Varner Chance’s Aesthetics

Topic: CRS Version
Varner Chance’s view of the possible, most likely, was formed by the Arthur Jordan Conservatory.  Max Krone, who took over the school in his junior year, [1] programmed classical works and international folk songs, [2] some of which he arranged. [3]  He was gone in 1935. [4]

By the time Chance returned to do his graduate work at the conservatory, Joseph Lautner had introduced a Philharmonic Choir.  He had left his native Germany in 1937 and spent a year at the Westminster Choir School in Princeton, New Jersey. [5]  Each year, the Arthur Jordan choir participated in Westminster’s choral festival. [6]  Chance wouldn’t have gone on these tours, but he no doubt got his idea for a choir camp from reports he heard.

While Chance was completing work on his masters in music degree in 1941, [7] Philharmonic Choir programs usually included “music of the old Russian school, eight part motets, and four part choral anthems.  From there they progress through old English compositions, and perhaps some Negro spirituals. Their favorites in this class seem to be ‘Deep River,’ and ‘Ole Arks A’moverin’.’  The final section of the program will probably contain modern and contemporary music.  Professor Lautner and the choir enjoy doing adaptations of songs of the Kentucky and Tennessee mountains, and songs by the contemporary Roy Harris.  In addition to this material they have an extensive repertoire of music for seasonal and holiday occasions.” [8]

When Chance moved to Baldwin-Wallace, he entered a community with entrenched musical traditions.  The spring Bach Festival had been the main activity of the conservatory since 1932, [9] and a Messiah was sung every winter. [10]

In 1954, the university’s Christmas concert featured Chance’s a capella choir and the symphony orchestra.  Chance selections echoed those of Lautner: “special arrangements of well-known Christmas carols and other seasonal anthems,” [11] including an eight-part motet by Palestrina, [12] an eight-part arrangement of a spiritual by Will James, [13] and a more popular song by Clay Boland.

The last was typical of the material used in high-school concerts.  “Holiday” was published by Fred Waring’s Shawnee Press, [14] which specialized in inexpensive arrangements for amateur musicians. [15]  The arrangements were challenging enough, and quickly forgotten.  The next year a choral director purchased similar music by similar, but different, composers.

The exception for Chance was James.  He used his arrangement of “Almighty God of Our Fathers” [16] at the Epworth Forest choir school in 1960 [17] and a high school festival in 1961. [18]  James was Willis Laurence James, an African-American composer whose name and use of western Christian motifs disguised his background as an accomplished musician who collected Black folk tunes and embedded them into this works. [19]

This choice may simply have been aesthetic: when Chance had talented singers, he used complex vocal arrangements.  However, one suspects it also was part of Chance’s Quaker heritage that survived despite his joining the Methodist church. [20]

His mother’s immigrant ancestor, John Mills, landed in Philadelphia, moved to Virginia, and was buried in the New Garden Friends Cemetery near Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1760. [21]  The American Revolution was difficult for pacifists: the colonial government taxed Quakers heavily for non-participation. [22]  When the armies met at Guilford Courthouse, they left their dead and wounded for nearby Quakers to tend.  Meantime, their men foraged on Quaker farms. [23]

The transformation of the North Carolina economy from subsistence to slave labor created new tensions between Quakers and their neighbors, who harassed them for treating Blacks as human beings. [24]  When Ohio and Indiana opened, many communities moved, en masse, to the better prairie lands where slavery did not exist. [25]  Most of the early settlers in Clinton County, Ohio, where John’s grandson died in 1834, [26] were Quakers. [27]

The first known Quaker on Chance’s father’s side was his father’s great-grandfather.  Isaac Chance was born in Caroline County, Maryland, and died in the Ohio county immediately south of Clinton on the Maumee River in 1871. [28]

Chance’s paternal grandfather, Joshua Chance, moved to Indiana sometime before his first son was born in 1857.  He and his wife were buried in the Westfield, [29] a village that had been founded in 1832 [30] by Quakers leaving Surrey County, North Carolina. [31]  The meeting split over abolition, with Asa Bales leading the anti-slavery group. [32]

