Joseph W. Postlewaite

Joseph W. Postlewaite (1827–1889) was an American composer and organizer of bands and orchestras in the 1850s to 1880s.

Early life He was born in Missouri in 1827 and came to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1848. Postlewaite's racial heritage has been debated. He was included in "A History of Negro Musicians" with a brief entry and no documentation of his racial identity. In the St. Louis Census of 1850, Postlewaite is listed as a twenty-three year old "mulatto." However, Postlewaite did apply for a freedom bond in 1850, which suggests his ethnicity was African-American.

Not much is known about Postlewaite's early life. The labor pool in St. Louis expanded with the arrival of European immigrants, and the need for slaves diminished. This affected free blacks as well, deteriorating their economic position. At that time, all "free colored" were required to post bond for a license to live in the state of Missouri. When Postlewaite arrived in St. Louis, at age twenty-one, as a free man, he applied for this bond. Postlewaite's bond is notable because most individuals signed their bonds with an X, but Postlewaite signed his bond himself, and with the signature of a cultured individual. She was also related to the Chouteaus, the founding family of St. Louis. Postlewaite was familiar with compositional practices of these Euro-American dance genres, as well as those of dance and folk tunes of the African American community.

His compositions, with respect to formal structure and harmonic structure, often reflect the Euro-American dance forms, being often in Minuet-trio form, Rondo, or a Ternary form, often deploying five basic chords (tonic, dominant, supertonic, subdominant, leading tone) Some of his pieces, however, fuse the large-scale structure of Euro-American social dance music with folksong tunes. Folksong-inspired pieces often consist of a four-measure introduction followed by five sixteen-measure sections that are each repeated, but are not organized according to a particular tonal plan aside from keys related by intervals of a fourth (e.g. C-G-C-F-F in Joplin's "Strenuous Life") and utilize folk/dance tunes popular in African American communities. By comparison, Euro-American social dance music is designed around eight- or sixteen-measure sections that are repeated, according to closely related keys (i.e. tonic, dominant, subdominant). In Postlewaite's "St. Louis Grey's Quick Step", for example, the large-scale form of the work is the minuet-trio, consisting of three four-measure introductions followed by six sixteen-measure sections. The key centers for these sections are C-C-F-?-C-C.

Works

NOTE: The dates in parentheses have been inferred from a combination of plate numbers and rear-cover catalogue listings.