A man of many “firsts,” William Grant Still is hailed as “the Dean of African American Composers” for his laundry list of achievements. Still was born in the small town of Woodville, Mississippi, on the 11th of May, 1895, but his mother moved to Little Rock with her infant son shortly after the death of her husband in late 1895. Still and his mother lived with his grandmother, while his mother worked as a school teacher. In 1904, Still’s mother married a railway postal clerk, Charles Benjamin Shepperson. William's interest in music was cultivated by his stepfather, who took him to operettas and bought him recordings of classical music. With Shepperson’s support, he studied violin in 1908 with American violinist William Price, who lived for a short time in Little Rock. Still later recalled, “I knew then that I would be happy only if someday I could compose operatic music, and I have definitely leaned toward a lyric style for that reason.”
William grew up listening to his grandmother tell stories about her life as a slave on a plantation in Georgia. And he also grew up hearing her sing spirituals that she learned as a child. Later on, those stories and spirituals found their way into his music. Still attended M. W. Gibbs High School in Little Rock and graduated in 1911 as class valedictorian. In 1911, Still entered Wilberforce University in Ohio where he planned to study medicine to please his mother but was lured away by his love for music. There he was also greatly influenced by the Afro-English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Still became a member of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity. At Wilberforce he played in the string quartet and conducted the university's band and started his first attempts at composition and orchestration.
Still studied science at Wilberforce from 1911 to 1915, but preferring music, he dropped out before finishing. His next step was to moved to Memphis, Tennessee in 1916 to try his hand in the popular music industry. He began as a freelance performer and arranger for many of the top bands in the Ohio region. In Memphis, he was captivated by the raw blues music he heard while working as an arranger for blues legend, W.C. Handy, “the Father of the Blues", who provided Still with the opportunity to arrange, publish and perform with his band. For a while he toured with the legendary bandleader, arranging some of Handy’s hits like “St. Louis Blues”. Still and Handy became lifelong friends. The next year when he reached 21, William Grant Still entered the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio to pursue a formal education in music. In 1918, Still joined the U.S Navy to serve in World War I. He served as a mess hall attendant and violinist for officers’ meals. He returned to Oberlin after his discharge where he studied theory and counterpoint, but did not receive a degree.
After the war, he settled with his wife, whom he had married on October 4, 1915, and family in Harlem in New York City, where he worked for the Pace and Handy Music Publishing Company. He started writing arrangements for bands and playing in pit orchestras on Broadway. That’s when the blues started finding their way into Still’s compositions. Later in the 1920s, Still served as the arranger of Yamekraw, a "Negro Rhapsody", composed by the Harlem stride pianist, James P. Johnson. Still's goal was to be a professional classical musician, but that career was not open to Black people at the time. He embraced popular music and aimed to benefit from it long-term. Still recorded with Fletcher Henderson's Dance Orchestra in 1921, and later played in the pit orchestra for Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake's musical, "Shuffle Along". He also played in other pit orchestras for Sophie Tucker, Artie Shaw, and Paul Whiteman.
Under Henderson, he joined Pace Phonograph Company, known as Black Swan Records. Along the way, he studied music with George Whitefield Chadwick, director of the New England Conservatory of Music, who would challenge him in the classical field, and Edgard Varèse, the French modernist. These diverse experiences provided Still with professional contacts and valuable insight to performing, arranging, orchestrating, and composing popular and symphonic music. Soon a flood of works ensued, his other noteworthy compositions include, "From the Black Belt" (1926), "From the Land of Dreams" (1924), "Darker America" (1924–1925), "From the Journal of a Wanderer" (1924), "La Guiablesse" (1926–1927), and "Levee Land" (1925). Along with these varied influences, Still was very much aware of the ideas of Harlem Renaissance thinkers who had begun to investigate the links between African and Black American culture.
Although Still had incorporated elements of African American music such as spirituals, the blues, and jazz in several of his compositions from the 1920’s, he had done so in an avant-garde manner, reflecting his studies with Varèse. Feeling that these works did not adequately reflect the “Negroid idiom” that he desired to cultivate, Still consciously adopted a much more accessible compositional style during the 1930’s, merging elements of African American folk music and tonal European art music. During his time in Harlem, Still was involved with other important cultural figures of the Harlem Renaissance such as Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps, and Countee Cullen, and is considered to be part of that movement. His communication with Alain Locke throughout the 1930’s, as well as Locke’s manifesto calling for the elevation of African American culture, had a profound influence on Still’s musical development.
