Ear Training for History: Listening to Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield's Double-Voiced Aesthetics

Bend your ear to Saturday, 23 July 1853. On that morning, America's first Black concert vocalist and operatic singer, Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, performed at Stafford House, home of prominent English Abolitionist the Duchess Sutherland, during her UK tour. Born into captivity on a plantation in Mississippi raised free Philadelphia, Greenfield's voice sounded out fever pitch conflict over slavery. A multioctave she smashed boundaries for race gender as woman who sang “white” vocal repertoire across registers heard both female male. Writing an early public performance 1851, one newspaper reviewer summed up revolutionary threat by stating “we can assure Union is no degree periled it,” meaning course, was . Whether received pro- or antislavery audiences, understood peal emancipation. In his 1855 review New York Tabernacle performance, James McCune Smith went far compare firearms employed escaped slaves defending their freedom against Fugitive Slave Act.