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about

How fitting that this album begins with two songs by Harry Thacker Burleigh (1866–1949) of Scranton, PA, best known for his published arrangements of spirituals, beginning in 1901 with Plantation Melodies, Old and New. His most famous arrangement was perhaps “Deep River,” still regarded by many as the definitive version. In 1892, a few months after Burleigh entered the National Conservatory of Music in New York, the great Czech composer Antonín Dvorˇák was appointed its director. Burleigh and Dvorˇák soon became fast friends, spending evenings together in which Burleigh would sing spirituals and plantation songs. Many have speculated that the haunting English horn melody in the Largo of Dvorˇák’s “New World” Symphony had its inspiration from those evenings.

Burleigh composed over two hundred original songs. Here are two, published during the height of his success as an acclaimed baritone soloist. First is the touching parlor song “Elysium,” with text by James Weldon Johnson (more famous as author of “Lift Every Voice,” set to music composed by his brother, J. Rosamund Johnson). The second, “Ethiopia Saluting the Colors,” is an unashamedly melodramatic setting of Walt Whitman’s poem of the same name. For Whitman, “Ethiopia”
represented the Black race. An old slave woman, wearing a turban the colors of Ethiopia, salutes the American flag as she watches General Sherman’s troops march by. When a passing Union soldier asks, “Who are you, dusky woman?”, the woman tells of “the cruel slaver” that brought her across the sea as a little child, captured “as the savage beast is caught.” Burleigh’s piano part imitates the sound of snare drums and
briefly quotes the tune “Marching Through Georgia.”

lyrics

Elysium
(James Weldon Johnson)

Your lips to mine,
My heart’s desire,
Let my soul thrill
To their passionate fire;

The world melts away
In the glow of your kiss
And leaves just you and me
This perfect hour of bliss.

Your lips again
Press them to mine,
One more full draught
Of their nectarous wine:

In the folds of your arms
Lull me softly until
There comes the wondrous calm
Of love, so deep and still

credits

from Wide as Heaven: A Century of Song by Black American Composers, released March 1, 2024

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New World Records Brooklyn, New York

Anthology of Recorded Music, Inc., which records under the label New World Records, was founded in 1975.

We are dedicated to the documentation of American music that is largely ignored by the commercial recording companies.

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