"Art preserves life in a very special way,'' Undine Smith Moore once said. "Our memories die with us, but art preserves the values and experiences.''
Moore died in 1989. Her values and experiences live on in her music. She was one of this country's most prominent composers and arrangers of choral works, many based on or inspired by Negro spirituals and folk songs. Her legacy is just as enduring in education. Moore joined the faculty of Virginia State College (now Virginia State University) in 1927; she retired in 1972 but continued teaching. Her students include some of the leading African-American music educators of their generation: pianist and jazz master Billy Taylor, opera singer Camilla Williams, conductor Leon Thompson.
The zenith of Moore's composing career came in January 1982, when her "Scenes From the Life of a Martyr,'' a 16-part contemplation on the life of Martin Luther King Jr. for soloists, chorus and orchestra, was performed at New York's Carnegie Hall.
Moore's choral music continues to be a staple of college and community ensembles.
Moore, the granddaughter of slaves, was born in 1904 in Jarratt. She attended high school in Petersburg, and went on to the preparatory academy of Fisk University in Nashville. At 18, she became the first recipient of a Fisk scholarship to study at the Juilliard School, the prestigious music conservatory in New York.
She graduated from Fisk in 1926, later earned a master's degree from Columbia University.
Late in life, Undine Moore warned against forgetting the struggles and sacrifices of the past.
"I think that black people need to remind themselves of the importance of remembering,'' she said in 1988. "We need to build our own monuments.''
