From the Dark Tower
by Dorothy Rudd Moore
Premiere Recording of Orchestral Version
Daveda Karanas, mezzo soprano
Texas State University Symphony Orchestra
Jacob Harrison, conductor
streaming release September 8, 2026
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“My music is going to be my Black power statement.”
Dorothy Rudd Moore (1940-2022) was born in New Castle, Delaware to a musical family. Her earliest musical experiences included singing, studying the piano, and playing the clarinet in her school band. She studied theory and composition at Howard University, where she excelled; her Symphony No. 1 received its world premiere by the National Symphony Orchestra while she was still a student. She received the Lucy Moten Fellowship to attend the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, where she studied with famed pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. When she settled in New York City, where she would live for the remainder of her life, she also pursued additional studies with composer Chou Wen-Chung. While her educational pedigree was exceptional, it is also notable that Moore had a tremendous strength of purpose and confidence in her work from an early age and throughout her career she was unafraid to be a fierce advocate for her work. To my ears, this inner certainty and determination comes through in her music and is one of the qualities I most admire about her work.
Moore considered From the Dark Tower (1970/72) to be one of her major works and in it we can find much to support that evaluation. As she was a singer and a poet (she composed the libretto, as well as the music, for her 1985 opera Frederick Douglass), it is perhaps unsurprising that vocal music is central to her output. She thought deeply about her choice and arrangement of texts, saying that “choosing the poetry is as important as anything else.” Before composing the music for any vocal work, she would memorize and internalize the poems until she felt they were a part of her. In From the Dark Tower, she chose eight poems by Black American poets, carefully arranged to portray the full range of the Black experience, as she laconically put it: “The joy of it, the pain of it.” She began working on the cycle in 1968, at a crucial moment in the Civil Rights Movement, lending this piece a strong element of social commentary, reflecting the perspective of a major Black artist as she considers the issues of her time. From the Dark Tower was also deeply personal in that it was written for her husband, the cellist (and conductor and composer) Kermit Moore, and the acclaimed mezzo-soprano Hilda Harris. The resulting work gives full display to Dorothy Rudd Moore’s artistry as a composer: the text-setting is natural and expressive, the harmonic language is rich, ranging from simple triads and open fifths to dissonant layers of complex chords, and throughout she expresses the full range of her musical ideas with a striking economy of means. Every note feels essential, no more or less than what was required.
The cycle opens with O Black and Unknown Bards, an expansive song that meditates on the poetry in Black American history and in the texts of Negro spirituals. The music begins with bare octaves, like the tolling of a great bell, and fragments of famous spirituals are hidden in the instrumental parts. Southern Mansions is a haunting evocation of the Southern plantation, exposing the hypocrisy of its supposed gentility amidst brutal violence. The music is organized around a simple ostinato that oscillates between major and minor and ends on an uncertain, mournful chord. Willow Bend and Weep is addressed to the tree, the poet commanding it to weep because “I have not tears.” This song shows Moore at her most straightforwardly melodic, and displays her keen ear for orchestration, with string harmonics and muted trumpets used to striking effect. Moore’s close attention to the order of texts is especially clear in the next two songs, Old Black Men and No Images. These poems are a pair, showing side-by-side the effects of racial injustice on Black men and women. Old Black Men is set with a touch of musical irony, which brilliantly counterpoints the deep sadness at the heart of the poem. No Images also presents a stark musical juxtaposition to express the text; the outer sections are completely ungrounded, an angular string line intertwining uncomfortably with the vocal line, while the middle section is a sensual dance grounded by a simple repeating rhythm, in which the body is free to move, comfortable at last in its own skin. Dream Variation continues in a similar vein, to imagine a possible hopeful future. As in No Images, this hope is expressed as a kind of dance (“To fling my arms wide / In some place of the sun”), but this time the music is almost naïve in its simple beauty. (I say “almost” because while it is simple on the surface, Moore shows her ingenuity in subtle harmonic shifts, which underline the sorrow as much as the hopefulness of the text.) For a Poet seems to take a more philosophical outlook about unsatisfied hope, and the music is suitably restrained and abstractly lyrical. Moore astutely places this song as an introverted interlude before the final anthem and titular song, From the Dark Tower. Moore said, “my music will be my Black power statement,” and this movement embodies that spirit most directly. It is the longest and most formally complex song in the set, shifting between different tempos and moods. It begins with a stirring instrumental introduction dominated by the brass, which leads to a driving 5/8 rhythm to support the resolute text. A variation on the opening idea leads to a reflective middle section, introduced by an English horn solo and underpinned by harp and celeste ostinatos. The driving 5/8 music returns to lead the music to a rousing conclusion. After expressing a huge range of emotions, from pain to disappointment to hope, I think it is notable that Moore chose to end the cycle with unwavering determination – the same sort of determination she exhibited in her own creative work throughout her long career.