>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C.
>> Nicholas Brown: Good
afternoon ladies and gentlemen.
Welcome back to those
of you who joined us
for the workshop this morning, and a
warm, hearty welcome to those of you
who are just here for
the first time today.
My name is Nicholas Brown
and I am a concert producer
with the music division.
We have a very exciting panel
discussion for you right now
in advance of the 2:00 p.m. concert.
The title of this panel
discussion is,
"The Legacy of Civil
War Spirituals."
And the idea is to look at how the
spirituals tradition that emerged
from the 19th century has affected
all different kinds of music
from that era through to today
and contemporary music as well.
For the panel discussion
we have three experts
of the spirituals tradition
and music of the Civil War era.
First up is Dr. James Weldon
Norris, who is the Director
of the Choruses at
Howard University.
He, prior to being at Howard
University, was the Director
of Choral Activities and the
Chairman of the Department
of Humanities and Acting
Academic Dean
at Morris College in South Carolina.
He was appointed to
his post as Director
of University Choral
Activities at Howard in 1973.
And of note, he studied with
choral conductors Robert Shaw
and Eric Ericson.
Dr. Norris has led the
Howard University Choir
in over 17 countries on six
continents of the world,
and he was appointed Principal
Conductor of the 105 Voices
of History, which is a
choir comprised of members
of the 105 historically
black colleges
and universities of America.
Next up is Steven Cornelius, who
is on the faculty at University
of Massachusetts, Boston.
He has been on the faculties
at Boston University,
Bowling Green State University,
The Bruckner Conservatorium
Linz and Pine Manor College.
He was a critic for The Blade, which
is Toledo, Ohio's daily newspaper.
And of note, he published the
book, "Music of the Civil War Era."
He received his PhD
from the University
of California, Los Angeles.
Then, it's a pleasure to welcome my
colleague from the music division,
Samuel Perryman, who is a
music reference specialist.
He is a singer, song-writer,
music teacher,
church organist, and
religion educator.
He is particularly
interested in using music
to inspire social change
in young people.
One of his hymn arrangements
was selected for inclusion
in the Christian Methodist
Episcopal Hymnal and some
of his recorded music
will be performed live
at that church's general
conference which will be held
in the Washington area in 2014.
Sam received his master's degree in
music from Alabama State University.
Each panelist is going to speak
for about 12 to 15 minutes
and then we're going to have a few
moments for questions at the end,
and then there will be a
brief pause before the concert
which will begin promptly at 2:00
p.m. Thank you so much and enjoy.
[ Audience Applause ]
>> Dr. James Weldon Norris: I
have been selected to go first.
[Laughter]
First, I think we should
determine just what a spiritual is.
What is a spiritual?
The current edition of the
New Grove Dictionary of Music
and Musicians defines the
term spiritual as a, I quote,
as a type of folksong
which originated
in American revivalist
activities between 1740
and the close of the 19th century.
The term is derived from
spiritual songs, a designation used
in many publications to distinguish
the text from mythical songs
and hymns of traditional churches.
End quote.
This well defines a white spiritual,
a genre which would be a topic
of another entirely different
series of discussions and lectures.
The Grove article further discusses
the white spiritual in a quote
as having evolved around
1800 from camp meetings.
Usually held in an
open rural setting,
the camp meeting was described as
being primarily social gatherings
which provided the settlers
with release from the isolation
and the hardships which
characterized their daily lives.
This provided occasions
for emotions --
emotional a fervor and religious
frenzy for the participants.
End quote.
Obviously, some of these
characteristics may also be seen
in spirituals and the Negro
church, a Negro spiritual
in a black worship
service on Sunday morning.
However, as proceed we will
find out that much more,
and in many instances, is used --
discussed when we look
at the Negro spiritual.
From its origins, the Negro
spiritual was a group singing
in unison, as opposed to solo
singing in the 1867 anthology,
"Slave Songs of the United
States," collected and edited
by William Francis Allen,
Charles Pickard Ware,
and Lucy McKim Garrison.
