Variations on “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” by Lettie Beckon Alston
These variations are inspired by the song “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” written by John Rosamund Johnson with lyrics by James Weldon Johnson for a group that was celebrating Abraham Lincoln’s birthday in the year 1900. It was sung by a chorus of five hundred African-American children in Jacksonville, Florida, and as the years progressed it became more popular, and today it is known as a sort of national anthem for African American people.
Lyrics:
Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.
Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand.
True to our God,
True to our native land.
The piece begins with an introduction like one would hear in a church hymn, which uses a phrase from the theme and ends with a fermata. The theme is a simple and contrapuntal statement of the melody. It is much more tonally accessible than Alston’s other piano works.
Variation one is slower than the theme, with 16th-note embellishments in the right hand that weave above and below the melody line. This section could be potentially difficult to voice. The first variation is romantic sounding, and has sixths and large leaps within chords. About halfway through the variation it becomes suddenly quiet and static, and then there is a pattern in the right hand that sounds like French impressionist music, especially when it is harmonized in thirds. Still within the first variation, the tempo changes to “tempo 1,” the tempo of the theme, and then more romantic accompaniment patterns ensue. The closing notes of the introduction are clearly stated as a transition between all variations.
The second variation is marked “playfully,” and right away there are two note slurs on everything in the right hand, with the first notes of the slur being a minor second. This is harmonically, shocking, especially after the romantic sounding first variation, and requires the performer to have enough stylistic variety in their playing to make this shift convincing. It moves away from the extreme dissonance a few bars later, with mostly major seconds, and then becomes “Dreamy (with rubato),” until it changes keys to a minor mode. Eight bars before the third variation, Alston introduces a syncopated rhythm still in the character of the minor section, but foreshadowing the next variation.
The third and last variation is heavily syncopated, with octaves in the middle/high register and accented pickup notes that give it a distinctly ragtime sound. This also presents stylistic challenges for students who are not used to playing ragtime. Surprisingly, right before the last page, material from the first variation returns in its original form, going back to the romantic sound, which ties these very different sections together. It is not until the second to last bar that a syncopated gesture returns to close the piece.
The length of these variations and the large jumps in the hand make it quite difficult, but it is also a fascinating piece because the variations start with a simple theme and then seem to progress through time- starting with romanticism, then impressionism, then a dissonant and Prokofiev-like second variation, and finally syncopated and ragtime.
Lettie Beckon Alston was born in Detroit in 1953. She received her doctorate in composition from the University of Michigan. She composes for orchestra, piano, voice, strings, and other instruments as well as synthesizers and electronically produced sounds.
Sources
Performed by Indigo Farmer.