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John Thomas Douglass

{{short description|American composer, violinist, conductor and teacher (1847–1886)}}

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File:The Pilgrim by John Thomas Douglass.png

John Thomas Douglass (1847–1886) was an American composer, virtuoso violinist, conductor and teacher.{{sfn|Bean|Hatch|Brooks|1996|p=168}} He is best known for composing Virginia's Ball (1868), which is generally regarded as the first opera written by a Black American composer. The work is now lost, and his only extant composition is The Pilgrim: Grand Overture (1878) for piano. His biography from James Monroe Trotter's Music and Some Highly Musical People (1878)—in which The Pilgrim survives—reports that he wrote many now lost pieces for piano, orchestra and particularly guitar, which he was known to play.

A highly regarded violinist, Douglass's violin playing received high praise during his lifetime. In addition to his solo career, he traveled with various groups throughout the 1870s, including the Hyers Sisters. He settled in New York by the 1880s and conducted both a music studio and string ensemble. Later in life he led a teaching studio, and among his students was David Mannes who became the concertmaster of the New York Symphony Orchestra. Nearly 30 years after Douglass's death at age 38–39, Mannes founded the Colored Music Settlement School in the memory of his teacher.

Life and career

John Thomas Douglass was born in New York City in 1847.{{sfn|Trotter|1878|p=[https://archive.org/details/musicsomehighlym00trot/page/301/mode/1up 301]}} Virtually nothing else is known about his early life, though it is thought that during his youth—due to a wealthy patron—he was able to study in Europe.{{sfn|Southern|1983|p=[https://archive.org/details/musicofblackamer00south/page/248/mode/2up 248]}}

He settled in New York by the late 1860s.{{sfn|Southern|1983|p=[https://archive.org/details/musicofblackamer00south/page/248/mode/2up 248]}} His three-act opera Virginia's Ball premiered in New York, at the Stuyvesant Institute on Broadway; the music is now lost.{{sfn|Southern|1983|p=[https://archive.org/details/musicofblackamer00south/page/248/mode/2up 248]}} The work was registered with the United States Copyright Office in 1868, and musicologist Eileen Southern presumes that it had been performed the same year.{{sfn|Southern|1983|p=[https://archive.org/details/musicofblackamer00south/page/248/mode/2up 248]}}

In the 1870s he began performing widely, touring with ensembles such as the Georgia Minstrels and the Hyers Sisters.{{sfn|Southern|1983|p=[https://archive.org/details/musicofblackamer00south/page/248/mode/2up 248]}} With the Hyers Sisters, the sisters' father, Samuel B. Hyers, organized a company which included Douglass, tenor Wallace King, John W. Luca of the Luca Family Singers and pianist Alexander C. Taylor.{{sfn|Graham|2015}} He returned to New York in the 1880s, where he conducted a music studio and a string ensemble, the latter of which played for various public entertainments, such as dances.{{sfn|Southern|1983|p=[https://archive.org/details/musicofblackamer00south/page/248/mode/2up 248]}} Contemporary sources describe Douglass as "very justly ranked with the best musicians of [the United States]";{{sfn|Trotter|1878|p=[https://archive.org/details/musicsomehighlym00trot/page/301/mode/1up 301]}} "the master violinist"; and "one of the greatest musicians of the race".{{sfn|Southern|1983|p=[https://archive.org/details/musicofblackamer00south/page/248/mode/2up 248]}} The Encyclopedia of African American Music (2010) notes that Douglass, along with his contemporaries Walter F. Craig and Joseph Douglass—all active in New York—joined their older contemporary Edmond Dédé in the pantheon of major Black violinists of the time.{{sfn|Price III|Kernodle|Maxile|2011|p=[https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofaf0001unse_t4w1/page/246/mode/2up 246]}}{{refn|Joseph Douglass is unrelated to John Thomas Douglass.|group=n}} Craig and John Thomas Douglass in particular obtained a "high level of virtuosity".{{sfn|Glaser|Shipton|Barnett|2003}} He was also known to have played guitar.{{sfn|Trotter|1878|p=[https://archive.org/details/musicsomehighlym00trot/page/301/mode/1up 301]}}

