Robert Nathaniel Dett

Robert Nathaniel Dett (October 11, 1882 – October 2, 1943), often known as R. Nathaniel Dett and Nathaniel Dett, was a Canadian-American composer, organist, pianist, choral director, and music professor. Born and raised in Canada until the age of 11, he moved to the United States with his family and had most of his professional education and career there. During his lifetime he was a leading Black composer, known for his use of African-American folk songs and spirituals as the basis for choral and piano compositions in the 19th century Romantic style of Classical music.

He was among the first Black composers during the early years after the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) was organized. His works often appeared among the programs of Will Marion Cook's New York Syncopated Orchestra. Dett performed at Carnegie Hall and at the Boston Symphony Hall as a pianist and choir director.

Early life Robert Nathaniel Dett was born in 1882 in Drummondville, Ontario (now part of Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada), to Charlotte (Washington) Dett and Robert T. Dett. Descended from previously enslaved people who had escaped and travelled North, his mother was a native of Drummondville and his father was from the United States. The young Dett studied piano at an early age, showing initial interest when he was three years old and starting piano lessons at the age of five. When he was a child, his mother directed him to study Shakespeare, Longfellow and Tennyson, and commit passages to memory.

In 1893, the family moved over the border to Niagara Falls, New York. At about age 14, Dett played piano for his local church, the Methodist Mission Church, later renamed to R. Nathaniel Dett Memorial Chapel. He studied at the Oliver Willis Halstead Conservatory of Music from 1901 to 1903.

He continued his piano studies at the Lockport Conservatory, matriculating to the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio, where he first encountered the practice of incorporating spirituals in classical music. Some of the music reminded Dett of the spirituals he had learned from his grandmother. He was the first black American to complete the Bachelor of Music degree at Oberlin (1908), for which he studied composition and piano.

His position as a major pianist-composer was earned in 1914. His piece Magnolia was performed at the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Club. On June 3 that year he performed Magnolia and In the Bottoms. The Chicago Evening Post reported that among the works on the "All Colored" program, his works were the most innovative, and it praised his high level of piano skills.

On December 27, 1916, Dett married Helen Elise Smith. She was the first black graduate of the Institute of Musical Art in New York City, which became known as the Juilliard School of performing arts.

In 1918, Dett wrote of his compositional goals:

We have this wonderful store of folk music—the melodies of an enslaved people ... But this store will be of no value unless we utilize it, unless we treat it in such manner that it can be presented in choral form, in lyric and operatic works, in concertos and suites and salon music—unless our musical architects take the rough timber of Negro themes and fashion from it music which will prove that we, too, have national feelings and characteristics, as have the European peoples whose forms we have zealously followed for so long.

Throughout his lifetime, Dett continued to study music, including studies at many prestigious institutions such as the American Conservatory of Music, at Columbia University, Northwestern University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard. He was buried beside his wife as well as his two daughters, in the town of his birth at Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.

Legacy and honours R. Nathaniel Dett British Methodist Episcopal Church, Niagara Falls, Ontario. National Historic Site of Canada In the 2000s, Dett is remembered most for his work in creating music in the style of the European Romantic composers that incorporated elements of African-American spirituals. His music is still performed in the 2000s. Canada's Nathaniel Dett Chorale, founded in 1998, was named for him and performs his music as well as that of other composers of African descent. The chorale is one of many that has recorded his music. In 2022 a previously unknown orchestral version of his Magnolia Suite Part Two: No 4 “Mammy” was found in a US archive.

In 2014, his oratorio The Ordering of Moses was revived by the Cincinnati May Festival, and performed the same week in Music Hall in Cincinnati and at Carnegie Hall in New York. The incident from the world premiere in 1937, when the live broadcast was cut off by the NBC network during the performance, was re-created, using tapes of the announcer. There is no documented account of the reason for the interruption of the broadcast.

In 1934 Dett, and/or his publisher, registered strong objections to saxophonist Frank Trumbauer's swing band adaptation of "Juba Dance", from the suite In the Bottoms. Brunswick Records was compelled to withdraw the recording (#6763) from release.

Dett did little recording of his music. In 1912 he recorded five selections from the Magnolia Suite for QRS piano rolls. These are believed to be the first commercial piano rolls ever made by a black pianist. In 1919 he recorded two selections for Broome Special Phonograph Records, "Mammy" from Magnolia Suite and "Barcarolle" from In the Bottoms. The latter can be found on the CD Lost Sounds, Archeophone ARCH 1005.

The Robert Nathaniel Dett Elementary School in Chicago is named for him.

Awards and honours Bowdoin Literary Prize (1921), for his essay, "The Emancipation of Negro Music", from Harvard. Francis Boott Music Award for his choral composition "Don't be Weary Traveller," from Harvard. Harmon Foundation Award. Listen to the Lambs (1914), "a religious character in the form of an anthem" Music in the Mine (1916), a choral work I'll Never Turn Back no More (1916) O Hear the Lambs A-Cryin''' (1926)