Topic: Pedagogy - Vocal Tone
The primary goal set for elementary school music teachers was inculcating our culture’s view of proper singing. Children could vocalize words to a melody in many ways. Louise Kifer Myers suggested they had three voices: a speaking one that was soft, clear, and high-pitched, a singing one that "should be the same," and a play voice that was "strident, harsh and forced." [1]
Karl Gehrkens ascribed the different timbres to different registers. He argued "the typical child’s voice has two divisions, commonly called ‘registers’." The "tone quality of the chest
register" generally was "poor" and the intonation "likely to be faulty." He reminded elementary-school teachers, "we discourage the use of this part of the voice." The higher or head register was preferred. [2]
Language for describing children’s voices was, at best, vague, and, at worst, judgmental. Joanne Rutkowski tried to be more precise when she said the range of a boy’s or girl’s speaking voice was from A below middle C to middle C. When they sang unguardedly, their range was between middle C and upper C. She recommended teachers select songs whose first note was above E to trick children into using their singing voices. [3]
"Kumbaya" was not necessarily the best choice for song books prepared for use in elementary schools because it began on middle C, the border between their speaking and singing voices. Harry Wilson’s arrangement was one of two from the 1960s and 1970s that transposed it into a different key. [4] His version began on E and rose to C above middle C.
Gehrkens thought the problem was dynamics. He believed the transition between the chest and head registers depended on the force used to make a sound. The louder children sang, the more likely they were to use the play or speaking voice. [5] Myers also encouraged softer singing. She wrote should a child "become excited while singing, his singing voice will take on the undesirable qualities of his play voice." [6]
The difference between loud and soft was one of the first musical concepts children understood. Marilyn Pflederer Zimmerman reported four-year-olds could "make accurate judgments concerning relative loudness, and that for first-grade children, this kind of discrimination" was easy. [7]
The problem wasn’t comprehension, but muscle control. Seven-year-olds simply had voices that generally were loud, sometimes reaching a penetrating, piercing pitch [8] while the voices of nine-year-olds were softer. [9]
Wilson’s sixth-grade text was designed to consolidate students’ understanding of the basic aspects of music: melody, harmony, and rhythm. "Kumbaya" had two parts, the primary melody and a descant of "Oh, my Lord," kumba yah" that began with the word "Lord" in the first three lines. It ended with the two groups singing the final line in parallel harmony.
"Kumbaya" was included in the opening section devoted to "Mood in Music." The headnote drew student’s attention to the dynamic markings:
"The mark (pp) tells you to sing very softly. Why has this mark been placed by the upper voice part?"
The main part was labeled "p" for pianissimo, and the entire text was to be sung "prayerfully." The presentation reinforced an unstated assumption that religious music, by definition, should be song reverently.
No more comments followed in the text on dynamics, and most of the songs were either marked mezzo piano or carried no instructions.
The treatment of "Kumbaya" in the 1970 text was unchanged. Some drawings that included only white children were replaced with abstractions, and some songs with such drawings were dropped. The 1966 edition already had pages devoted to music theory; the omitted pieces tended to be replaced by more notes on history.
An article was added on "African Music." It focused on chant, with no cross-reference back to "Kumbaya." Instead, Wilson referred to a recording by "a group of boys and girls of the Nyika tribe of Kenya, and is accompanied by castanets called kayamba." The bottom half of the page was devoted to Carl Orff’s "Carmina Burana" as "a much more sophisticated example of chant." [10]
Wilson also included a two-page spread on "Blues" that mentioned W. C. Handy. Then, it devoted half a page to a blues by Virgil Thompson in The Plow That Broke the Plains. [11] In general, music by composers of the baroque, classical, and romantic periods was replaced by more modern works like this.
I could not locate a copy of the 1963 edition. I don’t know if the fact my notes didn’t include it meant it wasn’t in the book, the edition wasn’t in the collection I was using, or if my notes were incomplete.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: two parts
Instrumental Accompaniment: none in student edition
Rhythm Accompaniment: none in student edition
Credits
African chant
Adapted by Marion A. Roberts
© 1957 by Shawnee Press,
by arrangement with Cooperative Recreation Service
"Kum Ba Yah" means "Come by Here"
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: no comments
Verses: kumbaya, crying
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: two-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 3/4
Tempo: Prayerfully
Key Signature: three flats
Dynamics: main part marked "p," descant marked "pp"
Basic Structure: strophic repetition with descant on last half of each line; two parts ended in parallel harmony
Singing Style: one syllable to one note, except for final "Lord" by main part.
Notes on Performers
Wilson was raised in Kansas were he attended Manhattan State College and taught music in the Eureka public schools. After earning a masters from Teacher’s College, Columbia, he taught in Hastings-on-Hudson schools, while earning his PhD. He spent the rest of his professional career teaching at Columbia. [12]
During World War II, he helped edit a community songster for Hall and McCreary [13] and co-authored a book for them on conducting music in public schools. [14] After the war, he published similar books for Robbins Music, but as the lead author. [15]
Availability
Book: "Kum Ba Yah." 12 in Growing with Music, Book 6. Edited by Harry R. Wilson and four others. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1966. A "boxed set of 12-inch L.P. records" was available with versions of all the songs.
Book: "Kum Ba Yah." 12 in Growing with Music, Book 6. Edited by Harry R. Wilson and same other four. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1970.
