The original performance of the Sacred Concert was given at Grace
(Episcopal) Cathedral in San Francisco on September 16, 1965.
This recording was made at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in
Manhattan on December 26, 1965. A studio recording was also made
but never released. This piece eventually became known as the
First Sacred Concert after Ellington produced two more: the Second
Sacred Concert (first performance in 1968 at the [Episcopal] Cathedral
of St. John the Divine in New York) and the Third Sacred Concert
(first performed at Westminster Abbey in London, 1973).
1. In the Beginning God 1. The piano parts throughout this piece are played by Ellington himself. The solo baritone saxophone of Harry Carney, and the solo clarinet solo, both make use of the six-note motive that will set the words "In the beginning God" in the vocal solo by Brock Peters.
2. Books of the Bible 1. The names of the books of the Protestant Old Testament are recited by the Herman McCoy Choir over an instrumental accompaniment featuring Paul Gonsalves on tenor saxophone. The accompaniment takes the form of a chord progression, which is repeated several times but inexactly.
3. In the Beginning God 2, instrumental. "Cat" Anderson plays the solo on his trumpet, ascending to the highest pitch he can reach.
4. Books of the Bible 2. After a piano intro, the names of the books of the New Testament are recited over a very simple one-note-at-a-time, ascending piano part.
5. In the Beginning God 3, percussion and choral. A drum solo by Louis Bellson, incorporating the six-note "In the Beginning God" motive, leads into a choral performance of "In the beginning God."
6. Tell Me It's the Truth, jazz waltz. The triple meter waltz tempo is unmistakable. The soloist is Esther Marrow, a gospel singer from Detroit.
7. Come Sunday 1 originally part of Ellington's suite Black, Brown and Beige, performed in Carnegie Hall in 1943.
8. The Lord's Prayer, based on the traditional Protestant text of the Our Father.
9. Come Sunday 2, instrumental. Solos by Cootie Williams (trumpet), Jimmy Hamilton (clarinet), and Johnny Hodges (saxophone). Notice that the solo instruments attempt to imitate the human voice.
10-11. Will You Be There and Ain't But the One, originally from Ellington's 1963 work, "My People," created for the Century of Negro Progress Exposition in Chicago. Both movements resemble the call-and-response format of African-American preaching. "Will You Be There," suggests a preacher urging a congregation, while "Ain't But the One" mentions the creation, the miracles of the Exodus and the New Testament, and the Biblical stories of Jonah, Daniel and Joshua. Soloist Jimmy McPhail and the McCoy choir are assisted by Cootie Williams' trumpet, using a rubber toilet-plunger as a mute.
12. New World a-Coming, a solo for Ellington at the piano, dates from a 1943 piece, originally for piano with orchestra. The name was taken from the title of a book published that same year by Roi Ottley, an optimistic history of black Americans that anticipated an improved situation for them after the Second World War ended.
13. David Danced Before the Lord With All His Might (on the other side of the tape cassette), also dates from the 1963 "My People." The title is from 2 Samuel 6:14, in which King David danced before the Ark of the Covenant as it was brought into his new capital, Jerusalem. The dancer in this performance is Bunny Briggs. The chorus sings the melody of "Come Sunday" in short notes (called "stop time") so that the rhythms of the dancer's feet can be heard clearly.
Some Relevant Texts
A journalist/biographer on Ellington's religious beliefs:
The bond with his mother was even more remarkable [than that with his father]. Her death in 1935 stunned him . . . . From her, more than anyone else, sprang his deep and abiding religious faith. She took him every Sunday to at least two services, usually at her own Baptist church and his father's Methodist church. She sent him also to Sunday school. The God she described to her child had no racial color, nor had his creations. She told her son he had nothing to worry about because he was blessed--and many times he spoke convincingly of his belief in her words because, he said, of the inexplicable good fortune he always encountered throughout his life.
