Chamber Music Piano
SKU: PR.140401330
Composed by R. Nathaniel
Dett. Edited by Lara
Downes. 32 pages.
Duration 18 minutes.
Theodore Presser Company
#140-40133. Published by
Theodore Presser Company
(PR.140401330).
ISBN
9781491134412. UPC:
680160684939.
Natha
niel Dett was among
America’s leading
composers in the early
20th century, and
MAGNOLIA SUITE is a
beautiful example of his
rich, hybrid style.
Deeply inspired by the
music and mission of
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor,
Dett’s piano music
springs from the late
Romantic traditions of
florid texture and
embellishment, along with
programmatic titles and
raw emotion. It is
notable for melody
writing inspired by and
paraphrasing
African-American song.
The 18-minute MAGNOLIA
SUITE contains five
movements, any of which
may also be performed
separately. This edition
by Lara Downes provides a
clean, new engraving that
corrects the many errors
and unclear indications
appearing in the
historical
printing.
Robert
Nathaniel Dett was born
in a place that was built
on freedom. The little
village of Drummondville,
Ontario was founded by
enslaved Africans
– Dett’s
ancestors among them
– who traveled the
Underground Railroad out
of the American South
into Canada. Their
journey brought them to a
safe haven, a place where
fortunes and futures
could be transformed in
the span of one
generation, to lives full
of new possibilities. You
could call it “the
place where the rainbow
ends,†which is the
title of the last
movement of Dett’s
Magnolia Suite.When Dett
wrote these pieces, he
was a young teacher at
Lane College in
Tennessee, a historically
Black college that had
been founded in 1882, the
year of his birth. A
place built on freedom,
with the purpose of
educating
newly-emancipated slaves
– a place designed
to nurture the blossoming
of ideas, the vibrant
flowering of minds set
free. This music is
inspired by the gorgeous
splendor of the magnolia
blooms on that college
campus, and also by the
shared histories,
experiences, and
aspirations of the
community that Dett found
there.These five pieces
pay affectionate tribute
to lineage and legacy.
They express gratitude
for the bittersweet
beauties of the present;
nostalgia for the past (a
bit romanticized, as the
past always is); and an
effervescent optimism for
the future that awaits us
in the place where the
rainbow ends.
