“The Montgomery Variations” is a group of freestyle variations based on the Negro Spiritual theme “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me.” Bonds begins with a bold statement of the theme which continues in dramatic variations throughout the piece in the same key, major and minor. Bonds wrote “The Montgomery Variations” following a visit to Montgomery, Alabama and surrounding areas in 1963 while on tour with Eugene Brice and the Manhattan Melodaires.
Bonds (1913-1972) was born in Chicago. She began her musical studies there, eventually becoming one of the few black students at Northwestern Univeristy. She suffered much discrimination on campus, including not being allowed to use the practice facilities or live on campus. In 1939 she moved to New York and studied composition at the famed Juliard School of Music. One of her first compositions was “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” a piece for voice and piano based on a poem of Langston Hughes by the same name that Bonds credited with “saving” her during the harsh time at Northwestern. Hughes and Bonds became good friends, and Bonds set many of the poets works to music.
“The Montgomery Variations” has 7 titled parts that function like separate movements: Decision, Prayer Meeting, March, Dawn in Dixie, One Sunday in the South, Lament, and Benediction. Decision evokes the meeting where the decision was made to boycott the bus companies and fight for their rights as citizen. The Prayer Meeting shows how prayer was engaged in prior to action. The meeting starts quietly and humbly, then builds in power, passion, and physical expression. In March, the people feel the Spirit of the Nazarene marching with them as they walked to work rather than ride on segregated buses. Dawn in Dixie evokes the beautiful flowers of the South awakening to something new happening. One Sunday in the South beginns with the sweetness of children learning of Jesus, the Prince of Peace when Southern “die-hards” planted a bomb in a church that killed 4 children. Lament evokes people leaning on Jesus to carry them through this crisis of grief and humiliation. Benediction is a benign God, Father and Mother to all people, pouring forth love to God’s children, “the good and the bad alike.”
Here is the Minnesota Orchestra performing “The Montgomery Variations”: