Spirituals for String Orchestra

Spirituals for String Orchestra is a group of ten pieces based on material from Negro spirituals. Except for the last movement, these pieces are not arrangements but new works inspired by the original songs. My intent was neither to deconstruct the original material nor to treat it ironically, but simply to pay homage to its beauty by creating new compositions from it.

I first used this technique in Gershwiniana for three violins (or two violins and viola) (1999), where each movement uses fragments from songs or piano pieces by Gershwin. I have continued along this path in Three Folksong Transformations for violin, cello, and piano and Five Greek Folksongs (After Ravel) for violin and piano.

I began working on Spirituals in 1999 after the Russian violinist Tatiana Grindenko—who had given several performances of my Violin Concerto in the U.S. and in Tallinn, Estonia, and had just premiered my Serenade Concertante in Moscow—asked me to write a work for the group she was organizing for the new millennium, Opus Posthumous. She wanted a composition related in some way to folk music or other anonymously created music.

I had already begun a movement for string orchestra whose initial melody reminded me of the famous English horn solo—often thought to be a spiritual—from the slow movement of Dvořák’s New World Symphony. (In fact, the tune Dvořák used was written by his African American friend, the singer Harry T. Burleigh, who introduced him to spirituals.) The similarity between my melody and Burleigh’s led me to the idea that it would be an interesting project, and one suitable to Tatiana’s concept, to write a group of pieces based on spirituals.

Spirituals originally consisted of seven movements, all written in 1999. In early 2000, I received a commission from Concertante Players to write a work for clarinet and string quartet, to be premiered with clarinetist Jon Manasse. For this commission, I wrote five new movements based on spirituals and arranged six of the original seven. Afterward, I arranged three of the new movements for string orchestra and added them to the original work, bringing the total to ten movements.

Movements:

1. Homage to Dvořák (“Goin’ Home”) – Based on the song “Goin’ Home” by Dvořák’s friend Harry T. Burleigh; near the end it uses silence in a manner similar to Dvořák’s slow movement. This is the longest movement of the set.
2. Minimalist Tendencies – Subjects the opening notes of Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child to minimalist-style repetition, later incorporating the phrase “a long way from home.”
3. Melody Over a Drone I – Derived from the melodic outline of O Mary, Don’t You Weep, with substantially altered rhythm and harmony.
4. Amazing Grace Notes: Homage to John Harbison – Based on motifs from Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen and inspired by the use of grace notes in John Harbison’s Amazing Grace for solo oboe.
5. Two Pentatonic Fragments – Uses melodic fragments from Go Tell It on the Mountain and Study War No More, ending with a direct quotation of “gonna lay down my sword and shield.”
6. Call and Response – Alternates lyrical and chordal, repetitive textures derived from Go Down, Moses.
7. Minor and Major – Retains the rhythm of This Ol’ Time Religion while transforming its melody and harmony into something more nostalgic and subdued.
8. Melody Over a Drone II – Suggests the melody of Deep River.
9. Canons and Chorus – Draws on Glory to That Newborn King and concludes with rich chordal writing evoking the word “Glory.”
10. Homage to Ravel – The only movement closer to an arrangement; combines harmonic techniques inspired by Ravel (from Trois Poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé) with Balm in Gilead, ending with a brief coda based on spiritual fragments.
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—Steven R. Gerber