On December 28, 1898, a music journal published a review of a vocal recital that took place in Brooklyn a few days before Christmas. The baritone David Bispham sang "A Corn-Song," composed by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, with words by Paul Laurence Dunbar. The writer complained that the piece, written by a British composer of African descent, lacked the authenticity of Black American music.
Tremendous crowds intent upon holiday shopping and weather about as bad as it could be had no appreciable effect upon the size of the audience at the Fourth Song Recital offered by the Institute at Association Hall on Thursday evening. Under the genial influence of music, people forgot the prevailing scourge of grip, and even refrained from coughing to a remarkable degree. S. Coleridge-Taylor has quite missed the Negro spirit in Paul Laurence Dunbar's "Corn-Song," and has made a pretty English ballad out of it. He evidently knows nothing of the peculiar cadence of Negro minstrelsy, with its individual blending of tones and its wild minor chords. The words afford every chance for effective composition.
Musical Courier (New York, New York). December 28, 1898.
Paul met Samuel Coleridge-Taylor during his trip to England in 1897. Both rising young stars in their respective fields, they collaborated on an opera called Dream Lovers, and Coleridge-Taylor set several of Paul's poems to music. "A Corn-Song" received more favorable reviews from other critics.
Admirers of "national" music should have flocked to the Salle Erard on the 5th, when that remarkable young composer, Mr. S. Coleridge-Taylor, who, as our readers know, is of partly African descent, gave a concert, interspersed with recitations by the gifted young Negro poet, Mr. Paul Dunbar. Mr. Taylor, while still a student, reflects neither his teachers' nor anybody else's music, such a case being, perhaps, without precedent in the history of our art. That the element of beauty, as we understand it, seems as yet somewhat dormant in his music need not be insisted upon; for the young composer will doubtless develop in that as in other respects. Some of his latest songs do, in fact, already show a great improvement in this regard, his setting of a "Corn-Song" by Mr. Dunbar, to name but one, being full of a fresh beauty that haunts the memory.
"Mr. S. Coleridge-Taylor's Concert." The Musical Times and Singing-Class Circular (London, England). July 1, 1897. Page 465.
There is something stimulating to one's musical patriotism in hearing Mr. Bispham sing. His recital last week was for the benefit of the Industrial Colony Association. After a miscellany of songs, the next number was "A Corn-Song" -- also a "coon song," for its refrain is in Negro dialect, the poem is by Mr. Paul Laurence Dunbar and the music is by S. Coleridge-Taylor, a mulatto living in England. If the race has much of this beautiful music in its potentiality it will be just as well to leave the Negro-music to the Negroes to develop, for the song is simply rapturous with beauty. The accompaniment is strained honey. The atmosphere of it is as full of twilight calm as Gray's Elegy.
"A Bispham Recital," by Rupert Hughes. The Criterion (New York, New York). April 15, 1899.
Paul's poem "A Corn-Song" is unusual because it is written in both standard English and Black dialect. In the refrain of Coleridge-Taylor's song setting, the vocalist portrays field hands who sing as they return to their cabins at sundown.
On the wide veranda white,
In the purple failing light,
Sits the master while the sun is lowly burning;
And his dreamy thoughts are drowned
In the softly flowing sound
Of the corn-songs of the field-hands slow returning.
Oh, we hoe de co'n
Since de ehly mo'n;
Now de sinkin' sun
Says de day is done.
O'er the fields with heavy tread,
Light of heart and high of head,
Though the halting steps be labored, slow, and weary;
Still the spirits brave and strong
Find a comforter in song,
And their corn-song rises ever loud and cheery.Oh, we hoe de co'n
Since de ehly mo'n;
Now de sinkin' sun
Says de day is done.Excerpt from "A Corn-Song," by Paul Laurence Dunbar. Published in Majors and Minors (1895).