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When R. Nathaniel Dett passed away in 1943, the surviving family did not remain in Rochester too long. Real estate records in Monroe County (not shown to maintain privacy) show the house changing hands in 1948. In 1949, The New York Age ran a New Year’s Day article about a Long Island social event honoring Helen Elise Smith and her daughters, Helen Dett Noyes (soon to be Hopkins) and Josephine Dett Gregory (later Breelove). Helen Elise Smith Dett passed away on 2 October 1950 in Queens, NY, per an obituary from the 5 October 1950 edition of New York’s Daily News. Dett’s biographers (Vivian FlaggRead More →

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Since I’m on the subject… You might imagine Dett during his year at Harvard, rolling of out bed from his lush accommodations in the Harvard Yard to dash to his courses or the library…except that Dett did not live in the Yard. I am of the mind currently that Harvard’s Housing situation was segregated at this time. The 1919-1920 Harvard Catalogue gives Dett’s local address, 27 Walden Street, which is near Porter Square in Somerville (a distinct area of Cambridge that is famously not Harvard Yard which was named after Porter’s Cattle Market Hotel) some 1.5 miles away from campus. Walden Street in particular, wasRead More →

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If I have failed to illustrate the confusion afforded by the source situation for a single year of Dett’s life, well, please be my guest and write Dett’s biography because I do not believe I can fix this by myself. As I understand it, Simpson thinks Dett took one group of courses, while Shipley thinks he took a different group of courses. Both Simpson and Shipley use materials from the Hampton Archives almost exclusively. While they present different conclusions on the details, both Simpson and Shipley agree that Dett’s supervisors (Davison, Gregg, Peabody) did not know what Dett was actually doing. I believe that DettRead More →

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Lori Rae Shipley’s dissertation, A History of the Music Department at Hampton Institute/University, 1868-1972, has a wider focus than Simpson’s biography of Dett. Because of her broader scope, Shipley examines administrative documents from Hampton that are not included in Simpson’s work. Thus, we receive a fuller picture of how Dett’s Harvard sabbatical arose. Archibald Davison, who is reported to have invited Dett to Harvard, initially became acquainted with Dett through Davison’s role as a “visiting music consultant” per Hampton’s 1920 President Annual Report [p. 138]. In essence, Davison was brought to Hampton as part of a Visiting Committee, which is usually used to review anRead More →

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In a previous post, I (outrageously) argued that Dett’s time at Harvard University was not spent in the way that current research presents it, namely, that he took coursework with Archibald Davison. In that post, I showed the courses that Archibald Davison taught on the (Harvard) record, which means that it probably happened that way because, hey, that’s how Harvard rolls. I would like to present how Ann Key Simpson reports Dett’s Harvard year, because her reckoning lies at the heart of a crucial research issue for Dett (and likely others from this time period): sources collide and spawn most of the difficulties with whichRead More →

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Originally published 2.06.23 Legend: Dett was enrolled at the Conservatoire Américain de Fontainebleau, France. Status: Untrue. There are no records establishing his enrollment there. In early January 2023, I corresponded with Joe Kerr, current Program Director of the Conservatoire Américain de Fontainebleau. Without any prompting from me, or even knowing what I was actually seeking, Joe wrote me the following: “It would be very exciting for us if R. Nathaniel Dett studied at Fontainebleau, but I have yet to see his name show up on the student lists I have scanned … It was not unusual, however, for students to study privately with Nadia Boulanger orRead More →

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Originally published 1.10.23. It is possible that Dett visited Rochester during his youth in nearby Niagara Falls, NY. Nevertheless, when he chose to call Rochester home after he graduated from Eastman it was likely not a stretch. You can read a bit about his neighborhood via Emily Morry, PhD, a fantastic historian at the Monroe Public Library who has written an excellent blog post about Dett’s life in Rochester on the website of the Library’s Local History & Genealogy Division, Local History ROCs! Dett spent one year in the MM program at Eastman, living alone at the Edison Hotel in downtown Rochester. During this time, the composer Zenobia Powell PerryRead More →

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Originally published 1.07.23. Now that people are performing Dett’s oratorio a lot more often, you will undoubtedly come across different composition dates, namely 1932 and 1937. The full performance version is from 1937, however, and the 1932 version for Dett’s MM Thesis at Eastman contains significantly less music. I am not currently aware if anyone has been doing any work on exactly when Dett began his work on his only surviving orchestral piece. We do get a valuable clue from Vivian Flagg McBrier’s dissertation/book, R. Nathaniel Dett, His Life and Works. McBrier quotes from a “personal notebook” that relates an interaction between Dett and his close friend, PercyRead More →

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Originally published 1.05.23. Legend: Dett studied with Arthur Foote at Harvard. Status: Misleading. Dett was granted a sabbatical that paid his Harvard tuition and lodging in Somerville, but he studied privately with Arthur Foote off campus. 1. Arthur Foote did not serve on the Harvard faculty, at least not while Dett was there in 1919-1920.Foote was a famous graduate of Harvard and noteworthy composer who taught out of his home in Dedham, a suburb of Boston that is not Cambridge. That is, he did not teach students on the Harvard campus.​OK, so how did Dett meet him?  The 1919-1920 Harvard University Catalogue lists Foote asRead More →

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Originally published 12.28.22 If you read about R. Nathaniel Dett, you are bound to encounter conflicting information. This is not anyone’s fault, really, but it still results in a lot of unnecessary confusion. So, here we go: 1. The Name. The first thing we need to do is get his name right. “R. Nathaniel Dett” was how he signed his name. The “R.” stands for Robert, which was his father’s name: Robert Tue Dett. However, Dett did not have a great relationship with his father, who divorced his mother and essentially estranged himself from Dett and his brother Samuel as well. Further, Robert Tue Dett wasRead More →