Topic: Learning Music
Boys choirs originally existed to create music for the church and court. Larry Cooper, who was discussed in the post for 29 September 2017, changed the goal from learning to sing to learning to perform and work as team. Walter Turnbull’s vision for the Boys Choir of Harlem wavered between the two.
He was raised in Greenville Mississippi [1] where he quickly figured he did not want to spend his life chopping cotton. [2]. The African American used his ability to sing to earn a scholarship to Tougaloo College [3] located near Jackson, Mississippi. During his junior year, he decided he would rather be an operatic tenor than a public school music teacher. [4]
His fellowship to the Manhattan School of Music covered his tuition but not his expenses. [5] The least expensive place in the fall of 1966 was the International House, which John D. Rockefeller and Cleveland Dodge’s family had built for 600 students in 1924. [6] He wandered the streets of Harlem looking for a congenial church: his mother had left Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church for the Seventh Day Adventists when he was five-years-old. [7]
To survive Turnbull took a job singing for Trinity Episcopal Church in Southport, Connecticut. [8] The white, upper-middle-class community [9] had a boys choir. [10] He began talking with friends about forming one at his Harlem Adventist church. In 1968, [11] Ephesus agreed to his plan and gave him rehearsal space. All the choir members belonged to the church. [12]
Once they began performing, other churches asked them to come. That led to more rehearsals, [13] and eventually a need to replace singers, especially the youngest trebles. Some church members objected when he accepted infidel singers, complained about his worldly music, and criticized the robes. [14]
After a fire gutted the church in January 1969, Turnbull had problems getting rehearsal space in the surviving parsonage. In 1974, he declared his independence by incorporating the choir. [15] After a brief stay at a community center, the renamed Boys Choir of Harlem moved to the Church of the Intercession. [16] Its first members were drawn from that Episcopalian church and Ephesus. [17]
The repertoire of the choir expanded beyond that of the traditional boys’ ensemble. He kept youth after their voices had changed, [18] and prepared works like Benjamin Britten’s Missa Brevis in D [19] and Mozart’s Coronation mass. [20] For its first major concert, Turnbull also included a "Xhosa folk song, a Swahili lullaby, and ‘Mister Bojangles’." [21]
He discovered his boys never sounded like the ideal boys choir, [22] a difference he attributed to the way the African-American voice developed. [23] Turnbull said, "The European sound was an acquired taste for me. I knew and felt more comfortable with a darker one that stirred my soul through high school and college." [24] He contrasted it with the sound of Saint Olaf College’s choir which was "very straight with little vibrato." [25]
After the choir incorporated and became known in the New York City area, Turnbull faced more problems recruiting choristers. Few young boys with decent voices knew how to read music, or had any self-discipline. He began augmenting rehearsals with intensive summer workshops in camp settings. [26]
His greater problem was retaining boys after they entered junior high school. Many came from one-parent households, where choir members were exposed to alcohol, drugs, and violence. He added a counselor in 1980 [27], and eventually a day school. The hours of concentration needed to stage 100 high-quality concerts a year led him to the same solution the church had found in the 1300s. [28]
He may have stumbled on the reason the church established schools in the first place. Many of the choristers in the fourteenth century may have been sons of agricultural workers whose labor could not be spared from the Medieval equivalent of chopping cotton. Boarding the boys shielded them from difficult home lives and provided an opportunity for the intensive drilling needed to teach singing to talented children who had not been exposed to church music as young children like the ones were in Steeple Ashton, England, and Moselle, Mississippi, mentioned in the posts for 21 September 2017 and 23 September 2017.
By the time the Boys Choir of Harlem released its version of "Kumbaya" in 2001, it had appeared in films and commercials. The variant was short–two verses in 57 seconds–too short to have been a stand-alone performance piece. It may have been prepared for some specific function or to please some patron who assumed all Blacks knew the song. The style was that of the traditional boys choir that featured young male voices.
Performers
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano
Rhythm Accompaniment: African-style drum
Credits
Albums:
(C) 2001 The Boys Choir of Harlem
(C) 2004 The Boys Choir of Harlem
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: koom-by-yah, with an accented "kum," staccato "by," and sustained "ya." You was pronounced "yah." They pronounced "you" as "ya" in "we need you Lord." This was a deliberate choice. Turnbull stressed correct diction, not only in English, but in all the languages they sang. [29]
Verses: kumbaya, we need you
Vocabulary:
Pronoun: we
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Format: 2 verses
Verse Length: 4 lines
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Line Meter: anapest
Line Length: 7 syllables
Line Repetition Pattern: AAAB. They changed the last line to conform with the structure of the other three lines.
Line Form: statement-refrain
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: variant of 1-3-5
Time Signature: some form of 3/4
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: repetition with variations in harmony. They sang the first verse in unison and the second in chordal harmony.
Singing Style: One syllable to one note, with the higher voices dominant.
Vocal-Instrumental Dynamics: the piano began after the drum by alternating between a low and high note; once the choir began it was so soft it was hard to tell it was playing. At the end, when the boys were holding the final note, it played arpeggios.
Vocal-Rhythm Dynamics: an African-style drum began playing two tones before the singing, and continued the same pattern throughout.
Notes on Movement
Like Cooper, Turnbull was very strict about posture. He began giving the youngest singers exercises in focusing on a point, then emphasize correct posture so they could stay on their feet during hours of rehearsals. [30]
In the early years, the choir stood in a semicircle around a piano in concerts. By 1987, Turnbull said "they were now able to move about the stage in carefully choreographed steps." [31]
Notes on Performers
"Come by Here" probably was not part of Turnbull’s adolescent or adult repertoire. All his Mississippi Adventist church required for his baptism was that he be twelve-years-old and willing to be immersed. [32] Its taste ran to "hymns and anthems," not gospel music. [33] He recalled members of the New York church he joined:
"were warm and familiar, and for the most part, acted like the congregations of every other black church that I had attended over the years. They were fundamentalists to the bone and, now that I think about it, bourgeois to the bone, too. Shirt and tie were required, and any demonstrative praise was almost frowned upon. It was not unlike other so-called middle-class churches in Harlem where the black folk though that it was low-class to praise God in any way that seemed African in spirit. Playing drums, shouting, and the throwing of hands was not encouraged." [34]
Availability
Album: We Shall Overcome. The Boys Choir of Harlem label. 30 November 2001.
Reissue: Precious Lord....Take My Hand. The Boys Choir of Harlem label. 15 February 2005.
YouTube: uploaded by CDBaby, 1 September 2015.
End Notes
1. Walter Turnbull. Lift Every Voice. With Howard Manly. New York: Hyperion, 1995. 1.
2. Turnbull. 31.
3. Turnbull. 47, 53.
4. Turnbull. 78.
5. Turnbull. 85.
6. Turnbull. 90.
7. Turnbull. 12, 22.
8. Turnbull. 92.
9. Wikipedia. "Southport, Connecticut." In 2000, the United States Census reported the village was 95% white and had more Native Americans than African Americans. The median, annual household income was over $140,000.
10. Turnbull. 92.
11. Wikipedia. "Boys Choir of Harlem."
12. Turnbull. 94.
13. Turnbull. 95.
14. Turnbull. 98.
15. Turnbull. 101.
16. Turnbull. 109.
17. Turnbull. 151.
18. Turnbull. 161.
19. Turnbull. 104.
20. Turnbull. 109.
21. Turnbull. 109.
22. Turnbull. 107.
23. Turnbull. 107. He noted some ascribed the distinct sound to "differences in head structure and nasal passages."
24. Turnbull. 106.
25. Turnbull. 107.
26. Turnbull. 152.
27. Turnbull. 139. The counselor was Frank Jones, Junior. In 2001, the same year the record with "Kumbaya" was released, one of the choir members accused Jones of sexually molesting him. When Turnbull did not immediately remove Jones, the choir lost most of its financial support. (Wikipedia, Boys Choir.)
28. Turnbull. 166.
29. Turnbull. 106, 183.
30. Turnbull. 162-163.
31. Turnbull. 203.
32. Turnbull. 26.
33. Turnbull. 38.
34. Turnbull. 91.
Showing posts with label ~ Learning Music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ~ Learning Music. Show all posts
Sunday, October 1, 2017
Friday, September 29, 2017
Fortis Boy Choir - Kumbayah, My Lord
Topic: Learning Music
School music programs include all students, although the performance groups, like church choirs, may be restricted to those who can carry a tune in a recognizable key. They are very much descendants of the congregational Anglo-Scots Reformation tradition that was reinforced in schools by the requirement for democratic participation.
As mentioned in the post for 11 September 2017, church singing was done by professionals prior to Henry VIII. In the mid-nineteenth century a group at Oxford [1] began pressing for the reinstatement of parts of the liturgy lost in the Anglican church during the Commonwealth that lasted until 1660. [2] This occurred at the same time as a secular revival of earlier music forms, some of which had used boys’ treble voices. [3]
In this country the introduction of boys’ choirs coincided with a greater separation between the congregation and the choir that had begun with Charles Finney. His criticisms of congregation singing had arisen, in part, from his being a listener, rather than a participant. [4] As congregations became accustomed to being audiences, their demands for musical perfection increased. By the end of the nineteenth century, wealthy Episcopal churches were hiring professional singers like Harry Burleigh to sing in their services. [5]
The short-lived interest in boys’ choirs was reignited in the 1950s when the Vienna Boys Choir began touring this country and, more important, appeared on Ed Sullivan’s television program. [6] The American Boys Choir copied its program and established a boarding school where members were trained, [7] much as they had been before the Reformation.
By 2000, such exclusively-male organizations were being criticized because they were all male, and more important, because they attracted predators as leaders and members. In Scottsbluff, Nebraska, Larry Cooper created a more American choir that was an extra-curricular activity like a local theater or dance company. Parents paid an annual fee, children attended early-evening rehearsals once a week, and the co-directors were a married couple. [8]
Ironically, the group’s performance of "Kumbaya" included more obvious mistakes than the ones by the Grant Elementary and Buds of Promise choirs. [9] In one place, a boy with a dominant voice sang the wrong words; in another, a younger boy sang a wrong note in a chord.
