Spirituals in WWII classical oratorio

Mentioned in passing in an article in the July print issue of Grammophone, the British classical music magazine, on Britten's War Requiem and other classical music written in the aftermath of 20th-century wars ... an oratorio by the British composer Sir Michael Tippett called A Child of Our Time. Composed between 1939 and 1941, A Child incorporates African-American spirituals in a choral work about events leading up to the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. Says Lisa Traiger, writing for the website All About Jewish Theatre about a 2005 production at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.:

Gordon Hawkins, a Phoenix-based soloist who has sung with the Metropolitan and the Washington National operas, will fly in from a Miami engagement with the Florida Grand Opera, to sing with the chorus on Sunday.

He considers Tippett's use of Negro spirituals a curative: "I think he uses spirituals not only as commentary, but as a healing. There's a difference between those who persecute and those who are persecuted. If [the Negro spirituals] were just for the persecuted, there would be a psalm that said, 'Don't worry, things will be better for you in another lifetime, in another place.' "

But, when Hawkins sings the spiritual, "Go Down Moses," it is used not as a palliative, but as a means of igniting the passion to fight back, to challenge what took place in Nazi Germany.

"The whole thrust of the piece," he said, "of course, has to be in the context of World War II. While everything happening in the United States [during that period] was in the context of the races, Tippett did not just make a Negro spiritual oratorio. That's not the point.

"The point," Hawkins continued, "is the universality: There's a component of the Negro spiritual that contains something in common that we can all simply relate to." (Brackets in the original.)

Added Robert Schaffer, director of the Washington Chorus, which performed the piece, "Many of these spirituals are very familiar to American audiences -- 'Deep River,' 'Go Down Moses' and others -- so there's an American impact and contribution to the piece. Negro spirituals came out of another time of great oppression with slavery during the 19th century and before."

A Child of Our Time has been recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, directed by the composer.

The article in Grammophone, by Armando Ianucci, is titled "Finding My Place" (p. 24). Its lede paragraph is especially memorable:

In the middle of The-War-on-Terror-and-the-Taliban-and-Iraq-and-Insurgents-and-Saudi-Funded-Jihadists-and-as-inevitably-as-night-follows-day-Iran, there will no doubt soon be a whole catalogue of musical works that celebrate, commemorate or commiserate the frightful mess of the world we seem to have made. At stupefyingly awful times like these, the composer becomes political, emerges as someone who feels obliged to come up with a definite response to international events."

Not only do I think that's an apt characterization of the last seven years of U.S. (and British) foreign policy. The way Ianucci uses his hyphens appeals to the recovering English teacher in me.