Still’s concern with the position of African Americans in U.S. society is reflected in many of his works. Notably the "Afro-American Symphony", the ballets Sahdji, set in Africa and composed after extensive study of African music, and Lenox Avenue. He was the first African American to conduct a major American orchestra in a performance of his own works. Though a prolific composer of operas, ballets, symphonies, and other works, he was best known for his "Afro-American Symphony". Still indicated that his intent was to reflect untutored musical characteristics of Black “sons of the soil,” hence the blues and spiritual (but not jazz) elements that thoroughly inform the work. Each of the four movements is associated with excerpts from poems by the important Black poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar, cast in dialect. Dunbar's poetry reflected the powerful voice of that African American experience that Still was looking for.
While living in New York, Still met Paul Whiteman, whom he had played in his pit orchestras, back in the early 1920's. Whiteman hired him to arrange music. When Whiteman took his orchestra to Hollywood, California, in May 1929, Still went, too. During the course of a year, Still completed more than 100 arrangements for Whiteman. Whiteman later commissioned Still to create original compositions, including "A Deserted Plantation" (1933), "Land of Superstition" (1933), "Beyond Tomorrow" (1936), and "Blues from Lennox Avenue" (1937). He was also engaged by other celebrities to prepare orchestral arrangements. Still's music lies somewhere between the symphony's modern progression and the growth of blues in Jazz's golden age. Still initially composed in the modernist style but later merged musical aspects of his Black heritage with traditional European classical forms to form a unique style.
"Afro-American Symphony", was premiered by the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra in 1931 under the direction of Howard Hanson. Since the 1931 premiere of the Afro-American Symphony, It was the first symphony by a Black composer to be performed by a major U.S. orchestra. Still’s multifarious style has gone on to influence even non-classical music. It was also performed by the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in 1935. "Afro-American Symphony" included a banjo in the orchestra and featured syncopated rhythms that tended to portray Blacks with traditional, simple lives. For the same reason, he kept harmonies simple and dissonance tightly in check. Since the premiere of the Afro-American Symphony, Still’s multifarious style has gone on to influence even non-classical music. By the end of World War II the piece had been performed in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Berlin, Paris, and London.
The 1930s and 1940s proved to be quite successful for Still, as major orchestras increasingly performed his compositions. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed "La Guiablesse", written for the ballet, on June 16, 1933. In 1934, Still moved to Los Angeles, along the way defeating the racial stereotypes and straddling his two worlds. He composed music for films alongside his classical works, helping shape a style that other composers and arrangers used for scoring films and popular music. It was in Los Angeles, where he received his first Guggenheim Fellowship and started work on the first of his eight operas, Blue Steel. Although Still did not write a large quantity of works for solo voice and piano, the quality is very high. His work in the world of commercial music lasted throughout his career including film scoring (largely uncredited) while living in Los Angeles during the 1930s.
On November 20, 1935, the New York Philharmonic performed Still’s "Afro-American Symphony" at Carnegie Hall. During this time, Still also made history when, in 1936 he conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He was the first African American to conduct a major American orchestra in a performance of his own works. Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Symphony premiered his "Symphony in G Minor" on December 10, 1937. Still wrote the theme music for the 1939–1940 New York World’s Fair. Several of Still’s works of the 1940s were rooted in serious events of the day and gained wide renown. His 1940 choral cantata with narrator, And They Lynched Him on a Tree, was in direct artistic response to the epidemic of lynching in the United States and to the national debate over anti-lynching legislation that was taking place and the fight to pass it, when he composed the work.
It is one of the most overtly political compositions of his career. For years he had wanted to compose something addressing racial violence. Although lynchings had declined from their horrific peak in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they were still occurring. More importantly, the memory and threat of mob violence remained a powerful reality for Black Americans. Billie Holiday's famous recording of Strange Fruit had appeared in 1939, only months before Still began composing the cantata. The work emerged from this same atmosphere of protest. The New York Philharmonic first performed "And They Lynched Him on a Tree" on June 24, 1940, at Lewisohn Stadium. What makes the piece unusual is that it is not simply a condemnation of the lynchers. Its drama uses, a narrator, a contralto soloist (the victim's mother), a Black chorus, a White chorus, and orchestra. The White chorus represents the mob that has carried out the lynching as the Black chorus mourns the victim and reflects on the tragedy. Convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, the mob had decided that the legal punishment was insufficient and lynched him anyway. The central message is that mob violence destroys justice itself.
Still veered from classical music into the popular music of the era derived from Black culture, namely ragtime, jazz, and blues. William Grant Still contributed prolifically to American music, arranging pop and film music, and playing in pit bands and for recordings. These included "Pennies from Heaven" and "Lost Horizon". For "Lost Horizon", he arranged the music of Dimitri Tiomkin. On February 6, 1939, he married his second wife, Verna Arvey in Mexico who was of Russian-Jewish decent. Their marriage resulted in several collaborations, with Arvey as librettist. Still, was often compared to George Gershwin. Gershwin and Still were mutually respectful of each other, with Still's wife remembering the latter's attendance at a performance of her husband's orchestral suite "Levee Land" in 1925. He in turn was supportive of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, but he also did not embrace the work with the enthusiasm that later generations sometimes have. Still respected Gershwin's gifts, but he was not always enthusiastic about the way White composers used Black musical idioms.
