Originally published 1.04.23.
Less than one year after its world premiere at the Cincinnati May Festival, Dett’s oratorio made its way to New York City’s Juilliard School in April of 1938. Baltimore’s prominent, Black news source, the Afro-American, kept tabs on Dett’s whereabouts and even had a local correspondent in Rochester, NY, who popped up onto its columns just when Dett moved there and then all but vanished once he took his job at Bennett College.
The performing organization, the Oratorio Society of New York, had close ties to Dett. Among them was the ethnomusicologically inclined music critic Henry Edward Krehbiel. Krehbiel published a treatise on African spirituals, Afro-American folksongs: a study in racial and national music (1914), which argued that African slaves brought their musical traditions with them directly from Africa and did not simply appropriate the church hymns of their owners (an unfortunate, widespread view at the time). Dett cited Krehbiel’s work personally and advocated its commendation by the National Association of Negro Musicians. Krehbiel’s association with the OSNY is manifested most strongly in his Notes on the cultivation of choral music and the Oratorio Society of New York (1884).
Two sons of Leopold Damrosch, the founder of the OSNY, assumed its artistic helm: Walter and Frank. These two musicians also had personal ties to Dett. Helen Elise Smith, Dett’s wife, was the first Black graduate of the Damrosch Institute of Musical Art (a precursor to the Juilliard School), founded by Frank Damrosch. Dett also made the acquaintance of Walter Damrosch, although I am currently unaware exactly how.
Albert Stoessel, listed as conductor in the news clipping above, apprenticed with Walter Damrosch beginning in 1921 and by 1938 had charge of Juilliard’s graduate opera and orchestra departments and was Musical Director at the Chautauqua Institution, which is not too far from Rochester, NY. It is not known exactly who performed with the orchestra, and I hesitate to attribute the concert to one of the school’s standing ensembles. Nevertheless, having Stoessel at the podium was quite significant and attests to Dett’s high regard in the Classical-music world.