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Especially Do I Believe: A Conductor’s Guide to Margaret Bonds’s Credo

find a juxtaposition between Western European writ- Second Movement
ing and African American vernacular styles. “Especially Do I Believe” is entirely different, in
The first movement segues directly into the second keeping with Bonds’s concern for significant contrast
movement, the only one in the work to do so. The between the movements. As is the case with the sixth
inconclusive nature of the first movement’s close—a movement, this movement showcases the composer’s
gradual decrescendo over a pedal tone A that segues expertise in writing expressively for the solo voice.
directly into the next movement—seems to suggest The solo soprano’s melody is lyrical in the best
that the vision of a world free of racism has not yet Schubertian style, accompanied by a piano part that
been achieved. As we will see, this inconclusive segue is supports it in the tradition of art song. Yet the move-
designed to resolve itself in the work’s final movement. ment also employs the call-and-response style of the
African American church and its tradition of gospel sa-

12 CHORAL JOURNAL November/December 2025 Volume 66 Number 4