Sonya Headlam & Rebecca Cypess
Transactional Musical Heritage
NEW YORK, NY
Notes on the Program
In the eighteenth century, Europe, Britain, and the Americas were home to countless musicians of African origin. While many of these musicians engaged in musical performance, participatory music-making, and other ephemeral forms of “musicking,” a number also became composers who notated or published their music. This program explores the work of three such composers—Ignatius Sancho, Joseph Bologne, and Francis Johnson—as well as two Black poets—Olaudah Equiano and Phillis Wheatley.
Little is known about the early life of Ignatius Sancho. A short biographical essay written after Sancho’s death and included in his posthumously published Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African (1782) states that he was born on a slave ship crossing the Middle Passage in 1729 and was orphaned as a baby. While these points cannot be verified, he is known to have been in London by the time he was young, perhaps a toddler, and held in captivity by three unmarried sisters. He soon gained the attention of the Duke and Duchess of Montagu, who supported his education, and whose household he joined as a domestic servant. In the Montagu home, he also gained an education, including in music. While Sancho is best known today as the author of the posthumous Letters, the books that he prepared for publication himself were his five books of music—one book of songs and four of instrumental dance music. Sancho’s vocal music was published in his Collection of New Songs, published in or after 1769. The texts that he draws upon include poems by William Shakespeare, David Garrick (one of Sancho’s friends), and the ancient Greek poet Anacreon, whose works had been recently translated into English.
Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, was a violinist and composer born in Guadeloupe to Georges Bologne de Saint-Georges and a woman whom he enslaved on his plantation. Joseph was taken to France at the age of seven, where he gained an education that included musical performance and composition, as well as courtly arts like literature and fencing. He conducted and performed in multiple orchestras in Paris, including the Concert des amateurs and the Paris Opéra. Bologne composed substantial and technically difficult works for violin and keyboard, small string chamber groups, and violin with orchestra. In addition, he composed dozens of songs in a style that was accessible to amateur musicians. These songs, many in the genre known as the romance, which evoked pastoral themes, encompass a limited range and technically accessible accompaniments that would have been suitable for either keyboard or harp. Three of the songs on this evening’s program set texts found in anthologies of French poetry. The text of the Ariette d’Iphigénie en Tauride is drawn from an opera libretto, Iphigénie en Tauride, which was set in full by Niccolò Piccinni.
Poet Olaudah Equiano’s story is recorded in his autobiography, published in 1789 as the Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. During his extensive travels around the world—first as an enslaved person, then as a sailor on a merchant ship and a member of the British military—he witnessed many types of musical performance and learned how to play the French horn, an instrument especially associated with Black musicians of the eighteenth century. The poem “Miscellaneous Verses, or, Reflections on the State of my Mind during my First Convictions” appears in Equiano’s autobiography at the moment when he decides to convert to Christianity. The poem is in the style and meter of a hymn, and we have set it to a hymn tune included in the Whole Book of Psalms assembled in the first half of the eighteenth century by John Travers.
Phillis Wheatley had been kidnapped from Africa and sold into slavery to a family in Boston at the age of seven. She quickly learned to read and write, and she became the first Black woman poet whose work was published. “On Imagination” appeared in her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773). In contrast to Equiano’s “Miscellaneous Verses,” the meters of Wheatley’s poems do not suggest that they would have been sung. Our program therefore includes a reading of Wheatley’s poem, set against the musical backdrop of a sentimental minuet by Sancho. In fact, Sancho knew Wheatley’s poems and commented on them in his correspondence: “Phyllis’s poems do credit to nature—and put art—merely as art—to the blush. It reflects nothing either to the glory of her master—if she is still his slave—except he glories in low vanity of having in his wanton power a mind animated by Heaven—a genius superior to himself.”
Francis Johnson was the first Black composer whose works were published in North America. He lived in Philadelphia and performed on both the violin and the keyed bugle. His compositions included instrumental dances, dances with choral accompaniment, songs, operatic-style arias, and more, though not all of these survive. Our program concludes with two of Johnson’s songs. The first, Grave of a Slave, uses the language of sentimental ballads to inspire sympathy for enslaved people and encourage the growing calls for abolition; its text was first published in 1831 in The Liberator, an antislavery newspaper that circulated widely in the antebellum period. The other, If Sleeping Now, Fair Maid of Love, is another sentimental song on the universal theme of love, with words attributed only to “a gentleman.”
