“Deep River” - Joseph Peeples, arranger | Piping Up: Selects (Joseph Peeples)

Joseph Peeples plays his own arrangement of the Black spiritual “Deep River,” performed on the Aeolian-Skinner Organ in the Salt Lake Tabernacle on Temple Square (Salt Lake City, Utah).
The rich repertoire of Black spirituals began to be collected and published in America in the middle of the 19th century, but the rate at which this collecting took place increased dramatically after the American Civil War ended and enslaved Americans were finally emancipated. The repertoire itself, however, dates back long before the Civil War, and had been passed on largely through oral tradition prior to that time.
Awareness and interest in the spiritual increased during the 1870s when the Jubilee Singers, a vocal group associated with Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, began performing spirituals in concerts around the United States and in Europe. In fact, the popular spiritual “Deep River” is first mentioned in 1876 in a history of the Fisk Jubilee Singers. “Deep River” wasn’t published, however, until 1917, when it was arranged by Harry T. Burleigh, the pioneering African-American singer/composer responsible for popularizing concert performances of spirituals-a beloved tradition that continues to this day.
The lyrics of these spirituals often invoked common biblical metaphors of freedom and deliverance, speaking not only to an assurance of spiritual relief, but also emancipation from physical captivity in this life. In “Deep River,” these symbols include “crossing over” the river Jordan (a possible allusion to escaping from slave territory into the North), and the “peaceful campground” of the “Promised Land.” Many spirituals were developed in camp meetings during the 18th century-these meetings were some of the few places that slaves were allowed to express themselves openly and without fear. The symbol of a “peaceful campground” may recall these oases of freedom and religious expression during the period of slavery.
This arrangement of “Deep River” was written by Temple Square Organist Joseph Peeples.
Piping Up! is an online series of concerts and performances by the organists serving on Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah, sponsored and presented by The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square.
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