Burleigh, perhaps the greatest living song writer
in America. Among his works are “Five Songs”
by Laurence Hope; “The Young Warrior,” which
became one of the greatest of the war songs;
“The Grey Wolf” and “Ethiopia Saluting the
Colors.” His adaptations of Negro folk-songs
are widely known and he assisted Dvorak in his
“New World Symphony.” R. Nathaniel Dett has written “Listen to the Lambs,” a carol widely
known, and “The Magnolia Suite.” Rosamond
Johnson wrote “Under the Bamboo Tree” and a
dozen popular favorites beside choruses and
marches. Clarence Cameron White has composed
and adapted and Maud Cuney Hare has revived
and explained Creole music. Edmund T. Jenkins
has won medals at the Royal Academy in London.
Among the colored performers on the piano are
R. Augustus Lawson, who has often been soloist
at the concerts of the Hartford Philharmonic
Orchestra; Hazel Harrison, a pupil of Busoni;
and Helen Hagen who took the Sanford scholarship at Yale. Carl Diton is a pianist who has
transcribed many Negro melodies.
Melville Charlton has done excellent work on the organ.
Then we must remember the Negro singers, the “Black Swan” of the early 19th century whose voice compared with Jenny Lind’s; the Hyer sisters, Flora Batson, Florence Cole Talbert, and