p. 17

Burleigh Sings
'Palms' on 46th
Palm Sunday

Negro Barytone, 73, Heard
at St. George's Church
byCapacityCongregation

For the forty-sixth consecutive
Palm Sunday, Harry Thacker Bur-
leigh, Negro barytone and composer,
grandson of a Maryland slave,
evoked the joyous spirit of the Pas-
chal season for the congregation of
St. George's Protestant Episcopal
Church in Stuyvesant Square yes-
terday by singing Faure's anthem,
"The Palms."

The familiar voice has acquired
mellowness while retaining its char-
acteristic vibrancy in the years since
Mr. Burleigh was chosen from
among sixty applicants to become
barytone soloist at St. George's in
May, 1894. It was heard, according
to the annual custom, at the morn-
ing service and again in the after-
noon when the Right Rev. Charles
K. Gilbert, Suffragan Bishop of New
York, confirmed twenty-nine chil-
dren and twenty-five adults.

The event, which always draws a
capacity congregation to the church,
occured toward the close of the
service, following several hymns of
hope and triumph by the choir of
120 voices. The singers, clad in blue,
purple and red cassocks and caps
and ranging from children seven-
and-a-half years old to adults, were
banked on both sides of the chancel.

Sings Opening Stanza
From the midst of the scarlet-clad
adult choir on the left side, Mr.
Burleigh's voice rang out with the
opening stanza of the anthem:

Around our way the palm trees
and the flowers,
Send forth their perfume on our
festal day.
Jesus appears; He comes to dry our
tears.
Already crowds approach and
homage pay.

Mr. Burleigh was in a deprecatory,
jesting mood after the service as he
greeted the friends who make a
point of attending the Palm Sunday
service and the annual service of
spirituals, which is held under Mr.
Burleigh's direction later in the
spring.
"I'm seventy-three. Isn't that
awful? Isn't that terrible?" he ex-
claimed. In answer to some one's
felicitations, he said: "You should
have been here forty years ago.
Then you would have heard a
voice !"
A woman came up to the diminu-
tive figure with alert eyes and white
hair and mustache and exclaimed:
"You were wonderful ! With all the
churches in town, here I am to hear
you !"
She was Mrs. Elmer Beardsley,
organist emeritus of the United
Congregational Church of Brideport,
who played at the services there for
fifty-five years.

Arranger of Spirituals

Mr. Burleigh was the first to ar-
range the spirituals of his race,
which form an integral part of
American music. From Negro musi-
cal lore he provided Anton Dvorak
with themes for his "New World
Symphony."
Yesterday he expressed the wish
that he might have more time for
composing. He recalled his admira-
tion for the late Lawrence Gilman,
music critic of the New York Herald
Tribune, and revealed that he had
aided and encourage Marian An-
derson, the Negro contralto, before
she attained success.
"Her voice - she has a great voice
- but it's something more, some -
thing within herself," Mr. Burleigh
said.
"Whenever I shake hands with
her, I just stand still for a moment.
I can't speak, and look into her face.
It's so true."
"I'm so emotional and impression-
able," Mr. Burleigh said, smiling,
"It comes from my mother. But it's
never led me astray."
In his sermon at the morning
service, the Rev. Elmore McNeill
McKee, rector of St. George's, as-
serted that "there's no such things
as neutrality."
Referring to the actions of the
United States during and after the
World War, Mr. McKee said "I
wonder if one of the greatest be-
trayals in history was not the pre-
dominant isolationism of America."
"Having started to assume responsi-
bility," he continued, "we pulled
away. Now that the body of this
world is being laid in its grave, we
try to say it with flowers."

Singing 'The Palms' for the 46th Consecutive Year

Herald Tribune - Fein
Harry Thacker Burleigh, Negro barytone, accompanying himself
on the piano at St. George's Protestant Episcopal Church yesterday