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“A Long Ways from Home?” Hampton Institute and the Early History of “Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2012

FELICIA M. MIYAKAWA
FELICIA M. MIYAKAWA*
Affiliation:
fmmiyakawa@gmail.com
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Abstract

The history of the well-known spiritual “Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child,” is wrapped up in the legacy of the Hampton Students, an ensemble of African American students modeled after the Fisk Jubilee Singers. The song's inclusion in the 1901 edition of Cabin and Plantation Songs as Sung by the Hampton Students solidified its place in the growing canon of spirituals. Although the tune remained in Hampton Institute's repertoire through subsequent printings of Cabin and Plantation Songs, it also entered the art music world, quickly becoming a favorite of performers and arrangers. But even as the tune journeyed away from Hampton, it remained tightly bound to composers, performers, and choir directors affiliated with what is now Hampton University. The story of “Motherless Child's” entrance into Hampton's repertoire around the turn of the twentieth century, its move beyond Hampton, and its later return is the story of the complex racial, cultural, and geographical relationships that have characterized the Institute's history. The telling of this story reveals a networked cast of characters, all invested in the health and growth of African American music in the early twentieth century, crossing paths in Tennessee, Mississippi, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, London, and, of course, Virginia.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Society for American Music , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , February 2012 , pp. 1 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Music 2012

