During the 1930 and 1940s, Harlem was full of musical talent and spirit, with numerous clubs whose stages hosted jazz greats such as Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Mary Lou Williams.

Outside of the grand stages and radios of Harlem, smaller and younger Black musicians were in training, learning in music lessons and programs. Students and teachers who developed their musical talent outside of the city’s public school system later brought their knowledge into Harlem school buildings, infusing the classrooms, auditoriums and special celebrations with bonafide talent.

Wadleigh High School’s June 1939 yearbook cover had a musical theme. This exhibit explores the cultivation of a “composer identity” at Wadleigh High School in Harlem, as one example of Black student achievement in the context of racial segregation and exclusion

Wadleigh’s Composer Culture: New Visions of Composer Identity

The word is: composer. Take a moment. Think. What comes to mind when you hear the word “composer”? What names, visuals, sounds and sensations come to mind?

It’s quite likely that “composers” draws to mind some historical figures from classical music: Bach, Handel, Mozart, Chopin. The common bond: all are white European men.

But are “composers” exclusively European and male? Yet if you visit the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and flip through the archival collection for Wadleigh High School, a school located on West 114th Street in Harlem, the word “composers” will keep coming to mind. Various folders from the all-girls high school, which served Black and white girls in the 1930s and 1940s were filled with original scores written by students, marked with a copyright logo, programs of musical and theatrical performances, and yearbooks whose contents included scores composed by students.

The seeds of musical careers seem to have been sown in Wadleigh’s musical spaces. Some of Wadleigh’s young female composers’ musical development continued beyond graduation. The professional heights these young girls achieved beyond their Wadleigh years show the impact of the “composer” identity cultivated at Wadleigh. The volume of musical artifacts in the archives further underscores that Wadleigh had a composer culture that welcomed the schools’ Black and white students in nurturing their musical talents. The school offered its students a platform to produce and present themselves as composers to their community. Young African American high school girls in the 1930s and 1940s may not have come to mind when thinking of “composers.” Yet the musical scores they and their teachers have left in the archive help to reawaken their voices and stories and challenge images of only white European men as composers.

Let’s take a look into the life of a specific Black Wadleigh student, Millicent Brown, who brought her musical talent into Wadleigh. Her story shows how Wadleigh High School during the 1930s and 1940s was an institution that encouraged students’ musical talents giving them the space to compose and perform, thereby expanding the “composer” identity to high school girls, many of them Black girls.

Nurturing Musical Talent in Harlem in the 1930s

“And if you give to Harlem, it always finds a way to give back. When I hear music coming from the apartment windows or from the doors of a storefront church, I know that’s Harlem giving me a gift.” – from Walter Dean Myers’ Here in Harlem

African Americans began flocking to the area surrounding West 135th St at the turn of the 20th century, making Harlem “the greatest Negro city in the world.” Black musicians were part of this Great Migration, too. Poet and lyricist James Weldon Johnson and his brother, composer J. Rosamond Johnson, lived in Jacksonville, Florida when they wrote “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” but moved to Harlem alongside millions of other Black Americans.

Community centers, churches and cultural centers moved into the area to support the young African American residents, and locals built new spaces to serve young people as well. One such cultural center was The Musical School Settlement, which opened its uptown location at 6 and 8 West 131 Street in 1914. White music schools remained closed to students of color, but The Musical School Settlement provided African Americans with music education through lessons on piano, recitals and performance opportunities. Additionally, acclaimed musicians gave lectures at the school. When the school closed its operations in 1919, a new music school - The Spiller School of Music - opened nearby.

Spiller School of Music

Isabele Tailiferro Spiller was a member of the band called the Musical Spillers, and a teacher in the Spiller School of Music at 232 West 138th St in Harlem. The Spiller School of Music, run by Isabelle Spiller and her husband William, offered a variety of lessons and programs for children and adults including a “Tiny Tots Band” for preschool children and beginning lessons on the piano, violin, banjo, drums, saxophone, clarinet, trumpet, trombone for children and adults.

The Spiller School of Music took pride in the musical achievements of its students and strongly encouraged them to enter into the New York Music Week Association Contest. The school and community lauded students who won awards from these contests. One of those winners was Millicent Brown, who played piano and won a Silver Medal in the 1932 New York Music Week Association Contest. The program featured a majority of white, European composers (Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Hewitt, Kuhlau, Holler, and Schumann) and a Black American composer, James Hubert Blake. Millicent Brown performed a symphony by Mozart at this event.

In the 1920s and 1930s people of all ages could come to the Spiller School of Music at 232 West 138th St in Harlem for music instruction.

Music educator, Isabele Tailiferro Spiller, a member of the band the Musical Spillers offered a variety of lessons and programs for children and adults including a “Tiny Tots Band” for preschool children and beginning lessons on the piano, violin, banjo, drums, saxophone, clarinet, trumpet, trombone for children and adults. Programs from recitals in the 1930s highlight students performing pieces typically composed by European men including Handel, Beethoven and Mozart.

The Spiller School of Music took pride in the musical achievements of their students and strongly encouraged them to enter into the New York Music Week Association Contest. Students who won awards from these contests were lauded. One of those winners was Millicent Brown, a 11 year-old African American girl living in Harlem, who was awarded a Silver Medal in the New York Music Week Association Contest 1932 for her piano talents. Through the Spiller School, she played and performed a variety of classical pieces, including an excerpt from Mozart’s “Symphony 1”, “Minuet in G” by Paderewski, and “Valse in A Minor” by Chopin.

