Robert Nathaniel Dett (Oct. 11, 1882 - Oct. 2, 1943) was a composer, pianist, organist, and professor of music. Born in Ontario, Canada, he showed interest in music at a young age, and began piano lessons at five years old. The family moved to New York around the time Dett was ten years old, and a few years later he was playing piano for his church. He would later on study at the Oliver Willis Halstead Conservatory of Music, and continued studying piano at the Lockport Conservatory, before eventually attend the Curtis Institute of Music. At Curtis, Dett was introduced to the idea of using spirituals in classical music, like in the music of Antonin Dvorak. The music Dett heard reminded him of spirituals he'd learned from his grandmother, and he'd later on integrate folksongs and spirituals in to his music.  

Dett's musical legacy lives in his many arrangements of folksongs and spirituals. His most frequently performed work is Listen to the Lambs, which is scored for an eight-part mixed choir and soprano solo. It is a clear integration of classical music and spiritual folksong. The works moves between various moods, like the dark sections about lambs crying out, to hopeful sections where the solo soprano sings "He shall feed his flock like a shepherd". Dett's writing is evocative; various moods and images are presented in this work, that Dett labeled "A Religious Characteristic in the form of an Anthem for Eight-part Chorus of Mixed Voices".

Here's a recording of this work for you to enjoy!

Nathaniel Dett Chorale