Despite his attraction to opera, however, Still remained primarily an instrumental composer. In his "Symphony no. 2 in G Minor"(1937), subtitled “Song of a New Race,” still continued working in the musical idiom of the "Afro-American Symphony", considering the later work a companion piece to the earlier one. Still was hired to arrange the music for the 1943 film Stormy Weather. The movie starred some of the leading Black performers of the day, including Bill “Bo Jangles” Robinson and Cab Calloway, but left the assignment because, quote "Twentieth Century-Fox was perpetuating degrading stereotypes of Black people". There was a broad consensus that racism and stereotyping were wrong, but there was often sharp disagreement about how to respond to them. William Grant Still was a classically trained composer who had spent decades fighting for recognition in a field dominated by White institutions. He was particularly sensitive to portrayals that he felt reinforced negative stereotypes. From his perspective, refusing to participate could be a matter of principle.
He was awarded the Jubilee Prize of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra for the Best Overture, his “Festive Overture,” in 1944. His opera "Troubled Island" with libretto by Langston Hughes premiered at the New York City Opera in 1949. It was the first by an African American to be performed by a major opera company. Troubled Island’s opening night was a huge success, with ecstatic curtain calls over “a flood of applause.” Nevertheless, critics were surprisingly negative in their reception, which greatly upset Still. That same opera was the first by an African American to be nationally televised. In 1953, a Freedoms Foundation Award came to him for his "To You, America!" which honored West Points Sesquicentennial Celebration. In 1955 he conducted the New Orleans Philharmonic Orchestra. On that historic occasion he became the first African American to conduct a major orchestra in the Deep South. Still’s works were performed internationally by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, and the BBC Orchestra.
This musician, composer, and instrumentalist was blessed with more fame than any other African-American of his time. His works included five symphonies, four ballets, nine operas, over thirty choral works, plus art songs, chamber music and works for solo instruments. Together, they number almost 200 pieces. William Grant Still, a musical legend of the 1900’s, created a beat of his own in the music world. He received an honor for Outstanding Service to American Music from the National Association for American Composers and Conductors, and had a raft of honorary doctorates to his name. These institutions include, Wilberforce University in 1936; Howard University in 1941; Oberlin College in 1947; Bates College in 1954; and the University of Southern California in 1975.
He was inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in 1999. Still used unique African American styles in his compositions that distinguished his work. He preferred "simple, commercial harmonies and orchestration, executed with the highest professionalism and seriousness of purpose". During his stellar career, William Grant Still became not only a leading Black composer, but a leading American composer. He felt that music—his or anyone’s—should lift up people of all countries, colors, and races. He was once quoted "I don't know what people mean by 'Black music'. Are they saying that Negroes can only write music in a certain way?" Columbia Records released a new recording of Still's Afro-American Symphony in 1974. The next year, Still was honored on his 80th birthday at the University of Southern California with a program of his works. In 1977, Opera Ebony revived Still's two-act opera Highway 1 USA in New York. Still’s health began to decline in the mid 1970's and he spent his last years in a convalescent home and died in Los Angeles in December of 1978.
One of the things that makes Still unique is that he could move comfortably between the worlds of W.C. Handy's blues, Fletcher Henderson's jazz arrangements, and the concert hall, then transform those influences into symphonies, operas, and cantatas. Few American composers of his era had such a broad musical reach. During his lifetime, Still achieved a remarkable series of historic firsts, breaking racial barriers in the worlds of symphonic music, opera, and conducting. His "Afro-American Symphony" demonstrated that Black musical traditions could serve as the foundation for serious classical composition, while works such as "And They Lynched Him on a Tree" and "Troubled Island" addressed important themes in Black history. His contributions stand alongside those of Gershwin, Aaron Copland, and Duke Ellington in shaping a distinctly American musical voice. Moreover, his career bridged multiple traditions, connecting the worlds of classical music, blues, jazz, and popular music associated with figures such as W. C. Handy, and Benny Goodman.
William Grant Still is noted for the series of “firsts” he achieved:
— first African-American to conduct a major American symphony orchestra
— first to have a symphony (his First Symphony) performed by a leading orchestra
— first to have a grand opera performed by a major opera company
— first to have an opera performed on national television
— first to conduct a major symphony orchestra, the New Orleans Philharmonic, in the Deep South