Marian Anderson

Note by J. B. Steane











One of these days somebody should draw a map of musical highways and byways, plotting the routes down which the great singers have travelled and marking the points of intersection. An unexpected crossing of paths, happening also in an unlikely place, brought the subject of these notes to the attention of one Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, illustrious tenor and, as it happens, remarkably perceptive writer. Though he failed to get her name quite right, he never forgot her, and years later in his book Voci parallele recalled the occasion, which took place at Ostend in 1935. There, he said, a young black singer appeared in one of the season's major concerts, before an audience small in number, uninterested in approach and inattentive in manner. There was some speculation as to who was this 'blackskin' ('pellenera') who had the audacity to come among them with her spirituals:

"But, at one stroke, at the first sound of this prophetic ('biblica') voice - and unimaginable, unpredictable fusion of contralto, mezzo-soprano and soprano - these indifferent spectators were startled, struck by this torrent of sonority. Who had ever heard a voice like it?"

She sang, in addition to the spirituals, a number of arias, including 'Ombra mai fù' from Handel's Serse; and, says Lauri-Volpi, though it was down in the programme he himself was to give there in a few hours' time, he withdrew it in deference to the young black unknown.

He pays her a further tribute. At the end of the book is a special section headed 'Voci isolate', or voices which have no parallel: in this, 'Mary Anderson' shares honours with Callas and Los Angeles, his teacher Cotogni and, of course, himself, Giacomo Lauri-Volpi.

Most singers have a particular year in which, they will say, came the break-through into, as we hope they will not say, 'the big time'. For Marian Anderson it was 1935. That, certainly, was the year of her concert at Ostend, but more importantly it took her round Europe and included a recital at Salzburg; it also brought her back home to the United States and reintroduced her at the Town Hall in New York. There the great transformation was observed. She had left as the winner of many prizes and a singer of great but somewhat indefinite promise. She came back a polished artist of international stature and in the prime of a magnificent voice. 1935 was also the year in which Kirsten Flagstad arrived in the States, enjoying an immediate and immense success in the opera house; Marian Anderson achieved something very comparable in the concert hall.

At this stage particularly with the contents of the present record in mind, it may be worthwhile recalling what form her recitals were likely to take. I have a programme in front of me now, of a concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London, 5th October 1952. She opened with four arias of Handel and continued with a group of Schubert songs, including 'Der Erlkönig' and 'Der Doppelgänger', two of the most demanding. Most of the groups had their own encore, and here it was 'Die Forelle'. There followed one of those items that look more exciting than they are: 'Pace, pace, mio Dio' from La forza del destino. It was transposed down by at least a full tone, very probably more, and even then sat comfortably within the voice only in certain passages. She used to do this kind of thing quite often (singing 'Casta diva', for instance, in E flat), and it does not rank among the happiest of memories - much better, as I remember it on this occasion, was 'Comin' through the rye' added as an encore and bringing the first half to a much more charming conclusion.

After the interval came songs in English, including Samuel Barber's 'Nocturne', Britten's 'Ploughboy' and Quilter's 'Blow, blow, thou winter wind'. Then it was time for spirituals, with 'He's got the whole world in his hand' as the unforgettable highspot, with its wonderfully varied listing from 'dat crapshootin' man' to 'dat little bits-ababy'. The encores now were Schubert's 'Ave Maria' and two more spirituals, 'There's no hidin' place' and 'All God's chillun'.

If that was a typical programme it by no means suggests the full range of her repertoire. The concert might have opened with some Monteverdi, the Lieder might have been by Schumann, Brahms or Strauss, and the 'art song' group of the second half might have been French (most likely Ravel) or Scandinavian. That was another special area of accomplishment. Like much else, it dated from the years of her European tours in the 1930s during which she met the Finnish pianist Kosti Vehanen who wrote songs for her and became her accompanist. With him she studied the songs of Sibelius, and one of the great inspirations of her life was the visit she paid to the composer at Villa Ainola. Not usually the easiest or most demonstrative of hosts, the old man listened to her, then stood, threw his arms around her and instead of the scheduled coffee called for champagne.