End Notes
1. Louise Kifer Myers. Teaching Children Music in the Elementary School. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1956 edition. 30-31.
2. Karl Wilson Gehrkens. Music in the Grade Schools. Boston: C. C. Birchard, 1934. 91.
3. Joanne Rutkowski. "The Nature of Children’s Singing Voices." Texas Music Educators Conference, annual meeting, 2003.
4. The other version that did not begin on C appeared in Harold C. Youngberg and Otto Luening. Making Music Your Own, 6. Morristown, New Jersey: Silver Burdette Company, 1968.
5. Gehrkens. 91.
6. Myers. 31. "He" was used here in the generic sense to refer to all children, not just boys.
7. Marilyn Pflederer Zimmerman. Musical Characteristics of Children. Washington: Music Educators National Conference, 1971. She was using Donald A. Riley and John P. McKee, "Pitch and Loudness Transposition in Children and Adults," Child Development 34:471-482:1963, and H.M. Williams, C.H. Sievers, and M.s. Hattwick, "The Measurement of Musical Development," University of Iowa Studies in Child Welfare, 1932.
8. Arnold Gesell and Frances L. Ilg. The Child from Five to Ten. New York: Harper and Row, 1946. 153.
9. Gesell. 196.
10. Wilson, 1970. 111.
11. Wilson, 1970. 156-157.
12. "Harry Robert Wilson." World Biographical Encyclopedia Prabook website.
13. Fowler Smith, Harry Robert Wilson, and Glenn H Woods. Songs We Sing. Chicago: Hall and McCreary, 1940. This company’s community songsters were mentioned in the post for 24 June 2018.
14. Paul Van Bodegraven and Harry Robert Wilson. The School Music Conductor. Chicago: Hall and McCreary Company, 1942.
15. Harry Robert Wilson and Hugo Frey. Sing along with Harry Wilson. New York: J. J. Robbins and Sons, 1948.
Harry Robert Wilson. Choral Arranging for Schools. New York: Robbins Music Corporation, 1949.
Sunday, July 15, 2018
Wednesday, July 11, 2018
Kylie Sanders - Kumbaya
Topic: Pedagogy - Instrumental Range
Children may begin singing when they are toddlers, but they need to be taught to play musical instruments. It’s true the very young can imitate drums by beating on anything that resonates and can pick out tunes on a piano by trial and error. [1] However, there’s nothing intuitive about playing a trumpet or clarinet. Even the talented need direction: E. T. Mensah remembered a Scotsman taught him the correct way to play saxophone, [2] while Victor Uwaifo had to be shown the standard tuning for a guitar. [3]
Beginning band books devoted their first pages to instructions specific to each instrument on topics like assembling an instrument and posture. Most left it to the music teacher to help students make their initial sounds. Vernon Leidig and Lennie Niehaus were the first [4] to suggest novices begin by working with the mouthpiece alone. After telling trumpet players to
"Place lips together naturally one against the other -- formed the syllable ‘Dim’."
Then, while keeping the "corners of the lips firm and cheeks firmly against the teeth and gums," they were told to "produce a clear steady buzz with lips alone." Next, they were allowed to "set mouthpiece only, on the lips as close to the center as possible" and blow. [5]
Given the difficulty of putting the process into words, others copied their use of the word "buzz" and recommendation to begin with the mouthpiece. [6] Harry Haines and John McEntyre added the suggestion that after buzzing and before using the mouthpiece alone, one "practice pulsing." [7]
The next step was blowing into an instrument. John Kinyon’s team said students will produce one of three notes on a trumpet when no valve was pressed: middle C, G, or upper C. After the band director told them which was natural for them, the book gave instructions on how to adjust to play G. [8]
The selection of G wasn’t made for the comfort of trumpet players. Band instruction manuals began with three notes, either E-F-G, F-G-A, or C-D-E. Since the group had to play in unison, the choice probably was one that fit the largest number of players. Thus, while clarinets and cornets began with simple key signatures, trombones began with D-E flat-F. [9]
Band books came in several volumes, but band directors like the one I had in the 1950s changed to sheet music as quickly as possible. Music publishers, who sold arrangements to public schools, established a rough classification system that indicated which items were appropriate for which students. Works intended for beginning students mainly used quarter and half notes, within a limited range of pitches. [10]
"Kumbaya" was ideal for some of the same reasons it had been useful for vocal-music textbook editors. It was in the public domain, so cost nothing to reprint. As originally published, the melody used only six notes of the scale with no sharps or flats. While it had some eighth notes, most were quarter and half notes. Further, if one played it slowly, the eighth note became a quarter note. The only problem was the opening C-F-G pattern was not as easy for a beginner as a melody that moved one tone at a time.
One young girl who posted a video of herself playing clarinet wrote she was "using c,e,g,a,f,d." She was able to do so without looking at music.
Trumpets differed from clarinets because they only had three keys. As suggested above, the same fingering pattern was used for different notes, and the pitch was achieved by varying the size of the lip opening. For "Kumbaya," the C and G were both open (no keys pressed), and the E and G both used the first and second valves.
Clarinets repeated the fingering by register, so the same fingers were used for both middle C and upper C. Which sound was heard was determined by pressing a small key near the top. The change began with B, and moving from the orchestra A to B was called crossing the break.
