Edward Boatner

1898 - 1981

About

Edward Boatner (1898 -1981), was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on 13 November 1898. His father, Dr. Daniel Webster Boatner, was a former slave who became an itinerant minister. Edward Boatner was exposed at an early age to the music sung by African Americans in the churches where his father preached. He was particularly fascinated by the spirituals of the former slaves and began collecting them. Boatner was educated in the public schools of St. Louis, Missouri, and Kansas City, Kansas. Most of his early musical education came from self-training. He entered Western University, Quindaro, Kansas, in 1916, where he studied voice and piano. Despite the strenuous objections of his father--who wanted Edward to become a minister--he gave recitals in the community. At one of these programs, he was heard by tenor Roland Hayes. Hayes encouraged Boatner to move to Boston and continue his studies there. Boatner followed Hayes' advice, and moved to Boston in 1917. During his first year in Boston, Boatner studied with instructors at the New England Conservatory of Music. In 1918, at the age of 20, he published his first arrangement of a spiritual, entitled “Give Me Jesus”. The Boston Conservatory of Music awarded Boatner with a one-year scholarship in 1921. Continuing his studies at the Longy School of Music the following year, Boatner met composer and pianist Robert Nathaniel Dett, who became a mentor and coach. The two musicians performed a successful series of concerts together throughout the New England states. Boatner relocated to Chicago in 1925. He received his Bachelor's degree from the Chicago College of Music seven years later. During this time, he served as a church choir director and continued to concertize. He also became director of music for the National Baptist Convention and published his Spirituals Triumphant, Old and New with Willa A. Townsend in 1927. In the early 1930s, Boatner joined the faculty of two Texas historically Black colleges, Samuel Huston, Austin, and Wiley College in Marshall, where he was appointed their Dean of Music. He returned to New York in the latter half of the decade and opened his own vocal studio. Over his teaching career, Boatner's students included opera singer George Shirley, entertainers Josephine Baker and Robert Guillaume, Blues songstress Libby Holman, and actor Clifton Webb. He continued to direct church and community choirs. He was a prolific writer of textbooks on music theory and pedagogy, non-fiction--especially on racial issues, short stories, and a novel, One Drop of Blood. Boatner continued to publish settings of Negro spirituals for choir and vocal soloist. His own company, Hammond Music, published a number of these settings. Boatner published 30 Afro-American Choral Spirituals, a collection for mixed chorus in 1971 and The Story of the Spirituals: 30 Spirituals and Their Origins for voice and piano in 1973. Boatner composed an unpublished opera, Troubled in Mind, musicals The Origin of the Spirituals and The Life of Jesus--a work composed of spirituals, text, and dance that was later renamed The Man from Nazareth, and a musical comedy, Julius Sees Her in Rome, Georgia. The Arlington Symphony premiered his Freedom Suite in 1967. He spent over three years researching and composing the work for orchestra, solo voices, mixed chorus and narrator. Boatner received numerous honors from organizations, such as the National Federation of Music Clubs, the National Association of Negro Musicians, the Brooklyn Lyceum, the Detroit Association of Musicians, and the New York Uptown Musicians, among others. In 1979, the Chicago branch of the National Association of Negro Musicians honored him.  Of approximately 300 works credited to him, some of the best-known are "On Ma Journey," "Trampin,'" "O What a Beautiful City," and "City Called Heaven." 

Related Information

http://www.afrovoices.com/boatner.html; http://archives.nypl.org/scm/20547

Works by Edward Boatner