Margaret Allison Bonds was born on March 3, 1913, and passed away on April 26, 1972. She is of one of my all-time favorite composers, and her extraordinary life that was filled with so much professional success, as well as personal tragedy, remains an inspiration to me.
Born in Chicago in 1913, Bonds was a ground breaking pianist and composer. As a pianist, she became the first black American soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1933. As a composer, she assimilated the sounds of jazz, blues and calypso into classical repertoire in works for orchestra, a Mass, two ballets, musical theater, voice and choir. Legendary artists such as soprano Leontyne Price performed her works, and Zubin Mehta conducted Bond’s Credo, for baritone, chorus and orchestra at the Los Angeles Symphony. I admire Bonds not only for bringing the sounds of traditional gospel stylings and harmonies into the concert hall, but for integrating what were two very separate musical cultures.
As a child, Bonds studied piano with her mother. She wrote her first work, Marquette Street Blues, at the age of five and was influenced by many black intellectuals who were frequent guests in her home. Langston Hughes was to become a life long friend, and Bonds set many of his writings to music. Florence Price taught Bonds composition while she was in high school, and Bonds performed her Concerto for Piano. After completing musical studies at Northwestern University and Julliard, Bonds wanted to continue with Nadia Boulanger. But she declined Bonds, saying she needed no additional training.
Bonds’s music speaks best for itself. Her interest in Negro spirituals – the secret form of communication used by slaves during the Civil War – led her to create arrangements of them in a variety of settings. She composed Troubled Water in 1967 for piano, and I recorded it for my disc, West of the Sun. It’s an impressive, beautifully crafted work that expresses a powerful, emotional history, drawing it’s material from ‘Wade in the Water’. The refrain and verse appear in different ways, some with complex rhythmic accompaniments. A languid tempo builds into a climax that juxtaposes ’Wade in the Water’ with ‘God’s Gonna Trouble the Water’. https://youtu.be/ozJXgZjiZf
An example of her larger scale writing is The Ballad of the Brown King, a nine movement work for chorus, soloists, and orchestra. It’s text, by Langston Hughes, tells the story of the three wise men focusing on Balthazar, the ‘brown’ king. https://youtu.be/Qsdixi0jVSo
Bonds also wrote many pieces for voice and piano, and her Three Dream Portraits again sets the poetry of Langston Hughes to her music. https://youtu.be/mIr1mT4-wKU