Margaret Allison Bonds (1913 – 1972)
Margaret Allison Bonds was born in Chicago. Her father was a physician and civil rights activist who wrote a book entitled Noted Negro Women: Their Triumphs and Activities. Her mother was a church musician who was Margaret’s first music teacher.
Beginning in high school, Margaret studied piano and composition with Florence Price and William Dawson. She later earned master’s degrees in music and composition at Northwestern University, and then studied at Juilliard. In 1933 she became to first Black person to perform with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She met Langston Hughes in 1936 and they became close friends. Many of her songs are settings of his poetry, such as these Three Dream Portraits from 1959:
Margaret Bonds composed the Montgomery Variations for orchestra in 1964. It is a series of variations on the spiritual “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me” that form snapshots of two events in the Civil Rights movement. This work was not published or performed during Margaret Bonds’ lifetime. In this world premiere performance in 2018, the conductor speaks for a few minutes about the background of the score and how it was discovered. The music begins at 4:00.
The first three variations focus on the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 – 1956:
1. Decision
2. Prayer Meeting
3. March
The final four variations concern the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham:
4. Dawn in Dixie
5. One Sunday in the South
6. Lament
7. Benediction
Her lovely Spiritual Suite for piano from 1967 has three movements: The Valley of the Bones, The Bells, and Troubled Water.