10 brilliant pieces of music by Black composers

8 October 2024, 17:26 | Updated: 8 October 2024, 18:07

Joplin, Marsalis, Wallen. Picture: Getty

By Will Padfield

For centuries the world of classical music has been a somewhat one-sided story, with some brilliant music written by Black composers being wrongly neglected.

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October is Black History Month, and this year’s theme is ‘Reclaiming Narratives’, with a strong emphasis on recognising and correcting the narratives of Black history and culture.

To honour this, we are celebrating some of the best pieces of classical music by Black composers that you should sit down, listen to and enjoy...

Scott Joplin: Bethena, A Concert Waltz (1905)

Dubbed the ‘King of Ragtime’, Scott Joplin is best known today as the composer of the hugely popular Maple Leaf Rag and The Entertainer.
However, Joplin was also a prolific composer of classical music, even writing an opera A Guest of Honor, which has sadly been lost.
Thankfully, we can hear an example of Joplin’s skill for writing in a style less associated with him in his concert waltz, Bethena.
The piece was rediscovered as a result of the Joplin revival in the 1970s and combines two different styles of music, the classical waltz and the rag and demonstrates Joplin's excellence as a classical composer. It’s a wonderful piece of music that will uplift you.

Bethena - Scott Joplin Original
Errollyn Wallen: Jesus on a train (1994)

Appointed in 2024 as Master of the King’s Music by His Royal Highness King Charles III, Errollyn Wallen’s astonishing compositional output includes eight operas, a host of orchestral and chamber music works and music for brass band.
In this beautiful, calming song, Wallen paints a delicate and intimate picture of a train journey, with the piano wistfully bubbling along. Enjoy this gem of a piece here in a transcription for Piano and Trumpet.

Errollyn Wallen: Jesus on a Train, played by Illiam Quane & Aaron Breeze
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: four Characteristic Waltzes, op.22 (1898)

Fighting against racial prejudice during his short life, Coleridge-Taylor was given a well-deserved foot in the door by Edward Elgar who recommended him to the Three Choirs Festival in Hereford, Gloucester and Worcester, where his Ballade in A minor was premiered.
Elgar was made aware of Taylor’s talent thanks to his friend August Jaeger, a highly influential music critic and editor of publisher Novello, who advised the composer that Taylor was “a genius.”
In this piece, Taylor exhibits his command of orchestral writing, skilfully marrying African American folk music with a sound world reminiscent of contemporaries Dvořák and Rachmaninov.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor : Four Characteristic Waltzes, for orchestra Op. 22 (1898)
Florence Price: Ethiopia's Shadow in America for orchestra (1932)

This fantastic orchestral tone poem tells the story of the journey of a black slave being bought to America.
The brooding, impassioned start showcases Price’s compositional prowess, with rich orchestration and each section of the orchestra being put to good use to deliver a dramatic narrative. The second section of the piece is more playful, with the composer integrating elements of traditional dance music into the warm classical sound world, giving the piece a unique and distinctive mix.

Florence Price: "Ethiopia's Shadow in America" for orchestra (1932)
Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges: Quartet no. 4 in C minor, op.1 (1771)

A contemporary of Mozart, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges is remembered today as the first classical composer of African origins.
Dubbed by former US president John Adams as “the most accomplished man in Europe,” he was not only a prolific composer, but also a prestigiously talented violinist, fencer and conductor.
This stormy string Quartet showcases his compositional skill, in a piece that deserves to be heard alongside the more well-known Quartets of Haydn, Beethoven and Mozart.

Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges - Quartet no. 4 in C minor op. 1, I. Allegro Moderato
Margaret Bonds: The Ballad of the Brown King: IX. Alleluia (1954)

A student of Florence Price’s, Margaret Bonds is perhaps best-known for her setting ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hand’, which she arranged for soprano Leontyne Price in 1963. She also collaborated closely with the leading poet Langston Hughes, writing music that celebrated African American culture and values at the time of the Civil Rights Movement.
In this sublime and quirky piece, Bonds creates a highly original sound world, combining European, Jazz and Calypso music. Other musical influences include four-part hymn and gospel music. It’s well worth adding to your playlist – enjoy listening to it here.

The Ballad of the Brown King: IX. Alleluia
William Grant Still Afro-American Symphony - III. Animato (1930)

The word “prolific” is often overused, but in the case of William Grant Still, its use is totally justified. He composed more than 150 works in his lifetime, including five symphonies and eight operas, the most famous of which is his ‘Afro-American’ Symphony No. 1.
He was the first African American to conduct a major American symphony orchestra, the first to have an opera produced by a major opera company, the first to have a symphony performed by a leading orchestra, and the first to have an opera performed on national TV. He also found time to moonlight as an oboist, conductor and jazz arranger.
This fun piece shows his jazz influences, with pulsating rhythms throughout, in a thick orchestral texture that is totally Hollywood.

William Grant Still: Afro-American Symphony - III. Animato
George Walker, Lilacs (1996)

The work, scored for soprano soloist and orchestra, was the unanimous choice of the Pulitzer Prize jury, making Walker the first African-American composer to be awarded the prize.
A setting of the 1865 poem when Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d by Walt Whitman, Walker conjures up a dark and mysterious sound world in this modern masterpiece, sparing no orchestral resources to assist him create music which matches the moody text. It's distinctly modern, yet highly accessible, making it a timeless classic.

George Walker: "Lilacs" | The Orchestra Now
Wynton Marsalis: A Fiddler's Tale Suite, The Fiddler's March (1998)

Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis is a musician whose output spans many genres. Equally at home performing classical masterpieces as he is leading a jazz ensemble from the trumpet, he became the first jazz musician to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music with his oratorio Blood on the Fields, written in 1997.
Since then, his inventive and infectious jazz, gospel and spiritual-infused compositions have become some of the most important new works to hit classical concert halls, recently composing his violin concerto, a work composed for violinist Nicola Benedetti, that's been a hit since 2019.
In a Fiddler’s tale suite, written in 1998, we can hear the fusion of Marsalis’s musical influences. The piece is at once distinctively groovy, but the use of Bassoon and trombone give it an earthy feel, highly reminiscent of Stravinsky’s ‘A Soldier’s Tale’ which the work is a direct response to. It sounds like Stravinsky, but much cooler.

A Fiddler's Tale Suite: The Fiddler's March
Francis Johnson: The New Bird Waltz (C.1818)

Francis ‘Frank’ Johnson was a celebrated and widely-published Philadelphia composer, known for being the first African American composer to have his works printed as sheet music.
He played the violin and keyed bugle, and wrote over 200 pieces – including Ethiopian songs, operatic airs and marches.
A contemporaneous account by Philadelphia resident, John Cromwell, remembers Johnson’s influential work and pioneering brass band, which was “the leading military band at all the famous parades and fashionable functions.”
Sadly, not many scores remain as Johnson taught most of his pieces to his musicians by ear, as opposed to writing them down on paper.
Thankfully, several of his pieces do survive to this day, including this brilliant short piece.

28 - The New Bird Waltz by Francis Johnson