The Study Of Still’s Ballet Music “sahdji”

William Grant Still(1895 –1978), the first African-American classical composer in American music history and the greatest African-American composer in 20 th century, breaks the racialism bounds in symphony field in American, and then the African-American composers begin to score an achievement in American professional music field. Still’s works derive from negro music, but though mixing with classical music, they have an unique style. Because Still makes great contribution to American classical music, He is often referred to as "the Dean" of African-American composers.Still lives through three creative periods. This paper stresses on analyzing the ballet ―Sahdji‖ which is with great significance in his second creative period and is the first truly nationalism composition.This paper analysis to music techniques for paper starting point, through to the Williams is representative of the movie theme music for technical analysis, and strive to summarized the features of still ballet some, for further understanding the excellent composer make my efforts.This paper is divided into 4 chapters:Chapter 1: introduction. The first part is about the present situation and the meaning of this research, the second part is about the main content we have studied.Chapter 2: About Still. This chapter mainly introduces Still’s life and his creative motivation of ballet ―Sahdji‖.Chapter 3: Analysis of ballet ―Sahdji‖. The analysis contains 3 aspects, musical form, harmony and rhythm. Paper mainly summarizes the characteristics of creative methods and make examples to analyze them.Chapter 4: Depth Analysis of ballet ―Sahdji‖. This chapter analyzes Still’s different creation styles in different periods based on ballet ―Sahdji‖ and analyzes the ―Afro-American Symphony‖ briefly.