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J. Rosamond Johnson

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

John Rosamond Johnson (August 11, 1873 – November 11, 1954; usually referred to as J. Rosamond Johnson) was an American composer and singer during the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Jacksonville, Florida, much of his music career was in New York City. Johnson is hailed well over a century later as the music composer of the civic anthem “Lift Every Voice and Sing” first performed live by 500 Black American students from racially-segregated Jacksonville, Florida’s First Baptist Academy, in the pivotal year of 1900. The song was published by Joseph W. Stern & Co., Manhattan, New York (later the Edward B. Marks Music Company). J. Rosamond Johnson was the younger brother of poet and activist James Weldon Johnson, who wrote the lyrics for “Lift Every Voice and Sing”. The two also worked together in causes related to the NAACP. Biography J. Rosamond Johnson was born on August 11, 1873, to Helen Louise Dillet, a native of Nassau, Bahamas, and James Johnson. His maternal great-grandmother, Hester Argo, had escaped from Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) during the revolutionary upheaval in 1802, along with her three young children, including Johnson’s grandfather, Stephen Dillet (1797–1880). Although

Jørgen Jersild

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Jørgen Jersild (17 September 1913 – 6 February 2004) was a Danish composer and music educator. He was a pupil of Poul Schierbeck and Albert Roussel. Jersild worked from 1953 to 1975 as a professor of ear training by The Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. Life Jersild learned how to play the piano at a young age and, when he was twelve, he arranged for the school orchestra and wrote some small compositions. He became a student of Rudolph Simonsen and later Poul Schierbeck, who taught him theory and composition, and Alexander Stoffregen, who gave him lessons on the piano. After a short stay in Paris in 1936 where he was taught for three months by Albert Roussel, he returned home and studied musicology at the University of Copenhagen. In 1940 he majored in musicology, but in 1939 he was employed as a program secretary with the DR, a national radio station in Denmark. In 1943 he became a teacher at The Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, during which his music was reviewed by the Berlingske Tidende. From 1953 to 1975, he was professor and taught ear training, instrumentation and composition. During those years he published a number of theoretical and practical musica