Doctoral Treatise: The Life and Solo Vocal Works of Margaret Allison Bonds

Margaret Allison Bonds [1]

In 2013, I had the privilege of completing my Doctor of Music in vocal performance at Florida State University College of Music. My treatise topic explored the life and solo vocal works of legendary Chicago and Harlem Renaissance composer, Margaret Allison Bonds (1913-1972). While completing this research, I traveled to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Paris. I also met some incredible people who shared my passion for research and music, including the solo vocal works of Margaret Allison Bonds. I have included the abstract of my doctoral treatise below. To download a PDF version of The Life and Solo Vocal Works of Margaret Allison Bonds (1913-1972), which is 136 pages, feel free to click on the link below:

https://repository.lib.fsu.edu/islandora/object/fsu:185122/datastream/PDF

ABSTRACT

This treatise examines the life and solo vocal works of composer Margaret Allison Bonds

(1913-1972). It includes a biographical outline of Bonds’s family background, education, and

students. Her accomplishments as a concert pianist, composer, and music educator in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles are also described. The second half offers an overview of Bonds’s solo vocal compositions. There is one chapter devoted to each of the three styles of song that she composed in her career: African-American spirituals, jazz/popular songs, and art songs. In addition, the treatise explores Bonds’s relationship with the poets of the Harlem Renaissance, and her forays into the musical theatre genre. Musical excerpts and descriptions of many of Bonds’s published and unpublished solo vocal works are included. This document will be of benefit to singers, pianists, coaches, and musicologists interested in finding new repertoire with a distinctly American sound, as well as those who are seeking songs composed by American female composers, African-American composers, or art songs that include musical elements drawn from the spiritual or jazz. Over half of Bonds’s solo vocal works incorporated the poetry of Langston Hughes. The chapter entitled “The Art Songs: Poets of the Harlem Renaissance” is dedicated to the art song settings of Langston Hughes’s poems and also includes one art song setting of a Countee Cullen

poem. The chapter entitled “The Art Songs” features settings of texts by Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Margaret Bonds, Marjorie May, Janice Lovoos, and Edmund Penney.

Appendix A of this document includes a list of Bonds’s solo vocal works. It includes

publication information, the names of the poets, and dates of composition. Appendix B includes seven digital photographs, including images of Margaret Bonds, Langston Hughes, William Levi Dawson, Florence Beatrice Price, Leonard Harper, Charlotte Holloman, McHenry Boatwright, and Maya Angelou. Many of Margaret Bonds’s songs were never published and are located in archival libraries and remain unknown. One purpose of this document is to expose these lesser-known pieces to a larger audience, hopefully giving them a deserved place as a significant contribution to the American art song repertoire.

Footnote

[1] The Oklahoma City Dispatch, July 12, 1947, Margaret Bonds Folder, Alumni Biographical Files.