This was not because the arrangement by Sigrid Schultz-Kokerbeck was more challenging. The choir began singing "kumbaya" in parallel octaves, then divided on two verses (humming, singing) with one group singing the melody and the other humming or crooning "doo." This was followed by most singing the shouting verse, and the deeper voices joining on "kumbaya." The last verse, praying, was softer than the others.
This was a simplification of the original arrangement, which had the higher voices sing the melody for shouting, and some lower voices sing kumbaya against the tune and others sing it during the rests. [10] For dancing, different vocal groupings of voices sang the melody and rhythm. Weeping was sung in parallel octaves, and praying had the lower voices sustaining "bom" in parallel fifths.
Conductors always make aesthetic decisions. In this case, some in Scottsbluff may have been responses to the inabilities of the youngest boys to sing anything more complex than a hum as a countermelody or rhythm. Other choices, like dropping the dancing and weeping verses, may have been acknowledgments of what was considered appropriate material for boys and, with dancing, a capitulation to the conservative views of some parents.
A different type of decision was made in adding an introduction and conclusion that featured a trio of younger boys. It was not obvious if they were singing chords or if the timbres of their voices did not blend. Whether or not they were too young to be trained to sing together precisely, the directors no doubt had been taught that the skill was beyond the capacity of the average boy.
This signified the importance of culture. In England, boys selected to sing in choirs were assumed to be extraordinarily talented and capable of greater work than other children. The Scottsbluff directors were trained to teach in public schools, and may never have been exposed to the disciplines of European boy choirs.
Probably more important than culture was the size of the pool of available talent. Scottsbluff may have been the largest settlement in its part of western Nebraska in 2010, but it only had 15,039 people [11] in a county that numbered 37,000 residents. Excluding women, that meant there were 3,234 boys between the ages of 6 and 18 of whom about two-thirds or 2,166 were eligible for auditions in the county and 1,033 in the town in 2010. [12, 13]
Cooper’s intentions were different than those of English music professionals. When he was ten-years-old, he had been asked to join a group of forty boys preparing a Christmas program. He wrote:
"I remember very little about the actual performances but I do remember the joy of practicing a piece of music, as a group, and over time learning the harmonies and understanding the phrasing. After the piece was perfected there was great satisfaction singing with the group and listening to what we had created. That feeling never goes away!
"The lessons a young boy learns while working with other young boys to accomplish what seems impossible will last a lifetime!" [14]
Performers
Soloist: Alex Backus
Vocal Trio: Alex Backus, Destin Egan, Zachary Wharton
Vocal Accompaniment: eleven boys
Vocal Group Conductor: man
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Credits
Choir
arr. Sigrid Schultz-Kokerbeck
Sheet Music
Traditional/arr Sigrid Schultz-Kokerbeck 2010
© by Sigrid Schultz-Kokerbeck, 2010
Released into the Choral Public Domain Library
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: all syllables in kumbaya were given equal emphasis, with the last sustained longer
Verses: kumbaya, humming, singing, shouting, praying
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Format: 7 verse song
Verse Length: 4 lines
Verse Repetition Pattern: AAxxxxA
Line Meter: trochaic
Line Length: 8 syllables
Line Repetition Pattern: AAAB
Line Form: statement-refrain
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature:
Sheet Music: 3/4
Tempo: moderate
Key Signature:
Sheet Music: two sharps
Vocal Parts:
Choir: three parts for preadolescent male voices
Sheet Music: SATB
Basic Structure: small group or ensemble supported by larger group
Singing Style: one syllable to one note, except for Lord in last line; one person trilled "by" in kumbaya one time.
Group Style: unison, chordal harmony
Vocal-Instrumental Dynamics: a piano played the first three notes before they began. It was not obvious if they needed it to set the pitch, or if it was part of the ritual of a capella singing. After the trio introduction, the piano played so softly it barely was heard.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: spring concert, 2015.
Location: Saint Agnes Roman Catholic church, Scottsbluff, Nebraska. The younger boys stood on the floor in front of the steps into the sanctuary. The older ones stood on the platform. A carpet was laid over the tile floor in the central aisle to absorb any sound.
Microphones: one floor mike for trio; two standing overhead microphones for choir
Clothing: white shirts with logo patch on left pocket, black slacks, and maroon stripped ties
Notes on Movement
The boys stood erect with their arms at their sides. The choir’s handbook gave precise instructions for proper carriage. [15] When the three boys in the trio stepped forward to the microphone, the other boys adjusted their positions. The boys stepped away from the mike after their solo, and returned to it only for the ending trio passage.
The director used both hands to conduct. The right marked the beat. The left often pointed to individuals or groups who had featured parts.
At the end, he stepped toward the group, turned and gestured toward them. The boys did not bow.
Communication between the boys during the performance was physical. When one boy did not move to his location after the trio stepped forward, the boy next to him touched his arm. I could not see how the older boy learned he was singing the wrong verse. The boy next to him may have whispered to him, the director may have glared, or he may have heard the others.
Notes on Audience
The audience sat still during the performance and applauded at the end.
Notes on Performers
Scottsbluff was a farming community since it was founded near the railroad tracks in 1899. The introduction of diesel pumps for irrigation made sugar beets profitable. Immigrants from Russia, Germany, and Japan did most of the work. After the restrictive immigration law of 1924, Mexican laborers took their places in the local sugar refining plant. [16] The community was still predominantly white, with most of the current immigrants speaking Spanish. [17]
Cooper was raised in Scottsbluff where he studied engineering at Western Nebraska Community College. [18] He made his living as a product distributor. [19]
The directors were Alyssa and Scott Harvey. They both graduated from Northwest Missouri State University, and both had been active in musical productions since they were a children. Both taught vocal music before moving to Scottsbluff, where he was teaching in the local public schools. He originally was from Scottsbluff and they lived on his family’s farm. She attended the local Episcopal church. [20]
Schultz-Kokerbeck was educated in Hamburg, Germany, gymnasiums [21] where she sang and learned to play guitar and accordion. She earned a degree in computer science, but preferred to direct choirs. [22] Google Translate garbled her comments when it indicated she believed:
"As a choral conductor, it is important to the individual singers to show how much joy they can prepare to discover the facets of their own voice, thereby underlining the content of the choral pieces, thus conveying the listeners accordingly." [23]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Larry Cooper, 6 June 2015.
Sheet Music: "Kumbayah, My Lord." Uploaded to Scribd website by yannisyanni2; access required subscription.
End Notes
1. Oxford had supported the crown in the English Civil War. It was Cambridge that was aligned with Parliament and the Puritans.
2. Wikipedia. "Oxford Movement."
3. Percy M. Young. "Chorus §5: Later Developments." 4:356-357 in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Edited by Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan, 1980. 4:356-357.
4. For more on Finney, see the post for 3 September 2017.
5. Burleigh was mentioned in the post for 15 August 2017. He was a soloist for Saint George’s Episcopal church in New York City from 1894 until 1946. When some men on the hiring committee were concerned about his race, J. Pierpont Morgan cast the deciding vote. (Wikipedia. "Harry Burleigh.")
6. I could not find many details on their appearances of Sullivan’s shows, which I remember were heavily promoted at the time. I did find a reference to an appearance on the 22 March 1953 program (Imdb website), and another to 18 September 1955 (tv website).
7. Wikipedia. "American Boychoir School."
8. Fortis Boychoir website.
9. Grant Elementary school was discussed in the posting for 25 September 2017. The Buds of Promise choir of the Kyles AME Zion church was described in the post for 27 September 2017.
10. Unlike the Teresa Jennings arrangement used by Grant Elementary that had children sing "kumbaya" on one tone, this assigned three different tones to the word.
11. Wikipedia. "Scottsbluff, Nebraska."
12. United States Census Bureau. "Quick Facts: Scottsbluff County, Nebraska." Census website. Calculations were mine.
13. The website said any boy at least six-years-old could audition. He would be asked to sing a few exercises "to determine range" and prepare a short piece. ("Audition Form." Fortis Boychoir website.)
There was no maximum age, but the average age for boys’ voices to change today is 13.5 years. (Wikipedia. "Boy’s Choir.)
14. Larry Cooper. "My Story." Fortis Boychoir website.
15. Handbook for Parents and Choir Boys. Fortis Boychoir website. It also covered attendance, academic standards, lying, memorizing music, staying healthy, and not harming the voice.
16. "Scotts Bluff, Nebraska." National Park Service website.
17. Wikipedia, Scottsbluff.
18. "About Larry Cooper." Facebook.
19. "Breezes Favorable for Power." [Scottsbluff, Nebraska] Star Herald, 10 March 2009.
20. "The Fortis Boy Choir is PROUD to introduce your co-directors." Fortis Boychoir website.
21. "Sigrid Schultz-Kokerbeck." Stay Friends website.
22. "Sigrid Schultz-Kokerbeck." Preetzer Gesangvereins von 1869 website.
23. Preetzer Gesangvereins. The original was: "Als Chorleitung ist es Frau Schultz-Kokerbeck wichtig, den einzelnen Sängerinnen und Sängern zu zeigen, wieviel Freude es bereiten kann, die Facetten der eigenen Stimme zu entdecken, dadurch den Inhalt der gesungenen Chorstücke zu unterstreichen und so den Zuhörerinnen und Zuhörern entsprechend zu vermitteln."
School music programs include all students, although the performance groups, like church choirs, may be restricted to those who can carry a tune in a recognizable key. They are very much descendants of the congregational Anglo-Scots Reformation tradition that was reinforced in schools by the requirement for democratic participation.