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References

References

Aldrich, Richard. “Mr. Taylor's Concert: A Negro Composer of Distinction Produces His Own Music in Mendelssohn Hall.” New York Times, 17 November 1906.Google Scholar
Allen, William Francis, Ware, Charles Pickard, and Garrison, Lucy McKim, eds. Slave Songs of the United States. New York: A Simpson and Co., 1867.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartholomew, Marshall. Songs of Yale. 16th ed. New York: G. Schirmer, 1953.Google Scholar
Barton, William E. D. D. “Hymns of the Slave and Freedman.” New England Magazine 25/5 (January 1899): 609–24.Google Scholar
Barton, William E. D. D.Old Plantation Hymns: A Collection of Hitherto Unpublished Medolies of Slave and the Freedman, with Historical and Descriptive Notes. Boston: Lamson, Wolffe, and Company, 1899.Google Scholar
Brooks, Tim. Lost Sounds: Blacks and The Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890–1919. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Burleigh, Harry T.Album of Negro Spirituals. New York: G. Ricordi, 1917.Google Scholar
Burlin, Natalie Curtis. “Black Singers and Players.” Musical Quarterly 5/4 (October 1919): 499–504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burrage, Henry Sweetser, and Stubbs, Albert Roscoe. Genealogical and Family History of the State of Maine. New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1909.Google Scholar
“Calls ‘Coon Songs’ Rot: S. Coleridge-Taylor Says They Are Not Negro Melodies.” New York Times, 13 November 1904.Google Scholar
Chickering, Frances E. “The Coleridge-Taylor Concerts.” Southern Workman 34/1 (January 1905): 54–56.Google Scholar
Chickering, Frances E. “The Hiawatha Trilogy.” Southern Workman 32/7 (July 1903): 317–19.Google Scholar
[Chickering, Frances E.] “Negro Melodies.” Southern Workman 34/5 (May 1905): 265.Google Scholar
Coleridge-Taylor, Samuel. Twenty-Four Negro Melodies Transcribed for the Piano. Preface by Washington, Booker T.. Bryn Mawr, PA: Oliver Ditson, 1905.Google Scholar
Dett, R. Nathaniel. Review of The Book of American Negro Spirituals, ed. Johnson, James Weldon and Johnson, J. Rosamond. Southern Workman 54/12 (December 1925): 564.Google Scholar
Dett, R. Nathaniel, ed. Religious Folk-Songs of the Negro as Sung at the Hampton Institute. Hampton, VA: Hampton Institute Press, 1927.Google Scholar
DuBois, W. E. B.The Souls of Black Folk. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1903.Google Scholar
Drew, Bessie. Religious Folksongs of the Negro as sung on the Plantations. Hampton, VA: Hampton Institute Press, 1909.Google Scholar
Edwards, Vernon H., and Mark, Michael L.. “Clarence Cameron White.” Black Perspective in Music 9/1 (Spring 1981): 51–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fenner, Thomas P., Rathbun, Frederic G., and Cleaveland, Bessie, eds. Cabin and Plantation Songs as Sung by the Hampton Students. 3rd ed. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1901.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fenno Heath, obituary, Daily Press (Newport News, VA), 25 February 1960.Google Scholar
Floyd, Samuel A. Jr. “The Invisibility and Fame of Harry T. Burleigh: Retrospect and Prospect.” Black Music Research Journal 24/2 (Autumn 2004): 179–94.Google Scholar
Graham, Sandra J. “The Fisk Jubilee Singers and the Concert Spiritual: The Beginnings of an American Tradition.” Ph.D. diss., New York University, 2001.Google Scholar
Graham, Sandra J. “Reframing Negro Spirituals in the Late Nineteenth Century.” In Music, American Made: Essays in Honor of John Graziano, ed. Koegel, John, 603–27. Detroit Monographs in Musicology/Studies in Music. Sterling Heights, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2011.Google Scholar
“Hampton Incidents.” Southern Workman 34/1 (January 1905): 59.Google Scholar
Heath, Fenno Jr., arr. “Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child.” In Yale Glee Club Series, Selected, Arranged and Edited by Marshall Bartholomew and Fenno Heath. Milwaukee, WI: G. Schirmer, 1957.Google Scholar
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth. “Negro Spirituals.” Atlantic Monthly 19 (June 1867): 685–94.Google Scholar
Jannifer, Ellsworth. “Samuel Coleridge-Taylor in Washington.” Phylon 28/2 (2nd Quarter 1967): 185–96.Google Scholar
Johnson, James Weldon. “The Larger Success.” Southern Workman 52 (September 1923): 427–36.Google Scholar
Johnson, James Weldon, ed., and Johnson, J. Rosamond, arr. The Book of American Negro Spirituals. New York: Viking, 1925, 1926; reprint, New York: Da Capo, 1977.Google Scholar
Lipsitz, George. Footsteps in the Dark: The Hidden Histories of Popular Music. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Locke, Alain. “The Negro Spirituals.” In The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Locke, Alain, 199–211. New York: Albert & Charles Boni, 1925; reprint, New York: Macmillan, 1992.Google Scholar