Until young students developed the proper facial muscles, they had problems hitting notes on the trumpet, or, if hitting them, sustaining them. Clarinet reeds were less forgiving than brass mouthpieces: when a note wasn’t played properly, the reed squeaked. Lori Baruth said the noise usually was caused by clamping down on the mouthpiece, but also might come from leaving a key partly pressed or a reed in poor condition. [11] The first two were more likely to occur in the upper register.
Sandy Feldstein and Larry Clark began Yamaha’s clarinet version of "Kumbaya" on F so it rose to high D. They had introduced the break earlier, and were using "Kumbaya" as a way to drill clarinet players. The simple opening chord of every phrase, F-A-upper C crossed the break. To emphasize the range, clarinets ended by playing the final kumbaya on the G and F below middle C.
John O’Reilly worked with Feldstein on an earlier Yamaha method book. For Accent of Achievement, he worked with a man who had played clarinet as a child. Their clarinet book started "Kumbaya" on low F while the trumpet book began on F. Half-way through the clarinet part changed and played in unison with the trumpet. The song was included on the page devoted to "crossing the break" because playing lines one and three, which were the same, in two octaves demonstrated the use of the register key. [12]
The two Essential Elements editions used the same F-A-upper C opening chord as Yamaha. Standard of Excellence and Jim Evans used the original middle C-E-G pattern and stayed below the break. [13]
Kylie Sanders posted a video of her version of "Kumbaya" on clarinet. She noted: "So many high notes!! I made it though!!" If the girl were using a book like Yamaha Advantage or Essential Elements, she had a hard time with the upper C, and squeaked the first time she descended from D to C at the end of the first line. She had no problems with the one interval descent from C to B flat to D to G in the second line. When she repeated the first line, she was more relaxed and did not squeak.
Performers
Yamaha Advantage for B-flat clarinet
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: none
Instrumental Group: B-flat clarinet
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Kylie Sanders and unidentified clarinet player
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: none
Instrumental Soloist: B-flat clarinet
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Credits
Yamaha Advantage for B-flat clarinet
African Folk Song
Kylie Sanders and unidentified clarinet player
None given
Notes on Lyrics
There were none
Notes on Music
Yamaha Advantage for B-flat clarinet
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 4/4
Tempo: largo
Key Signature: one flat
Kylie Sanders and unidentified clarinet player
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: slow
Basic Structure: played the melody through one time
Notes on Performance
Unidentified clarinet player
Location: played in her living room
Microphones: none
Clothing: navy blue school sweater
Kylie Sanders
Location: played in her living room
Microphones: none
Clothing: pink sleeveless top
Notes on Movement
Unidentified clarinet player
The young girl stood with her head bent down. One person observed she hadn’t yet mastered how to hold the instrument. [14]
Kylie Sanders
Sanders sat in a flat-bottomed chair, looked straight ahead at the music stand, and kept time with her right foot. She was still young enough that she needed to read the music and take a breath with each note.
Notes on Performers
Feldstein began playing drums when he was in elementary school and, by high school, was studying percussion in New York City. His music degrees were from the State University of New York at Potsdam, where he later taught, and Columbia University. After graduating, he worked as education director for Alfred Publishing. [15] He and John O’Reilly edited the first Yamaha band method book for them in 1988. [16] Feldstein then got involved with digital projects for Warner Brothers, and organized his own company, PlayinTime Productions. [17] In 1999, he was hired as president of Carl Fischer, the publisher of the current Yamaha method book. [18] PlayinTime’s website contained the digital files for Yamaha Advantage.
His co-editor, Larry Clark, was the son of a Florida band directory. He began playing trombone. After earning a music degree from Florida State University, Clark taught band in a Tampa middle school before going to James Madison University. Syracuse University hired him to direct its marching band. Warner Brothers then recruited him, and Feldstein took him to Carl Fischer where he became vice president. Clark continued to arrange music, including currently popular songs for high school band half time programs. In 2015 he did one for Bartow, Florida, High School that "transforms the football field into a pinball machine, and Clark’s musical arrangements include The Who’s ‘Pinball Wizard’ as well as themes from such video games as ‘Mortal Kombat’ and ‘The Legend of Zelda’." [19]
When "Kumbaya" was recorded, Sanders was in sixth grade. The next year she was in the East Jackson Middle School band in Commerce, Georgia, and part of the district honor band. [20]
I could find nothing on the person who uploaded the other video.
Availability
Yamaha Advantage for B-flat clarinet
Book: "Kum Ba Yah." 32 in The Yamaha Advantage. Book 1. Clarinet. Edited by Sandy Feldstein and Larry Clark. New York: Carl Fischer, 2001. Books also were available for flute, oboe, other clarinets, various saxophones, bassoon, trumpet, French horn, baritone horn, trombone, tuba, electric bass, and combined percussion.
Unidentified clarinet player
YouTube: "Kum ba yah clarinet." Uploaded by fa8le1 on 5 February 2013.
Kylie Sanders
YouTube: "Kum bah yah on clarinet!!" Uploaded by Kylie Sanders on 14 May 2017.