As mentioned in the post for 11 September 2017, church singing was done by professionals prior to Henry VIII. In the mid-nineteenth century a group at Oxford [1] began pressing for the reinstatement of parts of the liturgy lost in the Anglican church during the Commonwealth that lasted until 1660. [2] This occurred at the same time as a secular revival of earlier music forms, some of which had used boys’ treble voices. [3]
In this country the introduction of boys’ choirs coincided with a greater separation between the congregation and the choir that had begun with Charles Finney. His criticisms of congregation singing had arisen, in part, from his being a listener, rather than a participant. [4] As congregations became accustomed to being audiences, their demands for musical perfection increased. By the end of the nineteenth century, wealthy Episcopal churches were hiring professional singers like Harry Burleigh to sing in their services. [5]
The short-lived interest in boys’ choirs was reignited in the 1950s when the Vienna Boys Choir began touring this country and, more important, appeared on Ed Sullivan’s television program. [6] The American Boys Choir copied its program and established a boarding school where members were trained, [7] much as they had been before the Reformation.
By 2000, such exclusively-male organizations were being criticized because they were all male, and more important, because they attracted predators as leaders and members. In Scottsbluff, Nebraska, Larry Cooper created a more American choir that was an extra-curricular activity like a local theater or dance company. Parents paid an annual fee, children attended early-evening rehearsals once a week, and the co-directors were a married couple. [8]
Ironically, the group’s performance of "Kumbaya" included more obvious mistakes than the ones by the Grant Elementary and Buds of Promise choirs. [9] In one place, a boy with a dominant voice sang the wrong words; in another, a younger boy sang a wrong note in a chord.
This was not because the arrangement by Sigrid Schultz-Kokerbeck was more challenging. The choir began singing "kumbaya" in parallel octaves, then divided on two verses (humming, singing) with one group singing the melody and the other humming or crooning "doo." This was followed by most singing the shouting verse, and the deeper voices joining on "kumbaya." The last verse, praying, was softer than the others.
This was a simplification of the original arrangement, which had the higher voices sing the melody for shouting, and some lower voices sing kumbaya against the tune and others sing it during the rests. [10] For dancing, different vocal groupings of voices sang the melody and rhythm. Weeping was sung in parallel octaves, and praying had the lower voices sustaining "bom" in parallel fifths.
Conductors always make aesthetic decisions. In this case, some in Scottsbluff may have been responses to the inabilities of the youngest boys to sing anything more complex than a hum as a countermelody or rhythm. Other choices, like dropping the dancing and weeping verses, may have been acknowledgments of what was considered appropriate material for boys and, with dancing, a capitulation to the conservative views of some parents.
A different type of decision was made in adding an introduction and conclusion that featured a trio of younger boys. It was not obvious if they were singing chords or if the timbres of their voices did not blend. Whether or not they were too young to be trained to sing together precisely, the directors no doubt had been taught that the skill was beyond the capacity of the average boy.
This signified the importance of culture. In England, boys selected to sing in choirs were assumed to be extraordinarily talented and capable of greater work than other children. The Scottsbluff directors were trained to teach in public schools, and may never have been exposed to the disciplines of European boy choirs.
Probably more important than culture was the size of the pool of available talent. Scottsbluff may have been the largest settlement in its part of western Nebraska in 2010, but it only had 15,039 people [11] in a county that numbered 37,000 residents. Excluding women, that meant there were 3,234 boys between the ages of 6 and 18 of whom about two-thirds or 2,166 were eligible for auditions in the county and 1,033 in the town in 2010. [12, 13]
Cooper’s intentions were different than those of English music professionals. When he was ten-years-old, he had been asked to join a group of forty boys preparing a Christmas program. He wrote:
"I remember very little about the actual performances but I do remember the joy of practicing a piece of music, as a group, and over time learning the harmonies and understanding the phrasing. After the piece was perfected there was great satisfaction singing with the group and listening to what we had created. That feeling never goes away!
"The lessons a young boy learns while working with other young boys to accomplish what seems impossible will last a lifetime!" [14]
Performers
Soloist: Alex Backus
Vocal Trio: Alex Backus, Destin Egan, Zachary Wharton
Vocal Accompaniment: eleven boys
Vocal Group Conductor: man
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Credits
Choir
arr. Sigrid Schultz-Kokerbeck
Sheet Music
Traditional/arr Sigrid Schultz-Kokerbeck 2010
© by Sigrid Schultz-Kokerbeck, 2010
Released into the Choral Public Domain Library
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: all syllables in kumbaya were given equal emphasis, with the last sustained longer
Verses: kumbaya, humming, singing, shouting, praying
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Format: 7 verse song
Verse Length: 4 lines
Verse Repetition Pattern: AAxxxxA
Line Meter: trochaic
Line Length: 8 syllables
Line Repetition Pattern: AAAB
Line Form: statement-refrain
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature:
Sheet Music: 3/4
Tempo: moderate
Key Signature:
Sheet Music: two sharps
Vocal Parts:
Choir: three parts for preadolescent male voices
Sheet Music: SATB
Basic Structure: small group or ensemble supported by larger group
Singing Style: one syllable to one note, except for Lord in last line; one person trilled "by" in kumbaya one time.
Group Style: unison, chordal harmony
Vocal-Instrumental Dynamics: a piano played the first three notes before they began. It was not obvious if they needed it to set the pitch, or if it was part of the ritual of a capella singing. After the trio introduction, the piano played so softly it barely was heard.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: spring concert, 2015.
Location: Saint Agnes Roman Catholic church, Scottsbluff, Nebraska. The younger boys stood on the floor in front of the steps into the sanctuary. The older ones stood on the platform. A carpet was laid over the tile floor in the central aisle to absorb any sound.
Microphones: one floor mike for trio; two standing overhead microphones for choir
Clothing: white shirts with logo patch on left pocket, black slacks, and maroon stripped ties
Notes on Movement
The boys stood erect with their arms at their sides. The choir’s handbook gave precise instructions for proper carriage. [15] When the three boys in the trio stepped forward to the microphone, the other boys adjusted their positions. The boys stepped away from the mike after their solo, and returned to it only for the ending trio passage.
The director used both hands to conduct. The right marked the beat. The left often pointed to individuals or groups who had featured parts.
At the end, he stepped toward the group, turned and gestured toward them. The boys did not bow.
Communication between the boys during the performance was physical. When one boy did not move to his location after the trio stepped forward, the boy next to him touched his arm. I could not see how the older boy learned he was singing the wrong verse. The boy next to him may have whispered to him, the director may have glared, or he may have heard the others.
Notes on Audience
The audience sat still during the performance and applauded at the end.
Notes on Performers
Scottsbluff was a farming community since it was founded near the railroad tracks in 1899. The introduction of diesel pumps for irrigation made sugar beets profitable. Immigrants from Russia, Germany, and Japan did most of the work. After the restrictive immigration law of 1924, Mexican laborers took their places in the local sugar refining plant. [16] The community was still predominantly white, with most of the current immigrants speaking Spanish. [17]
Cooper was raised in Scottsbluff where he studied engineering at Western Nebraska Community College. [18] He made his living as a product distributor. [19]
The directors were Alyssa and Scott Harvey. They both graduated from Northwest Missouri State University, and both had been active in musical productions since they were a children. Both taught vocal music before moving to Scottsbluff, where he was teaching in the local public schools. He originally was from Scottsbluff and they lived on his family’s farm. She attended the local Episcopal church. [20]
Schultz-Kokerbeck was educated in Hamburg, Germany, gymnasiums [21] where she sang and learned to play guitar and accordion. She earned a degree in computer science, but preferred to direct choirs. [22] Google Translate garbled her comments when it indicated she believed:
"As a choral conductor, it is important to the individual singers to show how much joy they can prepare to discover the facets of their own voice, thereby underlining the content of the choral pieces, thus conveying the listeners accordingly." [23]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Larry Cooper, 6 June 2015.
Sheet Music: "Kumbayah, My Lord." Uploaded to Scribd website by yannisyanni2; access required subscription.
End Notes
1. Oxford had supported the crown in the English Civil War. It was Cambridge that was aligned with Parliament and the Puritans.
2. Wikipedia. "Oxford Movement."
3. Percy M. Young. "Chorus §5: Later Developments." 4:356-357 in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Edited by Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan, 1980. 4:356-357.
4. For more on Finney, see the post for 3 September 2017.
5. Burleigh was mentioned in the post for 15 August 2017. He was a soloist for Saint George’s Episcopal church in New York City from 1894 until 1946. When some men on the hiring committee were concerned about his race, J. Pierpont Morgan cast the deciding vote. (Wikipedia. "Harry Burleigh.")
6. I could not find many details on their appearances of Sullivan’s shows, which I remember were heavily promoted at the time. I did find a reference to an appearance on the 22 March 1953 program (Imdb website), and another to 18 September 1955 (tv website).
7. Wikipedia. "American Boychoir School."
8. Fortis Boychoir website.
9. Grant Elementary school was discussed in the posting for 25 September 2017. The Buds of Promise choir of the Kyles AME Zion church was described in the post for 27 September 2017.
10. Unlike the Teresa Jennings arrangement used by Grant Elementary that had children sing "kumbaya" on one tone, this assigned three different tones to the word.
11. Wikipedia. "Scottsbluff, Nebraska."
12. United States Census Bureau. "Quick Facts: Scottsbluff County, Nebraska." Census website. Calculations were mine.
13. The website said any boy at least six-years-old could audition. He would be asked to sing a few exercises "to determine range" and prepare a short piece. ("Audition Form." Fortis Boychoir website.)
There was no maximum age, but the average age for boys’ voices to change today is 13.5 years. (Wikipedia. "Boy’s Choir.)
14. Larry Cooper. "My Story." Fortis Boychoir website.
15. Handbook for Parents and Choir Boys. Fortis Boychoir website. It also covered attendance, academic standards, lying, memorizing music, staying healthy, and not harming the voice.
16. "Scotts Bluff, Nebraska." National Park Service website.
17. Wikipedia, Scottsbluff.
18. "About Larry Cooper." Facebook.
19. "Breezes Favorable for Power." [Scottsbluff, Nebraska] Star Herald, 10 March 2009.
20. "The Fortis Boy Choir is PROUD to introduce your co-directors." Fortis Boychoir website.