Cultural centers such as the Music Settlement School and the Spiller School of Music, opened up musical learning and opportunities for African American children. Encouraged by Black teachers and musicians like Isabelle Spiller, students entered city-wide music competitions and recitals and began to identify themselves as talented musicians and performers. This identity would then carry and continue into the public schools students attended. Millicent Brown carried her musicality with another Harlem institution, Wadleigh High School.

Millicent Brown at the Spiller School and Wadleigh

Wadleigh High School during the 1930s and 40s had many offerings to support students in their music and arts education. There was an orchestra, chorus, senior glee club, and theater group. Programs from formal performances and events from the school include more modern tunes of the time, such as Gershwin’s’ “Summertime” during “A Spring Festival” in June 1948 and more classical pieces such as “Batti, Batti” by Mozart during the January 1939 graduation exercise.

Ms. Spiller was first a teacher at the Spiller School and later on became a music teacher at Wadleigh High School, where faculty was predominantly white despite a diverse student body, as Kimberly Johnson documented. The arrival of a Black music teacher may have led to greater inclusion of Black girls in musical activities.

In addition to providing young girls with music to sing and play, the school was also a place for young girls to compose, publish and play original compositions. Millicent Brown contributed to this composer culture at Wadleigh through publishing a piece titled “String Quartette” in the school’s June 1940 yearbook.

Miss Brown also collaborated with a peer, Goldye Waters, in the original piece, “Wadleigh on Parade.” The yearbook credits Miss Waters for “Words and Music,” and Miss Brown for the piano parts that formed the “accompaniment.” Their song was published in the 1940 yearbook and as individual sheet music with “copyright applied for,” now preserved at the Schomburg Center.

Musicians Patrice P. Eaton and Gary Mitchell, Jr. performed and recorded Waters’ and Brown’s 1940 composition in 2020.

Millicent Brown and Goldye Waters made an enduring mark on Wadleigh’s musical culture. Their original composition was played not only at the June 1940 graduation, but at many integral milestones of students’ and the school’s history including the 1948 “A Spring Festival,” the school’s 50th anniversary celebration in 1947, and the Wadleigh High School Alumni Luncheon in 1982.

Following Brown’s graduation from Wadleigh, she remained connected to her work as a piano musician, as well as the Wadleigh community. Millicent participated in a variety of performances to benefit the community, but research for this exhibit could not identify or track any further work as a composer beyond this period.

Millicent Brown’s story may offer hints of the experience of other Black women musicians and composers at Wadleigh. While the school may not have been the sole influence in their musical development, given the rich landscape of musical spaces in Harlem, the school yearbooks from this time and the collection of sheet music and bylines for original compositions found in performance programs in the Wadleigh Collection at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture attest to a composer culture at Wadleigh.

Concluding Thoughts

African American women often have been overlooked in the field of composition, especially in classical music. Wadleigh High School in the 1930s and 1940s gave young girls the platform to write and share original works, including classical music. While Millicent Brown’s post-Wadleigh education and career remain unknown, many Wadleigh students used their musician and composer identities to open new doors in a male-dominated and racist world. Black graduates of Wadleigh attended prestigious institutions of higher education in music: Madeline “Maddie” Jenkins, a June 1942 graduate, attended Manhattanville College on a music scholarship, and two 1938 graduates, Marjorie Landsmark (June 1938) and Myrtle Gauntlett, (January 1938) attended the Juilliard school. Graduates also played with prominent composers and musicians: Carline Ray, a June 1941 graduate, performed with Mary Lou Williams. Wadleigh not only helped confirm students’ musical talent but opened up further doors of possibility. Original compositions at the school, like those by Millicent Brown and Goldye Waters, give Wadleigh its place in Harlem’s musical landscape.

Sources

Primary Sources

“Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater 40th anniversary gala,1999,” December 2, 1998, VHS, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

“Duke Ellington funeral, 1974,” May 27, 1974, Carl Seltzer collection of Eubie Blake recordings, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Wadleigh High School Collection. box 1, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library.

Wadleigh High School, The Owl, January 1937, June 1937, January 1938, June 1938, January 1939, June 1940, June 1941.

William N. and Isabele T. Spiller papers. box 1, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library.

William N. and Isabele T. Spiller Photograph Collection, Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library.

Secondary Sources

Anderson, Phyllis Wynn. “Isabele Taliaferro Spiller : Harlem music educator, 1925-1958” (Thesis, University of Georgia, 1988).

Griffin, Farah Jasmine. Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics During World War II (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2013).

McGruder, Kevin. Race and Real Estate: Conflict and Cooperation in Harlem, 1890-1920 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015).

Walker-Hill, Helen. From Spirituals to Symphonies: African American Women Composers and Their Music (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002).

Yardley, William. “Carline Ray, an Enduring Pioneer Woman of Jazz, Dies at 88,” The New York Times, July 27, 2013.

Credits

This exhibit was researched and written by Ellen Oshinsky. Ellen Oshinsky (MA, Teachers College, 2017 in Elementary Inclusive Education) is the founder and educator of DMV EcoAdventures, an environmental education out of school time program in the Washington DC area. Additionally, she is the Manager of Strategic Partnerships, DC for Avodah: The Jewish Service Corps.

This exhibit was peer-reviewed by Christopher Gurley and Karen D. Taylor. Editing by Esther Cyna and Ansley Erickson for the Harlem Education History Project.

The Teachers College Department of Arts and Humanities Diversity Grants for support to record Goldye Waters’ and Millicent Brown’s 1940 “Wadleigh on Parade,” performed by Patrice P. Eaton (vocals) and Gary Mitchell, Jr. (piano).