Everything about Marian Anderson totally explained
Marian Anderson (
February 27,
1897 –
April 8,
1993), was an
American contralto, perhaps best remembered for her performance on
Easter Sunday,
1939 on the steps of the
Lincoln Memorial in
Washington, D.C..
Biography
Anderson was born in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter of John Rucker Anderson and the former Anna Delilah Rucker. Two sisters followed young Marian, Alice (later spelled Alyce) (1899-1965) and Ethel (1902-1990) who also became singers. Ethel Anderson was mother to
James DePreist. Marian Anderson joined a junior church
choir at the age of six, and applied to an all-white music school after her graduation from
high school in 1921, but was turned away because she was black. The woman working the admissions counter replied, "We don't take colored" when she tried to apply. Consequently, she continued her singing studies with a private teacher. She debuted with the
New York Philharmonic on
August 26,
1925 and scored an immediate success, also with the critics. In 1928, she sang for the first time at
Carnegie Hall. Her reputation was further advanced by her tour through
Europe in the early
1930s where she didn't encounter the racial prejudices she'd experienced in America.
The famed conductor
Arturo Toscanini told her she'd a voice "heard once in a hundred years." In 1934, impresario
Sol Hurok offered her a better contract than she'd previously had with
Arthur Judson. Hurok became her manager for the rest of her performing career.
In 1939, the
Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused permission for Anderson to sing to an integrated audience in
Constitution Hall. The
District of Columbia Board of Education declined a request to use the auditorium of a white public high school. As a result of the ensuing furor, thousands of DAR members, including
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, resigned.
The Roosevelts, with
Walter White, then-executive secretary of the
NAACP, and Anderson's manager,
impresario Sol Hurok, then persuaded
Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes to arrange an open air Marian Anderson concert on the steps of the
Lincoln Memorial.
The concert mentioned above was held on
Easter Sunday in 1939. Anderson was accompanied by the Finnish accompanist Kosti Vehanen, who introduced Marian to
Jean Sibelius in 1933. Sibelius was overwhelmed with Anderson's performance and asked his wife to bring champagne in place of the traditional coffee. At this moment Sibelius started altering and composing songs for Anderson, who was delighted to have met a musician of Sibelius' magnitude, who felt that she'd been able to penetrate the Nordic soul.
In 1939 Sibelius made a new arrangement of the song
Solitude and dedicated it to Anderson. Originally
The Jewish Girl's Song from his 1906 incidental music to
Belshazzar's Feast, this later became the “Solitude” section of the orchestral suite derived from the incidental music.
In 1943, Anderson sang at the invitation of the DAR to an integrated audience at
Constitution Hall as part of a benefit for the
American Red Cross. By contrast, the federal government continued to bar her from using the high school auditorium in the District of Columbia. This same year Anderson married architect Orpheus Fisher. The couple purchased a 100 acre farm in Danbury, Connecticut three years earlier in 1940 after an exhaustive search throughout New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Many purchases were attempted but thwarted by property sellers due to racial discrimination. The Danbury property transaction was initially disputed by the seller as well, after he discovered the couple was African American. Through the years Fisher built many outbuildings on the property that became known as Marianna Farm, including an accoustic rehearsal studio he designed for his wife. The compound remained Anderson & Fisher's home for over 50 years. Fisher died in 1986 and Anderson remained in residence at Marianna Farm until one year before her death in 1992. Although the bucolic property was sold to developers, various preservationists as well as the City of Danbury fought to protect Anderson's studio. Their efforts proved successful and the Danbury Museum and Historical Society relocated the structure, restored it and opened it to the public in 2004.
On
January 7,
1955, Anderson broke the color barrier by becoming the first African-American to perform with the
New York Metropolitan Opera. On that occasion, she sang the part of Ulrica in
Giuseppe Verdi's
Un ballo in maschera.
In 1958 she was officially designated delegate to the
United Nations, a formalization of her role as "goodwill ambassador" of the U.S. she played earlier, and in 1972 she was awarded the
UN Peace Prize.
Later life
After an extensive farewell tour, she retired from singing in
1965. However, she continued to appear publicly, narrating
Aaron Copland's
Lincoln Portrait, including a performance with the
Philadelphia Orchestra at
Saratoga in 1976, conducted by the composer. Her achievements were recognized and honored with many prizes, including the
Kennedy Center Honors in 1978 and a
Grammy Award for
Lifetime Achievement in 1991.
In 1993, Anderson died of heart failure at age 96 in
Portland, Oregon at the home of her nephew, conductor
James DePreist. She is interred at
Eden Cemetery, in
Collingdale, Pennsylvania, a suburb of
Philadelphia.
In 2001, the
1939 documentary film, was selected for preservation in the United States
National Film Registry by the
Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
On
January 27 2005, a commemorative
U.S. postage stamp honored Marian Anderson as part of the Black Heritage series. Anderson is also pictured on the US$5,000 Series I United States
Savings Bond.
Anderson is a recipient of the
Silver Buffalo Award, the highest adult award given by the
Boy Scouts of America.
Anderson symbolized the civil rights movement with dignity and grace; she was the first African-American to be named a permanent member of Metropolitan Opera Company and was a frequent performer at the White House. During the World War II and the Korean War, Marian Anderson participated by entertaining the troops in hospitals and bases. By
1956 she'd performed over one thousand times.
In
1963 she was one of the original 31 recipients of the newly reinstituted
Presidential Medal of Freedom (which is awarded for "especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interest of the United States, World Peace or cultural or other significant public or private endeavors"), and in 1965 she christened the nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarine,
USS George Washington Carver.
Marian Anderson Award
The Marian Anderson Award is given to an artist who exhibits leadership in a humanitarian area. The award was first given in 1998.
Awardees by year:
Depictions in fiction
Anderson's 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial forms a centrepoint of
Richard Powers's novel
The Time of Our Singing.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Marian Anderson'.
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