And it is said that
the vocal beauty,
as well as the unusual technical
aspects of the group singing
by slaves in the deep
southern states were described.
The descriptions were
often somewhat demeaning --
perhaps because of a lack of
knowledge of the African music
and textual idioms or because
of the former slave status
of the creators of this music.
In his book, "The Souls of Black
Folk," the great sociologist
and historian W. E. B.
DuBois wrote, and I quote,
"They came out of the South
unknown to me, one by one,
and yet at once I knew
them as of me and of mine.
Then in after years when I came
to Nashville I saw the
great temple buildt
of these songs towering
over the pale city.
To me, the Jubilee Hall seemed
ever made of songs themselves,
and the bricks were red with
the blood and dust of toil.
Out of these rose for me,
morning, noon, and night,
bursts of wonderful melody, full
of the voices of my brothers
and sisters, full of
the voices of the past.
End quote.
DuBois' essay of 1903 is
called "The Sorrow Songs."
The first sentence is, and
I quote, "They that walked
in darkness sang songs in the
olden days -- Sorrow Songs --
for they were weary at heart."
This is a clue to the universal
appeal of the Negro spiritual --
and I do mean universal appeal
because I found this the
world over as I travel.
Because it is a universal
condition, it comes to us all.
As Dr. Howard Thurman said, "In
the wide swing of the years",
the transformation of Sorrow
Songs has been noted by many as --
sorry -- has been noted by many,
but the one that I find quite
apt is from Hasidic tradition.
I heard this once from our
priest, Father Lawrence Harris,
and he quoted this recently while
delivering the Sunday morning homily
in my church.
He said there were three ways
in which a person expressed
deep sorrow.
The one on the lowest level cries.
The one on the high -- the one
on the second level is silent.
The one on the highest level knows
how to turn sorrow into song.
This, to me, is the very
essence of the Negro spiritual.
And now, as to the spiritualness of
war -- although initially underpaid
and often what met with derisions
about white soldiers, history
and historical sources reveal
that over 200,000 Civil War black
soldiers served in the Union Army.
Initially, that service did not
meet with the approval of many
of the white soldiers since it
would involve in the black man's --
it would be involved -- I'm sorry.
It would involve the black man's
civil rights and political status.
There were black soldiers in the
Confederate military services,
but that is all together
a different discussion.
In many instances, black
soldiers sang the same songs
of their white counterparts
and compatriots.
Though, in some instances,
there was often a paraphrase
to reflect the position
of the black soldier
and his surroundings
as he sang with pride.
As for the songs of
the esprit de corps, --
I turned this and I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
prior to the black man's
participation in the war caused many
of the enslaved brothers and
sisters, often in secret,
to turn the old sorrow songs
into a much more defiant text
of great determination
for the socioeconomic
conditions of change and freedom.
Please listen to the following
example of a slave lament,
no more driver's lash for me,
from around 1862 from the coast
of South Carolina, this will be
performed by two of my students,
Ariana Melton, Soprano,
and [Inaudible], Baritone.
[ Piano ]
>> [Begin Singing] No
more peck of corn for me.
No more. No more.
No more peck of corn for me.
Many thousand gone.
>> No more driver's lash for me.
No more. No more.
No more driver's lash for me.
Many thousand gone.
>> No more pint of salt for me.
No more. No more.
No more pint of salt for me.
Many thousand gone.
>> No more hundred lash for me.
No more. No more.
No more hundred lash for me.
Many thousand gone.
>> No more missy calls for me.
No more. No more.
No more missy calls for me.
Many thousand gone.
>> [Singing Together] No
more missy calls for me.
No more. No more.
No more missy calls for me.
Many thousand gone.
