Robert Nathaniel Dett (October 11, 1882 – October 2, 1943), often known as R. Nathaniel Dett and Nathaniel Dett, was a Black Canadian-American composer, organist, pianist, choral director, and music professor. Born and raised in Canada until the age of 11, he moved to the United States with his family and had most of his professional education and career there. During his lifetime he was a leading Black composer, known for his use of African-American folk songs and spirituals as the basis for choral and piano compositions in the 19th century Romantic style of Classical music. He was among the first Black composers during the early years after the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) was organized. His works often appeared among the programs of Will Marion Cook's New York Syncopated Orchestra. Dett performed at Carnegie Hall and at the Boston Symphony Hall as a pianist and choir director. Early life Dett was born in 1882 in Drummondville, Ontario (now part of Niagara Falls, Ontario), to Charlotte (Washington) Dett and Robert T. Dett. Descended from escaped slaves who travelled North, his mother was a native of Drummondville and his father was from the United States. The young Dett studied piano at an early age, showing initial interest when he was three years old and starting piano lessons at the age of five. When he was a child, his mother directed him to study Shakespeare, Longfellow and Tennyson, and commit passages to memory. In 1893, the family moved over the border to Niagara Falls, New York. At about age 14, Dett played piano for his local church, the Methodist Mission Church, later renamed to R. Nathaniel Dett Memorial Chapel. He studied at the Oliver Willis Halstead Conservatory of Music from 1901 to 1903. He continued his piano studies at the Lockport Conservatory, matriculating to the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio, where he first encountered the practice of incorporating spirituals in classical music. He heard the music of Antonín Dvořák, a Czech composer who had toured the United States and incorporated elements of American music in his own work, including the New World Symphony. He was also influenced by the composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor who composed a set of three cantatas called The Song of Hiawatha based on a poem of the same name by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Some of the music reminded Dett of the spirituals he