The New York Premiere of The Ordering of Moses
2023-02-12
Originally published 1.04.23. Less than one year after its world premiere at the Cincinnati May Festival, Dett’s oratorio made its way to New York City’s Juilliard School in April of 1938. Baltimore’s prominent, Black news source, the Afro-American, kept tabs on Dett’s whereabouts and even had a local correspondent in Rochester, NY, who popped up onto its columns just when Dett moved there and then all but vanished once he took his job at Bennett College. The performing organization, the Oratorio Society of New York, had close ties to Dett. Among them was the ethnomusicologically inclined music critic Henry Edward Krehbiel. Krehbiel published a treatise on African spirituals, Afro-AmericanRead More →