Marsh, J. B. T.The Story of the Jubilee Singers with Their Songs. Revised ed. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., 1881.Google Scholar
“A Musical Success.” Southern Workman 33/12 (December 1904): 646.Google Scholar
Patterson, Michelle Wick. Natalie Curtis Burlin: A Life in Native and African American Music. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Rathbun, Frederic G. “The Indian as Musician.” Southern Workman 20/1 (January 1891): 141.Google Scholar
Rathbun, Frederic G. “The Negro Music of the South.” Southern Workman 22/11 (November 1893): 173.Google Scholar
“Review of Twenty-Four Negro Melodies.” New York Times, 2 April 1905.Google Scholar
“S. Coleridge-Taylor's Coming.” New York Times, 28 August 1904.Google Scholar
Sears, Ann. “‘A Certain Strangeness’: Harry T. Burleigh's Art Songs and Spiritual Arrangements.” Black Music Research Journal 24/2 (Autumn 2004): 227–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Self, Geoffrey. The Hiawatha Man: The Life and Work of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1995.Google Scholar
Seward, Theodore. Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University. New York: Biglow and Main, 1871.Google Scholar
Shirley, Wayne D. “The Coming of ‘Deep River.’” American Music 15/4 (Winter 1997): 493–534.Google Scholar
Simpson, Anne Key. Follow Me: The Life and Music of R. Nathaniel Dett. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Simpson, Anne Key. Hard Trials: The Life and Music of Harry T. Burleigh. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Snyder, Jean E. “A Great and Noble School of Music: Dvořák, Harry T. Burleigh, and the African American Spiritual.” In Dvořák in America, 1892–1895, ed. Tibbetts, John C., 121–48. Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Snyder, Jean E. “Scandalize My Name: Louise Alston Burleigh Becomes Princess Nadonis Shawa.” Paper presented at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Society for American Music, Ottawa, Canada.Google Scholar
Southern, Eileen. The Music of Black Americans: A History. 3rd ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997.Google Scholar
Spencer, Jon Michael Spencer. “R. Nathaniel Dett's Views on the Preservation of Black Music.” Black Perspective in Music 10/2 (Autumn 1982): 132–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stanley, May. “R. N. Dett of Hampton Institute Helping to Lay Foundation for Negro Music of Future.” Musical America 6 (July 1918): 17. Reprinted in Black Perspective in Music 1/1 (Spring 1973): 65.Google Scholar
Thompson, Randall. Liner notes to When I Have Sung My Songs: The American Art Song, 1900–1940. New World NW 247, 1976, compact disc.Google Scholar
Trice, Patricia Johnson. Choral Arrangements of the African-American Spirituals: Historical Overview and Annotated Listings. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998.Google Scholar
“Visit of English Negro Composer Emphasizes American Prejudice.” New York Times, 27 November 1904.Google Scholar
White, Clarence Cameron, arr. Forty Negro Spirituals Compiled and Arranged for Solo Voice. New York: Theodore Presser, 1927.Google Scholar
“William E. Barton Letters: Biographical History.” William E. Barton Letters, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University. http://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/b/barton_we.htm.Google Scholar
Southern Workman 42/2 (February 1913): 71.Google Scholar
Southern Workman 43/7 (July 1914): 420.Google Scholar
Southern Workman 47/2 (February 1918): 105.Google Scholar
Southern Workman 47/5 (May 1918): 250.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Southern Workman 47/6 (July 1918): 367.Google Scholar
Southern Workman 47/11 (November 1918): 554.Google Scholar
The Hampton Student 5/4 (1 May 1914).Google Scholar
“History of Hampton Institute Music Department from 1873–1971.” Music Department Collection, History Folder.Google Scholar
Letter from Dr. Marshall Bartholomew to William H. Scoville, 1 March 1934. Music Collection, Glee Club Box, Yale Glee Club folder.Google Scholar
Letters from Theodore Metz (of the Metz School of Music in Stamford, CT), addressed to the Musical Director of the Hampton Glee Club, 25 February 1907. Dr. Robert Russa Moton collection.Google Scholar
Letter from William H. Scoville to Dr. Marshall Bartholomew, 20 February 1934. Music Collection, Glee Club Box, Yale Glee Club folder.Google Scholar
R. Nathaniel Dett, “Report to Dr. Frissell, Principal,” 1914.Google Scholar
R. Nathaniel Dett, “Report on the Department of Music at Hampton Institute.”Google Scholar

