composer. However, Southern notes that the Harry Lawrence
Freeman may be considered the first significant black composer of opera,
as he wrote fourteen and had five performed from 1893 to 1947 during his
lifetime. Throughout the 20th century, Freeman was thought to be the
first black composer to write an opera, until Southern's The Music of
Black Americans: A History (1971) revealed Douglass's contribution.
Musicologists Mellonee V. Burnim and Portia K. Maultsby note that at
this time African Americans were working to associate themselves with
the "lavish forms of entertainment" in the vein of Mozart, Rossini and
Verdi. The monetary profit from works like Virginia's Ball was likely
miniscule.
Douglass's only surviving work is The Pilgrim: Grand Overture for
piano.[8] It was published in Trotter's Music and Some Highly Musical
People by Lee and Shepard in 1878, though Trotter records that Douglass
wrote the piece earlier, in his 20s (1867–1876). The piece is in cut
time (cut time), E minor and marked Andante initially, but has many
tempo changes throughout: Andante, Allegro Vivace, Adagio, Allegro,Lento
and Allegro. The continuous use of scales, tremolos and embellishments
evokes the sense of a piano transcription from an orchestral score.
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Source
Sources for this article include:
•
Southern, Eileen (1997) [1971]. The Music of Black Americans: A History
Bean, Annemarie; Hatch, James V.; Brooks, McNamara, eds. (1996). Inside
the Minstrel Mask: Readings in Nineteenth-Century Blackface Minstrelsy.
Martin, Sherrill (1988). Feel the Spirit: Studies in Nineteenth-century
Afro-American Music.
Any contributions will be
gratefully accepted
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