Musgrave REMEMBERING HARRIET

Thea Musgrave REMEMBERING HARRIET Excerpts from ‘Harriet, the Woman called Moses’, A story of the American Underground Railroad (1984/2005)

Vocal score

NOVELLO

This work of excerpts from the opera Harriet, the Woman called Moses was commissioned by The Brooklyn Philharmonic.

It was first performed by the Brooklyn Philharmonic conducted by Chelsea Tipton II at Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York, May 13, 2006 CAST Harriet……………Soprano Rit, her mother…...Contralto Josiah, a friend…...Baritone Narrator…………..Actor CHORUS

The story is very freely based on the life of Harriet Tubman, a slave who escaped from bondage on the Eastern shore of Maryland and who became a ‘conductor’ on the Underground Railroad, returning back nineteen times and rescuing over three hundred of her people. At one time a reward of $40,000 was offered for her recapture alive or dead.

COMPOSER’S NOTE (written for the premiere of Harriet, the Woman called Moses, Virginia Opera, March 1, 1985) The story of Harriet Tubman concerns an individual gifted with those rare qualities of courage and imagination which enabled her to overcome seemingly insuperable odds. She followed the North Star to freedom and then became herself a famous ‘conductor’ on the Underground Railroad, helping many other slaves to escape.

Her story is also a moving example of the age-old conflict between good and evil.

Abraham Lincoln described it in very direct terms … ‘slavery is the eternal struggle between two principles which have stood face to face since the beginning of time, and which will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of all humanity; the other is the divine right of kings. Slavery is the spirit that says “You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it!” No matter in what shape it comes it is the same principle.’ The remarkable seventeenth-century Englishman, John Lilburne put it in another way: ‘For what is done to anyone may be done to everyone.’

At one time or another, most of us have asked the question ‘But what can one person do?’

Harriet Tubman is an inspiration to those of us who despair of being able to make any positive change in the world in which we live. Black people do not lack for heroes and heroines, but Harriet Tubman certainly deserves a place in the history of mankind’s struggle for human rights.

These are some of the reasons why I, a white woman of Scottish descent, felt moved to write about Harriet Tubman. But there is another overriding reason why composers are drawn to subjects that cross political and temporal boundaries and venture into different, often exotic settings for their work. For, in addition to making one’s work a satisfying emotional experience for the audience, most composers want to underline and emphasize the eternal nature of human conflicts and emotions which transcend time and place. The artist is accustomed to making the leap in their imagination into the feelings and lives of people very different from themselves, yet impelled and moved by the same motivations. Harriet is every woman who dared to defy injustice and tyranny; she is Joan of Arc, she is Susan B. Anthony, she is Anne Frank, she is Mother Teresa.

I am proud that the world premiere of Harriet, the Woman called Moses will take place in Virginia now my home.

Thea Musgrave August 20, 1984

REMEMBERING HARRIET

© 2005 Novello & Company Limited

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REV. 09/02/06

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