Afro-American Symphony

1 in A-flat major, is a 1930 composition by William Grant Still, the first symphony written by an African American and performed for a United States audience by a leading orchestra.

It combines a fairly traditional symphonic form with blues progressions and rhythms that were characteristic of popular African-American music at the time.

[citation needed] Still used quotes from four poems by early 20th-century African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar as epigraphs for each symphonic movement.

Sketches (1924) for the symphony, including a layout of its four movements, are found in a journal which Still was using to collect material for an opera called Rashana, which he never finished.

In his journal, Still wrote: "I seek in the 'Afro-American Symphony' to portray not the higher type of colored American, but the sons of the soil, who still retain so many of the traits peculiar to their African forebears; who have not responded completely to the transforming effect of progress.

"[2]Although he had received instruction from (among others) the French modernist composer Edgard Varèse, Still used a traditional tonal idiom in the Afro-American Symphony, infused with blues-inspired melodic lines and harmonic colorings.

[citation needed] This movement is based on the poem, "An Ante-Bellum Sermon" by Dunbar, which is about emancipation and citizenship of the blacks in America.

The lines quoted by Still in the score are as follows: The fourth movement, lento, con risoluzione, or as Still titled it in "Rashana," "Aspiration," begins with a hymn-like section, and continues on in a modal fashion, eventually ending with an upbeat and lively finale.