William Grant Still

All three names, as is peculiarly common for US composers, are required. He was born in Mississippi in 1895 and his father died shortly thereafter. His mother moved with him to Little Rock, Arkansas, where his musical enthusiasms were encouraged by his stepfather. He began learning violin when he was 15, but he also taught himself to play the clarinet, saxophone, oboe, double bass, cello and viola. At his mother's insistence, he attended the historically black Wilberforce College to study medicine …but he ended up conducting the College's band and dabbling in composition and left the college without ever graduating.

Upon finally receiving his father's inheritance, he began studying at Oberlin Conservatory, where he was at last encouraged to compose: lacking the necessary funds, George Whitfields Andrews (another three-barrelled US composer!) agreed to teach him free of charge.

He served in the navy during World War I and returned from that service to New York, where he worked for a music publishing company whilst playing oboe in assorted theatre orchestras and studying with Varèse. He began composing large-scale orchestral works in the 1920s and in 1931 the Rochester Philharmonic performed his Afro-American Symphony: it was the first symphony by a black composer performed by a leading American orchestra. Still likewise was the first black American to conduct a leading orchestra, the first to have an opera performed by a top-rank opera company and one of the first to write for radio, films and television.

Of his style, New Groves writes that, “After a period of avant-garde experiment he turned in a neo-romantic direction, with graceful melodies supported by conventional harmonies, rhythms and timbres. His music has a freshness and individuality that has brought enthusiastic response.” From which one might conclude: he sounds good, but maybe a little conventional? My own instinctive reaction to his music is, often, to think, 'an intelligent person's Eric Coates', for whatever that might be worth! For me, in other words, his music has all the charm, poise and fun of Coates, but in a rather more serious, thoughtful mode.

His output is quite extensive: it includes five symphonies, four ballets, nine operas and multiple choral and chamber works. All of it is highly listenable, with its infectious use of the blues, spirituals and jazz in addition to other ethnic American genres.