21. "Sigrid Schultz-Kokerbeck." Stay Friends website.
22. "Sigrid Schultz-Kokerbeck." Preetzer Gesangvereins von 1869 website.
23. Preetzer Gesangvereins. The original was: "Als Chorleitung ist es Frau Schultz-Kokerbeck wichtig, den einzelnen Sängerinnen und Sängern zu zeigen, wieviel Freude es bereiten kann, die Facetten der eigenen Stimme zu entdecken, dadurch den Inhalt der gesungenen Chorstücke zu unterstreichen und so den Zuhörerinnen und Zuhörern entsprechend zu vermitteln."
Wednesday, September 27, 2017
Kyles Temple AME Zion - Kumbaya
Topic: Learning Music
Churches are the second place where children sing in groups. Unlike schools, which segregate students by age, churches bring together people of all ages. Those choirs dominated by adults do not need to change their style or repertoire when children join, but children’s choirs are limited by the abilities of their youngest members. Thus, children in the one absorb music from exposure to those around them, while those in others learn their roles in communities.
The Buds of Promise choir of the Kyles Temple A.M.E. Zion church in Sacramento, California, included eleven people, ranging from one whose eyes were below the level of the lectern to twelve-year-olds. [1] Only three were girls, all among the tallest. They sang in unison, and there was no sound of any voice maturing with adolescence.
Their variant had been published by Zondervan in 1973. Instead of ending each line with "kumbaya," it asked the Lord to provide the "someone" with a specific gift. Thus, if "someone" was lonely, the song asked the Lord "to give him friends." This effectively changed the song from "Come by Here’s" request for the Holy Ghost to materialize into a prayer.
The editors said the source was "unknown." However, one of them, Don Wyrtzen was the son of an evangelist who had founded youth camps for Word of Life, and was closely associated with Youth for Christ. [2] Before he was named Zondervan’s youth editor, he had been influenced by "the folk music trend of the sixties," according to Jim Ruark. [3] He probably heard the song, and may have standardized the verse format.
The Buds version used the "somebody" of "Come by Here," instead of Zondervan’s "someone." They also made clear "somebody" referred to people in general, when they used the pronoun "them" in the second parts of the lines.
Their lyrics shared two verses with the published version. Another was the "Kumbaya" crying verse with "give them peace" in place of the refrain. Zondervan used that request with "someone’s fighting." The children substituted "come by here" in the praying stanza. Their "somebody loves you" was unique to them.
Before they began, a piano played the melody through once, with a drum accompaniment, to set the pitch and pace. The instruments continued while they sang, without pauses between the verses. Even the youngest seemed to have learned all the words.
Performers
Vocal Group Conductor: unidentified woman
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano
Rhythm Accompaniment: drum set
Credit or Credits
Sheet Music
Source: unknown
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: koom-BY-yah, with short "kum," long "ya," and accented "by"
Verses: kumbaya, loves you, crying, hating, doubting, praying
Vocabulary
Pronoun: somebody, them
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Format: 8 verses
Verse Length: 4 lines
Verse Repetition Pattern: AAxxxxxA
Line Meter: iambic
Line Length: 9 syllables
Line Repetition Pattern: AAAB
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-5
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: group singing in unison
Singing Style: one syllable to one note
Notes on Performance
Location: the children were standing in front of a maroon curtain that served as a communion rail hiding the altar. They were in the raised area next to the lectern at stage left (right to the audience).
Microphones: none
Clothing: green and white are the Buds of Promise colors. The girls, and some of the boys, were wearing apple-green robes. The other boys wore green vests with white shirts and black trousers. The conductor was wearing a green smock.
Notes on Movement
The children stood in two rows, arrayed by height. They stood as still as children their age can. The youngest swivelled from side to side. The others touched their hair or other parts of the bodies, especially when the piano was playing and they were not singing.
The conductor used both arms symmetrically, but stood in place.
Notes on Audience
One man from somewhere behind the microphone started making comments about half way through, usually between verses. The rest of the audience sat still, and applauded at the end.
Notes on Performers
Kyles Temple was founded in Sacramento in 1916 by Thomas Allen Harvey. At the time this was uploaded, the pastor was Gloria Clemons-White. [4] Most of the 383 registered members in 2007 had lived their entire lives in Sacramento. [5]
Lynwood Washington Kyles was the AME Zion bishop assigned to the west coast from 1916 to 1924. [6]
Buds of Promise was organized in 1904 by Marie Clay Clinton for the Women’s Home and Overseas Missionary Society. She was raised in Huntsville, Alabama, but then was living in North Carolina where her husband was a church bishop. [7]
Don Wyrtzen was raised in New Jersey, and graduated from the Moody Bible Institute. He furthered his studies at the Dallas Theological Seminary, where he remembered, "most theologians don’t know a lot about music, and most musicians don’t know much about theology and doctrine." Phil Anderson added, "his background, in which the two areas of study came together, helped him formulate songs that were not only musically solid, but biblically sound, as well." [8]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Kyles Temple AME Zion Church, 23 February 2016.
Sheet Music: "O Lord!" 89 in Hymnal for Contemporary Christians. Compiled by Norman Johnson and Don Wyrtzen. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Corporation, 1976.
End Notes
1. Buds of Promise is the AME Zion program for children from 1 to 12 years.
2. Wikipedia. "Jack Wyrtzen."
3. Jim Ruark. The House of Zondervan. Nashville: Harper Collins Christian Publishing, Inc., 2006. 147.
4. Kyles Temple AME Zion Church, 101st Anniversary Program. 21 May 2017.
5. Dale Nelson. "Oak Park Church Rolls into Future." Sacramento News and Review website, 4 August 2007. The membership, no doubt, increased in the past decade.
6. "Kyles, Lynwood Westinghouse." In Encyclopedia of African American Religions. Edited by Larry G. Murphy, J. Gordon Melton, and Gary L. Ward. Abington-on-Thames: Routledge, 2013 edition.
7. "Mrs. Marie Louise Clay Clinton." In Program for Marie L. Clinton Day, 24 January 2016. Prepared by Cynthia L. Revels-Young and Sandra L. Gadson. Charlotte, North Carolina: Women’s Home and Overseas Missionary Society.
8. Phil Anderson. "The Poet of the Piano: At 74, Don Wyrtzen Still Making Christian Music." The Topeka Capitol-Journal website, 19 May 2017.
Churches are the second place where children sing in groups. Unlike schools, which segregate students by age, churches bring together people of all ages. Those choirs dominated by adults do not need to change their style or repertoire when children join, but children’s choirs are limited by the abilities of their youngest members. Thus, children in the one absorb music from exposure to those around them, while those in others learn their roles in communities.
The Buds of Promise choir of the Kyles Temple A.M.E. Zion church in Sacramento, California, included eleven people, ranging from one whose eyes were below the level of the lectern to twelve-year-olds. [1] Only three were girls, all among the tallest. They sang in unison, and there was no sound of any voice maturing with adolescence.
Their variant had been published by Zondervan in 1973. Instead of ending each line with "kumbaya," it asked the Lord to provide the "someone" with a specific gift. Thus, if "someone" was lonely, the song asked the Lord "to give him friends." This effectively changed the song from "Come by Here’s" request for the Holy Ghost to materialize into a prayer.
The editors said the source was "unknown." However, one of them, Don Wyrtzen was the son of an evangelist who had founded youth camps for Word of Life, and was closely associated with Youth for Christ. [2] Before he was named Zondervan’s youth editor, he had been influenced by "the folk music trend of the sixties," according to Jim Ruark. [3] He probably heard the song, and may have standardized the verse format.
The Buds version used the "somebody" of "Come by Here," instead of Zondervan’s "someone." They also made clear "somebody" referred to people in general, when they used the pronoun "them" in the second parts of the lines.
Their lyrics shared two verses with the published version. Another was the "Kumbaya" crying verse with "give them peace" in place of the refrain. Zondervan used that request with "someone’s fighting." The children substituted "come by here" in the praying stanza. Their "somebody loves you" was unique to them.
Before they began, a piano played the melody through once, with a drum accompaniment, to set the pitch and pace. The instruments continued while they sang, without pauses between the verses. Even the youngest seemed to have learned all the words.
Performers
Vocal Group Conductor: unidentified woman
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano
Rhythm Accompaniment: drum set
Credit or Credits
Sheet Music
Source: unknown
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: koom-BY-yah, with short "kum," long "ya," and accented "by"
Verses: kumbaya, loves you, crying, hating, doubting, praying
Vocabulary
Pronoun: somebody, them
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Format: 8 verses
Verse Length: 4 lines
Verse Repetition Pattern: AAxxxxxA
Line Meter: iambic
Line Length: 9 syllables
Line Repetition Pattern: AAAB
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-5
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: group singing in unison
Singing Style: one syllable to one note
Notes on Performance
Location: the children were standing in front of a maroon curtain that served as a communion rail hiding the altar. They were in the raised area next to the lectern at stage left (right to the audience).
Microphones: none
Clothing: green and white are the Buds of Promise colors. The girls, and some of the boys, were wearing apple-green robes. The other boys wore green vests with white shirts and black trousers. The conductor was wearing a green smock.
Notes on Movement
The children stood in two rows, arrayed by height. They stood as still as children their age can. The youngest swivelled from side to side. The others touched their hair or other parts of the bodies, especially when the piano was playing and they were not singing.
The conductor used both arms symmetrically, but stood in place.
Notes on Audience
One man from somewhere behind the microphone started making comments about half way through, usually between verses. The rest of the audience sat still, and applauded at the end.