[End Singing]
[ Audience Applause ]
>> Dr. James Weldon Norris: As for
the songs of the esprit de corps
of the black soldiers, I wish to
quote the distinguished, late,
great African-American historian,
Benjamin Quarles in his book,
"The Negro and the Civil War."
I quote: that their
freedom was the object
of the war was a dominant
conviction.
For they were believing
they were believing people.
Religion was an ever-present
dimension of experience.
And to them, the war
was a fulfillment
of the Old Testament prophecy.
They did not doubt that a
new dispensation was at hand.
Their folk songs had always
reflected in some ways
or in some guise another.
This longing for freedom now
that the day of reckoning was
at hand, they sang with fervor.
And the old spiritual, we
will fight for liberty.
We will fight for liberty.
We will fight for liberty
when the Lord calls us home.
Slaves in Georgetown -- probably
in Georgetown, South Carolina --
were thrown into jail for voicing
this song or singing it in 1861.
The Union Army's anthem became
the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
Now, as we know, the tune is
taken from John Brown's body,
and we know that John Brown
and Julia Hall, who wrote this,
were acquaintances and
she set the Battle Hymn
of the Republic from that.
Black soldiers were given what --
the black soldiers were all thrown
into all black regiments.
So finally, the black soldiers
were finally given uniforms
and were paid for their services.
The first Arkansas color
regiment presented us with one
of the first Civil War era songs
with many verses, which
was a paraphrase
of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
One verse will now be performed
by the male section of my chorale.
Watch with defiance, but with
pride, they sing we are tired
of planting [Inaudible], we
are done with planting corn.
We are Yankee because our soldiers
just as sure as you are born.
[ Piano ]
>> [Choir Singing] We are
done with hoeing cotton,
we are done with hoeing corn;
We are colored Yankee soldiers,
just as sure as you are born.
When the Rebels hears us yelling
they will think it's Gabriel's horn,
As we go marching on.
[End Singing]
[ Audience Applause ]
>> Dr. James Weldon Norris:
Around the time of the Civil War,
the Negro spirituals were being
heard outside the black community
in the south, but especially
now in the northern states.
This new experience to the
slave culture impressed many.
This was of great importance
to abolitionists.
According to an article from
the recent publication entitled,
"The Spiritual Project," published
by the University of Denver,
a northern minister received a
letter which contained the lyrics,
"Go down Moses" which was sent and
published in the New York Tribune.
There soon followed, though it not
in good condition, the sheet music.
This publication proved to be of
great importance to abolitionists.
And it was hard evidence that
slaves really wanted freedom.
According to that article, this
powerful text led to the publication
of the much heralded, although I
consider somewhat controversial,
previously mentioned "Slave
Songs in the United States."
The slaves quest for
freedom was deeply rooted
in the Biblical characters
of the Old Testament.
As the late Howard
University educator and author,
Dr. John Lovelle, states in his
epic publication of 1972 entitled,
"Black Song: The Forge
and the Flame",
that the greatest hero was Moses.
Moses. And the greatest
devil was Pharaoh.
As Dr. Lovelle states, and
I quote, nearly every song
about Moses is intended to chide
Americans, south and north,
about permitting slavery
and to issue a stern warning
that slavery would not be
indefinitely tolerated.
Therefore, go down Moses.
A spiritual obviously, obviously,
influenced the black
participation --
influenced by the black
participation of the war,
the dangerously bold, yet
successful trips of Harriett Tubman
and an ever-now more
emboldened quest for freedom.
It is not a sorrow song.
It does not include
encoded secrets, symbolisms,
but an emphatically bold
statement -- let my people go.
Choir in [Inaudible].
Just one verse of it.
[ Piano ]
>> [Singing] When Israel
was in Egypt land.
Let My people go.
Oppressed so hard they
could not stand.
Let My people go.
Go down Moses way down
in Egypt land.
Tell all Pharaohs to
let My people go.
[End Singing]
[ Audience Applause ]
>> Steven Cornelius: Thank you, Dr.
