In the following essay, Cuny-Hare offers a brief description of the development of this spiritual.
These songs known as Spirituals are the expression of a supreme belief in immortality that transcends mere religious creeds and theoretical dogma. Through them the paganism of African "spirit" songs are reboro and modified by Christian doctrines, and they are the musical expression of spiritual emotion created by the race and not for it.
"Swing Low Sweet Chariot," an American "Negro Spiritual" in the pentatonic scale, noted in Fisk Jubilee Songs, 1871, offers a key to this development. The variants of this song are "Good Old Chariot," "Swing Low Sweet Chariot," (Hampton) and "The Danville Chariot." In the first movement of Dvorak's "New World Symphony," in which this theme occurs, it is given out by the flute. The song has.....
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