Notes on Performers
Kyles Temple was founded in Sacramento in 1916 by Thomas Allen Harvey. At the time this was uploaded, the pastor was Gloria Clemons-White. [4] Most of the 383 registered members in 2007 had lived their entire lives in Sacramento. [5]
Lynwood Washington Kyles was the AME Zion bishop assigned to the west coast from 1916 to 1924. [6]
Buds of Promise was organized in 1904 by Marie Clay Clinton for the Women’s Home and Overseas Missionary Society. She was raised in Huntsville, Alabama, but then was living in North Carolina where her husband was a church bishop. [7]
Don Wyrtzen was raised in New Jersey, and graduated from the Moody Bible Institute. He furthered his studies at the Dallas Theological Seminary, where he remembered, "most theologians don’t know a lot about music, and most musicians don’t know much about theology and doctrine." Phil Anderson added, "his background, in which the two areas of study came together, helped him formulate songs that were not only musically solid, but biblically sound, as well." [8]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Kyles Temple AME Zion Church, 23 February 2016.
Sheet Music: "O Lord!" 89 in Hymnal for Contemporary Christians. Compiled by Norman Johnson and Don Wyrtzen. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Corporation, 1976.
End Notes
1. Buds of Promise is the AME Zion program for children from 1 to 12 years.
2. Wikipedia. "Jack Wyrtzen."
3. Jim Ruark. The House of Zondervan. Nashville: Harper Collins Christian Publishing, Inc., 2006. 147.
4. Kyles Temple AME Zion Church, 101st Anniversary Program. 21 May 2017.
5. Dale Nelson. "Oak Park Church Rolls into Future." Sacramento News and Review website, 4 August 2007. The membership, no doubt, increased in the past decade.
6. "Kyles, Lynwood Westinghouse." In Encyclopedia of African American Religions. Edited by Larry G. Murphy, J. Gordon Melton, and Gary L. Ward. Abington-on-Thames: Routledge, 2013 edition.
7. "Mrs. Marie Louise Clay Clinton." In Program for Marie L. Clinton Day, 24 January 2016. Prepared by Cynthia L. Revels-Young and Sandra L. Gadson. Charlotte, North Carolina: Women’s Home and Overseas Missionary Society.
8. Phil Anderson. "The Poet of the Piano: At 74, Don Wyrtzen Still Making Christian Music." The Topeka Capitol-Journal website, 19 May 2017.
Monday, September 25, 2017
Grant Elementary School - Kumbaya
Topic: Learning Music
Every reform in Anglo-Scots Protestant music has been prefaced by comments that congregations were not singing because they were bored. Isaac Watts responded with psalms shorn of alien Old Testament references, [1] John Wesley thought churches needed to improve their song-leading methods, [2] and Thomas Hastings believed singers needed better training in public schools. [3] In the 1960s, people complained about the irrelevance of school music programs.
The Grant Elementary School choir’s 2011 rendition of "Kumbaya" indicated music publishers had responded. Teresa Jenning’s arrangement came with tapes so students could hear and sing along with their parts. The sheet music was intended for the instructor.
The publisher also suggested the "lively African style" arrangement could be used for Black History Month. While most schools now include African-American history in their curriculum, Grant’s students had different interests. It was located in the Little Armenia district of East Hollywood were Armenians had begun moving in the 1940s when the Japanese were removed. [4] After the elimination of immigration quotas in 1965, [5] Asian and Hispanic immigrants moved into the area because there were no restrictive covenants. [6] At the time the choir was singing, pupils in the school spoke more than twenty languages. [7]
The choir was composed of older students who stood on risers with their arms at their sides. The school had two classes of fifth and sixth graders, and they probably were the singers. Younger children have problems with the recognition of variations in tunes that is necessary to singing parts, [8] but have no problem hearing them as generalized sounds. The audience of younger students sat on the gymnasium floor for the Freedom Day assembly, did not grow restive during the singing, and applauded at the end.
The ability to sing harmony comes later, after children have developed new skills in listening that occur around the age of eleven or twelve. [9] Arnold Gesell found a twelve-year-old was the one who "especially enjoys singing in harmony." [10]
Jennings’ arrangement used three groups who did not need to heed each other: one sang the melody and two rhythm. A teacher faced with all the aptitudes found in a public school could put those able to remember a text and tune into the one group, and the rest into the groups who intoned fewer words on a single note. They only needed to conform on timing. Variations in tempo was something they had mastered when they were eight-years-old. [11]
However, the rhythmic parts were alien. Jennings dictated kumbaya be sung as three even eighth notes followed by a rest. She hoped having one group sing the pattern, followed by the other would create a "rollicking African triplet feel." Instead, the students converted the XXXx triplets into XxXx by emphasizing the first and third syllables of "kumbaya." This turned what should have been a simple form of polyrhythm into a chant.
The danger with dividing groups into melody and rhythm is girls usually sing the one and boys get bored doing the other. The Grant music teacher avoided such gender distinctions. The choir stood on risers placed into a U formation, with boys and girls mixed in each section. In addition to black tops and jeans they wore cerise or chartreuse scarves. There was no gender or part coding in the scarves.
The arrangement came with a tape of African music that groups could use for an accompaniment. It included a "conga, udu, log drum, shekere, and shells, as well as djembe." Jennings warned that, if the chorus director did not use the tape, he or she would "need to give starting pitches and tempo." The Grant teacher played a few measures of the tape, then the groups began a capella.
Performers
Vocal Group Conductor: woman
Instrumental Accompaniment: sound track introduction
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Credits
arr. Teresa Jennings
© 2006 Plank Road Publishing, Inc.
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: KOOM-by-YAH
Verses: kumbaya, walk with me, sing with me, come by here
Vocabulary:
Pronoun: me
Term for Deity: Lord used, but "oh" often substituted. The teachers’ notes cited guidelines from the Music Educators National Conference that indicated spirituals could be sung in public schools "solely within an educational context."
Special Terms: none
Format: 4 verses
Verse Length: 4 lines
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Line Meter: trochaic
Line Length: 8 syllables
Line Repetition Pattern: AAAB
Line Form: statement-refrain, with the rhythm groups repeating the key words of the statement: "kumbaya" with that verse, "sing with me" with the second verse.
Notes on Music
Score
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 4/4
Tempo: quarter note is 112 beats per minute
Key Signature: two sharps
Basic Structure: melody with vocal rhythm
Singing Style: One syllable to one note, except for "oh" and "Lord" in the last line. Each group sang in unison.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: Freedom Concert, 2011
Location: gymnasium with no strong echoes
Microphones: none
Notes on Movement
The white director stood in front of the students and used her right arm to conduct. She did not move from her position, except to manage the tape recorder.
Viewers’ Perceptions
One parent commented: "my daughter is one of the singers .i am going to tell ever one to watch all of the videos that grant has . BEST I EVER SEEN!" [12]
Notes on Performers
Lisa Smith uploaded the tape with the implication she was the music teacher. In 2017, a woman with that name was teaching at Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood where her pupils were enthusiastic about music classes. [13] She had studied at Brigham Young University and California State University, Northridge. [14]
Both Jennings’ parents were college-trained musicians. Her father, Donald Riggio, studied music at Murray State College in Kentucky and chaired the music department at West Virginia Institute of Technology. [15] Her mother, Suzanne Mouton Riggio, was raised in Bayou Teche, Louisiana. She received her first training at Louisiana State University, and later played French horn with the Charleston Symphony Orchestra. [16]
Teresa learned oboe, but turned to composition and music education. She and her husband started Plank Road Publishing after their employer, Jenson Publications was sold to Hal Leonard. [17] It had specialized in "band and vocal arrangements for high schools, colleges, churches and choral groups." [18]
Her parents were Roman Catholics [19], and she believed "Kumbaya" symbolized "a desire for social change through peaceful means."
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Lisa Smith, 26 February 2011.
Sheet Music: Golden Rule website. Includes all the quoted comments.
End Notes
1. Isaac Watts. "Preface." Hymns and Spiritual Songs. London: J. Humfreys for John Lawrence, 1707. He observed "the dull Indifference, the negligent and the thoughtless Air that sits upon the Faces of a whole Assembly, while the Psalm is on their Lips."
2. 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. "[. . .] take care you sing not too slow. This drawling way naturally steals on all who are lazy; and it is high time to drive it out from among us, and sing all our tunes just as quick as we did at first." 197.
3. Thomas Hastings. Dissertation on Musical Taste. New York: Mason Brothers, 1853 edition. "few members of the congregation know enough to sing for the edification of others." 95.
4. Susan Park. "Iconic Neighborhood Restaurants: East Hollywood & Little Armenia." KCET-TV [Burbank, California] website.
5. Wikipedia. "Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965."
6. Park.
7. "School History." Grant Elementary School website.
8. Marilyn Pflederer Zimmerman. Musical Characteristics of Children. Washington: Music Educators National Conference, 1971. She found third-grade students, normally eight-years-old, usually could recognize a tune when it underwent some variations in form, like changing tempos. They could not perceive others, like changes in key.
9. Karl Wilson Gehrkens. Music in the Grade Schools. Boston, C. C. Birchard and Company, 1934. He considered the improved ability to listen fundamental to the ability to sing well. 89-90.
10. Arnold Gesell, Frances L. Ilg, and Louise Bates Ames. Youth: The Years from Ten to Sixteen. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1956. 133.
11. See quotation in #8.
12. Sam Arzumanyan. YouTube comment, 2011.
13. "Lisa Smith." Rate My Teachers website.
14. "Lisa Smith." LinkedIn website.
15. "Professor Exhibits His Paintings at Tech." [Charleston, West Virginia] Sunday Gazette-Mail, 13 November 1966. 49.
16. "Suzanne M. Riggio." Obituary. Posted by Schmidt and Bartelt funeral home, Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, 10 May 2016.
17. "About Teresa Jennings." Music K-8 website.
18. "Jenson Firms Now in Gotham." Billboard, 6 Septempter 1980. 32.
19. Jennings’ mother was buried by the Saint Mary’s Visitation Roman Catholic parish. See #16.
Every reform in Anglo-Scots Protestant music has been prefaced by comments that congregations were not singing because they were bored. Isaac Watts responded with psalms shorn of alien Old Testament references, [1] John Wesley thought churches needed to improve their song-leading methods, [2] and Thomas Hastings believed singers needed better training in public schools. [3] In the 1960s, people complained about the irrelevance of school music programs.