~Rebecca Cypess
The square piano used on this program was on generous loan from Leslie Martin, with thanks to Willard Martin. The instrument was built by Johannes Zumpe in London in 1780 and restored in 1993 by Tim Hamilton.
This concert is part of GEMAS, a project of Americas Society and Gotham Early Music Scene devoted to early music of the Americas, curated by Nell Snaidas and Sebastian Zubieta.
With gratitude to the AMERICAS SOCIETY / COUNCIL OF THE AMERICAS, and the MUSIC OF THE AMERICAS SERIES for the opportunity to offer this concert to our audiences.
Sonya Headlam photo credit: Fotoplicity
Texts & Translations
Bientôt je vais
Bientôt je vais cesser de vivre,
Soon I will cease living,
Sans cesser de vous adorer,
Without ceasing to love you,
Content si ma mort vous délivre
Content if my death delivers you
Des maux qu’on vous fait endurer.
From evils that you have been made to endure.
Elle n’a rien qui m’épouvante:
It has nothing that scares me:
Sans vous, la vie est sans attraits.
Without you, life is without attraction.
Un regret pourtant me tourmente;
Just one regret tourments me:
Quoi! je ne vous verrai jamais!
What! That I will never see you again!
text by Charles de Lusse from Recueil de romances (1767)
Ariette d’Iphigénie en Tauride
Oreste! au nom de l’amitié,
Oreste! In the name of friendship,
Au nom de ta sœur et des Dieux,
In the name of your sister and the gods,
Écoute un ami qui te prie,
Listen to a friend who implores you,
Quand il veut t’immoler sa vie,
When he wishes to sacrifice his life,
Ne résiste point à ses vœux.
Do not resist his wishes.
Vas porter au sein de la Grèce,
Go, carry within Greece,
Loin de ces funestes climats,
Far from this lethal country
Le souvenir de ma tendresse,
The memory of my tenderness
Et l’heureux fruit de mon trépas.
And the happy fruit of my death.
Oreste! au nom de l’amitié,
Oreste! In the name of friendship,
Au nom de ta sœur et des Dieux,
In the name of your sister and the gods,
Écoute un ami qui te prie,
Listen to a friend who implores you,
Quand il veut t’immoler sa vie,
When he wishes to sacrifice his life,
Ne résiste point à ses vœux.
Do not resist his wishes.
text by Alphonse Ducongé Dubreuil from Iphigénie en Tauride (1783)
Pour jamais à ma Thémire
Pour jamais à ma Thémire
Forever, to my Thémire,
J’ai donné mon cœur,
Have I given my heart,
C’est pour moi qu’elle soupire;
It is for me that she sighs,
Je suis son vainqueur.
I am her victor.
Tous nos bergers veulent vivre
All the shepherds want to live,
Pour suivre
To follow
Sa loi:
Her law:
C’est à moi, c’est à moi
It is to me, it is to me,
Qu’elle a donné sa foi.
That she has given her fidelity.
L’autre jour sur la fougère
The other day under the gazebo
Le beau Licidas
The handsome Licidas
Vint parler à ma bergere
Came to speak to my shepherdess,
Qui n’écouta pas.
Who did not listen.
Elle méprise en son âme
She despises in her soul
La flamme
The flame
D’un Roi.
Of a king.
C’est à moi, c’est à moi
It is to me, it is to me,
Qu’elle a donné sa foi.
That she has given her fidelity.
text by M. le Duc de Nivernois from Correspondance secrète, politique,
et littéraire 2 (1787)
Le baiser de Cloris
Que ne suis-je encore un enfant!
Why am I no longer a child!
Je n’avois troupeau ni houlette;
I had neither flock nor crook;
Je n’allois aux champs seulement,
I used to go to the fields
Que pour cueillir la violette.
Only for picking violets.
