This past Sunday, our opening hymn was “In Christ There Is No East or West” (Common Praise 484), by John Oxenham (William Arthur Dunkerley), with music arranged by Harry (né Henry) Thacker Burleigh (*photo from hymnary.org). Burleigh called the tune “McKee” in honour of the rector of St George’s Episcopal Church (New York), Elmer M. McKee; he arranged it for Dunkerley’s poem based upon an Irish tune that African American slaves had made their own. Previously, the melody had been commonly used as the tune for the spiritual, “The Angels Changed My Name” (104 in the annex of J. B. T. Marsh’s 1876 book, The Story of the Jubilee Singers with their Songs). Burleigh’s tune was published with Dunkerley’s words as hymn 263, tune (a), in The Hymnal of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America (1940).
Burleigh’s grandfather paid $50 (plus $5 for Burleigh’s great-grandmother) in 1832 to receive a certificate of freedom and moved to Ithaca, New York, from Somerset County, Maryland. After the family moved to Erie, Pennsylvania, Burleigh’s mother, who had graduated from Avery College, taught at the “Colored School” because the Erie Public Schools would not hire her. Burleigh grew up in Erie and sang in the choir at St Paul’s Cathedral, but it was his grandfather, who was, himself, well-known as a good singer, who taught him and his brother African American spirituals. Burleigh went on to study at the National Conservatory of Music in New York City (on a scholarship), and he played double bass in the orchestra. Working as a handyman at the Conservatory, Burleigh famously met and collaborated with the Czech composer, Antonín Dvořák, who said that the spirituals to which Burleigh introduced him could be the basis for American classical music.
Burleigh was also recognised as a talented classical baritone and sang regularly at churches, synagogues and community events before going to the Conservatory, during his time there and afterward. Although it was a close vote when he was hired as a soloist at the all-white St George’s, he spent 52 years there. Despite his fame as a singer (he was a concert soloist, toured Europe and sang with the synagogue choir at the Temple Emanu-El), he appears to have made only two recordings, one of which has been lost. On the other hand, we have over 200 (possibly close to 300) compositions and arrangements by this prolific composer. He was a founding member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), becoming a board member in 1941. New York City “co-named” East 16th Street in the Stuyvesant Square District as Harry T. Burleigh Place, and the Temple Emanu-El Choir sang at the ceremony on September 12, 2021.
Learn more:
- The story of the Jubilee Singers with their songs, by J. B. T. Marsh, is now in the public domain.
- Lots to explore jumping off from Wikipedia.
Listen (video will start at the hymn):