Bonds, Margaret: I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to be Free

In 1969, soprano Leontyne Price commissioned Bonds to set I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free and three other spirituals for performance with the Rust College A Cappella Choir. The setting reflects Bonds’s distinctive approach to the spiritual as a genre, featuring active accompaniments that interact with the main melody. In the first three verses, the solo soprano carries the main theme, but in verse 4 the chorus takes the tune while the soprano adds a soaring melody – a musical imagining of the symbolic image of a bird soaring to the sun and joyously singing a song of freedom.