End Notes
1. Arnold Gesell and Frances L. Ilg. The Child from Five to Ten. New York: Harper and Row, 1946. 83.
2. For more on E. T. Mensah, see the post for 29 April 2018.
3. For more on Victor Uwaifo, see the post for 6 May 2018.
4. See Notes on Sample in post for 27 June 2018 for details on how I determined the "first" band book to do something.
5. Vernon Leidig and Lennie Niehaus. Visual Band Method. Book 1. Bb Trumpet (Cornet). Norwalk, California: Highland Etling Publishing, 1964. 3. Band books were careful to present the same material on the same page for every instrument.
6. For instance, Art C. Jenson used the same words in Learning Unlimited. Level One. Trumpet/Cornet. Winona, Minnesota: Hal Leonard Corporation, 1973. 5.
7. Harry H. Haines and J. R. McEntyre. Division of Beat. Book 1, Cornet/Trumpet, Baritone TC. San Antonio: Southern Music Company, 1980. 4.
8. John Kinyon, Richard Berg, and George Frederick McKay. The Band-Booster. Book 1. Bb Cornet (Trumpet). New York: Remick Music Corporation, 1960. 5.
9. Ed Sueta. Band Method. Book 1. Trombone. Rockaway, New Jersey: Macie Publishing Company, 1974.
10. The Safe Music website said level 1 was characterized by "very basic rhythms with restricted ranges" ("Band Difficulty Gradings"). The Music44 site said, in level 1 "mainly quarter note values and longer are used, with eighth notes occasionally. Limited number of pitches used" ("What is the Grade Level on a Piece of Music?")
11. Lori Baruth said the squeak was "usually an unintended high partial." "No More Squeaks! How To Successfully Diagnose and Treat Issues on the Clarinet." Kentucky Music Educator’s Association Conference. 2013. She listed other reasons all related to embouchure, breathing, or fingering.
12. "Kum Ba Yah." 30 in Accent on Achievement. Book 1. Bb Clarinet. Edited by John O’Reilly and Mark Williams. Van Nuys, California: Alfred Music, 1997. It came with a CD. Details on this version and Mark Williams appeared in the post for 26 August 2018.
13. Publishing details for band books containing "Kumbaya" were provided in the post for 27 June 2017.
14. Hadley Nichols wrote "that’s not even how to hold it." Comment posted to YouTube, 2017. People generally refrained from making critical comments on YouTube videos by children and young adolescents. The other comment by Emily Kristine was more typical: "Cute!" (Posted to You Tube, 2014)
15. Lauren Vogel Weiss. "Sandy Feldstein." Percussive Arts Society website.
16. Sandy Feldstein and John O’Reilly. Yamaha Band Student. Book 1. Bb Trumpet/Cornet. Van Nuys, California: Alfred Publishing Company, 1988.
17. Weiss.
18. "Sandy Feldstein." PlayinTime Advantage website.
19. Gary White. "Lakeland Resident Is Prolific Composer, Arranger of Music for School Bands." The [Lakeland, Florida] Ledger website, 6 September 2015.
20. "Congratulations to Our 11 EJMs Students Who Made District Honor Band!!!" East Jackson Middle School Eagle Band website.
Children may begin singing when they are toddlers, but they need to be taught to play musical instruments. It’s true the very young can imitate drums by beating on anything that resonates and can pick out tunes on a piano by trial and error. [1] However, there’s nothing intuitive about playing a trumpet or clarinet. Even the talented need direction: E. T. Mensah remembered a Scotsman taught him the correct way to play saxophone, [2] while Victor Uwaifo had to be shown the standard tuning for a guitar. [3]
Beginning band books devoted their first pages to instructions specific to each instrument on topics like assembling an instrument and posture. Most left it to the music teacher to help students make their initial sounds. Vernon Leidig and Lennie Niehaus were the first [4] to suggest novices begin by working with the mouthpiece alone. After telling trumpet players to
"Place lips together naturally one against the other -- formed the syllable ‘Dim’."
Then, while keeping the "corners of the lips firm and cheeks firmly against the teeth and gums," they were told to "produce a clear steady buzz with lips alone." Next, they were allowed to "set mouthpiece only, on the lips as close to the center as possible" and blow. [5]
Given the difficulty of putting the process into words, others copied their use of the word "buzz" and recommendation to begin with the mouthpiece. [6] Harry Haines and John McEntyre added the suggestion that after buzzing and before using the mouthpiece alone, one "practice pulsing." [7]
The next step was blowing into an instrument. John Kinyon’s team said students will produce one of three notes on a trumpet when no valve was pressed: middle C, G, or upper C. After the band director told them which was natural for them, the book gave instructions on how to adjust to play G. [8]
The selection of G wasn’t made for the comfort of trumpet players. Band instruction manuals began with three notes, either E-F-G, F-G-A, or C-D-E. Since the group had to play in unison, the choice probably was one that fit the largest number of players. Thus, while clarinets and cornets began with simple key signatures, trombones began with D-E flat-F. [9]
Band books came in several volumes, but band directors like the one I had in the 1950s changed to sheet music as quickly as possible. Music publishers, who sold arrangements to public schools, established a rough classification system that indicated which items were appropriate for which students. Works intended for beginning students mainly used quarter and half notes, within a limited range of pitches. [10]
"Kumbaya" was ideal for some of the same reasons it had been useful for vocal-music textbook editors. It was in the public domain, so cost nothing to reprint. As originally published, the melody used only six notes of the scale with no sharps or flats. While it had some eighth notes, most were quarter and half notes. Further, if one played it slowly, the eighth note became a quarter note. The only problem was the opening C-F-G pattern was not as easy for a beginner as a melody that moved one tone at a time.