Norris, and the wonderful vocalists.
This is a hard act to follow.
[Sigh] At the onset
of the Civil War,
African-American music had been
undergoing nearly three centuries
of development.
The sounds were new -- neither
purely African nor European,
but with elements from each.
Compared to European
models, phrasing was looser
and rhythms more syncopated.
In the moment, embellishments
and improvisations were standard.
The music's formal structure
was perhaps simpler in design,
but more flexible and open-ended.
The music had also shed
aspects of its African heritage.
Bards no longer sang praises
or detailed family histories.
That information was lost.
So, too, were drum
languages, and with them some
of the music's rhythmic
complexity and social vitality.
The vast majority of African people
-- some 4 1/2 million, 90% slaves --
were born in the United States,
but their lives remained infused
with African social and
religious understandings,
collective experiences, and, of
course, ways of making music.
New world work songs focused the
pacing and energy of group labor.
Dance rhythms inspired bodies to
move with African power and grace.
Religious music adopted Christian
imagery of God and the Devil,
oppression and salvation,
but reframed those ideas
into African understandings
of a dynamic and involved God,
one to be approached
and consequently moved
with intensity of spirit.
Curiously, while African-American
musical
and dance styles had been paritied
by black-faced minstrels at least
since the 1830s, it was not
until the Civil War that more
than a tiny percentage of northern
whites began to have direct contact
with and take serious notice of the
real music of African-Americans.
They encountered a rich tradition.
Spirituals were based on
biblical verses, of course,
but often imbedded within those
ancient images were new ones
of secular freedom.
Back to the spiritual, Go Down
Moses, invites comparisons
between the fate of the ancient
Israelites and the modern oppression
of African-American slaves.
Tell Old Pharaoh, Let
My People Go, they sang.
Of course the symbolism is obvious.
Go Down Moses, one of the first
spirituals to become known
to a white audience when, in October
1961, six months after the attack
on Fort Sumpter, the first stanza
of that spiritual was printed
in the New York based newspaper,
National Anti-Slavery Standard.
Shortly afterwards, twenty
more verses were published
in the New York Tribune,
and in December the Standard
published a music transcription.
White northerners had been aware
of African-American music makers,
but mostly they only knew
of those who conformed
to Euro-American musical styles --
band masters like Frank Johnson;
vocalists like Elizabeth
Taylor Greenfield --
also known as the Black Swan; and
Connecticut's Lucas Family Singers,
which occasionally sang with
the Hutchison Family Singers --
another abolitionist group.
The Civil War emancipated
both slave and music.
This process unfolded
both north and south.
Escaped slaves sought and
generally received protection
under Union armies.
Such people were considered as
contraband or spoils of war,
a legal sleight of
hand that effectively
over road the Fugitive
Slave Act of 1850.
What were the soldiers hearing?
This September 1861 account which
appeared in Dwight's Journal
of Music, normally dedicated
to European classical music --
here's what he wrote: It is one
of the most striking incidents
of this war to listen
to the singing of groups
of colored people in
Fortress, Monroe.
Last evening, I passed around
by the fortress chapel,
where most of the contraband
tents are spread.
There were hundreds of men
of all ages scattered around.
In one tent they were singing,
one man leading, while some ten
or twelve others joined
in the chorus.
The hymn was long and
plaintive, and the air was one
of the sweetest minors
I have ever heard.
It would have touched many a
heart if sung for the audiences
who appreciate the
simple melody of nature,
fresh and warm from the heart.
All was as tender and harmonious
as the symphony of an organ.
Such experiences must
have been sobering.
Absent were Jim Crow, Zip
Coon, and Brudder Bones,
and all of the shallow
sensibility that decades
of blackface minstrel shows had
taught white audiences to expect.
Northerners were also
traveling to the slave south.
Most were soldiers, but there
also were teachers and collectors
or others involved
in relief efforts.
