Henry F. Gilbert

Gilbert was born in Somerville, Massachusetts, and attended the New England Conservatory; among his teachers were Edward MacDowell, for composition, and Emil Mollenhauer, for violin.

His Negro Episode—adapted from pieces he had heard on field trips—was performed in New York in 1896, and in 1905 he completed Americanesque, an orchestral suite based on three tunes from minstrel shows.

Originally completed in 1908, it was rejected by Karl Muck for public performance in Boston as "niggah music" and remained unperformed until recast as a 20-minute ballet and given on a triple bill by the Metropolitan Opera Company in March 1918, conducted by Pierre Monteux.

[3] It was given to acclaim at the International Festival of Contemporary Music in Frankfurt-am-Main on July 1, 1927, with the composer in attendance, though by this time Gilbert was an invalid, and died less than a year later, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

He had a congenital heart condition known as Tetralogy of Fallot, and his case was published by White and Sprague in the Journal of the American Medical Association.