Je vis Cloris, bientôt j’aimai;
I saw Cloris, soon I knew love;
Dieux ! que mon âme fut ravie!
Gods! How my soul was ravished!
Le premier vœu que je formai,
The first vow that I took
Fut de l’aimer toute ma vie.
Was to love her all my life.
text by Claude-Sixte Sautreau de Marsy from Le petit chansonnier
françois 1 (1778)
Miscellaneous Verses, or, Reflections on the State of my
Mind during my First Convictions
Well may I say my life has been
One scene of sorrow and of pain;
From early days I griefs have known,
And as I grew my griefs have grown:
Inur’d to dangers, griefs, and woes,
Train’d up ‘midst perils, deaths, and foes,
I said “Must it thus ever be?—
No quiet is permitted me.”
Strivings and wrestlings seem’d in vain;
Nothing I did could ease my pain:
Then gave I up my works and will,
Confess’d and own’d my doom was hell!
Yet here, ‘midst blackest clouds confin’d,
A beam from Christ, the day-star, shin’d;
Surely, thought I, if Jesus please,
He can at once sign my release.
O, happy hour, in which I ceas’d
To mourn, for then I found a rest!
My soul and Christ were now as one--
Thy light, O Jesus, in me shone!
He dy’d for all who ever saw
No help in them, nor by the law:—
I this have seen; and gladly own
“Salvation is by Christ alone!”
from the poem of the same name by Olaudah Equiano (? -1797)
The Complaint
Take, oh take those lips away,
That so sweetly were forsworn,
And those eyes: the break of day,
Lights that do mislead the Morn;
But my kisses bring again,
Seals of love, but sealed in vain.
text from Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare
Sweetest Bard
Sweetest bard that ever sung,
Nature’s glory, Fancy’s child,
Never sure did witching tongue,
Warble forth such wood notes wild.
Come each Muse and sister grace,
Loves and Pleasures hither come,
Well you know this happy place,
Avon’s banks were once your home.
Bring the laurel, bring the flowers,
Songs of triumph to him raise;
He uniting all your powers,
All uniting, sing his praise.
text by David Garrick
Anacreon ode XXIII
If the treasured gold could give
Man a longer time to live,
I’d employ my utmost care
still to keep and still to spare.
And when death approach’d would say,
“Take thy fee and go away.”
But since riches cannot save
Mortals from the gloomy grave,
Why should my self decieve,
Vainly sigh and vainly grieve?
Death will surely be my lot,
Whether I am rich or not.
Give me freely while I live
Generous wine in plenty give,
Soothing joys my life to cheer,
Beauty kind and friend sincere.
Happy could I ever find
Friends sincere and beauty kind.
translation by Francis Fawkes
Thou Soft Flowing Avon
Thou soft flowing Avon, by thy silver stream,
Of things more than mortal
sweet Shakespeare would dream:
The fairies by moonlight dance round his green bed,
For hallowed the turf is which pillowed his head.
The lovestricken maiden, the soft sighing swain
Here rove without danger and sigh without pain:
The sweet bud of beauty no blight shall here dread,
For hallowed the turf is which pillowed his head.
Here youth shall be famed for their love & their truth,
And cheerful old age feel the spirit of youth:
For the raptures of fancy here poets shall tread,
For hallowed the turf is which pillowed his head.
Flow on, silver Avon, in song ever flow,
Be the swans on thy bosom still whiter than snow:
Ever full be thy stream, like his fame may it spread,
And the turf ever hallwed which pillowed his head.
text by David Garrick
Friendship, Source of Joy
When love, that source of pleasing pains,
Triumphant in the bosom reigns,
Our cares increase,
Then farewell peace,
Yet still we hug our chain.
Not so is friendship’s gentle sway,
Mild and serene as dawning day;
Parent of smiles, Our grief beguiles,
And drives each care away.
Let friendship then our thoughts employ,
For charming friendship ne’er can cloy:
Cupid, no more
We’ll thee adore:
Friendship’s the source of joy.
“The words by a young Lady”
On Imagination
Thy various works, imperial queen, we see,
How bright their forms! how deck’d with pomp by thee!
Thy wond’rous acts in beauteous order stand,
And all attest how potent is thine hand.
