Elie Siegmeister - Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen (Negro Spiritual)

Elie Siegmeister was born January 15, 1909 in New York City. Both parents were of Russian-Jewish ancestry. His father was a surgeon. The family moved to Brooklyn when Siegmeister was five, at which age he began piano lessons.
Siegmeister entered Columbia University at age 15, and he earned a B.A. cum laude at the age of 18; he had studied music theory with Seth Bingham. He studied conducting with Albert Stoessel at the Juilliard School and counterpoint with Wallingford Riegger. He was among the numerous American composers, including Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson, who were students of the influential teacher Nadia Boulanger in Paris.
His varied musical output showed his concern with the development of an authentic American musical vocabulary. Jazz, blues and folk melodies and rhythms are frequent themes in his many song cycles, his nine operas, his eight symphonies, and his many choral, chamber, and solo works.

Among his signal achievements, he was composer-in-residence at Hofstra University 1966-76, having organized and conducted the Hofstra Symphony Orchestra; established 1971 and chaired the Council of Creative Artists, Libraries, and Museums; and initiated 1978 the Kennedy Center's National Black Music competition. In 1939, he organized the American Ballad Singers, pioneers in the folk music renaissance whom he conducted for eight years in performances throughout the United States. He was the winner of numerous awards and commissions, among them those of the Guggenheim, Ford, and Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundations, the Library of Congress, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the United States Information Agency.

* * *

The image before the music is from M. M., and we would like to thank him for his kind permission to reproduce his painting.

There is no copyright infringement intended. if you wish this recording to be removed, it can be done, please just let us know and the video will be removed.