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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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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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Orignally published 1.04.23. Legend: The NBC radio broadcast of The Ordering of Moses on 7 May 1937 was cut off because of racist complaints at stations in the South. Status: Untrue. However, this does NOT mean that racist complaints were not made. We need to put blame where blame is due, namely, what I have been calling the “long arm of the radio schedule,” which still serves as the primary means to frame on-air advertisements. Newspapers printed the day’s radio listings ahead of time, such as you see here, which is a clip of the schedule from Rochester’s Democrat and Chronicle. Mind you, Dett was livingRead 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 →