The Civil War created a new dilemma for Quakers who believed in both abolition and pacifism.  Thomas D. Hamm and his Earlham College students [33] found a quarter of the young men in the Indiana Yearly Meeting fought in the war. [34]

Quaker life in Indiana changed in the late nineteenth century.  As mentioned in the post for 1 March 2020, Methodists joined Friends’ meetings after the church proscribed Phoebe Palmer.  Hamm believed many were Civil War veterans. [35]  When the United States entered World War I in 1917, at least two-thirds of Indiana’s Quakers enlisted. [36]

This didn’t preclude persecution.  The reputation of Quakers as pacifists led the federal government to send agents to the Indiana Yearly Meeting and to investigate individual members as traitors.  One pastor was pelted with eggs by his neighbors.  Another family was penalized for registering as constituents objectors. [37]

The war was followed by the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana.  While David Curtis Stephenson was most vocal against Catholics in the northern part of the state, [38] African Americans were not immune.  Both the Shortridge and North Side High Schools, where Chance later taught, exploited residential segregation when they were built in the late 1920s in all-white neighborhoods. [39]

Chance was a boy during World War I, [40] and a young adolescent when Stephens was tried for murder in Chance’s Hamilton County. [41]  If he was like most his age, he was oblivious to current events.  At most, Chance may have absorbed legends about Asa Bales and heard warnings to be careful.

Quaker witnessing was always a personal choice.  One man who attended the Epworth Forest choir school in the 1980s [42] remembered Chance: “drilled us and demanded excellence but got us there in a masterful way that was endearing and inspiring.  Like some who can squeeze blood out of a turnip he could pull amazing music out of a very common group of singers.  But for him music was only a vehicle for spiritual transformation in Christ Jesus.  He grew up Quaker and carried that emphasis on the Holy Spirit his whole life.” [43]

A sample of two is too small to judge if Chance was choosing music by James as a covert protest or if it was coincidence.

Graphic
Chance’s photograph appears on the Photos K tab.

End Notes
1.  Jack L. Eaton.  “Butler University Jordan College of Fine Arts: A Chronological History of the Development of the College.”  Butler University website.  13 April 1995.  8.

2.  Max T. Krone and Florence M. Wallace.  “High School Students’ Interests in Choral Music.”  Music Educators Journal  21:26–28:October 1934.  He selected ten songs for a high school festival in Illinois in 1933.  The classical works were by Bach, Beethoven, Haydn, Pitoni, and Purcell.  Koshets arranged the Ukranian song, and Krone the Neopolitan and Czech ones.  A song by Stephen Foster and a Christmas carol by Peter Cornelius also were sung.  In 1934, Krone reused the Pitoni, Foster, and his two folk-song arrangements at an Easter concert. [44]

3.  Specifying one’s compositions was another way music teachers added to their income.

4.  Krone resigned in the summer of 1935. [45]  His later activities are mentioned briefly in the post for 8 July 2018.

5.  “Lautner Seeks Higher Public Interest in Opera.”  Indianapolis [Indiana] Times.  29 August 1938.

6.  “The Voice Department (As the outsider knows it).”  Opus.  Butler University yearbook, 1941.

7.  His thesis is mentioned in the post for 21 March 2021.
8.  Opus.
9.  Wikipedia.  “History of Baldwin Wallace University.”
10.  Item.  The [Baldwin-Wallace College] Exponent.  29 November 1953.
11.  Item.  The [North Canton, Ohio] Sun.  1 December 1954.
12.  Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.  “Hodie Christus Natus Est.”  1575.

13.  Willis James.  “Negro Bell Carol.”  New York: Carl Fischer, 1952.  A version by The Sound of the Northwest was uploaded to YouTube by CD Baby on 9 February 2017.  It was from the 2004 CD, The Gift: Love (Part 1).