The Grant Elementary School choir’s 2011 rendition of "Kumbaya" indicated music publishers had responded. Teresa Jenning’s arrangement came with tapes so students could hear and sing along with their parts. The sheet music was intended for the instructor.
The publisher also suggested the "lively African style" arrangement could be used for Black History Month. While most schools now include African-American history in their curriculum, Grant’s students had different interests. It was located in the Little Armenia district of East Hollywood were Armenians had begun moving in the 1940s when the Japanese were removed. [4] After the elimination of immigration quotas in 1965, [5] Asian and Hispanic immigrants moved into the area because there were no restrictive covenants. [6] At the time the choir was singing, pupils in the school spoke more than twenty languages. [7]
The choir was composed of older students who stood on risers with their arms at their sides. The school had two classes of fifth and sixth graders, and they probably were the singers. Younger children have problems with the recognition of variations in tunes that is necessary to singing parts, [8] but have no problem hearing them as generalized sounds. The audience of younger students sat on the gymnasium floor for the Freedom Day assembly, did not grow restive during the singing, and applauded at the end.
The ability to sing harmony comes later, after children have developed new skills in listening that occur around the age of eleven or twelve. [9] Arnold Gesell found a twelve-year-old was the one who "especially enjoys singing in harmony." [10]
Jennings’ arrangement used three groups who did not need to heed each other: one sang the melody and two rhythm. A teacher faced with all the aptitudes found in a public school could put those able to remember a text and tune into the one group, and the rest into the groups who intoned fewer words on a single note. They only needed to conform on timing. Variations in tempo was something they had mastered when they were eight-years-old. [11]
However, the rhythmic parts were alien. Jennings dictated kumbaya be sung as three even eighth notes followed by a rest. She hoped having one group sing the pattern, followed by the other would create a "rollicking African triplet feel." Instead, the students converted the XXXx triplets into XxXx by emphasizing the first and third syllables of "kumbaya." This turned what should have been a simple form of polyrhythm into a chant.
The danger with dividing groups into melody and rhythm is girls usually sing the one and boys get bored doing the other. The Grant music teacher avoided such gender distinctions. The choir stood on risers placed into a U formation, with boys and girls mixed in each section. In addition to black tops and jeans they wore cerise or chartreuse scarves. There was no gender or part coding in the scarves.
The arrangement came with a tape of African music that groups could use for an accompaniment. It included a "conga, udu, log drum, shekere, and shells, as well as djembe." Jennings warned that, if the chorus director did not use the tape, he or she would "need to give starting pitches and tempo." The Grant teacher played a few measures of the tape, then the groups began a capella.
Performers
Vocal Group Conductor: woman
Instrumental Accompaniment: sound track introduction
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Credits
arr. Teresa Jennings
© 2006 Plank Road Publishing, Inc.
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: KOOM-by-YAH
Verses: kumbaya, walk with me, sing with me, come by here
Vocabulary:
Pronoun: me
Term for Deity: Lord used, but "oh" often substituted. The teachers’ notes cited guidelines from the Music Educators National Conference that indicated spirituals could be sung in public schools "solely within an educational context."
Special Terms: none
Format: 4 verses
Verse Length: 4 lines
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Line Meter: trochaic
Line Length: 8 syllables
Line Repetition Pattern: AAAB
Line Form: statement-refrain, with the rhythm groups repeating the key words of the statement: "kumbaya" with that verse, "sing with me" with the second verse.
Notes on Music
Score
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 4/4
Tempo: quarter note is 112 beats per minute
Key Signature: two sharps
Basic Structure: melody with vocal rhythm
Singing Style: One syllable to one note, except for "oh" and "Lord" in the last line. Each group sang in unison.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: Freedom Concert, 2011
Location: gymnasium with no strong echoes
Microphones: none
Notes on Movement
The white director stood in front of the students and used her right arm to conduct. She did not move from her position, except to manage the tape recorder.
Viewers’ Perceptions
One parent commented: "my daughter is one of the singers .i am going to tell ever one to watch all of the videos that grant has . BEST I EVER SEEN!" [12]
Notes on Performers
Lisa Smith uploaded the tape with the implication she was the music teacher. In 2017, a woman with that name was teaching at Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood where her pupils were enthusiastic about music classes. [13] She had studied at Brigham Young University and California State University, Northridge. [14]
Both Jennings’ parents were college-trained musicians. Her father, Donald Riggio, studied music at Murray State College in Kentucky and chaired the music department at West Virginia Institute of Technology. [15] Her mother, Suzanne Mouton Riggio, was raised in Bayou Teche, Louisiana. She received her first training at Louisiana State University, and later played French horn with the Charleston Symphony Orchestra. [16]
Teresa learned oboe, but turned to composition and music education. She and her husband started Plank Road Publishing after their employer, Jenson Publications was sold to Hal Leonard. [17] It had specialized in "band and vocal arrangements for high schools, colleges, churches and choral groups." [18]
Her parents were Roman Catholics [19], and she believed "Kumbaya" symbolized "a desire for social change through peaceful means."
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Lisa Smith, 26 February 2011.
Sheet Music: Golden Rule website. Includes all the quoted comments.
End Notes
1. Isaac Watts. "Preface." Hymns and Spiritual Songs. London: J. Humfreys for John Lawrence, 1707. He observed "the dull Indifference, the negligent and the thoughtless Air that sits upon the Faces of a whole Assembly, while the Psalm is on their Lips."
2. 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. "[. . .] take care you sing not too slow. This drawling way naturally steals on all who are lazy; and it is high time to drive it out from among us, and sing all our tunes just as quick as we did at first." 197.
3. Thomas Hastings. Dissertation on Musical Taste. New York: Mason Brothers, 1853 edition. "few members of the congregation know enough to sing for the edification of others." 95.
4. Susan Park. "Iconic Neighborhood Restaurants: East Hollywood & Little Armenia." KCET-TV [Burbank, California] website.
5. Wikipedia. "Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965."
6. Park.
7. "School History." Grant Elementary School website.
8. Marilyn Pflederer Zimmerman. Musical Characteristics of Children. Washington: Music Educators National Conference, 1971. She found third-grade students, normally eight-years-old, usually could recognize a tune when it underwent some variations in form, like changing tempos. They could not perceive others, like changes in key.
9. Karl Wilson Gehrkens. Music in the Grade Schools. Boston, C. C. Birchard and Company, 1934. He considered the improved ability to listen fundamental to the ability to sing well. 89-90.
10. Arnold Gesell, Frances L. Ilg, and Louise Bates Ames. Youth: The Years from Ten to Sixteen. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1956. 133.
11. See quotation in #8.
12. Sam Arzumanyan. YouTube comment, 2011.
13. "Lisa Smith." Rate My Teachers website.
14. "Lisa Smith." LinkedIn website.
15. "Professor Exhibits His Paintings at Tech." [Charleston, West Virginia] Sunday Gazette-Mail, 13 November 1966. 49.
16. "Suzanne M. Riggio." Obituary. Posted by Schmidt and Bartelt funeral home, Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, 10 May 2016.
17. "About Teresa Jennings." Music K-8 website.
18. "Jenson Firms Now in Gotham." Billboard, 6 Septempter 1980. 32.
19. Jennings’ mother was buried by the Saint Mary’s Visitation Roman Catholic parish. See #16.
Saturday, September 23, 2017
Voices Of Joy - Come By Here
Topic: Learning Music
The toddlers who watched the Voices of Joy in Moselle, Mississippi, in 2012 heard different vocal sounds than did the one in Steeple Ashton, England. The slightly older children absorbed different attitudes about music than did the two girls in the Wiltshire choir.
Darqueitta Cook said the Voices were singing at the The Gospel Upsetters 32nd anniversary. [1] There were enough people in the New Zion Missionary Baptist church pews for it to have been a concert, [2] but the five women were dressed informally in black skirts, bright colored tee-shirts, and running shoes.
The event was informal: people sat or stood or walked in the center and far aisles. No boundaries existed between them and the artists. Several women stood next to the soloist in the space between the front pews and the sanctuary with toddlers in their arms. Later, the soloist walked down the center aisle into the audience.
The video was made by someone standing next to the women with toddlers, probably with a telephone that had limited storage. It was filmed in two parts, with the end missing. The hand holding the camera was not always steady, so parts were blurred or jerky. The microphone picked up the three backup singers and the drummer who were on the right side of the church, but not the soloist or the other instrumentalists.
Toward the end of the first video, a young boy walked along the far aisle to stand by the empty front pew. A few seconds later he had advanced into the empty space and was bent at the waist to look more closely at the singers or musicians. In the second video two slightly taller children moved toward the center aisle on the left side to see better.
The voices they heard were poised between speaking and melodic singing. The backup singers were in their normal range, while the soloist used her upper register. More important than the way they sang were the ways they used pauses to establish a rhythm separate from that established by the drums. The soloist took a brief rest between "come by" and "here Lord." The trio did the same, but attacked "here" with greater force.
The toddlers then heard voices that were both melodic and rhythmic, and that used many tonal qualities in a wide range. Even when the three women sang harmony, the children heard distinct voices, not the submerged chord of Steeple Ashton. They saw women maintain their identities when they were members of groups supporting someone.
Performers
Soloist: woman
Vocal Accompaniment: three woman
Instrumental Accompaniment: guitar and organ heard
Rhythm Accompaniment: woman playing drum set
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Verses: come by here, crying
Vocabulary:
Pronoun: somebody
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Format: ritual prelude-denouement structure
Verse Length: 4 lines
Line Meter: iambic
Line Length: 7 syllables
Line Repetition Pattern: AAAB
Line Form: statement-refrain
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-5
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: call-response and soloist supported by group
Singing Style
Solo: melismatic with great uses of pauses. Her voice was more harsh then melodic.
Group: chordal harmony. They voices were closer to the shout tradition than the melodic one.
Solo-Group Dynamics
Prelude: in the first video, the soloist sang the statement, and the group followed with the refrain.
