Undine Smith Moore: The Dean of Black Women Composers

Samantha Ege is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Southhampton in the United Kingdom. She is a 2024 Rose Library Visiting Research Fellow in the area of African American History and Culture.

When you spend any amount of time with the materials of Undine Smith Moore (1904–1989), aka the Dean of Black women composers, you can be sure that some of the most profound lessons you’ll ever learn are afoot.

My name is Dr. Samantha Ege and I am a musicologist, classical pianist, and senior research fellow at the University of Southampton whose research and repertoire largely focus on Black American women composers. My route has been unconventional, and my work doesn’t easily fit into one box or another. So, imagine the great comfort I felt as I came across diary entries from the 81-year-old Undine Smith Moore who, even after a long and illustrious career as a celebrated music professor, prolific composer, and stalwart champion of underrepresented voices, was still navigating her own sense of belonging within the classical music world. In a diary entry dated July 12, 1986 (a little over a month before her 82^nd birthday), Moore wrote,

It is evening and I feel like I’ve been born again. I have been yearning for a renewal in my spirit—I have been cowering in fear, doubt—I’ve felt so much an “outsider”—so much in need of finding ways to join the “others.”

But, I played the piano tonight after an absence—I played my own music and I truly feel myself healed. It was as if a voice said to me, “You have forgotten who you are.” You are a musician—You are not one of the ‘others.’ It is music that makes you whole.”[1]

I was moved, inspired, and even more excited to dive into the world found within the Undine Smith Moore papers of the Rose Library.

Moore was born in Jarratt, Virginia, to parents James William Smith, who worked as a brakeman on the Norfolk and Western Railway, and Hardie Turnbull Smith, a homemaker who was an avid reader and inspired a last love of literature in Undine. The family then moved to Petersburg VA, where Moore’s talent for music—especially the piano—became apparent. She was yet to learn the word “composer,” but she always “making up” pieces of music and felt the piano to be an extension of her expressive voice.

Decorated with degrees from Fisk University and Columbia Teachers College (alongside stints at Juilliard, Eastman, and the Manhattan School of Music), the adult Moore threw herself into the work and duty of the music educator. Her most significant appointment was at Virginia State University, where she taught from the years of 1927 to 1972. Among her most accomplished students were Leon Thompson, former director of educational activities at the New York Philharmonic, jazz pianist Billy Taylor, and sopranos Roberta Alexander and Camilla Williams. 

Moore always thought of herself as a teacher first and composer second. But in the 1950s, something shifted within her, and composition took greater hold.

My interest lies in Moore, the composer. And her archives at the Rose Library gift us with incredible insights into her process and array of works for solo voice, choir, chamber ensemble, and orchestra. During my fellowship, I mainly focused on a piece called Soweto, which Moore wrote for piano trio in 1987.[2] Soweto was her response to the horrors of apartheid, and it is possible to chart her compositional journey, from early ideas, such as those mapped out below, to the finalized pages of the complete work. There are, mind you, around 300 pages to parse. But who said learning from the Dean of Black women composers would be easy?

Moore’s Rose Library archives also contain rare TV interviews, radio conversations, and printed programs in which she recounts the impetus behind Soweto. In the TV interviews, you can see the pain on her face as she laments the injustice of the apartheid regime. In radio interviews, her storytelling voice is even more apparent as she vividly describes the moment that she knew she would write this piece. And in her program notes (see below), you can really feel her need to create music betters humanity and brings us closer together:

I hope the piece will in some way encourage us to preserve our vulnerability—help us to avoid withdrawal in too protective a covering; for the perception of the beauty and the fullness of life lived with passion is the other accompanying side of life as lived by those who let themselves remain vulnerable, able deeply to feel and care about the piercing wounds of others.[4]

It was a true highlight of the fellowship to hear several performances of Soweto by the original interpreters, who commissioned the work from Moore—an interracial, mixed-gender ensemble called the Nova Trio, who regularly programmed works with a social justice theme. I had actually recorded Soweto with the Boston-based Castle of our Skins musicians on our 2022 album Homage: Chamber Music from the African Continent and Diaspora, but we had never heard the recordings from the Moore papers. As a musician, it was wonderful to compare our rendition with the Nova Trio’s, and to feel that we truly gave a compelling interpretation that I believe the Dean would have loved!

Samantha Ege and Castle of our Skins performing Undine Smith Moore’s Soweto for piano trio (begins at 13’26”): https://youtu.be/bKc2qisngVk?t=806

The Undine Smith Moore collection is a treasure trove for musicologists, musicians, and historians of African American culture alike, and I hope that many more researchers will spend time with these materials. My time here has inspired articles, book chapters, and a new recording. And, of course, I will be forever buoyed by the Dean’s caring reminder: “It is music that makes you whole.”

Footnotes:

[1]Journal, 1986 July–December, Box 19, Folder 6, Undine Smith Moore Papers Manuscript Collection No. 1155, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University.

[2] Soweto, Box 35, Folders 3–7, Undine Smith Moore Papers, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, & Rare Book Library, Emory University, Atlanta, GA. Emphasis in original.

[3] Soweto Box 35, Folders 5, Undine Smith Moore Papers, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, & Rare Book Library, Emory University, Atlanta, GA. Emphasis in original.

[4] 1990 Winston-Salem Delta Fine Arts program, Series 6, Printed material, 1923-2004, Box 3, Folder 5, Undine Smith Moore Papers, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, & Rare Book Library, Emory University, Atlanta, GA. Emphasis in original.