One young girl who posted a video of herself playing clarinet wrote she was "using c,e,g,a,f,d." She was able to do so without looking at music.
Trumpets differed from clarinets because they only had three keys. As suggested above, the same fingering pattern was used for different notes, and the pitch was achieved by varying the size of the lip opening. For "Kumbaya," the C and G were both open (no keys pressed), and the E and G both used the first and second valves.
Clarinets repeated the fingering by register, so the same fingers were used for both middle C and upper C. Which sound was heard was determined by pressing a small key near the top. The change began with B, and moving from the orchestra A to B was called crossing the break.
Until young students developed the proper facial muscles, they had problems hitting notes on the trumpet, or, if hitting them, sustaining them. Clarinet reeds were less forgiving than brass mouthpieces: when a note wasn’t played properly, the reed squeaked. Lori Baruth said the noise usually was caused by clamping down on the mouthpiece, but also might come from leaving a key partly pressed or a reed in poor condition. [11] The first two were more likely to occur in the upper register.
Sandy Feldstein and Larry Clark began Yamaha’s clarinet version of "Kumbaya" on F so it rose to high D. They had introduced the break earlier, and were using "Kumbaya" as a way to drill clarinet players. The simple opening chord of every phrase, F-A-upper C crossed the break. To emphasize the range, clarinets ended by playing the final kumbaya on the G and F below middle C.
John O’Reilly worked with Feldstein on an earlier Yamaha method book. For Accent of Achievement, he worked with a man who had played clarinet as a child. Their clarinet book started "Kumbaya" on low F while the trumpet book began on F. Half-way through the clarinet part changed and played in unison with the trumpet. The song was included on the page devoted to "crossing the break" because playing lines one and three, which were the same, in two octaves demonstrated the use of the register key. [12]
The two Essential Elements editions used the same F-A-upper C opening chord as Yamaha. Standard of Excellence and Jim Evans used the original middle C-E-G pattern and stayed below the break. [13]
Kylie Sanders posted a video of her version of "Kumbaya" on clarinet. She noted: "So many high notes!! I made it though!!" If the girl were using a book like Yamaha Advantage or Essential Elements, she had a hard time with the upper C, and squeaked the first time she descended from D to C at the end of the first line. She had no problems with the one interval descent from C to B flat to D to G in the second line. When she repeated the first line, she was more relaxed and did not squeak.
Performers
Yamaha Advantage for B-flat clarinet
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: none
Instrumental Group: B-flat clarinet
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Kylie Sanders and unidentified clarinet player
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: none
Instrumental Soloist: B-flat clarinet
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Credits
Yamaha Advantage for B-flat clarinet
African Folk Song
Kylie Sanders and unidentified clarinet player
None given
Notes on Lyrics
There were none
Notes on Music
Yamaha Advantage for B-flat clarinet
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 4/4
Tempo: largo
Key Signature: one flat
Kylie Sanders and unidentified clarinet player
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: slow
Basic Structure: played the melody through one time
Notes on Performance
Unidentified clarinet player
Location: played in her living room
Microphones: none
Clothing: navy blue school sweater
Kylie Sanders
Location: played in her living room
Microphones: none
Clothing: pink sleeveless top
Notes on Movement
Unidentified clarinet player
The young girl stood with her head bent down. One person observed she hadn’t yet mastered how to hold the instrument. [14]
Kylie Sanders
Sanders sat in a flat-bottomed chair, looked straight ahead at the music stand, and kept time with her right foot. She was still young enough that she needed to read the music and take a breath with each note.
Notes on Performers
Feldstein began playing drums when he was in elementary school and, by high school, was studying percussion in New York City. His music degrees were from the State University of New York at Potsdam, where he later taught, and Columbia University. After graduating, he worked as education director for Alfred Publishing. [15] He and John O’Reilly edited the first Yamaha band method book for them in 1988. [16] Feldstein then got involved with digital projects for Warner Brothers, and organized his own company, PlayinTime Productions. [17] In 1999, he was hired as president of Carl Fischer, the publisher of the current Yamaha method book. [18] PlayinTime’s website contained the digital files for Yamaha Advantage.
His co-editor, Larry Clark, was the son of a Florida band directory. He began playing trombone. After earning a music degree from Florida State University, Clark taught band in a Tampa middle school before going to James Madison University. Syracuse University hired him to direct its marching band. Warner Brothers then recruited him, and Feldstein took him to Carl Fischer where he became vice president. Clark continued to arrange music, including currently popular songs for high school band half time programs. In 2015 he did one for Bartow, Florida, High School that "transforms the football field into a pinball machine, and Clark’s musical arrangements include The Who’s ‘Pinball Wizard’ as well as themes from such video games as ‘Mortal Kombat’ and ‘The Legend of Zelda’." [19]
When "Kumbaya" was recorded, Sanders was in sixth grade. The next year she was in the East Jackson Middle School band in Commerce, Georgia, and part of the district honor band. [20]
I could find nothing on the person who uploaded the other video.