References

Aldrich, Richard. “Mr. Taylor's Concert: A Negro Composer of Distinction Produces His Own Music in Mendelssohn Hall.” New York Times, 17 November 1906.Google Scholar
Allen, William Francis, Ware, Charles Pickard, and Garrison, Lucy McKim, eds. Slave Songs of the United States. New York: A Simpson and Co., 1867.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartholomew, Marshall. Songs of Yale. 16th ed. New York: G. Schirmer, 1953.Google Scholar
Barton, William E. D. D. “Hymns of the Slave and Freedman.” New England Magazine 25/5 (January 1899): 609–24.Google Scholar
Barton, William E. D. D.Old Plantation Hymns: A Collection of Hitherto Unpublished Medolies of Slave and the Freedman, with Historical and Descriptive Notes. Boston: Lamson, Wolffe, and Company, 1899.Google Scholar
Brooks, Tim. Lost Sounds: Blacks and The Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890–1919. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Burleigh, Harry T.Album of Negro Spirituals. New York: G. Ricordi, 1917.Google Scholar
Burlin, Natalie Curtis. “Black Singers and Players.” Musical Quarterly 5/4 (October 1919): 499–504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burrage, Henry Sweetser, and Stubbs, Albert Roscoe. Genealogical and Family History of the State of Maine. New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1909.Google Scholar
“Calls ‘Coon Songs’ Rot: S. Coleridge-Taylor Says They Are Not Negro Melodies.” New York Times, 13 November 1904.Google Scholar
Chickering, Frances E. “The Coleridge-Taylor Concerts.” Southern Workman 34/1 (January 1905): 54–56.Google Scholar
Chickering, Frances E. “The Hiawatha Trilogy.” Southern Workman 32/7 (July 1903): 317–19.Google Scholar
[Chickering, Frances E.] “Negro Melodies.” Southern Workman 34/5 (May 1905): 265.Google Scholar
Coleridge-Taylor, Samuel. Twenty-Four Negro Melodies Transcribed for the Piano. Preface by Washington, Booker T.. Bryn Mawr, PA: Oliver Ditson, 1905.Google Scholar
Dett, R. Nathaniel. Review of The Book of American Negro Spirituals, ed. Johnson, James Weldon and Johnson, J. Rosamond. Southern Workman 54/12 (December 1925): 564.Google Scholar
Dett, R. Nathaniel, ed. Religious Folk-Songs of the Negro as Sung at the Hampton Institute. Hampton, VA: Hampton Institute Press, 1927.Google Scholar
DuBois, W. E. B.The Souls of Black Folk. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1903.Google Scholar
Drew, Bessie. Religious Folksongs of the Negro as sung on the Plantations. Hampton, VA: Hampton Institute Press, 1909.Google Scholar
Edwards, Vernon H., and Mark, Michael L.. “Clarence Cameron White.” Black Perspective in Music 9/1 (Spring 1981): 51–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fenner, Thomas P., Rathbun, Frederic G., and Cleaveland, Bessie, eds. Cabin and Plantation Songs as Sung by the Hampton Students. 3rd ed. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1901.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fenno Heath, obituary, Daily Press (Newport News, VA), 25 February 1960.Google Scholar
Floyd, Samuel A. Jr. “The Invisibility and Fame of Harry T. Burleigh: Retrospect and Prospect.” Black Music Research Journal 24/2 (Autumn 2004): 179–94.Google Scholar
Graham, Sandra J. “The Fisk Jubilee Singers and the Concert Spiritual: The Beginnings of an American Tradition.” Ph.D. diss., New York University, 2001.Google Scholar
Graham, Sandra J. “Reframing Negro Spirituals in the Late Nineteenth Century.” In Music, American Made: Essays in Honor of John Graziano, ed. Koegel, John, 603–27. Detroit Monographs in Musicology/Studies in Music. Sterling Heights, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2011.Google Scholar
“Hampton Incidents.” Southern Workman 34/1 (January 1905): 59.Google Scholar
Heath, Fenno Jr., arr. “Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child.” In Yale Glee Club Series, Selected, Arranged and Edited by Marshall Bartholomew and Fenno Heath. Milwaukee, WI: G. Schirmer, 1957.Google Scholar
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth. “Negro Spirituals.” Atlantic Monthly 19 (June 1867): 685–94.Google Scholar
Jannifer, Ellsworth. “Samuel Coleridge-Taylor in Washington.” Phylon 28/2 (2nd Quarter 1967): 185–96.Google Scholar
Johnson, James Weldon. “The Larger Success.” Southern Workman 52 (September 1923): 427–36.Google Scholar
Johnson, James Weldon, ed., and Johnson, J. Rosamond, arr. The Book of American Negro Spirituals. New York: Viking, 1925, 1926; reprint, New York: Da Capo, 1977.Google Scholar
Lipsitz, George. Footsteps in the Dark: The Hidden Histories of Popular Music. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Locke, Alain. “The Negro Spirituals.” In The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Locke, Alain, 199–211. New York: Albert & Charles Boni, 1925; reprint, New York: Macmillan, 1992.Google Scholar
Marsh, J. B. T.The Story of the Jubilee Singers with Their Songs. Revised ed. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., 1881.Google Scholar
“A Musical Success.” Southern Workman 33/12 (December 1904): 646.Google Scholar
Patterson, Michelle Wick. Natalie Curtis Burlin: A Life in Native and African American Music. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Rathbun, Frederic G. “The Indian as Musician.” Southern Workman 20/1 (January 1891): 141.Google Scholar
Rathbun, Frederic G. “The Negro Music of the South.” Southern Workman 22/11 (November 1893): 173.Google Scholar
“Review of Twenty-Four Negro Melodies.” New York Times, 2 April 1905.Google Scholar
“S. Coleridge-Taylor's Coming.” New York Times, 28 August 1904.Google Scholar
Sears, Ann. “‘A Certain Strangeness’: Harry T. Burleigh's Art Songs and Spiritual Arrangements.” Black Music Research Journal 24/2 (Autumn 2004): 227–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Self, Geoffrey. The Hiawatha Man: The Life and Work of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1995.Google Scholar
Seward, Theodore. Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University. New York: Biglow and Main, 1871.Google Scholar
Shirley, Wayne D. “The Coming of ‘Deep River.’” American Music 15/4 (Winter 1997): 493–534.Google Scholar
Simpson, Anne Key. Follow Me: The Life and Music of R. Nathaniel Dett. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Simpson, Anne Key. Hard Trials: The Life and Music of Harry T. Burleigh. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Snyder, Jean E. “A Great and Noble School of Music: Dvořák, Harry T. Burleigh, and the African American Spiritual.” In Dvořák in America, 1892–1895, ed. Tibbetts, John C., 121–48. Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Snyder, Jean E. “Scandalize My Name: Louise Alston Burleigh Becomes Princess Nadonis Shawa.” Paper presented at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Society for American Music, Ottawa, Canada.Google Scholar
Southern, Eileen. The Music of Black Americans: A History. 3rd ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997.Google Scholar
Spencer, Jon Michael Spencer. “R. Nathaniel Dett's Views on the Preservation of Black Music.” Black Perspective in Music 10/2 (Autumn 1982): 132–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stanley, May. “R. N. Dett of Hampton Institute Helping to Lay Foundation for Negro Music of Future.” Musical America 6 (July 1918): 17. Reprinted in Black Perspective in Music 1/1 (Spring 1973): 65.Google Scholar
Thompson, Randall. Liner notes to When I Have Sung My Songs: The American Art Song, 1900–1940. New World NW 247, 1976, compact disc.Google Scholar
Trice, Patricia Johnson. Choral Arrangements of the African-American Spirituals: Historical Overview and Annotated Listings. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998.Google Scholar
“Visit of English Negro Composer Emphasizes American Prejudice.” New York Times, 27 November 1904.Google Scholar
White, Clarence Cameron, arr. Forty Negro Spirituals Compiled and Arranged for Solo Voice. New York: Theodore Presser, 1927.Google Scholar
“William E. Barton Letters: Biographical History.” William E. Barton Letters, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University. http://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/b/barton_we.htm.Google Scholar

