Steal Away (Moses Hogan) Jacksonville University Singers, Julian Bryson, Director

Steal Away

Traditional Negro Spiritual*
Moses Hogan, arranger (1957 – 2003)

Jacksonville University Singers
Julian David Bryson, director
Julian Morris, Alyssa Stark, & Noah Ellison, soloists

Season Theme: SoundS
Concert Title: The SoundS of Shibboleth
Recorded live in Terry Concert Hall, October 31, 2023

Selected annually by audition, the members of the Jacksonville University Singers perform an eclectic and challenging repertoire spanning the centuries and the globe including Renaissance polyphony, Baroque and Classical masterworks, folksongs, music theatre, opera and new music by living composers. The University Singers have performed for conferences of the American Choral Directors Association, the Florida Music Educators Association and the Music Teachers National Association. Other notable performances include concerts in New York’s Avery Fisher Hall, England’s Canterbury Cathedral, Chartres Cathedral, La Madeline – Paris, the Basilica of St. Nicholas – Nantes, TEDx Jacksonville, and numerous collaborations with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra. The University Singers give many performances each year on campus, in the community, and on tour, most recently in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York City.

Concert description:
Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth:
for he could not frame to pronounce it right.
Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan:
and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.
--Judges 12:6 (KJV)

According to the book of Judges and Tele-President Josiah Bartlet, a Shibboleth is a test. If you know how to pronounce it, you’re safe. If you don’t, well, you may be in for more tricks than treats. #IYKYK #DictionMatters

Like a Shibboleth, tonight’s program is filled with twists and turns, double meanings, puzzles, humor, beauty, and even a bit of spookiness!

Moses Hogan’s Steal Away provides another moment of unpretentious yet transcendental beauty. Along with Good News, The Chariot’s Comin’, these works honor Hogan’s important life and work to reimagine and reinvigorate the genre of Negro Spirituals* in the 20th year since his untimely passing. Spirituals always have more than one meaning, frequently referring both to Biblical and secular circumstances. Composed by enslaved people before and during the American Civil War, these songs were frequently subversive and rebellious works disguised as hymns and devotions. Chariots and trains referenced the Underground Railroad, while a starry crown reminds escaping slaves to navigate northward by the light of stars. Rivers, and especially the Jordan River, were often a stand-in for the Ohio River, which separated slave states from free states. Home and Jesus represent freedom in the northern states. In Steal Away, contemporary listeners may hear judgment of the sinner as the singers’ penitence, it was more likely a prayer for God to deliver the singers while humbling and destroying their enslavers. Interpretation depends on defining “the sinner”.

The original, anonymous composers of spirituals were categorically denied citizenship and all the rights thereof because of their race. For this reason, the term “African American Spirituals” ignores a crucial historic injustice. For this reason, we follow the guidance of contemporary African American scholars, including Dr. Marques L. A. Garrett, in naming the genre by the more historically informed term, “Negro Spirituals”.

To learn more about studying music or singing in an ensemble at Jacksonville University, visit https://www.ju.edu/music/vocalensembl...