From Helicon’s refulgent heights attend,
Ye sacred choir, and my attempts befriend:
To tell her glories with a faithful tongue,
Ye blooming graces, triumph in my song.
Now here, now there, the roving Fancy flies,
Till some lov’d object strikes her wand’ring eyes,
Whose silken fetters all the senses bind,
And soft captivity involves the mind.
Imagination! who can sing thy force?
Or who describe the swiftness of thy course?
Soaring through air to find the bright abode,
Th’ empyreal palace of the thund’ring God,
We on thy pinions can surpass the wind,
And leave the rolling universe behind:
From star to star the mental optics rove,
Measure the skies, and range the realms above.
There in one view we grasp the mighty whole,
Or with new worlds amaze th’ unbounded soul.
Though Winter frowns to Fancy’s raptur’d eyes
The fields may flourish, and gay scenes arise;
The frozen deeps may break their iron bands,
And bid their waters murmur o’er the sands.
Fair Flora may resume her fragrant reign,
And with her flow’ry riches deck the plain;
Sylvanus may diffuse his honours round,
And all the forest may with leaves be crown’d:
Show’rs may descend, and dews their gems disclose,
And nectar sparkle on the blooming rose.
Such is thy pow’r, nor are thine orders vain,
O thou the leader of the mental train:
In full perfection all thy works are wrought,
And thine the sceptre o’er the realms of thought.
Before thy throne the subject-passions bow,
Of subject-passions sov’reign ruler thou;
At thy command joy rushes on the heart,
And through the glowing veins the spirits dart.
Fancy might now her silken pinions try
To rise from earth, and sweep th’ expanse on high:
From Tithon’s bed now might Aurora rise,
Her cheeks all glowing with celestial dies,
While a pure stream of light o’erflows the skies.
The monarch of the day I might behold,
And all the mountains tipt with radiant gold,
But I reluctant leave the pleasing views,
Which Fancy dresses to delight the Muse;
Winter austere forbids me to aspire,
And northern tempests damp the rising fire;
They chill the tides of Fancy’s flowing sea,
Cease then, my song, cease the unequal lay.
poem by Phyllis Wheatley Peters from Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral (1773)
The Grave of the Slave
The cold storms of winter shall chill him no more,
His woes and his sorrows, his pains are all o’er;
The sod of the valley now covers his form,
He is safe in his last home, he feels not the storm.
The poor slave is laid all unheeded and lone.
Where the rich and the poor find a permanent home;
Not his master can rouse him with voice of command;
He knows not and hears not his cruel demand;
Not a tear, nor a sigh to embalm his cold tomb,
No friend to lament him, no child to bemoan;
Not a stone marks the place where he peacefully lies,
The earth for the pillow, his curtain the skies.
Poor slave, shall we sorrow that death was thy friend,
The last and the kindest that heaven could send?
The grave of the weary is welcomed and blest;
And death to the captive is freedom and rest.
text by Sarah Louisa Forten
If Sleeping Now, Fair Maid of Love
If sleeping now, fair maid of love,
Upon they couch of down,
May guardian angels from above
Thy sleep with softness crown.
And oh may fancy lend her aid,
Through all thy slumbering hours,
And grant to thee my charming maid,
Her bright and cheering powers.
If waking still in pity bend,
And hear a suppliant’s prayer,
Nor hopeless hence thy victim send
To sink beneath despair,
For life without thee maid will prove,
Nights dark and dismal way,
Which but thy smiles of faithful love,
Can turn to brilliant day.
text by “A Gentleman”
Artist Bio’s
With a voice described as “golden” (Seen and Heard International), soprano Sonya Headlam performs music that spans centuries, from the Baroque era to the present. Recent debuts include the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and, in 2024, the Summer for the City Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center and the New Jersey Symphony. 2024 also brought Sonya to her home state of Ohio for Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with the Akron Symphony Orchestra. Also in 2024, Sonya premiered the role of The Caretaker in Luna Pearl Woolf‘s photographic oratorio, Number Our Days, at the Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC), and she joined the Bang on a Can All-Stars and Friends for Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In the 2022-2023 season, Sonya made several notable solo debuts, including with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Handel’s Messiah, her Severance Hall debut with conductor Jeannette Sorrell and Apollo’s Fire, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the North Carolina Symphony.
