To celebrate #BlackHistoryMonth, our students will be discussing some prominent Canadian Black musicians who changed the way we listen to and understand music. We're pleased to highlight these musicians on our website and social media, and our final profile is on Robert Nathaniel Dett.

There was poured into the astonished and delighted ears of the world an indigenous music, sung by its own creators, a music as fresh as the morning, as intimate as the breath and as vital as the heartbeat.
~ R. Nathaniel Dett

Robert Nathaniel Dett lived most of his life in the US, and is often celebrated as an American composer, but he was born in Drummondville Ontario (now part of Niagara Falls), and only moved to the states at the age of 11. Dett attended Oberlin College, the first integrated university in the US, and became the first Black graduate of the music program there. He learned piano and organ as a child, and was inspired to study classical music after hearing a performance of the slow movement of a string quartet by Antonín Dvořák. Dett became part of a generation of gifted Black composers who responded to Dvořák's call to use the traditional music of African American peoples as the basis for America’s emerging classical tradition.

A poet and writer as well as a composer, Dett won awards for his writing at Harvard university, and published a book of poems called "The Album of a Heart", as well as academic writings and several collections of spirituals, arranged for choir.

All day long from my window

I hear the sound of the sea;

The solemn sound of its deep profound

Fathomless tranquility.

‘Tis the sound of its mighty spirit

Whose inmost life is peace -

But from the pain of a love is vain

The heart finds no release!

Nathaniel Dett, “To The Sea”, from The Album of a Heart

All through his life, Dett looked for new chances to learn and study. He was awarded two honourary doctoral degrees, but still chose to attend the Eastman School of Music to take a Master of Music degree. His thesis composition, the oratorio The Ordering of Moses, was broadcast on NBC in 1937, performed by the Cincinnati Symphony. The broadcast was mysteriously interrupted mid-way through, likely because of complaints from racist listeners who objected to hearing a piece by a Black composer, although no record has been found to confirm this. The incident was recreated in a 2014 performance by the Cincinnati Symphony at Carnegie Hall, using tapes of the announcer.

Today Dett is recognized as one of the most talented composers of his generation. His recording of five pieces on piano roll is believed to be the first ever commercial recording by a Black musician, and one of Canada’s leading choirs, Toronto’s Nathaniel Dett Chorale, is named in his honour. His most performed works include “Listen to the Lambs”, performed here by the Nathaniel Dett Chorale, and the piano suite In the Bottoms, performed here by William Chapman. The Ordering of Moses can be heard in its entirety here, in a 1968 recording by the Mobile Symphony Orchestra.