Denouement: in the second video, the group repeated "Oh Lord." The soloist could not be heard because she had moved too far from the camera’s microphone. At the end, she moved back to the group and they sang "come by here" together."
Vocal-Instrumental Dynamics: a guitar made some sounds, followed by an organ. Once the drum began, they could only be heard between verses.
Vocal-Rhythm Dynamics: drums set the pace for the women. The women’s phrasing created another rhythmic pattern.
Notes on Movement
As soon as the drums began, the backup singers may have begun shifting their weight from foot to foot. While they were singing, they held microphones in their right hands, and moved their left arms from the elbows. Toward the end, they moved closer to each other and put their arms around each other’s waists.
The soloist began with a mike in her right hand and a large white handkerchief in her left. Toward the end of the second verse she turned in different directions, and lifted her left arm high. At the end of the second video she returned to the trio, turned towards them, and took off her glasses. They she returned to the aisle, before coming back for the final line.
Notes on Audience
They began sitting in wooden bench pews. By the end, many who were on the left side of the church had moved toward the aisle where they stood. Some were dressed in suits or dresses, and others in slacks and casual tops. If any made responsive sounds or moved, they were not recorded by the camera.
Notes on Performers
Voices of Joy were middle-aged African-American women. The drummer was dressed like the rest of the members of the group. The other musicians never were seen.
The Gospel Upsetters who sponsored the event originally were from Chicago, but had moved to Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Their manager was Ella Cook. [3]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded in two parts by Darqueitta Cook, 26 November 2012.
End Notes
1. They brought together local gospel groups for a two-day festival. Clara Ward’s mother held her first anniversary concert in 1934; I do not know if she was the first or the most famous, but she may have established a precedent for other groups. (Willa Ward-Royster. How I Got Over: Clara Ward and the World-Famous Ward Singers. Told to Toni Rose. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997. 31.)
2. "The Gospel Upsetters 32nd Anniversary." All Events In Moselle website.
3. "About Gospel Upsetters." Facebook.
The toddlers who watched the Voices of Joy in Moselle, Mississippi, in 2012 heard different vocal sounds than did the one in Steeple Ashton, England. The slightly older children absorbed different attitudes about music than did the two girls in the Wiltshire choir.
Darqueitta Cook said the Voices were singing at the The Gospel Upsetters 32nd anniversary. [1] There were enough people in the New Zion Missionary Baptist church pews for it to have been a concert, [2] but the five women were dressed informally in black skirts, bright colored tee-shirts, and running shoes.
The event was informal: people sat or stood or walked in the center and far aisles. No boundaries existed between them and the artists. Several women stood next to the soloist in the space between the front pews and the sanctuary with toddlers in their arms. Later, the soloist walked down the center aisle into the audience.
The video was made by someone standing next to the women with toddlers, probably with a telephone that had limited storage. It was filmed in two parts, with the end missing. The hand holding the camera was not always steady, so parts were blurred or jerky. The microphone picked up the three backup singers and the drummer who were on the right side of the church, but not the soloist or the other instrumentalists.
Toward the end of the first video, a young boy walked along the far aisle to stand by the empty front pew. A few seconds later he had advanced into the empty space and was bent at the waist to look more closely at the singers or musicians. In the second video two slightly taller children moved toward the center aisle on the left side to see better.
The voices they heard were poised between speaking and melodic singing. The backup singers were in their normal range, while the soloist used her upper register. More important than the way they sang were the ways they used pauses to establish a rhythm separate from that established by the drums. The soloist took a brief rest between "come by" and "here Lord." The trio did the same, but attacked "here" with greater force.
The toddlers then heard voices that were both melodic and rhythmic, and that used many tonal qualities in a wide range. Even when the three women sang harmony, the children heard distinct voices, not the submerged chord of Steeple Ashton. They saw women maintain their identities when they were members of groups supporting someone.
Performers
Soloist: woman
Vocal Accompaniment: three woman
Instrumental Accompaniment: guitar and organ heard
Rhythm Accompaniment: woman playing drum set
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Verses: come by here, crying
Vocabulary:
Pronoun: somebody
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Format: ritual prelude-denouement structure
Verse Length: 4 lines
Line Meter: iambic
Line Length: 7 syllables
Line Repetition Pattern: AAAB
Line Form: statement-refrain
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-5
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: call-response and soloist supported by group
Singing Style
Solo: melismatic with great uses of pauses. Her voice was more harsh then melodic.
Group: chordal harmony. They voices were closer to the shout tradition than the melodic one.
Solo-Group Dynamics
Prelude: in the first video, the soloist sang the statement, and the group followed with the refrain.
Denouement: in the second video, the group repeated "Oh Lord." The soloist could not be heard because she had moved too far from the camera’s microphone. At the end, she moved back to the group and they sang "come by here" together."
Vocal-Instrumental Dynamics: a guitar made some sounds, followed by an organ. Once the drum began, they could only be heard between verses.
Vocal-Rhythm Dynamics: drums set the pace for the women. The women’s phrasing created another rhythmic pattern.
Notes on Movement
As soon as the drums began, the backup singers may have begun shifting their weight from foot to foot. While they were singing, they held microphones in their right hands, and moved their left arms from the elbows. Toward the end, they moved closer to each other and put their arms around each other’s waists.
The soloist began with a mike in her right hand and a large white handkerchief in her left. Toward the end of the second verse she turned in different directions, and lifted her left arm high. At the end of the second video she returned to the trio, turned towards them, and took off her glasses. They she returned to the aisle, before coming back for the final line.
Notes on Audience
They began sitting in wooden bench pews. By the end, many who were on the left side of the church had moved toward the aisle where they stood. Some were dressed in suits or dresses, and others in slacks and casual tops. If any made responsive sounds or moved, they were not recorded by the camera.
Notes on Performers
Voices of Joy were middle-aged African-American women. The drummer was dressed like the rest of the members of the group. The other musicians never were seen.
The Gospel Upsetters who sponsored the event originally were from Chicago, but had moved to Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Their manager was Ella Cook. [3]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded in two parts by Darqueitta Cook, 26 November 2012.
End Notes
1. They brought together local gospel groups for a two-day festival. Clara Ward’s mother held her first anniversary concert in 1934; I do not know if she was the first or the most famous, but she may have established a precedent for other groups. (Willa Ward-Royster. How I Got Over: Clara Ward and the World-Famous Ward Singers. Told to Toni Rose. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997. 31.)
2. "The Gospel Upsetters 32nd Anniversary." All Events In Moselle website.
3. "About Gospel Upsetters." Facebook.
Thursday, September 21, 2017
Steeple Rocks - Kumbaya
Topic: Learning Music
Singing is a form of language that utilizes the same parts of the body. One’s vocal abilities are formed at the same time, because language is more than a collection of words bound together by grammar. The spoken word has a melodic range and arc, along with a cadence. It may be individuals begin to speak actual words [1] before they hum or sing syllables, [2] but at two months most are "capable of making all of the sounds of the vernacular," [3] plus a great many others "which, lacking social sanction, will never be crystallized into words." [4]
What matters most are infants’ exposure to sounds. Those who are taken into communal situations will hear more than those who are kept in the home. What they hear they accept, and possibly imitate.
The public places youngsters hear live music include concerts and churches. James Cleveland remembered, when he was young, his mother left him with his grandmother while she was working. The older woman took him to her choir rehearsals. [5] It was there, hearing Thomas Dorsey’s group in Chicago, that he absorbed the chorale aesthetics that formed the basis of his mature work.
Rehearsals are ideal places for the very young because people tend to be more tolerant than in concerts. A video of one by the Steeple Rocks choir in southwestern England in 2011 showed a mother with an infant girl. [6] You never saw more than the top of her head. From that you know she was old enough to sit in her mother’s lap, and young enough to get restive when she was not rocked.
What was not clear was if the woman deliberately moved to the rhythm of "Kumbaya" or if it was coincidence that she leaned to her left on the downbeats. The a capella choir emphasized harmony at the expense of other musical elements. Whatever emphasis syllables received came from the durations of the notes, not from the way they were articulated.
Even more important than the infant to the perpetuation of music in the community were the two middle-school-aged girls singing with the group of adults. They were not there because the arrangement required the special qualities of their voices, but because the group included men and woman on all ages.
In this particular selection, the group was more important than any individual. There were no solos. It was pure chordal harmony based on the Seeker’s recording. Each person was expected to blend into the whole. Unless you looked at the group, you would not know it contained at least five men or two young voices. The performance highlighted the voice, pure and simple, shorn of all individuality.
This style was derived from the modern revival of medieval and Renaissance music, which, in turn, drew on the English cathedral tradition. [7] The conductor of the Tallis Scholars told an interviewer, he had
"had a single sound in his head since he founded the group, ‘which I had got from listening to a mixture of choirs that were around at that time,’ he said, mentioning the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge and the Clerkes of Oxenford as two primary examples." [8]
It was "very clear and bright," and turned the choir into an instrument. [9] Gilbert Reaney argued there should be no vibrato or wavering, and "the tone of voice should be as smooth as the unvarying tone of a cornett." [10] Daniel Leech-Wilkinson went further, and said it was "abstract music, not expressive in any modern sense of the texts it set; it was characterized by clarity of harmony and texture." [11]
The words were clearly heard; it was still post-Reformation music. However, the variations in harmonic patterns were not tied to content. They did not occur between verses, but between lines within verses that repeated the same words.
In many ways it was a return to the time in an individual’s life when words had no concrete meanings, but were perceived as sounds that were associated with outcomes. That is, "ma ma" did not signify a particular person, but it brought the attention of that person. [12]
The young infant probably heard nothing to expand her repertoire, but the young girls learned other lessons. When they sang they were expected to stand erect and not move. Many in the front row dropped their arms and clasped their hands. The director, Adrienne Hale, also stood erect, using large gestures with her right hand to conduct. When she used both hands they moved symmetrically.
