Topic: Pedagogy - Duration
Cultural groups as diverse as the Welsh, many Africans, and some Slavs created and maintained complex group singing traditions. Such musicality was rejected by English and Scots followers of Jean Calvin. While Shakespeare used patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables, they defined their songs by the number of syllables in a line: long meter had four lines of eight syllables (8-8-8-8), short meter had four six-syllable lines (6-6-6-6) and common meter alternated the two line lengths, (8-6-8-6). Text were associated with tunes with the same metric counts.
John Wesley reintroduced harmony after he observed the effects of singstunden [1] in the Moravian religious colony he visited in Saxony. [2] His preface to a 1761 hymn collection tried to reconcile his innovations with earlier styles of psalm singing. Wesley enjoined members to "sing lustily and with good courage" like Puritans, but also to "strive to unite your voices together, so as to make one clear melodious sound." [3]
Once the tradition of group singing was lost, it was difficult to reestablish. The bar line became the device singing teachers used to organize groups who counted beats in a measure rather than syllables in a line. Lowell Mason’s hymn collection from 1848 was transitional: it used bars and single numbers at the beginning to indicate the number of beats in a measure: 2, 3, 4. [4]
He had tried to introduce the contemporary European time-signature format of 4/4 in his 1841 collection, [5] but was met with resistence. A member of the Church of the Brethren complained, "these multiplied varieties" of rhythm or meter found in some books "are not only unnecessary and useless, they are positively injurious, and only tend to involve the subject in difficulties." [6] Jesse Bowman Aikin argued there were only three types of "measures—equal, unequal, or compound." [7]
"To keep time, we must beat time, and when one mode of each measure only is used, correctness in keeping time is soon attained. The habit is soon formed of appropriating one beat to each half-note, or its equivalent, whether in equal or unequal measure." [8]
While Mason and Bowman were discussing meter, that was only a means to address the underlying problem that adults had to be taught to follow a leader and start, continue, and end a phrase together. The closer one was to the Calvinist belief in personal grace, the more difficult it was for a music director to overcome habits of individual action.
Without any formal education, children acquired their culture’s basic vocal skills. Arnold Gesell’s team found many kindergarten-aged children in the late 1930s had learned to sing along with phonograph records. [9] At that point, before they could read, Karl Gehrkens suggested teachers could exploit their listening skills by singing "in a light voice, absolutely true to pitch" and having their students sing with them. [10]
The burden placed on teachers to maintain perfect pitch every time they sang was eased when pianos became available in schools after World War II. [11] After that children could be taught to match their voices to it while they sang with the teacher and class. By the 1960s, Frank Churchley remembered Canadian school music-books provided collections of age-appropriate songs [12] for a teacher who "pounds out the notes, and mindlessly gets the kids to just follow." [13]
The skill of singing with the piano became fundamental to all further music training. Along with providing standardized sounds, the accompaniments marked rhythms. Many were no more than melodies and chords at the beginnings of phrases or measures. Implicitly, they taught singers to follow its lead to stay together.
Joseph Maddy transferred singing skills to instrumental music in 1923. He suggested students:
"Learn each tune by singing it with the Do, Re, Mi syllables, using a perfectly smooth, soft, steady tone in rather slow time. Then play it in the same way with a steady breath, making the instrument sound as nearly like your singing as possible." [14]
Harold Rusch, who came of age in the 1930s, [15] revived the method in his instrumental method book for elementary schools in 1961. He began with children’s songs like "Three Blind Mice" and "Mary Had a Little Lamb," which he printed with notes, fingerings, and words. [16]
David Wright employed several of these techniques with students in a small Antioch, California, elementary school to encourage them to transfer habits formed in church to instrumental ensembles. He chose a familiar song, "Kumbaya," for a public performance. Then, because Hilltop Christian included vocal music in its program, he could assume his students already had sung in groups. He realized his students were so occupied with mastering their instruments and reading the music, they hadn’t yet had time to learn how to follow his lead. Thus, he had a pianist maintain the tempo by playing chords, much like she would have done for a religious service.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: none
Instrumental Soloists: none
Instrumental Groups: three clarinets, two flutes, three saxophones
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Conductor: David Wright
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
There were none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: slow
Basic Structure: played melody through twice
Instrumental Style: unison
Notes on Performance
Occasion: sacred concert
Location: stage, perhaps in a chapel
Microphones: one floor mike at the front of the stage in the center
Clothing: black slacks and black or white tops
Notes on Movement
The eight musicians sat in a semi-circle on cushioned straight-backed chairs. Wright stood a little to the side and used a baton in his right hand. Four people sat behind them who might have played other instruments or had other parts in the concert.
