“Summertime,” composed in 1934 by George Gershwin for Porgy and Bess, is undoubtedly one of the most popular and recorded songs in the Great American Songbook.  Gershwin drew inspiration for what he called an “American folk opera” from DuBose Heyward’s novel Porgy, published in 1925.  Heyward also penned the lyrics to “Summertime,” though some sources co-credit Ira Gershwin, who collaborated with Heyward on crafting the opera’s libretto.  Stephen Sondheim, in his book Invisible Giants: Fifty Americans Who Shaped the Nation But Missed the History Books, wrote: “DuBose Heyward has gone largely unrecognized as the author of the finest set of lyrics in the history of the American musical theater – namely, those of Porgy and Bess. I admire his theater songs for their deeply felt poetic style and their insight into character. It’s a pity he didn’t write any others. His work is sung, but he is unsung.”

Gershwin spent nearly two years working on Porgy and Bess and nearly a decade would pass from its conception to opening night in 1935. The initial production ran for only 124 performances, received mixed reviews, and was a financial flop. The opera was also met with deep controversy, criticized for perpetuating degrading stereotypes of Blacks. On the other hand, Porgy and Bess provided work for classically trained African-American singers at a time when discrimination barred them from the Met and other leading stages.

Statistics for the number of recordings of "Summertime" vary by source, but the song has been covered by thousands of solo performers and groups in different eras and genres.

“Dreams” presents the music of two accomplished, yet little known Black female composers, Margaret Bonds and Florence Price.  Remarkably, both women achieved milestones in the classical musical canon (“the domain of dead white men”) in the mid-20th century, but their names have largely been forgotten over time.  The three songs featured in this set—"Minstrel Man,” “Dream Variation,” and “Hold Fast to Dreams”—are all set to the poetry of Langston Hughes, a favorite source for choral settings in the 1940s.

Apart from being on a short list of African-American female composers, the names of Margaret Bonds and Florence Price are linked by other achievements and affiliations:

• Both were notable figures in the Chicago Black Renaissance, which flourished after World War I when the city saw an influx of Black residents. Their careers were helped along in 1932 when they won top awards in the prestigious Wanamaker Foundation Competition.  Price won first prize in the orchestral category for her Symphony in E Minor and first prize for her Piano Sonata in the solo instrumental category. Bonds won first prize in the song category for her composition “Sea Ghost,” written for voice and piano.

• Thanks to the progressive thinking and actions of conductor Frederick Stock, a Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert in June 1933 premiered Price’s Symphony in E Minor and featured a piano performance by Bonds.   The platform brought both women national recognition.

• Both women were prodigies.  Bonds wrote her first composition at age 5. Price had her first composition published at age 7 and was valedictorian of her high school graduating class at age 14. 

• Following divorce from her abusive husband in 1931, Price and her children moved into different friends’ homes in Chicago, eventually going to live with the Bonds. Price took an active role in mentoring the young Margaret Bonds and her compositional career.

Margaret Bonds (1913-1972)

The selections performed today are part of the “Three Dream Portraits” song cycle.  Like more than half of Margaret Bonds’ solo vocal compositions, “Minstrel Man” and “Dream Variation” are set to the poetry of Langston Hughes—a close and lifelong friend.  In this case, Hughes’s collection “The Dream Keeper,” which reflect on different themes related to being Black in America, provided Bonds with her text.  “Minstrel Man” speaks of the conflict between the Black entertainer’s outward appearance of happiness and inner pain and humiliation.  The second song in the cycle, “Dream Variation,” projects hopefulness, as the music brings to life Hughes’s vision of a better world, where all things beautiful are colored black. The song cycle ends with “I, Too,” (not performed today), which evokes a sense of defiance and pride.

Born in Chicago in 1913, Margaret Bonds enjoyed success as a composer, concert pianist, music educator, and church musician.  Bonds incorporated and connected elements of different African-American genres (folksongs, ragtime, and blues) in her music and blended African-American musical idioms with Western classical music compositional techniques and traditions.  This blending of different musical worlds distinguishes Bonds’s compositions in the American music canon.

Florence Price (1887-1953)

Florence Price composed organ works, symphonies, piano concertos, chamber music, art songs, and arrangements of spirituals. She achieved a remarkable string of firsts, propelled by the completion of her Symphony in E Minor in 1931. As noted above, she was the first African-American woman to win a national classical music prize and to have her works performed by a major orchestra.  Although she was recognized as a prodigious talent, Price struggled finding commercial success and making headway into the classical music culture.  After her death in 1953, she fell into relative obscurity.  In 2009 a trove of nearly 200 manuscripts was discovered in Price’s former summer home outside Chicago, prompting a rediscovery of this extraordinary composer’s music. 

“True enough, this music was transmitted to us through humble channels, but its source is that of all great art everywhere—the unquenchable, divinely human longing for a perfect realization of life… Born out of the heart-cries of a captive people who still did not forget how to laugh, this music covers an amazing range of mood. Nevertheless, it is always serious music and should be performed seriously, in the spirit of its original conception.” -  Hall Johnson, preface of his collection, Thirty Spirituals Arranged for Voice and Piano.

Today’s program includes three works (“His Name So Sweet,” “Scandalize My Name,” and “Take My Mother Home”) by Hall Johnson (1888-1970), one of the most prolific, well-known, and important arrangers of African-American spirituals.

Johnson served in many roles throughout his career—composer, arranger, conductor, and choir director.  Criss-crossing all these roles was Johnson’s consuming passion to preserve the African-American spiritual.  By establishing choral groups that performed to audiences in the United States and abroad and through their recordings, Johnson gave the spiritual international exposure.  Johnson also authored publications on the history of the spiritual and their performance practice.  The amalgam of Johnson’s efforts elevated the African-American spiritual to an internationally recognized art form.

