Composers Datebook

On today’s date in 1937, the NBC radio network was carrying a live broadcast from the Cincinnati May Festival of a new oratorio entitled “The Ordering of Moses,” inspired by the Biblical Book of Exodus. British conductor Eugene Goosens led soloists and a chorus of 350 in what was the world premiere performance of this music by a 54-year old Canadian-born American composer, organist, pianist, and music professor named Robert Nathaniel Dett. Curiously, about 40 minutes into the live broadcast, which should have lasted a full hour, the NBC announcer broke in, stating, (quote), “We are sorry indeed, ladies and gentlemen, but due to previous commitments, we are unable to remain for the closing moments of this excellent performance." A live recording of the broadcast, preserved on scratchy acetate discs, documents that moment for posterity. No one knows for certain why the broadcast was cut short, but some have speculated that angry calls to NBC’s Southern affiliate stations might have been the reason, because Dett was African-American. 77 years later, in 2014, the American conductor James Conlon led the Cincinnati May Festival Chorus in another live, broadcast performance of Dett’s oratorio, this time complete and uninterrupted from the stage of Carnegie Hall in New York City. That live performance was also recorded, this time digitally, and made available for posterity on compact disc. Reviewing the 2014 performance, New Yorker critic Alex Ross wrote: ‘The uncanny radiance of this music is tied to a fundamental ambiguity: does the Exodus story serve as a metaphor for the black experience, or does that experience serve to amplify the religious text? When we hear the rattling of chains in the percussion, whose enslavement is being invoked? … The sadness of Dett’s career is that he began composing in earnest so late; he died, at the age of sixty, just six years after the première of 'The Ordering of Moses.'”