Gilbert, Henry (EN)

Gilbert Henry Franklin Belknap, known as Frank Belknap, *26 September 1868 Somerville (Massachusetts), †19 May 1928 Cambridge (Massachusetts), American composer and folk song collector. Music played an important role in Gilbert’s family home. His father worked in a bank but performed as an organist and singer and composed hymns; his mother was a professional singer and a talented pianist. They ensured he received early lessons in violin and piano; Gilbert also taught himself to play wind instruments. Between 1886 and 1892, he studied at the New England Conservatory in Boston under E. Mollenhauer (violin), G.E. Whiting and G.H. Howard (piano and harmony) and with E.A. MacDowell (composition), earning his living by playing the violin in small entertainment orchestras. Between 1892 and 1901, after moving to New York, he took on various jobs (including in publishing and estate agency); he tried his hand at composition and undertook adventurous journeys across the southern United States. In 1893, he worked as a casual labourer at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where he encountered ragtime and music from exotic cultures, which made a great impression on him; he began collecting the music of Native Americans and African Americans. In 1894, he travelled through France and England, studying French literature and collecting sheet music for J.D. Whitney’s collection, which became the foundation of the Harvard University Music Library. Upon his return to America, he performed with Whitney in chamber music concerts in Cambridge.

In 1896, Gilbert’s work Two Episodes was performed in public for the first time in New York. In 1901, Gilbert heard Louise by Charpentier in Paris; captivated by the opera, he decided to devote himself entirely to composition. Between 1902 and 1911, he collaborated with Arthur Farwell, whose publishing house, Wa-Wan Press – which promoted Native American music – published Gilbert’s early works (Mazurka, Scherzo, The Pirate Song). The 1911 performance of his Comedy Overture on Negro Themes by the Boston Symphony Orchestra was described by critics as a breakthrough in American orchestral music. This work was selected by A. Glazunov for performance in Russia in 1914 under the baton of R. Glière. The symphonic poem The Dance on the Congo, staged as a ballet in 1918 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and in Boston, and subsequently performed in its original orchestral version in many cities, was one of the main American works presented in 1927 under the baton of W. Furtwängler at the festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music in Frankfurt, in which Gilbert participated as a guest.

Gilbert had a keen interest in folklore. He collected folk songs and transcribed Native American songs collected by E.S. Curtis. He was co-editor of The Art of Music (New York, 1916), wrote articles for music journals, and contributed programme notes for the American Orchestra Society; he was invited to give lectures at Harvard University. In later years, he frequently returned to his early compositions, reworking them or drawing on them for material for new works. A congenital serious heart defect gradually limited his activity, leaving him practically crippled towards the end of his life. Gilbert’s legacy was bequeathed to Yale University’s Gilmore Music Library.

Gilbert sought to develop a distinctively American style through his extensive use, particularly in his early works, of folk music, especially African-American folk music. He was the first to incorporate Negro spirituals and ragtime rhythms into orchestral compositions. The compositions from Gilbert’s mature period (after 1915), though no longer based on authentic folklore, display an original style that captures the spirit of American society. They are characterised by vitality, lively rhythms and colourful instrumentation.

Literature: O. Downes Henry Gilbert: Nonconformist, in: A Birthday Offering to C. Engel, New York 1943; K E. Longyear Henry Franklin Gilbert. His Life and Works, thesis University of Rochester, 1968; K.E. and R.M. Longyear Henry Franklin Gilbert’s Unfinished «Uncle Remus» Opera, “Yearbook for Inter-American Musical Research” X, 1974; S.V. Martin Henry F. Gilbert. A Bio- Bibliography, Westport, Conn 2004. w: Bio-Bibliography in Music 93; [H.F. Gilbert’s legacy] https//archives.yale.edu/repositories/6resources/10677.