Availability
Yamaha Advantage for B-flat clarinet
Book: "Kum Ba Yah." 32 in The Yamaha Advantage. Book 1. Clarinet. Edited by Sandy Feldstein and Larry Clark. New York: Carl Fischer, 2001. Books also were available for flute, oboe, other clarinets, various saxophones, bassoon, trumpet, French horn, baritone horn, trombone, tuba, electric bass, and combined percussion.
Unidentified clarinet player
YouTube: "Kum ba yah clarinet." Uploaded by fa8le1 on 5 February 2013.
Kylie Sanders
YouTube: "Kum bah yah on clarinet!!" Uploaded by Kylie Sanders on 14 May 2017.
End Notes
1. Arnold Gesell and Frances L. Ilg. The Child from Five to Ten. New York: Harper and Row, 1946. 83.
2. For more on E. T. Mensah, see the post for 29 April 2018.
3. For more on Victor Uwaifo, see the post for 6 May 2018.
4. See Notes on Sample in post for 27 June 2018 for details on how I determined the "first" band book to do something.
5. Vernon Leidig and Lennie Niehaus. Visual Band Method. Book 1. Bb Trumpet (Cornet). Norwalk, California: Highland Etling Publishing, 1964. 3. Band books were careful to present the same material on the same page for every instrument.
6. For instance, Art C. Jenson used the same words in Learning Unlimited. Level One. Trumpet/Cornet. Winona, Minnesota: Hal Leonard Corporation, 1973. 5.
7. Harry H. Haines and J. R. McEntyre. Division of Beat. Book 1, Cornet/Trumpet, Baritone TC. San Antonio: Southern Music Company, 1980. 4.
8. John Kinyon, Richard Berg, and George Frederick McKay. The Band-Booster. Book 1. Bb Cornet (Trumpet). New York: Remick Music Corporation, 1960. 5.
9. Ed Sueta. Band Method. Book 1. Trombone. Rockaway, New Jersey: Macie Publishing Company, 1974.
10. The Safe Music website said level 1 was characterized by "very basic rhythms with restricted ranges" ("Band Difficulty Gradings"). The Music44 site said, in level 1 "mainly quarter note values and longer are used, with eighth notes occasionally. Limited number of pitches used" ("What is the Grade Level on a Piece of Music?")
11. Lori Baruth said the squeak was "usually an unintended high partial." "No More Squeaks! How To Successfully Diagnose and Treat Issues on the Clarinet." Kentucky Music Educator’s Association Conference. 2013. She listed other reasons all related to embouchure, breathing, or fingering.
12. "Kum Ba Yah." 30 in Accent on Achievement. Book 1. Bb Clarinet. Edited by John O’Reilly and Mark Williams. Van Nuys, California: Alfred Music, 1997. It came with a CD. Details on this version and Mark Williams appeared in the post for 26 August 2018.
13. Publishing details for band books containing "Kumbaya" were provided in the post for 27 June 2017.
14. Hadley Nichols wrote "that’s not even how to hold it." Comment posted to YouTube, 2017. People generally refrained from making critical comments on YouTube videos by children and young adolescents. The other comment by Emily Kristine was more typical: "Cute!" (Posted to You Tube, 2014)
15. Lauren Vogel Weiss. "Sandy Feldstein." Percussive Arts Society website.
16. Sandy Feldstein and John O’Reilly. Yamaha Band Student. Book 1. Bb Trumpet/Cornet. Van Nuys, California: Alfred Publishing Company, 1988.
17. Weiss.
18. "Sandy Feldstein." PlayinTime Advantage website.
19. Gary White. "Lakeland Resident Is Prolific Composer, Arranger of Music for School Bands." The [Lakeland, Florida] Ledger website, 6 September 2015.
20. "Congratulations to Our 11 EJMs Students Who Made District Honor Band!!!" East Jackson Middle School Eagle Band website.
Sunday, July 8, 2018
Charles Leonhard - Kum Ba Yah (1966)
Topic: Pedagogy - Vocal Range
"Kumbaya" began to be included in public school music texts in the middle-1960s when students demanded more relevance from their classes. It was ideal because it was popular enough to give children a sense of participating in their culture, without being as inflammatory as "We Shall Overcome." [1]
The publisher of "Kumbaya" would have granted reprint permission with few conditions, and while the text included the word "Lord" it had no specific religious content. As mentioned in the post for 12 October 2017, that term for the deity was used by Protestants, Catholics, and Jews.
Equally important, the melody fit educators’ observations of children’s abilities. In the 1930s, Karl Gehrkens had told teachers that voices of children in third grade ranged from middle C to high F, and by sixth grade the lowest note was B-flat below middle C. [2] Later, Orpha Duell and Richard Anderson reported children had a difficult time hearing small intervals in music like half steps. [3]
Charles Leonhard’s team was the first to recognize the utility of "Kumbaya" in 1966. Their fourth-grade book’s version began on middle C and rose to the orchestra’s A through a series of seconds (A to E to G), then descended at single step intervals (A to G or G to F to E to D to middle C).