White and African-American
Northerners worked with contrabands
and newly enlisted Union
soldiers in South Carolina, where,
just seven months into the war,
Union forces had captured Port Royal
Sound and freed some 10,000 slaves.
From there came some of the war's
most intriguing musical documents.
Beaufort served as the
hub around which a coterie
of fascinating personalities formed.
One was Charlotte Forten, an
African-American teacher from Salem,
Massachusetts, who worked from
1862 to 1864 on Helena Island.
Forten's agenda entailed more
than imparting the three R's.
She taught her charges of the world
outside Port Royal, about John Brown
and Toussaint L'Ouverture,
the Haitian nationalist.
The students also taught
the teacher.
After a boat trip, Forten
remembered the boatman's song
as he asked for Jesus' grace.
The sound, she writes, broke
upon the evening stillness --
sweet, strange, and solemn.
Forten listened and learned.
She found their differences both
fascinating and sometimes troubling.
She writes: The shouting
is solemn and impressive.
We cannot determine whether it
has a religious character or not.
Some of the people tell us it
has, others say it has not.
But the shouts are always in
connections with religious meetings.
It is probable that they are the
barbarous expressions of religion,
handed down from African ancestors.
Forten was friends with Colonel
Thomas Wentworth Higginson,
who in November of
1862, had taken command
of the First South
Carolina Volunteers,
a regiment made up of
emancipated slaves.
Higginson and all the officers
were white in this regiment.
Higginson also wrote
compellingly about what he heard.
This from a December
diary entry: He says,
all over the camp the lights
glimmer in the tents, a flute stirs,
a drum throbs, and from a
neighboring cook-fire comes the
monotonous sound of that
strange festival, half pow-wow,
half prayer-meeting, which
they know only as a shout.
The fires are usually enclosed in a
little booth, like an African hut,
crammed with men, singing at the
top of their voices, in a quaint,
monotonous, endless,
Negro-Methodist chant.
All is accompanied with drumming
of feet and clapping of hands.
Men quiver and dance,
sometimes join, a circle forms,
winding round someone in the
center; some tremble and stagger on,
they whirl, caper sideways,
always circling.
The circle enlarges, louder
grows the singing, rousing shouts
of encouragement come in, half
bacchanalian, half devout,
the ceaseless drumming and
clapping, in perfect cadence,
goes steadily on A little
later, Higginson continues,
we abolitionists had
underrated the suffering produced
by slavery among the Negroes, but
had overrated the demoralization.
Higginson collected words
to thirty-six spirituals,
which he described in his 1867 book,
"Army Life in a Black Regiment."
There he documented African
American music's spontaneity
and social groundedness.
A spiritual's variations were
endless, he learned, quote,
often straying into
wholly new versions.
He found the composition
process just to be stunning
as he watched entirely
new pieces of music formed
in the moment according
to the situation.
Also in the area were William
Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware,
and Lucy McKim Garrison, who, also
in 1967, published Slave Songs
of the United States, also in 1867.
Allen and company admitted their
transcriptions were, quote,
but a faint shadow of the original.
They write, the intonations
and delicate variations
of even one singer cannot
be reproduced on paper.
And I despair of conveying
any notion of the effect
of a number singing together,
especially in a complicated shout.
There is no singing in parts, as we
understand it, and yet no two appear
to be singing the same thing.
Up in Virginia in 1864,
Boston journalist
and historian Charles Carlton
Coffin, traveling with Grant's army,
published the following
observations of contrabands
who attached themselves
to the Union forces.
He writes, the Negroes came from
all the surrounding plantations.
Some driving a team of skeleton
steers or wall-eyed horses attached
to rickety carts and wagons,
piled with beds, tables, chairs,
pots and kettles, hens, turkeys,
ducks, women with infants,
and children trotting by their side.
He continues: It was
the Sabbath-day, bright,
clear, calm, and beautiful.
There was a crowd of several hundred
people at a deserted farm-house.