They had been well coached. While a few held music, there was no sign any turned pages. More important, everyone began together without anyone setting the pitch.
The choir was standing in a limestone Anglican church in the space in front of the pews and before the sanctuary. Hale did not exploit the acoustics of the building. She used sharp gestures to indicate everyone should end together, leaving no lingering sounds. A moment of silence marked the transition between verses.
Performers
Choir: I counted 20 adults, including at least five men, in addition to the two adolescent girls.
Conductor: Adrienne Hale
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: cum-BYE-ya, with no strong emphasis
Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying
Vocabulary:
Pronoun: Someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Format: five verses
Verse Length: 4 lines
Verse Repetition Pattern: AxxxA
Line Meter: trochaic
Line Length: 8 syllables
Line Repetition Pattern: AAAB
Line Form: statement-refrain
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: Seekers
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: strophic with variations in harmony
Harmonic Structure: major chords, with some minor ones in later repetitions
Singing Style: one syllable to one note, except for "Lord" in the last line
Notes on Performance
Location: Anglican’s Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Steeple Ashton, Wilkshire, England.
Microphones: not used
Clothing: the choir members and director were dressed informally in slacks and tops.
Notes on Audience
Three people were visible in the audience, all sitting on the right side of the church. An older couple sat in front of the woman with the infant. None responded in any way to the music.
Notes on Performers
Hale studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and sang with the Scottish Opera [13] before moving to Bath in 2009 where she directed the City of Bath Bach Choir. [14] Since 2011 she had been teaching music in local schools and organizing choral groups. She formally organized Steeple Rocks in 2012, but this video was uploaded in December 2011. The amateur group met once a week. [15]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by choirconductor99, 17 December 2011.
End Notes
1. Arnold Gesell and Helen Thompson. Infant Behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1934. He suggested "sixty-seven per cent of the children at 52 weeks and 86 per cent at 56 weeks uttered two words." He also noted another researcher found children of professionals had larger vocabularies. 251.
2. Gesell observed humming at 18 months. 254.
3. Gesell. 251.
4. Gesell. 288-289.
5. Kathryn B. Kemp. "Cleveland, James." American National Biography Online website.
6. I am assuming the infant was a girl because it was wearing a pink knit cap and what looked like a pink blanket was spread on the back of a pew across the aisle.
7. Todd M. McComb. "Medieval Perspectives: Sounds of Voices." Medieval Music and Arts Foundation website. 28 August 2001; last updated 16 August 2004.
8. Stephen Raskauskas. "The Secrets to Heavenly Singing from Peter Phillips, Conductor and Founder of the Tallis Scholars." WFMT-radio Chicago website, 5 April 2016.
9. Raskauskas.
10. Gilbert Reaney. Quoted by Daniel Leech-Wilkinson. The Modern Invention of Medieval Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 131
11. Leech-Wilkinson. 131.
12. Gesell said the infant "comprehends movements before he comprehends words and we may suppose that in their nascent stages the word-sounds are closely bound up with a system of motor predispositions or anticipations. The words do not have a distinct and mobile status in his mental life. They are moored in his postural and manipulatory reaction system. Accordingly he comprehends many words before he masters their utterance and, even after he learns to speak them, it may be years before the words attain a high degree of detached autonomy in his thinking." 253.
13. "Angel Fish." Purple Fish Band website.
14. Wikipedia. "City of Bath Bach Choir."
15. Steeple Rocks Choir website.
Singing is a form of language that utilizes the same parts of the body. One’s vocal abilities are formed at the same time, because language is more than a collection of words bound together by grammar. The spoken word has a melodic range and arc, along with a cadence. It may be individuals begin to speak actual words [1] before they hum or sing syllables, [2] but at two months most are "capable of making all of the sounds of the vernacular," [3] plus a great many others "which, lacking social sanction, will never be crystallized into words." [4]
What matters most are infants’ exposure to sounds. Those who are taken into communal situations will hear more than those who are kept in the home. What they hear they accept, and possibly imitate.
The public places youngsters hear live music include concerts and churches. James Cleveland remembered, when he was young, his mother left him with his grandmother while she was working. The older woman took him to her choir rehearsals. [5] It was there, hearing Thomas Dorsey’s group in Chicago, that he absorbed the chorale aesthetics that formed the basis of his mature work.
Rehearsals are ideal places for the very young because people tend to be more tolerant than in concerts. A video of one by the Steeple Rocks choir in southwestern England in 2011 showed a mother with an infant girl. [6] You never saw more than the top of her head. From that you know she was old enough to sit in her mother’s lap, and young enough to get restive when she was not rocked.
What was not clear was if the woman deliberately moved to the rhythm of "Kumbaya" or if it was coincidence that she leaned to her left on the downbeats. The a capella choir emphasized harmony at the expense of other musical elements. Whatever emphasis syllables received came from the durations of the notes, not from the way they were articulated.
Even more important than the infant to the perpetuation of music in the community were the two middle-school-aged girls singing with the group of adults. They were not there because the arrangement required the special qualities of their voices, but because the group included men and woman on all ages.
In this particular selection, the group was more important than any individual. There were no solos. It was pure chordal harmony based on the Seeker’s recording. Each person was expected to blend into the whole. Unless you looked at the group, you would not know it contained at least five men or two young voices. The performance highlighted the voice, pure and simple, shorn of all individuality.
This style was derived from the modern revival of medieval and Renaissance music, which, in turn, drew on the English cathedral tradition. [7] The conductor of the Tallis Scholars told an interviewer, he had
"had a single sound in his head since he founded the group, ‘which I had got from listening to a mixture of choirs that were around at that time,’ he said, mentioning the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge and the Clerkes of Oxenford as two primary examples." [8]
It was "very clear and bright," and turned the choir into an instrument. [9] Gilbert Reaney argued there should be no vibrato or wavering, and "the tone of voice should be as smooth as the unvarying tone of a cornett." [10] Daniel Leech-Wilkinson went further, and said it was "abstract music, not expressive in any modern sense of the texts it set; it was characterized by clarity of harmony and texture." [11]
The words were clearly heard; it was still post-Reformation music. However, the variations in harmonic patterns were not tied to content. They did not occur between verses, but between lines within verses that repeated the same words.
In many ways it was a return to the time in an individual’s life when words had no concrete meanings, but were perceived as sounds that were associated with outcomes. That is, "ma ma" did not signify a particular person, but it brought the attention of that person. [12]
The young infant probably heard nothing to expand her repertoire, but the young girls learned other lessons. When they sang they were expected to stand erect and not move. Many in the front row dropped their arms and clasped their hands. The director, Adrienne Hale, also stood erect, using large gestures with her right hand to conduct. When she used both hands they moved symmetrically.
They had been well coached. While a few held music, there was no sign any turned pages. More important, everyone began together without anyone setting the pitch.
The choir was standing in a limestone Anglican church in the space in front of the pews and before the sanctuary. Hale did not exploit the acoustics of the building. She used sharp gestures to indicate everyone should end together, leaving no lingering sounds. A moment of silence marked the transition between verses.
Performers
Choir: I counted 20 adults, including at least five men, in addition to the two adolescent girls.
Conductor: Adrienne Hale
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: cum-BYE-ya, with no strong emphasis
Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying
Vocabulary:
Pronoun: Someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Format: five verses
Verse Length: 4 lines
Verse Repetition Pattern: AxxxA
Line Meter: trochaic
Line Length: 8 syllables
Line Repetition Pattern: AAAB
Line Form: statement-refrain
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: Seekers
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: strophic with variations in harmony
Harmonic Structure: major chords, with some minor ones in later repetitions
Singing Style: one syllable to one note, except for "Lord" in the last line
Notes on Performance
Location: Anglican’s Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Steeple Ashton, Wilkshire, England.
Microphones: not used
Clothing: the choir members and director were dressed informally in slacks and tops.
Notes on Audience
Three people were visible in the audience, all sitting on the right side of the church. An older couple sat in front of the woman with the infant. None responded in any way to the music.
Notes on Performers
Hale studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and sang with the Scottish Opera [13] before moving to Bath in 2009 where she directed the City of Bath Bach Choir. [14] Since 2011 she had been teaching music in local schools and organizing choral groups. She formally organized Steeple Rocks in 2012, but this video was uploaded in December 2011. The amateur group met once a week. [15]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by choirconductor99, 17 December 2011.
End Notes
1. Arnold Gesell and Helen Thompson. Infant Behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1934. He suggested "sixty-seven per cent of the children at 52 weeks and 86 per cent at 56 weeks uttered two words." He also noted another researcher found children of professionals had larger vocabularies. 251.
2. Gesell observed humming at 18 months. 254.
3. Gesell. 251.
4. Gesell. 288-289.
5. Kathryn B. Kemp. "Cleveland, James." American National Biography Online website.
6. I am assuming the infant was a girl because it was wearing a pink knit cap and what looked like a pink blanket was spread on the back of a pew across the aisle.
7. Todd M. McComb. "Medieval Perspectives: Sounds of Voices." Medieval Music and Arts Foundation website. 28 August 2001; last updated 16 August 2004.
8. Stephen Raskauskas. "The Secrets to Heavenly Singing from Peter Phillips, Conductor and Founder of the Tallis Scholars." WFMT-radio Chicago website, 5 April 2016.
9. Raskauskas.
10. Gilbert Reaney. Quoted by Daniel Leech-Wilkinson. The Modern Invention of Medieval Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 131
11. Leech-Wilkinson. 131.
12. Gesell said the infant "comprehends movements before he comprehends words and we may suppose that in their nascent stages the word-sounds are closely bound up with a system of motor predispositions or anticipations. The words do not have a distinct and mobile status in his mental life. They are moored in his postural and manipulatory reaction system. Accordingly he comprehends many words before he masters their utterance and, even after he learns to speak them, it may be years before the words attain a high degree of detached autonomy in his thinking." 253.
13. "Angel Fish." Purple Fish Band website.
14. Wikipedia. "City of Bath Bach Choir."
15. Steeple Rocks Choir website.
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