Home / Full timeline / Harty Burleigh receives the Spingarn Medal, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s highest honor for his excellence of creative music.
Harty Burleigh receives the Spingarn Medal, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s highest honor for his excellence of creative music.
1917 (Feb 1)
For excellence of creative music, Harry T. Burleigh was awarded the Spingarn Medal, the NAACP's highest honor. Burleigh was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1866. Although he demonstrated an aptitude for music as a child, he did not receive formal training until 1892, when he began his studies at the National Conservatory of Music in New York. Burleigh majored in orchestral and vocal music. During his sophomore year, Burleigh studied under the famous Czech composer Antonin Dvorak, who took the young Black student as a protégé. Two years after entering the conservatory, Burleigh was on his way to a career of singing. He became the first Black soloist at St. George's Episcopal Church in New York and at the Temple Emanu-El. His European tours included a performance before King Edward WI in England. In his senior year, Burleigh became a voice instructor at The Conservatory, a position he held for two years after his graduation. Around 1900, Burleigh began to shift his attention from singing to composing. His first compositions were sentimental ballads, then he branched out into choral pieces, spirituals, and miscellaneous works. Among his better-known compositions are: Six Plantation Melodies for Violin and Piano (1901), Southland Sketches (1916), The Prayer (1915), Little Mother of Mine (1917), Deep River (1916), and The Lovely Dark and Lonely One (1935). "Contemporary critics" lauded Burleigh's imagination and his masterly musicianship. Of his spiritual compositions Burleigh wrote, "My desire was to preserve them in harmonies that belong to modern methods of tonal progression without robbing the melodies of their racial flavor." In addition to the Spingarn Medal, Burleigh was the recipient of honorary degrees from Atlanta University and Howard University.
References:
- • Hornsby, Alton. Chronology of African-American History: Significant Events and People from 1619 to the Present. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995.