Ex. 5-13: Go Down, Moses

"Go Down, Moses" is an African American spiritual, a song that grew up among enslaved people in the American South. Harry T. Burleigh (1866–1949) arranged it for solo voice and piano in 1917, and that is the version here.

The words retell the Bible story of Moses, who is sent to tell Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, to set the Israelites free. For people held in slavery, Egypt meant slavery, Moses meant a deliverer, and "Let my people go" meant exactly what it says. The song was first written down in 1861 at Fort Monroe, Virginia, where people who had escaped from slavery during the Civil War were singing it, and it was printed the same year, the first spiritual known to have been published as sheet music. Harriet Tubman, who guided escaped slaves to freedom, said she used it as a signal song for people in hiding.

Burleigh was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, the year after slavery was abolished. His grandfather, Hamilton Waters, had been enslaved in Maryland and had bought freedom for himself and his mother; he sang the old songs to the boy. In 1892 Burleigh won a scholarship to the National Conservatory of Music in New York, whose director was Dvořák. Burleigh sang spirituals to him very often, and Dvořák, who was writing his New World Symphony at the time, said that these melodies were the foundation for a truly American music.

From 1894 Burleigh was the baritone soloist at St. George's Church in New York, and he kept the post for 52 years. About sixty singers auditioned, and he was the only Black candidate. Some members of the church did not want him, but the banker J. P. Morgan cast the deciding vote for him.

In a note printed with these songs, Burleigh warned singers not to treat them as comic "minstrel" songs, with swaying, hand-clapping and put-on accents. Through all these songs, he said, "there breathes a hope, a faith in the ultimate justice and brotherhood of man."

Burleigh himself recorded this song in 1919. From the album Black Swans: The First Recordings of Black Classical Music Performers (2019)
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Also, in a jazz version for saxophone and piano, from the album Goin' Home by Archie Shepp and Horace Parlan (1977)
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