"In over 45 personal interviews, 4 generations of classically trained Black musicians, ranging in age from 17 to 95, tell their peronal stories. Most of these musicians were born, bred, educated, and in all cases, contributed significantly to the musical life of the great city of Philadelphia, a city with a well established and vital Black community"--Jacket.

In his memoir, DR. GEORGE E. ALLEN looks back at a career spanning more than five decades of teaching music to Philadelphia students. Early on in life, he learned about many styles of music, and he took his love of the art to college, where he earned multiple degrees before joining the Philadelphia School District. There, he earned the respect of students, fellow music teachers, and music administrators. It wasn’t easy, but he did it his way and enjoyed positive results. He inspired the same type of dogged effort in his students, relying on a phrase that he placed at the beginning of all his syllabi: “It is better to know than to think you know.” He first heard that on the phone from Ellis Marsalis, the father of jazz musician Wynton and a well-known musician in his own right. Allen adopted the phrase as one of his own mantras, never allowing his students to say “I think” or “I can’t.” Whether you are someone who loves music, an education professional, or someone thinking about becoming a teacher, you can find inspiration in Allen’s love for music, education, and his students. It was time for me to begin serious work on writing about my experience as a music educator in Philadelphia because I did it differently with satisfying results.

"Johnson pursued all phases of his music with unmatched skill and fervor, even to the detriment of his health. At the time of his untimely death in 1844, Johnson had become the most prolific and widely traveled American composer, bandmaster, and performer in our nation's first century."--Jacket.

A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 A provocative interpretation of why classical music in America "stayed white"—how it got to be that way and what can be done about it. In 1893 the composer Antonín Dvorák prophesied a “great and noble school” of American classical music based on the “negro melodies” he had excitedly discovered since arriving in the United States a year before. But while Black music would foster popular genres known the world over, it never gained a foothold in the concert hall. Black composers found few opportunities to have their works performed, and white composers mainly rejected Dvorák’s lead. Joseph Horowitz ranges throughout American cultural history, from Frederick Douglass and Huckleberry Finn to George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and the work of Ralph Ellison, searching for explanations. Challenging the standard narrative for American classical music fashioned by Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, he looks back to literary figures—Emerson, Melville, and Twain—to ponder how American music can connect with a “usable past.” The result is a new paradigm that makes room for Black composers, including Harry Burleigh, Nathaniel Dett, William Levi Dawson, and Florence Price, while giving increased prominence to Charles Ives and George Gershwin. Dvorák’s Prophecy arrives in the midst of an important conversation about race in America—a conversation that is taking place in music schools and concert halls as well as capitols and boardrooms. As George Shirley writes in his foreword to the book, “We have been left unprepared for the current cultural moment. [Joseph Horowitz] explains how we got there [and] proposes a bigger world of American classical music than what we have known before. It is more diverse and more equitable. And it is more truthful.”

From the moment that Joseph Boulogne Saint-Georges poised his violin to play at the court of Louis XVI in eighteenth-century France, the Black presence has been felt in the world of classical music. Today, the names of Leontyne Price and Andre Watts are household words. These are only two of the hundreds of Blacks who have made important contributions to the concert and opera scene. For over a quarter of a century, the author's provocative and often witty review of musical events have appeared in the Black press. In this informal history, he uses some of these pieces as a point of departure for discussion of Blacks in classical music from the eighteenth century to the present day. Included are composers, singers, operas and opera companies, keyboard artists, instrumentalists, conductors, orchestras, choruses, and critics.

*Winner of the Sophie Brody Medal* A moving and uplifting history set to music that reveals the rich life of one of the first internationally renowned female violinists. Spanning generations, from the shores of the Black Sea to the glittering concert halls of New York, The Nightingale's Sonata is a richly woven tapestry centered around violin virtuoso Lea Luboshutz. Like many poor Jews, music offered an escape from the predjudices that dominated society in the last years of the Russian Empire. But Lea’s dramatic rise as an artist was further accentuated by her scandalous relationship with the revolutionary Onissim Goldovsky. As the world around them descends in to chaos, between revolution and war, we follow Lea and her family from Russia to Europe and eventually, America. We cross paths with Pablo Casals, Isadora Duncan, Emile Zola and even Leo Tolstoy. The little girl from Odessa will eventually end up as one of the founding faculty of the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music, but along the way she will lose her true love, her father, and watch a son die young. The Iron Curtain would rise, but through it all, she plays on. Woven throughout this luminous odyssey is the story is Cesar Franck’s “Sonata for Violin and Piano.” As Lea was one of the first-ever internationally recognized female violinists, it is fitting that this pioneer was one of the strongest advocates for this young boundary-pushing composer and his masterwork.