14.  Fred Waring, Moe Jaffe, and Clay Boland.  “Holiday.”  Arranged by Harry Simeone.  New York: Shawnee Press, 1948. [46]

15.  Virginia Waring.  Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997.  132, 210–211.  Waring’s widow remembered Leopold Stokowski once wanted Waring to publish some of his music for high schools.  Shawnee’s staff believed “some of the brass requirements were too difficult for kids.”  When Stokowski rejected the criticism, Waring presented one of his arrangements to all-star students from Long Island with Stokowski, himself, conducting.  She said: “The result was a fiasco.  The poor kids just couldn’t as they say, cut the mustard.  It was just impossible for them to freely play some of the most important passages.”

16.  Will James.  “Almighty God of Our Fathers.”  Boston: B. F. Wood Music, 16 May 1941. [47]  This still is available from Alfred Music, who classifies it as “difficult” on its website.

17.  Epworth Forest Choir School.  1960.  Private recording in DePauw University Libraries. [WorldCat entry.]

18.  Charles F. Brush High School, Lyndhurst, Ohio, A Cappella Choir and Bedford High School, Bedford, Ohio, A Cappella Choir.  Combined Choral Concert, 7 April 1961.  Private recording in Cleveland State University’s Michael Schwartz Library.  [WorldCat entry.]

19.  Rebecca Turner Cureau.  “Willis Laurence James (1900-1966)–Musician, Music Educator, Folklorist: a Critical Study.”  DA dissertation.  Atlanta University, July 1987.  She said “The Negro Bell Carol” used elements of the jubilee “A New Bell.” [48]  “Almighty God” was more in the standard hymn tradition, and dedicated “To my friend, Max Krone.” [49]  Its most African-American trait may have been the assumptions James made about the abilities of sopranos.  The arrangement begins on high E and rises to the high A.  By comparison, the “Star-Spangled Banner” goes no higher than the D until “rockets red glare.”  Then, at the point where many have trouble singing the anthem, it reaches the E. [50]

20.  Chance’s family.  Letter.  21 June 2016.  Typed.

21.  Dave Mills.  “John Mills Sr.”  Find a Grave website.  2 October 2013.  Other genealogists trace John Mills back to England, but Dave Mills thinks the connection is false or wishful thinking.

22.  Seth B. Hinshaw.  The Carolina Quaker Experience, 1665-1985: An Interpretation.  North Carolina Friends Historical Society, 1984.  50.

23.  Hinshaw.  51.

24.  The Quaker Map: From Harlowe to Mill Creek.  5 April 2019.  David Cecelski .  His website.  “The reasons for their departure were many and varied, but the central issue was their opposition to slavery and the antagonism that their slaveholding neighbors directed against them for, among other issues, paying wages to black workers.”  As mentioned in the post for 1 March 2020, the lack of eligible spouses was another reason people followed the exodus.  As an example of the smallness of the community, Asa Bales’ great-aunt married John Mills whose son, Joseph, moved to Ohio. [51]

25.  Hinshaw.  141.
26.  “Joseph Mills.”  Geni website.  11 January 2002.
27.  “Clinton County.”  Ohio History Central website.

28.  Jay Wright.  “Isaac Chance.”  Find a Grave website.  5 May 2014.  He was buried in the Fairfield Quaker Cemetery in Leesburg, Ohio.  He was there in the 1830 census.  His ancestors may have been Friends, but all that’s known is the immigrant William Chaunce died in Somerset County, Maryland, [52] where Quakers from Virginia were the first settlers.  However, Charles Calvert wanted to populate the peninsula on the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay and welcomed non-Quakers as well. [55]

29.  “Joshua Chance.”  Geni website.  20 February 2015.  The anonymous contributor or the Geni software alternated between Hamilton County and the village of Hamilton in Steuben County.

“Mary Lydia Chance.”  Geni website.  13 February 2020.

30.  “Who is Asa Bales?”  Westfield, Indiana, website.

31.  Patricia Williams Curry.  “Jacob Beals.”  Find a Grave website.  18 June 2013.  Asa Bales’ father.

32.  “Who Is Asa Bales?”