Douglass managed a teaching studio; as Southern explains, "like many concert artists of the time, Douglass could not earn a living solely [performing] with his violin."{{sfn|Southern|1983|p=[https://archive.org/details/musicofblackamer00south/page/248/mode/2up 248]}} His violin students included both David Mannes{{sfn|Bean|Hatch|Brooks|1996|p=168}} and Albert Mando.{{sfn|NYA|1907}}{{sfn|NYA|1912}} Mannes was later a violinist and then concertmaster of the New York Symphony Orchestra, founding the Colored Music Settlement School in 1916 in the memory of Douglass.{{sfn|Bean|Hatch|Brooks|1996|p=168}} Douglass died in 1886 at the age of 38–39 and did not live to see the creation of the school.{{sfn|Bean|Hatch|Brooks|1996|p=168}}{{sfn|Southern|1983|p=[https://archive.org/details/musicofblackamer00south/page/248/mode/2up 248]}}

He has a short biography in James Monroe Trotter's historical study, Music and Some Highly Musical People (1878), written while Douglass was in his thirties.{{sfn|Trotter|1878|p=[https://archive.org/details/musicsomehighlym00trot/page/301/mode/1up 301]}}

Works

File:The Pilgrim A Grand Overture 1.ogg

Only two works of Douglass's are known, Virginia's Ball and The Pilgrim: Grand Overture—only The Pilgrim has survived.{{sfn|Koskoff|2000|p=616 [print: 646]}}{{sfn|Martin|1988|p=138}} He supposedly wrote numerous other works, based on Trotter's assertion that "He has also composed many fine pieces for orchestras and for piano."{{sfn|Trotter|1878|p=[https://archive.org/details/musicsomehighlym00trot/page/301/mode/1up 301]}} Trotter also reported that Douglass arranged and composed a "great deal of music" for guitar.{{sfn|Trotter|1878|p=[https://archive.org/details/musicsomehighlym00trot/page/301/mode/1up 301]}}

Works by other Black composers of this period have generally not survived.{{sfn|Martin|1988|p=138}} Like Douglass, Frederick Elliott Lewis (1846–18?) and Jacob J. Sawyer (1856–1885) only have a single surviving keyboard work,{{refn|{{IMSLP|author=Lewis, Frederick Elliott|cname=Frederick Elliott Lewis}}. {{IMSLP|author=Sawyer, Jacob|cname=Jacob J. Sawyer}}.|group=n}} all published in Music and Some Highly Musical People.{{sfn|Martin|1988|p=138}}{{refn|While the surviving keyboard works by Douglass (The Pilgrim: Grand Overture),{{sfn|Trotter|1878|p=[https://archive.org/details/musicsomehighlym00trot/page/30/mode/2up 30 (appendix)]}} Lewis (Scenes of Youth: Fantasia for Piano),{{sfn|Trotter|1878|p=[https://archive.org/details/musicsomehighlym00trot/page/101/mode/1up 101 (appendix)]}} and Sawyer (Welcome to the Era){{sfn|Trotter|1878|p=[https://archive.org/details/musicsomehighlym00trot/page/22/mode/2up 22 (appendix)]}} are in Music and Some Highly Musical People,{{sfn|Martin|1988|p=138}} Sawyer has a multitude of other works that have survived,{{sfn|Schüler|2014}} while Douglass and Lewis only have their respective keyboard work.{{sfn|Martin|1988|p=138}}|group=n}}

=''Virginia's Ball''=

Virginia's Ball was an opera in 3 acts by John Thomas Douglass.{{sfn|Southern|1983|p=[https://archive.org/details/musicofblackamer00south/page/248/mode/2up 248]}} It was premiered in 1868 at the Stuyvesant Institute on Broadway and is only known to have been performed once; it is now lost.{{sfn|Southern|1983|p=[https://archive.org/details/musicofblackamer00south/page/248/mode/2up 248]}}{{sfn|Koskoff|2000|p=616 [print: 646]}} It is generally considered to be the first opera by a Black composer.{{sfn|Southern|2001}}{{sfn|Burnim|Maultsby|2014|p=301}} However, Southern notes that Harry Lawrence Freeman may be considered the first significant Black composer of opera, as he wrote 14 and had five performed from 1893 to 1947 during his lifetime.{{sfn|Southern|2001}}{{refn|Louisa Melvin Delos Mars was the first Black female composer to write an opera and have it performed. This occurred with her operetta Leoni, the Gypsy Queen, premiered in Providence, Rhode Island in 1889.{{sfn|Kirk|2001|p=[https://archive.org/details/americanopera00kirk/page/110/mode/2up 110]}}|group=n}}{{refn|Throughout the 20th century, Freeman was thought to be the first Black composer to write an opera, until Southern's The Music of Black Americans: A History (1971) revealed Douglass's contribution.{{sfn|de Lerma|1990|p=155}}|group=n}}