Francis Hall Johnson was born in Athens, Georgia, on 12 March 1888. Early musical influences were his father, a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal church, and especially his grandmother, a former slave whose interpretations of spirituals moved him deeply.  Johnson received an extensive education and was fluent in French and German. In 1925, he formed his first choral group, the Hall Johnson Negro Choir.  The choir sang Johnson’s settings for spirituals composed for several Broadway productions, The Green Pastures and Run Little Chillun.  Through these performances, touring productions, a film adaption of The Green Pastures, and Johnson’s efforts, the group became an internationally renowned ensemble.  Johnson would arrange music for and conduct his choirs in more than 30 feature-length Hollywood films, as well as a number of short films and cartoons.

Johnson died on April 30, 1970, during a fire at his New York apartment.  In a New York Times tribute published the following month, contralto Marian Anderson wrote, "Hall Johnson was a unique genius. For although he invented no new harmonies, designed no new forms, originated no new melodic styles, discovered no new rhythmic principles, he was yet able to fashion a whole new world of music in his own image.”

"I never knew how good our songs were until I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing them" – Ira Gershwin

The music of the Gershwins is featured again in this set with a medley of two well-known songs: “Love is Here to Stay” and “I Got Rhythm.”  “Love is Here to Stay” was George Gershwin’s final composition before his tragic death in 1937 at the age of 38.  Ira wrote the lyrics after his brother’s death, expressing grief at the loss of his sibling, partner, and friend, and pledging  everlasting love. The song was initially performed in the 1938 motion picture The Goldwyn Follies, but became popular when Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron performed it in the 1951 film, An American in Paris.

"I Got Rhythm," premiered in the 1930 Gershwin musical comedy Girl Crazy.  After experimenting for two weeks with the rhyme scheme, lyricist Ira finally settled on leaving most of the lines unrhymed.  Ira recalled that the “approach felt stronger,” but “was a bit daring for me who usually depended on rhyme insurance.” The song itself pays tribute to the simple, no-cost pleasures that generate feelings of well-being and happiness—daisies in green pastures, starlight, and sweet dreams. As Ira succinctly put it, “Who Could Ask for Anything More?”

Girl Crazy’s cast and pit band included a “who’s who” of future entertainment stars. On the stage at the Alvin Theater were Ginger Rogers at 19 and Ethel Merman at 21, making their Broadway debuts. (Decades later Merman would borrow from the song’s lyrics for the title of her 1955 autobiography Who Could Ask for Anything More?) The pit band, led by Red Nichols, included young musicians who would go on to make their marks in the world of swing: Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Gene Krupa, and Jimmy Dorsey.

Since its introduction in Girl Crazy, “I Got Rhythm” has become firmly entrenched in the jazz repertory. Within ten days of the show’s opening, three recordings of “I Got Rhythm” were made, each taking a different approach—as a popular song, a jazz vocal standard, and a jazz instrumental composition.  The jazz vocal standard was recorded by the Girl Crazy pit band and vocalist Dick Robertson.

Legendary jazz/pop singer Ella Fitzgerald frequently recorded songs from the Gershwin catalog, capturing the spirit of George’s music and Ira’s lyrics with her silky voice and exquisite jazz stylings.  She devoted an entire album to their music in ''Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Songbook'' (1959), to include “Love is Here to Stay.”  Also noteworthy is the recording of “Love is Here to Stay” by Fitzgerald with Louis Armstrong in the 1957 album “Ella and Louis Again.” 

The jazz standard “Good Morning Heartache” was first recorded by Billie Holiday in 1946, becoming one of the vocalist’s signature tunes.  The song was a collaboration between Irene Higginbotham, an African-American songwriter; lyricist Ervin Drake, and producer Dan Fisher.  Diana Ross revived “Good Morning Heartache” when she portrayed Holiday in the 1972 biopic Lady Sings the Blues, putting the song on the R&B and pop charts.  Its success led to a number of cover versions recorded and performed the following year. 

The gentlemen responsible for the medley “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught / Children Will Listen'' belong in the ranks of Broadway songwriting royalty, producing some of the most memorable songs in the musical theater canon. “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught” comes from Richard Rodgers’s and Oscar Hammerstein's blockbuster South Pacific. “Children Will Listen” comes from the 1987 musical Into the Woods, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine.

South Pacific, whose story revolves around interracial romances in the South Pacific during World War II, opened on Broadway in 1949.  More than 70 years ago, Rodgers and Hammerstein were making an overt plea for racial tolerance in their complex musical, nowhere more evident than in “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught.”  The song, which contrasts markedly with the musical’s more light-hearted numbers such as “I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair” and “There is Nothing Like a Dame,” was considered by some to be too controversial or inappropriate for the musical stage. During tryouts, the songwriters were repeatedly advised to remove the number, but they insisted it remain, even if it meant failure of the production. 

Stephen Sondheim has enjoyed an extraordinary 60-year-plus career that has profoundly influenced American musical theater.  Young Sondheim was mentored by Oscar Hammerstein, who, with Richard Rodgers, advanced the musical from a revue into an integrated dramatic form, where the songs advanced the plot. Sondheim built on the songwriting duo’s innovations, experimenting with subject matter and form. Into the Woods takes the audience into the forests created by the Brothers Grimm.  The fairy tales are timeless and so is the admonition delivered by “Children Will Listen:” “Be careful the things you do, children will listen."  

Moving to something a little lighter, this set concludes with the heart-warming “Make Someone Happy,” composed by prolific songwriter Jule Styne with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green.  The showtune comes from the short-lived 1960 musical Do Re Mi, whose plot centers on a con man trying to go straight. “Make Someone Happy” has been recorded by scores of artists.