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An Afro-American Composer's Viewpoint Melody, in my opinion, is the most important musical element. After melody comes harmony; then form, rhythm, and dynamics. I prefer music that suggests a program to either pure or program music in the strict sense. I find mechanically produced music valuable as a means of study; but even at its best it fails to satisfy me completely. My greatest enjoyment in a musical performance comes through seeing as well as hearing the artist. The exotic in music is certainly desirable. But if one loses sight of the conventional in seeking for strange effects, the results are almost certain to be so extreme as to confound the faculties of the listeners. Still, composers should never confine themselves to materials al ready invented, and I do not believe that any one tonality is of itself more significant than another. I am unable to understand how one can rely solely on feeling when composing. The tongue can utter the letters of the alphabet, but it is the intellect alone that makes it possible to combine them so as to form words. Likewise a fragment of a musical composition may be conceived through inspiration or feeling, but its development lies altogether within the realm of intellect. Colored people in America have natural and deep-rooted feeling for music, for melody, harmony, and rhythm. Our music possesses exoti cism without straining for strangeness. The natural practices in this music open up a new field which can be of value in larger musical works when constructed into organized form by a composer who, having the underlying feeling, develops it through his intellect. From William Grant Still and the Fusion of Cultures in American Music, edited by Robert Bartlett Haas (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow, 1975), 112. Reprinted with the permission of William Grant Still Music. Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/black-sacred-music/article-pdf/6/2/232/792974/232wgs.pdf by DEEPDYVE INC user on 13 February 2021
Black Sacred Music – Duke University Press
Published: Sep 1, 1992
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