A young man took the
centre of the room.
The women and girls stood round him.
He began to dance, jumped
up, clapped his hands,
slapped his thighs, whirled
round, and stamped upon the floor.
Sisters, let us bless the Lord.
Sisters, join in the chorus, he
said, and led off with a kind
of recitative, improvised
as the excitement took him.
And so it went on for a
half-hour, all dancing,
clapping their hands,
tossing their heads.
It was the ecstasy of action, a joy
not to be uttered, but demonstrated.
The old house shook
in all its joints.
It seems that music, though always
different, in that it was always
"in the moment," was also
in many ways "the same."
Forten's, Higginson's,
Coffin's descriptions are
virtually interchangeable.
As the sinews of Southern
authority weakened,
similar scenes must have taken
place virtually everywhere
as the advancing Union army went.
Freedom rang.
About a year and a half
earlier, on December 31, 1864,
the day before the Emancipation
Proclamation took effect --
and upstairs there is an early draft
of the Emancipation Proclamation
in the Civil War exhibit.
Before it took effect, thousands
of freed men and former slaves
who had joined in singing "Go Down
Moses" at a D.C. contraband camp.
Following several renditions
of that particular piece,
a woman came forward and sang
a song that asked for action
of a quite different nature.
She sang she hoped the devil
would do some good for a change,
that he would catch Confederate
President Jefferson Davis.
[Audience Laughter] Thank you.
[ Audience Applause ]
>> Samuel Perryman: I'm going
to share three things with you.
The first is how to reach -- how
to contact the music division,
how to get music from us.
And the second is, I want to talk
to you about the Spirituals Index,
which is a card file
in the music division
that helps people locate
spirituals and I will wrap this
up by sharing a couple of treasures
that's from our collection.
How to contact us.
There are several ways.
One, you can go online.
Log onto loc.gov.
That's the easiest way
to remember how to get
to the library's homepage.
And you will see a link
that says Ask a Librarian
if you want to send us a question.
There are other ways of
reaching the music division,
and I tell people often that
the easiest way to get to us is
to do a Google search and type
Library of Congress Music Division,
enter, and then the first hit
will take you to our homepage.
And that's the easiest thing to do.
We want to make it easy
so that you can get to us.
I would also like to talk to
you about how to get music
from us once you're at our page.
Once you are there, you
will see a link that says,
Ask a Librarian, as I indicated.
Also, when people come
to the library,
or when they visit the library,
one of the things that we ask them
to do is to get a reader card
and then come to the division
which they want to
do their research.
That's for people who actually come.
There are ways to also
get information
from us by correspondence.
And you will see all
of this on our website.
You can send us the Ask
a Librarian question
or you can write a
letter to us and mail it.
You can send this information
through fax or you can call us.
Our hours are from 8:30 until
5:00 on Monday through Saturday.
The music division is open now.
We are located across the
street in the Madison Building
and we certainly do look forward to
people coming and sharing with us
and getting assistance
from us as well.
The Spirituals Index.
The Spirituals Index is a card
file in the music division
or the Performing Arts Reading Room.
So once one walks into
the Reading Room,
he or she will see a card
catalogue with lots of drawers,
which you can use to find music.
Four of those drawers are
labeled Spirituals Index.
And those are the ones
that I want to talk about.
It's kind of a well-kept
secret, and this is a great time,
I thought, to tell you about it.
There are about 2,000 cards
that are in those files,
and I like to describe what's
the content of those cards are.
In the first drawer, about the
first 200 cards are indexed cards
that list sources of song books
that's in our collections.
And then we have a listing of
individual titles of the contents
of those songs that follow,
and that's how it comes 2,000.
And I think it's a very important
resource because a lot of times
when people are looking
for spirituals,
they don't necessarily find them
because we have a lot of music
and you will need to get
assistance from a librarian
in order to actually find them.
We have a good example.
I wanted to give you a good example.
