Book contents
- Margaret Bonds
- New Cambridge Music Handbooks
- Margaret Bonds
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Music Examples
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Margaret Bonds’s Societal Mission and The Montgomery Variations
- 2 Hope, Divine Benevolence, and The Montgomery Variations
- 3 The Text and Music of the Credo
- 4 Interpreting the Credo in Context
- Epilogue The Veil and Margaret Bonds’s Syncretic Dual Perspective
- Index
4 - Interpreting the Credo in Context
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 November 2023
- Margaret Bonds
- New Cambridge Music Handbooks
- Margaret Bonds
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Music Examples
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Margaret Bonds’s Societal Mission and The Montgomery Variations
- 2 Hope, Divine Benevolence, and The Montgomery Variations
- 3 The Text and Music of the Credo
- 4 Interpreting the Credo in Context
- Epilogue The Veil and Margaret Bonds’s Syncretic Dual Perspective
- Index
Summary
Bonds’s setting of the Du Bois Credo continues and extends the series of musical appeals for racial justice that had led to The Montgomery Variations, just as the revised version of Credo published at the head of his first autobiography, Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil, in 1920 extends the ideas that had led to the original 1904 version of Du Bois’s text. This chapter frames both the Du Bois Credo and Bonds’s musical setting thereof as articulations of the themes and issues of the works’ respective biographical contexts and, taken together, a dyadic lens into their creators’ perspectives on the societal upheavals of the most turbulent years of the twentieth century. Then, after demonstrating why, and how, the Credo was effectively silenced during Margaret Bonds’s lifetime despite its obvious importance, timeliness, and musical genius – including conversation with the publisher who insisted that the work could not be published unless its text were altered – the chapter closes by exploring the work’s first posthumous performances and documenting the ringing endorsement of Shirley Graham Du Bois, widow of the poet, for this “work of art that is eternal.”
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- Information
- Margaret Bonds: The Montgomery Variations and Du Bois Credo , pp. 121 - 145Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023