In 2023, Sonya was appointed the Rohde Family Artist-in-Residence at the Chelsea Music Festival, where she performed a wide range of chamber music including Iman Habibi’s effervescent Ey Sabā. In 2021, she premiered Patricio Molina’s spiritual song Kecha Tregulfe at Carnegie Hall, marking the first performance in the Mapudungun language on that stage. Her Jamaican heritage inspires her to explore works of celebrated Jamaican composers such as Peter Ashbourne and Andrew Marshall; performing for the Governor General in her critically acclaimed Jamaican debut. Equally at home on the opera stage, Sonya has delighted audiences with her portrayals of characters such as le Feu in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges, Fiordiligi in Mozart’s Così fan tutte, and Musetta in Puccini’s La bohème. Sonya was a full-time member of the Choir of Trinity Wall Street from 2019–2024 and remains an auxiliary member.
Sonya is featured on two recent recordings with The Raritan Players: In the Salon of Madame Brillon: Music and Friendship in Benjamin Franklin’s Paris, and the newly commissioned Reflections by Trevor Weston, both directed by historical keyboardist and musicologist, Dr. Rebecca Cypess. She was a visiting scholar at Rutgers University in 2021, where she conducted research on Ignatius Sancho, presenting a lecture recital on the composer with Dr. Cypess at the 2021 Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society. Sonya’s article, “Inspiring the Next Generation: Navigating the Singer’s Path with Purpose and Resilience” was published in the American Music Teacher journal. Sonya holds a Doctor of Musical Arts from Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts, where she was honored with the Michael Fardink Memorial Award.
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Noted harpsichordist and historical pianist Rebecca Cypess is the founder and director of the Raritan Players, a period-instrument chamber group devoted to the exploration of little-known compositions and performance practices of the eighteenth century. The ensemble’s recent appearances include the American Philosophical Society, the Center for Jewish History, Duke University, the “Chamber Music Live” series at Queens College, and both live and virtual engagements at the Bloomington Early Music Festival. The group’s recordings, A Portrait of Ignatius Sancho featuring new compositions by Trevor Weston, and In the Salon of Madame Brillon, both with soprano Sonya Headlam; Sisters, Face to Face: The Bach Legacy in Women’s Hands; and In Sarah Levy’s Salon, have been called “simply mesmerizing” (Early Music America), “enchanting” (Classics Today), and “an unexpected treasure” (American Record Guide). Rebecca has also recorded music to accompany exhibitions of eighteenth-century artwork at the Royal Academy of Arts (London) and for the Apple TV series Franklin.
A highly accomplished and prolific music historian, Rebecca specializes in the cultural history and performance practices of music in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe and America, as well as music in Jewish culture, music in the history of science, and women in music. She the author of Women and Musical Salons in the Enlightenment; Curious and Modern Inventions: Instrumental Music as Discovery in Galileo’s Italy; and over 45 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. She is co-editor of five books, including Music and Jewish Culture in Early Modern Italy: New Perspectives, and Sara Levy’s World: Gender, Judaism, and the Bach Tradition in Enlightenment Berlin. Rebecca has been the recipient of two awards from the American Musicological Society: the Noah Greenberg Award for contributions to historical performance and the Ruth A. Solie Award for a collection of musicological essays of exceptional merit.
Rebecca is the Mordecai D. Katz and Dr. Monique C. Katz Dean of the Undergraduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Yeshiva University. She previously served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Music at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University where she co-founded Rutgers JFAS (Jewish Faculty, Administrators, and Staff), a grassroots group of Jewish employees that combats antisemitism as well as anti-Israel bias and promotes a positive, supportive environment for Jews on campus. Starting in 2023, the disturbing rise in antisemitism in higher education led her to begin publishing and speaking widely on the purposes of academia and how it can be reclaimed as a site of reason and understanding. Rebecca’s work on these topics has appeared in venues such as Tablet, Inside Higher Ed, and the Wall Street Journal.