Robert Nathaniel Dett

About Robert Nathaniel Dett

Nathaniel Dett, born in 1882, was one of the foremost composers and arrangers of Spirituals in America but is still little known in Europe. Born in Drummondville Ontario, Canada, he received his early musical education from local teachers. Whilst a student at Oberlin College in Ohio, where he studied piano, organ, and composition, he heard a recital of Dvorak's Quartet in F. The third movement of the quartet has ideas based on "traditional airs" which inspired him to use Spirituals in his compositional output. After graduation, Dett got a teaching position at a college in Tennessee as a piano teacher and conductor; whilst at this college, he learned numerous Spirituals from his students and the community, which he collected and arranged. His first significant work was the piano piece The Magnolia Suite (1912).