Concert Spiritual

Concert Spiritual is the arranged form of the African American spiritual as performed on the concert stage, in recital halls and by trained choirs. Beginning with the arrangements of *Harry T. Burleigh* in the 1910s, composers set traditional spirituals for solo voice and piano or for a cappella chorus, applying the harmonic language and formal discipline of the Western art song while preserving the melodies and texts of the folk originals. The idiom demands virtuoso singers capable of both operatic projection and idiomatic inflection, and it became a principal vehicle through which Black composers and performers entered the American classical mainstream.