Henry Thacker Burleigh (December 2, 1866 – September 12, 1949) was an American classical composer, arranger, and professional singer known for his baritone voice. The first black composer who was instrumental in developing characteristically American music, Burleigh made black music available to classically trained artists both by introducing them to spirituals and by arranging spirituals in a more classical form. Burleigh also introduced Antonín Dvořák to Black American music, which influenced some of Dvořák's most famous compositions and led him to say that Black music would be the basis of an American classical music.
Early and family life
Henry Thacker Burleigh was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1866 to Elizabeth Burleigh and Henry Thacker. His grandfather, Hamilton Waters, was granted manumission from slavery in Somerset County, Maryland, after paying $55 ($50 for him and $5 for his mother) in 1832 and receiving a certificate of freedom in 1835. They traveled to Ithaca, New York, where two of Waters's half-brothers lived. After his mother died, Waters married Lucinda Duncanson. Their first child, Elizabeth Lovey Waters (who would be Burleigh's mother) was born in Lansing, New York, in 1838. Later that year the family moved to Erie, Pennsylvania, where they lived until the 1920s. Elizabeth, who was graduated from Avery College in Pittsburgh in 1855, was denied a teaching position in the Erie Public Schools, but taught at the Colored School for many years.
Burleigh's father, Henry Thacker Burleigh Sr., a naval veteran in the Civil War, was the first black juror in Erie County in 1871. After his father's death in 1873, his mother remarried in 1875. Her second husband, John Elmendorf, was also a veteran of the Union Navy.
Burleigh's grandfather, who was known for his "exceptionally melodious voice", taught young Burleigh and his brother Reginald traditional spirituals and slave songs.
Burleigh helped support his family by various odd jobs: lighting gas streetlamps, selling newspapers and working as a printer's devil, as a coachman, and as a steward on Lake Erie steamboats. He also studied to be an accountant at the Clark's Business College while he was in high school. His mother occasionally worked as a maid for the daughter of Burleigh Sr.'s employer when she held musicales (musical gatherings) in her home. Burleigh served as a doorman when various famous musicians performed at those musicales, including Venezuelan pianist Teresa Carreño and Italian tenor Italo Campanini.
He studied voice with George F. Brierly. During and after his high school years Burleigh became known as one of Erie's most accomplished classical singers. Several Erie churches and the Jewish synagogue hired him as a soloist, and he also sang as soloist at many community and civic events.
Studies at the National Conservatory
Burleigh was accepted, with a scholarship, to the prestigious National Conservatory of Music in New York at the age of 26. He obtained the scholarship with the help of Frances MacDowell, the mother of composer Edward MacDowell, and he would eventually play double bass in the Conservatory's orchestra. Although at first the Conservatory denied Burleigh the tuition scholarship he needed to be able to attend, citing him falling just below their audition standards, Mrs. MacDowell (the registrar) insisted that he be allowed to try his entrance exam again. Days later, he received a scholarship.
Relation with Dvořák
To help support himself during his studies, Burleigh worked for Mrs. MacDowell as a handyman, cleaning and working on anything she needed. Reputedly, Burleigh, who later became known worldwide for his excellent baritone voice, sang spirituals while cleaning the Conservatory's halls, which drew the attention of the conservatory's director, Czech composer Antonín Dvořák, who asked Burleigh to sing for him. Burleigh said: "I sang our Negro songs for him very often, and before he wrote his own themes, he filled himself with the spirit of the old Spirituals." Dvořák said: "In the negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music."
From what he called "Negro melodies" and Native American music, Dvořák took up the Pentatonic scale, which appears in some places in his Symphony "From the New World" and at the beginning of each movement of the "American" String Quartet. In the Symphony, a flute theme resembles the spiritual "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" that may well be among those Burleigh sang to Dvořák.