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about the composition
Birmingham (2006),
for orchestra and (optional) narrator, is dedicated to the work and memory of Civil Rights
Movement leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The work incorporates text from Dr.
King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” written during his April 1963 civil
disobedience campaign in Birmingham, Alabama.
Dr. King, one of thousands jailed
during the Birmingham campaign, wrote the letter in response to a published
statement by eight Alabama clergymen who called his demonstrations “unwise and
untimely” and “extremist.” It was hastily scrawled in the margins of a newspaper
and other sheets of paper provided to Dr. King while he was confined in a
Birmingham city jail cell.
Birmingham,
composed by Carl Schroeder of Minneapolis, Minnesota, with text by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., has an
approximate performance time of 6 1/2 minutes. Permission to use excerpts from
Dr. King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" was generously granted by Intellectual
Properties Management, of Atlanta, Georgia, as exclusive licensor of the King
Estate. |