There -- yesterday, an
individual, who is also here today,
actually called the music division
and I answered the phone during
office hours, and he was interested
in getting some spirituals.
And he said that he
couldn't find them online.
He was online searching
for the spirituals
and he couldn't find them.
And that was a great
opportunity for me to tell him
about the Spirituals Index.
Interestingly, he was able
to come to the music division
and actually get them and I was able
to show him how the
index actually works.
And so that was a real good example.
The index is also important
because it indexes the songs
in the songbook, not only by
title, but by first line as well
as the first lines of the refrain.
And so if a person came to the
library and wanted the song,
but they didn't know the title of
it, but they knew the first line,
then we could also find it that way.
So it's very useful.
The oldest card that I've found
representing the song books actually
date back to 1875, and I think the
most current card is about 1940.
So if you're looking for a song
that perhaps was published in 1950,
then that wouldn't be a
good resource to look,
but there are so many other
places to actually find music.
Finally, I want to share a couple of
treasures from the music division.
And I've brought a
couple of letters.
They are from Dean Warner Lawson.
Warner Lawson was the Dean
of the College of Fine Arts,
and Dr. Norris will have
to help me with this
because I think he was
his predecessor as far
as the choir is concerned.
I think they were on the
faculty together there,
but there are some letters
of Warner Lawson that are
in the music division and I think
our students actually need to know
who Dr. Lawson is or was.
If you don't, his dates were 1903
to 1971, and they are important
because Dean Lawson
actually was good friends
with a former Chief
of the music division.
And I acknowledge that we have
some letters of Nathaniel Dett
out in the showcase and I invite
you to take a look at them.
Back in 1926, the Hampton
Institute Choir actually came here
and performed on the stage.
I think it was the first college
choir to actually perform here,
and I think that is significant.
But the library also has a
history with Howard University
that dates back about 40 years ago.
And so I thought that it was
important to actually mention that.
And my hope is that people
from the Howard community
or others might help us to
illuminate the relationship
between the library and
local and other universities.
And the letter reads -- Warner
Lawson's wife's name was Nellie.
Warner Lawson died in 1971 and here
is a letter from our chief, then,
Harold Spivacke to
Nellie Larson -- Lawson.
Dear Nellie, an extended absence
from the office delayed
this letter to you.
In spite of Warner's lengthy
illness, we all hope for recovery.
He really sounded well on
the phone when we spoke
to him just a few weeks
ago, and now he is gone.
There is little I can say to you
about my feelings for Warner.
I actually regarded him as one of
the greatest educators we ever had
in this country and field of music.
But perhaps more important was
my feeling for him personally.
He was one of the nicest and
kindest men I ever met in my life.
In this case, I can really say
that he cannot be replaced.
And this is coming from
a music division chief
to a Howard University administrator
in the music department.
And I think that this
relationship is certainly worthy
to be explored further, and I
encourage our students, especially,
to help us to learn more
about this relationship.
I am certainly interested
myself, and I certainly would
like to see others
take interest as well.
This letter is from Nellie
Lawson, who is the wife
of the then deceased Warner Lawson.
And she writes: Dear
Harold and Rose Marie --
Harold Spivacke and
his wife Rose Marie --
the friendship and fellowship
which Warner enjoyed with you is
to be remembered and cherished.
Your kind thoughts, your concerns,
your friendships during Warner's
illness was greatly appreciated
and helped make the anxieties
and tensions lighter.
It may be as well that you did not
see him and now you can remember him
as being in fairly good health.
As one of Warner's hometown
friends used to say,
Warner never gains weight.
His face just goes up and down.
And I could read the letter on.
But the point is that
there is a relationship
and it certainly is worth exploring
and we certainly do invite Dr.
Norris and others to help us
to continue to explore more
about the relationships
between the African-American,
especially, universities
and the music division
because there is one
and there has been
one for many years.
Thank you.
[ Audience Applause ]
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