1. Beside the Ungathered Rice He Lay
2. She dwells by Great Kenhawa's Side
3. Loud He Sang the Psalm of David
4. The Quadroon Girl
5. In Dark Fens of the Dismal Swamp
These five ballads, two of which are performed tonight, were written by Coleridge-Taylor for the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Choral Society, Washington, D.C. The work is scored for SATB (No. 4 is also scored for SSA) and piano or orchestra.
The words are from Longfellow's Poems on Slavery. Longfellow wrote these poems in the latter part of October 1842 aboard ship on a return trip from Germany. These poems were written, according to Longfellow in a letter to John Forster, "to awaken by gentle force soliciting their hearts." Longfellow also wrote that "I believe that everyone has a perfect right to express his opinion on the subject of slavery. . . everyone ought to do so until the public opinion of all Christendom shall penetrate into and change the hearts of the Southerners on this subject."
`The Quadroon Girl' deals with a difficult subject, the abuse of slave women by their white `masters.' The word quadroon is one that in itself many find offensive. The measuring of blackness or whiteness in an individual was a practice of the slave period that illustrated the power of one individual over another to ultimately assert one of life's great indignities. The children of these unions faced a life of confusion, rejection, and often were susceptible to further abuse. Why in fact is our subject quadroon (one quarter black)? Her mother herself must have been one half black and therefore a victim herself. A painful issue from a painful period.
The lines that Longfellow uses that most stir my emotions are:
His heart within him was at strife
With such accursed gains:
For he knew whose passion gave her life
Whose blood ran in her veins.
Chilling and deeply disturbing. The fact remains that we have survived all the indignities and tragedies of the slave period. It is important to know our history and shine the light of truth in the darkest corners. The healing that our nation continues to seek will continue to grow with knowledge and understanding. Our mothers and sisters during this period found what paths of resistance they could.
to the main page of the Cambridge Community Chorus