Before he was out of his twenties, Ellington claimed, he had
completely read the Bible four times, and he went through it thrice
after the death of his mother. So, although it was scarcely surprising
that the world outside did not suspect the beliefs of the emergent
hip entertainer, those who were close to him were always aware
of Duke's faith. Otto Hardwick, one of Ellington's earliest friends
in Washington, recalled how Duke would come home at night and
read the Bible in his bath till the water turned cold. Ellington
was meticulous about saying grace before meals, and he wore a
gold cross on a chain around his neck from his middle thirties,
which was odd, since he had an aversion to other jewelry, and
refused to wear watches or rings . . . .
Any black American with a religious family would have gained a
good grounding in music from churchgoing in those days, and Ellington's
home was a place for music too . . . .
The first [Sacred] concert was to be repeated many times thereafter--including English performances at Coventry Catehdral and at Cambridge--in churches of many denominations until, later in the decade, Duke produced an entirely new set of works for further Sacred Concerts. The seriousness with which he viewed these occasions was unmistakable. I remember him standing admiringly before that stunning altar tapestry of Graham Sutherland's when he came to Coventry in the following year first to perform a Sacred Concert in England. "This music," he said, very simply, "is the most important thing I've ever done or am ever likely to do. This is personal, not career. Now I can say out loud to all the world what I've been saying to myself for years on my knees."
Source: Derek Jewell, Duke: A Portrait of Duke Ellington, (New York: Norton, 1977) 26, 27, 153.
From Ellington's program note for the first performance:
In this world we presume many ambitions. We make many observations such as (a) everyone's aloneness (there really are no categories, you know. Everyone is so alone--the basic, essential state of humankind); (b) the paradox that is communication--the built-in answer to that feeling of aloneness.
Communication itself is what baffles the multitude. It is both so difficult and so simple. Of all man's fears, I think men are most afraid of being what they are--in direct communication with the world at large. The fear reprisals, the most personal of which is that they "won't be understood."
How can anyone expect to be understood unless he presents his thoughts with complete honesty? This situation is unfair because it asks too much of the world. In effect, we say, "I don't dare show you what I am because I don't trust you for a minute but please love me anyway because I so need you to. And, of course, if you don't love me anyway, you're a dirty dog, just as I suspected, so I was right in the first place." Yet, every time God's children have thrown away fear in pursuit of honesty--trying to communicate themselves, understood or not--miracles have happened.
As I travel from place to place by car, bus, train, plane .
. . taking rhythm to the dancers, harmony to the romantic, melody
to the nostalgic, gratitude to the listener . . . receiving praise,
applause and handshakes, and at the same time, doing the thing
I like to do, I feel that I am most fortunate because I know that
God has blessed my timing, without which no thing could have happened--the
right time or place or with the right people. The four must converge.
Thank God . . . .
Wisdom is something that man partially enjoys--One and only One
has all the wisdom. God has total understanding. There are some
people who speak one language and some who speak many languages.
Every man prays in his own language, and there is no language
that God does not understand.
. . . It has been said once that a man, who could not play the organ or any of the instruments of the symphony, accompanies his worship by juggling. He was not the world's greatest juggler but it was the one thing he did best. And so it was accepted by God.*
I believe that no matter how highly skilled a drummer or saxophonist
might be, that if this is the thing he does best, and he offers
it sincerely from the heart in--or as the accompaniment to--his
worship, he will not be unacceptable because of lack of skill
or of the instrument upon which he makes his demonstration, be
it pipe or tomtom.
If a man is troubled, he moans and cries when he worships. When
a man feels that that which he enjoys in this life is only because
of the grace of God, he rejoices, he sings, and sometimes dances
(and so it was with David in spite of his wife's prudishness).**
In this program, you may hear a wide variety of statements without
words, and I think you should know that if it is a phrase with
six tones, it symbolizes the six syllables in the first four words
of the Bible, "In the beginning God," which is our theme.
We say it many times . . . many ways.
Source: The Duke Ellington Reader, ed. Mark Tucker (Oxford University Press, 1993) 371-2.
[Notes by JR:] *This medieval story was retold by Anatole France in "Le jongleur de Notre Dame," which was made into an opera by Massenet. Ellington seems to have known it indirectly.
**The story is told in 2 Samuel 6:14-23. However, it was not David's wife who objected to his dancing, but Michal the daughter of David's predecessor Saul.