33.  Thomas D. Hamm, Margaret Marconi, Gretchen Kleinhen Salinas, and Benjamin Whitman.  “The Decline of Quaker Pacifism in the Twentieth Century: Indiana Yearly Meeting of Friends as a Case Study.”  Indiana Magazine of History 96:44–71:March 2000.  45.  They did not include Westfield in their sample.

34.  Hamm.  48.
35.  Hamm.  49.
36.  Hamm.  54.
37.  Hamm.  52.

38.  Wikipedia.  “Indiana Klan.”  Quakers don’t seem to have been a target.  Instead, the number who joined was similar to other denominations.  In Indianapolis, 6.4% of the members joined compared to 6.3% of Methodists.  The denomination with the highest percentage of congreants who joined the Klan was the United Brethren (10.5%).  The ones with the smallest percentages were the Nazarenes (1.4%) and Warner’s Church of Christ in Anderson (0%). [56]

39.  Indianapolis built its first high school for African Americans in 1927.  Then, in “1928, Shortridge High School moved from downtown Indianapolis to a new building at its current location at 34th and Meridian Street on the north side of Indianapolis.” [57]  Fort Wayne built North Ridge in 1927. [58]

40.  Chance was born on 27 September 1909, [59] so he wasn’t yet eight years old when the United States declared war.

41.  Stephens was tried and convicted of driving a young woman to attempt suicide.  The trial was moved to Hamilton County in 1925 when Chance was 14 years old. [60]

42.  Student of Varner Chance.  Email.  2 June 2016.
43.  Student of Varner Chance.  Email.  5 June 2016.
44.  Item.  Indianapolis [Indiana] Times.  27 March 1934.
45.  Item.  The Indianapolis [Indiana] Star.  17 July 1935.  9.

46.  United States Copyright Office.  Catalog of Copyright Entries.  Third Series.  January–June 1949.  22.

47.  United States Copyright Office.  Catalog of Copyright Entries.  Third Series.  July–December 1941.  840.

48.  Cureau.  237.
49.  James, “Almighty God.”

50.  Wikipedia reproduces John Stafford Smith’s melody in its “The Star-Spangled Banner” entry.

51.  “Joseph Mills.”  Geni website.  11 January 2020.  His mother was born Sarah Bowater Beals.

Bonnie’s Daughter.  “John Beals Jr.”  Find a Grave website.  31 December 2011.  His children included Sarah Bowater Beals, who married John Mills, Jr., and Bowater Beals.

52.  “William E. Chaunce.”  Geni website.  16 July 2017.  All the family genealogists seem to be using research done by Hilda Chance [53] that is plausible, but not proven.  Earlayne Chance seems the most conscientious of people who posted notes on the family.  She warned: “we still need todefinitely link William and Elizabeth Perkes (1656)in England to our William, the Emigrant... although it appears highly likely that they are one in the same... we just need to find a document identifying the two as one...something to link the Shepley/Bromsgrove Chaunce’s to our William, the Emigrant in Somerset Co., Md.” [54]

53.  Hilda Chance.  Chance Family, England to America, 1668 to 1972, in Forty-eight States.  Liberty, Pennsylvania: 1970, and subsequent revisions.

54.  Earlayne Chance.  “Re: Ancestors of William the immigrant!”  Ancestry website.  11 October 2000.

55.  Wikipedia.  “Somerset County, Maryland.”

56.  Leonard J. Moore.  Citizen Klansmen: The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, 1921–1928.  Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1991.  70–72.

57.  Wikipedia.  “Shortridge High School.”
58.  Wikipedia.  “North Side High School (Fort Wayne, Indiana).”

59.  Varner M. Chance.  Obituary.  The [Bloomington, Illinois] Pantagraph.  26 April 2001.  6.

60.  Andrea Neal.  “Klan Had Short-Lived Political Power Here.”  Ink Free News [Milford, Indiana] website.  15 June 2016.