Musicologists Mellonee V. Burnim and Portia K. Maultsby note that in the late 19th-century African Americans were working to associate themselves with the "lavish forms of entertainment" in the vein of noted opera composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Gioachino Rossini and Giuseppe Verdi.{{sfn|Burnim|Maultsby|2014|p=301}} The profit from works like Virginia's Ball was likely minuscule.{{sfn|Burnim|Maultsby|2014|p=301}}

=''The Pilgrim''=

Douglass's The Pilgrim: Grand Overture for piano was published by the Lee & Shepard firm in 1878 for Trotter's study.{{sfn|Trotter|1878|p=[https://archive.org/details/musicsomehighlym00trot/page/30/mode/2up 30 (appendix)]}} According to Trotter, Douglass wrote the piece in his twenties (1867–1876).{{sfn|Trotter|1878|p=[https://archive.org/details/musicsomehighlym00trot/page/30/mode/2up 30 (appendix)]}} The piece is 173 bars, in the key of E minor and marked {{lang|it|Andante}} initially, but has many tempo changes throughout: {{lang|it|Andante}}, {{lang|it|Allegro Vivace}}, {{lang|it|Adagio}}, {{lang|it|Allegro}}, {{lang|it|Lento}} and {{lang|it|Allegro}}.{{sfn|Trotter|1878|pp=[https://archive.org/details/musicsomehighlym00trot/page/30/mode/2up 30]–[https://archive.org/details/musicsomehighlym00trot/page/42/mode/2up 43 (appendix)]}} The regular use of scales, tremolos and embellishments evokes the sense of a piano transcription from an orchestral score.{{sfn|Martin|1988|p=138}}