Discovering Music Together was the second incarnation of a text book series that had begun when Irving Wolfe was working with Charles Fullerton to revise the latter’s One Book Course in Elementary Music [4] that had been published by Follett in 1933. [5] Fullerton’s daughter purchased control of the copyright [6] after her father’s death in 1945. She and Wolfe produced Together We Sing in 1950. [7]
Max Krone became involved with the series in 1951, and his wife, Beatrice Krone, was one of the editors of the 1955 [8] and 1963 editions. [9] They ran the Idyllwild School of Music in California. Their version of "Kumbaya" was recorded by the Girl Scouts at the 1965 National Roundup in Idaho’s Farragut State Park. [10]
Leonhard took over the new Follett series that still included Beatrice Krone, Wolfe, and Margaret Fullerton as contributors.
Discovering Music Together was very much in the spirit of the folk music revival associated with Pete Seeger, who often appeared at Idyllwild. [11] Leonhard had studied with Lilla Belle Pitts, who as mentioned in the post for 24 June 2018, advocated the use of folk songs in school texts. It was the early 1950s and collections of American folk songs by Carl Sandburg [12] and the Lomaxes [13] were popular. While he was at Teacher’s College, Columbia, Leonhard taught students "to create accompaniments to folk and popular songs for school use." [14]
The two largest sections of the fourth grade Discovering Music were devoted to "Music from the U. S. A." and "Music around the World." It followed the outlines of Sandburg and the Lomaxes by including chanteys, cowboy songs, and other work songs. These songs followed a page that described the ways rhythms were notated. [15] A headnote introduced the idea that work songs had unique rhythmic patterns. [16]
The international section had a page devoted to the concepts of "Melody and Chords." [17] It noted "many melodies are built on the tones of a chord." This was followed up with the footnote to "Kumbaya" that asked "what chord do the first three tones outline."
Leonhard paired it with "Wo-Ye-Le," a canoe chant from Lake Tanganyika which it said "helps the men work together in even rhythm." [18] The illustration [19] with "Kumbaya" showed five men standing in a long boat with poles to propel it along a river with trees overhanging the banks They were wearing loin clothes.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: class
Instrumental Accompaniment: none in student’s book
Rhythm Accompaniment: none in student’s book
Credits
African spiritual
Cooperative Recreation Service
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: not specified
Verses: kumbaya, singing, praying
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: three-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 3/4
Tempo: slowly
Key Signature: no sharps or flats
Autoharp Chords: C F G7
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: unison, one syllable to one note, except for final "Lord"
Notes on Performers
Leonhard’s father had a hardware store in Anadarko, Oklahoma, which he lost in the agricultural depression that followed World War I. Leonhard spend most of his youth doing chores on their dairy farm and practicing piano. [20] After he graduated from the University of Oklahoma he taught music in Duncan, Oklahoma, [21] while spending his summers earning a master’s degree from Teacher’s College, Columbia. He graduated in 1941, taught a year in two Dallas high schools, [22] then enlisted. [23] After the war, Leonhard returned to Teacher’s College [24] to earn a PhD. He taught a few years there, [25] before going to the University of Illinois where he spent the rest of his career. [26]
Availability
Book: "Kum Ba Yah." 92 in Discovering Music Together, Book 4. Edited by Charles Leonhard, Beatrice Perham Krone, Irving Wolfe, and Margaret Fullerton. Chicago: Follett Publishing company, 1966. There was also a teacher’s edition and a set of recordings, but I couldn’t locate copies of either.
End Notes
1. The only band method book to use "We Shall Overcome" was edited by Art C. Jenson. Learning Unlimited. Level 1. Trumpet/Cornet. Winona, Minnesota: Hal Leonard Corporation, 1973. 35.
2. Karl Wilson Gehrkens. Music in the Grade Schools. Boston: C. C. Birchard, 1934. The subsequent research summarized by Marilyn Pflederer Zimmerman in 1971 focused on how high students could sing; Gehrkens was one of the few to mention the lower limit. (Musical Characteristics of Children. Washington: Music Educators National Conference, 1971.)
3. Orpha K. Duell and Richard C. Anderson. "Pitch Discrimination Among Primary School Children." Journal of Educational Psychology 58:315-318:1967.
4. "Charles A. Fullerton Papers." University of Northern Iowa, Rod Library website.
5. Irma H. Collins. Dictionary of Music Education. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2013. 108.
6. George N. Heller. Charles Leonhard. Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1995. 119.
7. Collins. 282.
8. Irving Wolfe, Beatrice Perham Krone, Max T Krone, and Margaret Fullerton. Together We Sing series. Chicago: Follett Publishing Company, 1955
9. Irving Wolfe, Beatrice Perham Krone, and Margaret Fullerton. Together We Sing series. Chicago: Follett Publishing Company, 1963.
10. Girl Scouts. Senior Round Up, Farragut State Park, Idaho, 1965. "Kum-Ba-Yah." The 7" album was made by Maxwell House Coffee and distributed as a promotion. The entire recording was uploaded to YouTube by grettajetta on 3 November 2015.
11. Larry Eisenberg remembered meeting Seeger at Idyllwild in 1957. Larry Eisenberg. "It’s Me, O Lord." Tulsa: Fun Books, 1992. 63.
12. Carl Sandburg’s The American Songbag, published in 1927 by Harcourt, Brace, was reissued as Carl Sandburg’s new American Songbag in 1950 by Broadcast Music.
13. John Lomax and Alan Lomax released American Ballads and Folk Songs in 1934. Macmillan reprinted it in 1943, and nearly every year after that through 1951, according to WorldCat.
14. Heller. 61. Heller’s source was Eunice Boardman, who was then one of Leonhard’s students. She was mentioned in the post for 24 June 2018.