Marian Anderson was, of course, more than the sum total of her programmes; she was more, even, than herself. Inevitably the times involved her in wider issues. It is not true to say that she was the first black singer to achieve distinction in 'classical' music - as Henry Pleasants points out in The Great Singers (London, 1967), she was preceded, if only by a few years, by the tenor Roland Hayes. But hers was a great voice, palpably and appealingly so. Nobody who heard her, in concerts or on the radio or on records, could fail to recognise it, and with this went a personality that was at once dignified and loveable. This, with the evident mastery of her art and the aura of European culture with which she had returned, made her a focal point in the racial movement of the times. In the matter of sheer voice she was comparable to Paul Robeson, but musically she had gone beyond him, and politically she possessed what to white allies of the black cause was a great asset - an avoidance of alignments, factions and slogans, coupled with a reliance on art and humanity. And so, when the test-case arose in 1939, she, as the individual at its centre, could seem almost aloof, an artist and a woman whose undisputed integrity raised her above the arguments, the manoeuvres, claims and counter-claims that raged around her.

The story used to be so familiar that it would scarcely bear repetition, but by this date there will be many to whom it is no more than a dimly remembered bit of hearsay, and perhaps not even that. Briefly, she was due to sing in Washington's Constitution Hall but permission was withheld by the Daughters of the American Revolution. Mrs Roosevelt, the President's wife, resigned from the organisation and the matter became a national issue, with race clearly its subject. In an inspired moment, somebody conceived a great open-air concert at the Lincoln Memorial, and in a triumph of practicality it was arranged for Easter Sunday. Seventy-five thousand turned up, and Howard Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, introduced the singer with the words "Genius draws no colour line". She sang 'My country, 'tis of thee', 'O mio Fernando' from La favorita, Schubert's 'Ave Maria' and some spirituals. No doubt the music and the great voice stirred the emotions, but everybody knew what it was really about.

Similarly, when, in 1955, she was at last invited to appear at the great national opera house, the event was not simply the belated debut of Marian Anderson at the Metropolitan; it was the debut of black America, and the start of a line that continued through Leontyne Price to the great number who have joined and enriched the company. The sadness as far as our singer is concerned was that it came too late. At one time - perhaps when Stanislavski had tried to persuade her to stay in Russia and study Carmen with him on one of her tours in the '30s - an operatic career could surely have been hers; but now she was over fifty years of age, and the voice was in decline. She sang the short role of Ulrica in Un ballo in maschera and was greeted by an overwhelming reception. But uncertainties of tone and intonation were all too obvious - to herself as to others.

On her farewell concert at Carnegie Hall in 1965, Harold Schoenberg wrote in the New York Times that an epoch in American culture had come to an end. The 'personality' article about her the previous day described her as "the woman who has met kings and queens and several presidents, who has sung the Marseillaise for Charles de Gaulle, who must be one of the few women in the world to have been sent a roomful of roses - six hundred of them." She also collected, in her time, some thirty honorary degrees and had been the active United States delegate to the United Nations. On her 75th birthday, in 1977, Congress presented her with a gold medal, and she lived to the grand age of ninety-one, dying on 8th April 1993.

So much for the legend. What this record preserves is the still-living artist. Not the whole of her: I think it has to be stressed that recordings never caught the whole of her. But here are two aspects, and the two cultures which she so magnificently embodied. Taste has changed much regarding the performance of Bach and Handel, but voice and sincerity transcend fashion. Over the spirituals, too, ideas may differ, for hers is a decorous way with them, taming them to the manners of art-song. But here above all is the human warmth and the warmth of voice - a warmth which (I can vouch for this) could spread to the remotest parts of the Albert Hall in London, and, like a mother, raise the audience as a united family. She disciplined us well with the classics, and there we were, at the end, eating out of her hand and clamouring for more.


© 1996 J. B. Steane

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