Professor of Music Michael Cooper published Margaret Bonds  as a part of the Composers Across Cultures series by Oxford University Press (New York). It is the first book-length biography of the composer, pianist, and activist who (as many readers of these Notables know distressingly well) is Cooper’s primary musical heartthrob of late. The book draws on an unprecedented mass of archival materials, offers insights into previously neglected (but important) facets of Bonds’ career, points out and corrects a number of longstanding and widely repeated fictions, and includes as its final chapter a 100-page survey of Bonds’ more than 400 compositions, categorized by genre. It’s also Cooper’s third book completed in as many years (although its origins date back to the mid-1980s). Readers of this notice may rest assured that Cooper will now take a break from writing books (though his series of editions of previously unpublished works by Bonds and her friend and mentor Florence Price will continue…). Those interested in this book about one of the most extraordinary musicians and musical activists of the twentieth century may read snippets (or more) at OUP’s website here and through their favorite booksellers.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper published Margaret Bonds’ choral love song “Supplication” with E.C. Schirmer (St. Louis). Written for SATB chorus and piano, the work proceeds from the usual sense of the term “supplication” (an earnest request or entreaty, especially one made deferentially to a person in a position of power or authority – OED Online), but challenges its connotation of hierarchy (here, gender hierarchy): the men’s and women’s voices address each other with mutual/reciprocal deference: “Once more I offer you my adoration, I offer you my love. Once more I beg of you, heed my supplication… I want to love again, and learn to smile. I want to live again the life you made worthwhile… This is my tender supplication, this is my plea.”

Professor of Music Michael Cooper published Margaret Bonds’ choral gem “Rainbow Gold” with E. C. Schirmer (St. Louis). Scored for mixed chorus and piano, “Rainbow Gold” was part of what Bonds called “a certain line” of compositions that she was “anxious to promote” after she became the only woman of color in classical music in the white- and male-dominated American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers in 1955, because the compositions advanced the cause of Black music and gave voice to the Black experience. She took it on a dangerous tour of thirteen Southern states as the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 was gaining steam toward passage. In a letter to her family, she linked it to the end of segregation, tying the growing spirit of hope born of that Act’s progress to audiences’ enthusiasm for the piece and its populist message hailing the rewards that – so Bonds believed – would come to those who devoted themselves to doing good for others: “There’s a folly in believin’ / You can’t take it with you when / All these riches you’re achievin’ / No one else could use again, / It’s the pay you’ve been receivin’ / While you did good deeds for men – / Rainbow Gold.” Rainbow Gold posthumously premiered using a pre-publication print of Cooper’s edition by the Capitol Hill Chorale (Washington, D.C.) in 2022. Those interested in being moved to earn their own Rainbow Gold can hear that performance here.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper published Margaret Bonds’ “Note on Commercial Theater” as part of the Margaret Bonds Signature Series  with Hildegard Publishing Company. The song is Margaret Bonds’ final art song based on a text of her longtime friend and collaborator Langston Hughes, an art song in the style of blues, and about the blues – and it is a searing critique of cultural appropriation: “You’ve taken my blues and gone – You sing ’em on Broadway and you sing ’em in Hollywood Bowl, and you mixed ’em up with symphonies, and you fixed ’em so they don’t sound like me … But someday somebody’ll stand up and talk about me, and write about me – Black and beautiful – and sing about me, and put on plays about me! I reckon it’ll be me myself! Yes, it’ll be me.” (To hear Hughes’ own reading of it with jazz accompaniment, click here.) Bonds wrote her in 1960-61 and at that time, Hughes’ assistant George Bass described it as “another message from the gods to man via MARGARET BONDS,” and a pre-publication version of Cooper’s edition (2019) was used for a videorecording released by the Antwerp-based team Songs of Comfort in 2021 (that powerful recording can be seen here) – but the song has until now remained in manuscript. This edition marks its first publication.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper and Part-Time Instructor of Music Christopher Washington published the world-premiere edition of Two Songs for Peggy Lee  by Margaret Bonds with ClarNan Editions. Cooper accessed the original autographs in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and prepared the volume as a whole, while Washington composed the piano part for “Don’t Speak,” which survives in lead sheet only (vocal line with chord changes, but no written-out accompaniment). The two songs represent Bonds’ well-known ability to synthesize classical and non-classical styles and offer a glimpse into the workings of Bonds’ genius as it had come to exist by 1968. “Don’t Speak” is a love song of great tenderness and eros-tinged intimacy, while the other song, “Bunker Hill,” is a hard-hitting critique of the human costs of urban renewal and gentrification, named for the storied Bunker Hill neighborhood of Los Angeles, whose poor and underserved community of immigrants and minorities was heartlessly displaced in 1958 so that the area could be redeveloped with high-rise, high-rent, and predominantly white-owned facilities.