Notes on Performers
Wright had a bachelor’s degree in music from Mount Saint Mary’s College in Los Angeles and a masters in music from California State University, East Bay. He taught during the day in the Mount Diablo schools, and participated in Hilltop’s after-school program. His instrument was the flute. [17]
Hilltop Christian was a small school with eight to twelve students in a grade. The surrounding community of Antioch, California, had become a bedroom community for Oakland and San Francisco. The Seventh Day Adventist student body was less than 25% white [18] and the band director was an African American. While the eight young musicians could have constituted an entire grade, they were not typical of the school. Four looked white and four did not. This was essentially a wind ensemble, and all the clarinet and flute players were girls. The saxophone players were boys.
Availability
YouTube: "Kum Ba Ya." Uploaded by cornell7ant on 10 March 2013.
End Notes
1. Singstunde were singing sessions where the song leader used verses from multiple hymns that were related to the day’s sermon or theme. They could last hours, and usually were held as part of the evening services at the Moravian colony at Herrnhut, Saxony. (C. Daniel Drews. "Moravian Worship: The Why of Moravian Music." 29-43 in The Music of the Moravian Church in America. Edited by Nola Reed Knouse. Rochester: University Rochester Press, 2008. 34.)
2. Bertrand Harris Bronson. "Some Aspects of Music and Literature." 91-118 in Bronson. Facets of the Enlightenment. Berkeley: University of California Press 1968. On Wesley, 12.
3. John Wesley. "Directions for Singing." Select Hymns: with Tunes Annext. London: 1761. Reprinted in Martin V. Clarke. "John Wesley’s ‘Directions for Singing’: Methodist Hymnody as an Expression of Methodist Beliefs in Thought and Practice." Methodist History 47:196-209:2009. 196. Emphasis in original.
4. Lowell Mason and George James Webb. The Psaltery. Boston: Wilkins, Carter, and Company, 1848 edition.
5. Lowell Mason. Carmina Sacra. Boston: J. H. Wilkins and R. B. Carter, 1841.
6. J. B. Aikin. The Christian Minstrel. Philadelphia: T. K. Collins, Jr., 1853 edition. 5.
7. Aikin. 4. Equal was variation of Xx where formula was division by halves. Unequal was Xxx where division by thirds. Compound was multiples of 3/4 like 6/8.
8. Aikin. 5. Aiken was a pioneer in the development of shaped-note song books.
9. Arnold Gesell and Frances L. Ilg. The Child from Five to Ten. New York: Harper and Row, 1946. 83. They said children preferred records to radio because they could replay them. Later, video channels and CDs would provide the same control.
10. Karl Wilson Gehrkens. Music in the Grade Schools. Boston, C. C. Birchard and Company, 1934. 33.
11. Some schools always had pianos, but the depression made them a luxury item and war shortages made them scarce.
12. Frank E. Churchley. Interviewed by Betty Hanley. "Frank E. Churchley: Gentleman, Scholar, Teacher." March 2005. 42. For more on Churchley, see the post for 25 July 2018.
13. Churchley. 36.
14. Joseph E. Maddy and Thaddeus P. Giddings. Universal Teacher. Cornet or Trumpet. Elkhart, Indiana: C. G. Conn, Ltd., 1923. 1. For more on Joseph Maddy, see the post for 27 June 2018.
15. Rusch was born in 1908 and studied at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Lawrence University. (Dutch Wikipedia. "Harold W. Rusch.") Rusch was mentioned in the post for 27 June 2018.
16. Harold W. Rusch. Hal Leonard Elementary Band Method. Bb Cornet or Trumpet. Winona, Minnesota: Hal Leonard Music, Inc., 1961.
17. "David Wright." Hilltop Christian School website.
18. "Hilltop Christian School." Niche website.
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