Untitled Hampton Publications

Southern Workman 42/2 (February 1913): 71.Google Scholar
Southern Workman 43/7 (July 1914): 420.Google Scholar
Southern Workman 47/2 (February 1918): 105.Google Scholar
Southern Workman 47/5 (May 1918): 250.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Southern Workman 47/6 (July 1918): 367.Google Scholar
Southern Workman 47/11 (November 1918): 554.Google Scholar
The Hampton Student 5/4 (1 May 1914).Google Scholar

Hampton Archive documents

“History of Hampton Institute Music Department from 1873–1971.” Music Department Collection, History Folder.Google Scholar
Letter from Dr. Marshall Bartholomew to William H. Scoville, 1 March 1934. Music Collection, Glee Club Box, Yale Glee Club folder.Google Scholar
Letters from Theodore Metz (of the Metz School of Music in Stamford, CT), addressed to the Musical Director of the Hampton Glee Club, 25 February 1907. Dr. Robert Russa Moton collection.Google Scholar
Letter from William H. Scoville to Dr. Marshall Bartholomew, 20 February 1934. Music Collection, Glee Club Box, Yale Glee Club folder.Google Scholar
R. Nathaniel Dett, “Report to Dr. Frissell, Principal,” 1914.Google Scholar
R. Nathaniel Dett, “Report on the Department of Music at Hampton Institute.”Google Scholar