References

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  • {{cite book |editor-last1=Bean |editor-first1=Annemarie |editor-last2=Hatch |editor-first2=James V. |editor-last3=Brooks |editor-first3=McNamara |editor-link3=Brooks McNamara |year=1996 |title=Inside the Minstrel Mask: Readings in Nineteenth-Century Blackface Minstrelsy |publisher=Wesleyan University Press |location=Middletown |isbn=978-0-8195-6300-2 |url={{google books|plainurl=y|id=108FKskkkygC}} }}
  • {{cite book |last1=Burnim |first1=Mellonee V. |authorlink=Mellonee V. Burnim |last2=Maultsby |first2=Portia K. |authorlink2=Portia K. Maultsby |year=2014 |title=African American Music: An Introduction |publisher=Taylor & Francis |location=Abingdon-on-Thames |isbn=978-1-317-93442-4 |url={{google books|plainurl=y|id=Q1dWBQAAQBAJ}} }}
  • {{cite encyclopedia |last1=Glaser |first1=Matt |authorlink1=Matt Glaser |last2=Shipton |first2=Alyn |authorlink2=Alyn Shipton |last3=Barnett |first3=Anthony |authorlink3=Anthony Barnett (poet) |year=2003 |orig-year=2002 |encyclopedia=Grove Music Online |title=Violin, jazz |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |doi=10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.J468100 |isbn=978-1-56159-263-0 |url-access=subscription |url=https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-2000468100 }} {{Grove Music subscription}}
  • {{cite encyclopedia |last=Graham |first=Sandra Jean |year=2015 |orig-year=2013 |encyclopedia=Grove Music Online |title=Hyers Sisters |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |doi=10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.A2284679 |isbn=978-1-56159-263-0 |url-access=subscription |url=https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002284679 }} {{Grove Music subscription}}
  • {{cite book |last=Kirk |first=Elise K. |year=2001 |title=American Opera (Music in American Life) |publisher=University of Illinois Press |location=Champaign |isbn=978-0-252-02623-2 |url=https://archive.org/details/americanopera00kirk }}
  • {{cite book |editor-last=Koskoff |editor-first=Ellen |year=2000 |title=Garland Encyclopedia of World Music |volume=3: The United States and Canada |publisher=Garland Publishing |location=New York |isbn=978-0-8240-4944-7 |url=https://search.alexanderstreet.com/preview/work/bibliographic_entity%7Cbibliographic_details%7C326923 }} {{subscription required}}
  • {{cite journal |last=de Lerma |first=Dominique-René |authorlink=Dominique-René de Lerma |date=Spring 1990 |title=A Musical and Sociological Review of Scott Joplin's "Treemonisha" |journal=Black Music Research Journal |publisher=University of Illinois Press |volume=10 |issue=1 |pages=153–159 |jstor=779549 |doi=10.2307/779549 }}
  • {{cite book |last=Martin |first=Sherrill |year=1988 |title=Feel the Spirit: Studies in Nineteenth-century Afro-American Music |publisher=Greenwood Press |location=Santa Barbara |isbn=978-0-313-26234-0 |url={{google books|plainurl=y|id=uIPDlKlchQ0C}} }}
  • {{cite book |editor-last1=Price III |editor-first1=Emmett G. |editor-last2=Kernodle |editor-first2=Tammy L. |authorlink2=Tammy L. Kernodle |editor-last3=Maxile |editor-first3=Horace |year=2011 |title=Encyclopedia of African American Music |volume=1 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |location=Santa Barbara |isbn=978-0-313-34200-4 |url=https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofaf0001unse_t4w1 }}
  • {{cite encyclopedia |last=Schüler |first=Nico |year=2014 |orig-year=2013 |encyclopedia=Grove Music Online |title=Sawyer, Jacob J. |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |doi=10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.A2267610 |isbn=978-1-56159-263-0 |url-access=subscription |url=https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002267610 }} {{Grove Music subscription}}
  • {{cite book |last=Southern |first=Eileen |authorlink=Eileen Southern |year=1983 |orig-year=1971 |title=The Music of Black Americans: A History |publisher=W.W. Norton & Co. |location=New York |isbn=9780393952797 |oclc=1036776225 |url=https://archive.org/details/musicofblackamer00south }}
  • {{cite encyclopedia |last=Southern |first=Eileen |authorlink=Eileen Southern |year=2001 |encyclopedia=Grove Music Online |title=Freeman, (Harry) Lawrence |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |doi=10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.10187 |isbn=978-1-56159-263-0 |url-access=subscription |url=https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000010187 }} {{Grove Music subscription}}
  • {{cite book |last=Trotter |first=James M. |authorlink=James Monroe Trotter |year=1878 |title=Music and Some Highly Musical People |publisher=Lee and Shepard |location=Boston |oclc=1157161991 |url=https://archive.org/details/musicsomehighlym00trot/mode/2up }}
  • {{cite news |date=August 8, 1907 |title=Albert F. Mando: America's Most Noted Musical Artist, Instructor and Composer |pages=2 |work=The New York Age |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/34494217/?terms=Mando&match=1 |via=Newspapers.com |ref={{sfnRef|NYA|1907}} }}
  • {{cite news |date=October 7, 1912 |title=Prof. Mando Dead |pages=1 |work=The New York Age |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/33461060/?article=4976314b-82b5-4808-9f25-f8f1896aa4ca |via=Newspapers.com |ref={{sfnRef|NYA|1912}} }}

{{refend}}

External links

{{IMSLP|id=Douglass, John Thomas|cname=John Thomas Douglass}}

{{portal bar|Classical music|Opera|United States|Biography|Music}}

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Category:1847 births

Category:1886 deaths

Category:19th-century American classical composers

Category:19th-century classical violinists

Category:19th-century American male musicians

Category:African-American classical composers

Category:African-American male classical composers

Category:African-American opera composers

Category:American opera composers

Category:American classical violinists

Category:American male classical violinists

Category:American male opera composers