15. Leonhard, Discovering. 4:38.
16. Leonhard, Discovering. 4:40.
17. Leonhard, Discovering. 4:80.
18. Leonhard, Discovering. 4:93.
19. Carl Martin was listed as the illustrator for the volume. I could find nothing about him on the internet.
20. Heller. 10.
21. Heller. 24.
22. Heller. 44.
23. Heller. 46.
24. Heller. 50.
25. Heller. 60.
26. Heller. 72.
"Kumbaya" began to be included in public school music texts in the middle-1960s when students demanded more relevance from their classes. It was ideal because it was popular enough to give children a sense of participating in their culture, without being as inflammatory as "We Shall Overcome." [1]
The publisher of "Kumbaya" would have granted reprint permission with few conditions, and while the text included the word "Lord" it had no specific religious content. As mentioned in the post for 12 October 2017, that term for the deity was used by Protestants, Catholics, and Jews.
Equally important, the melody fit educators’ observations of children’s abilities. In the 1930s, Karl Gehrkens had told teachers that voices of children in third grade ranged from middle C to high F, and by sixth grade the lowest note was B-flat below middle C. [2] Later, Orpha Duell and Richard Anderson reported children had a difficult time hearing small intervals in music like half steps. [3]
Charles Leonhard’s team was the first to recognize the utility of "Kumbaya" in 1966. Their fourth-grade book’s version began on middle C and rose to the orchestra’s A through a series of seconds (A to E to G), then descended at single step intervals (A to G or G to F to E to D to middle C).
Discovering Music Together was the second incarnation of a text book series that had begun when Irving Wolfe was working with Charles Fullerton to revise the latter’s One Book Course in Elementary Music [4] that had been published by Follett in 1933. [5] Fullerton’s daughter purchased control of the copyright [6] after her father’s death in 1945. She and Wolfe produced Together We Sing in 1950. [7]
Max Krone became involved with the series in 1951, and his wife, Beatrice Krone, was one of the editors of the 1955 [8] and 1963 editions. [9] They ran the Idyllwild School of Music in California. Their version of "Kumbaya" was recorded by the Girl Scouts at the 1965 National Roundup in Idaho’s Farragut State Park. [10]
Leonhard took over the new Follett series that still included Beatrice Krone, Wolfe, and Margaret Fullerton as contributors.
Discovering Music Together was very much in the spirit of the folk music revival associated with Pete Seeger, who often appeared at Idyllwild. [11] Leonhard had studied with Lilla Belle Pitts, who as mentioned in the post for 24 June 2018, advocated the use of folk songs in school texts. It was the early 1950s and collections of American folk songs by Carl Sandburg [12] and the Lomaxes [13] were popular. While he was at Teacher’s College, Columbia, Leonhard taught students "to create accompaniments to folk and popular songs for school use." [14]
The two largest sections of the fourth grade Discovering Music were devoted to "Music from the U. S. A." and "Music around the World." It followed the outlines of Sandburg and the Lomaxes by including chanteys, cowboy songs, and other work songs. These songs followed a page that described the ways rhythms were notated. [15] A headnote introduced the idea that work songs had unique rhythmic patterns. [16]
The international section had a page devoted to the concepts of "Melody and Chords." [17] It noted "many melodies are built on the tones of a chord." This was followed up with the footnote to "Kumbaya" that asked "what chord do the first three tones outline."
Leonhard paired it with "Wo-Ye-Le," a canoe chant from Lake Tanganyika which it said "helps the men work together in even rhythm." [18] The illustration [19] with "Kumbaya" showed five men standing in a long boat with poles to propel it along a river with trees overhanging the banks They were wearing loin clothes.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: class
Instrumental Accompaniment: none in student’s book
Rhythm Accompaniment: none in student’s book
Credits
African spiritual
Cooperative Recreation Service
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: not specified
Verses: kumbaya, singing, praying
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: three-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 3/4
Tempo: slowly
Key Signature: no sharps or flats
Autoharp Chords: C F G7
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: unison, one syllable to one note, except for final "Lord"
Notes on Performers
Leonhard’s father had a hardware store in Anadarko, Oklahoma, which he lost in the agricultural depression that followed World War I. Leonhard spend most of his youth doing chores on their dairy farm and practicing piano. [20] After he graduated from the University of Oklahoma he taught music in Duncan, Oklahoma, [21] while spending his summers earning a master’s degree from Teacher’s College, Columbia. He graduated in 1941, taught a year in two Dallas high schools, [22] then enlisted. [23] After the war, Leonhard returned to Teacher’s College [24] to earn a PhD. He taught a few years there, [25] before going to the University of Illinois where he spent the rest of his career. [26]
Availability
Book: "Kum Ba Yah." 92 in Discovering Music Together, Book 4. Edited by Charles Leonhard, Beatrice Perham Krone, Irving Wolfe, and Margaret Fullerton. Chicago: Follett Publishing company, 1966. There was also a teacher’s edition and a set of recordings, but I couldn’t locate copies of either.
End Notes
1. The only band method book to use "We Shall Overcome" was edited by Art C. Jenson. Learning Unlimited. Level 1. Trumpet/Cornet. Winona, Minnesota: Hal Leonard Corporation, 1973. 35.
2. Karl Wilson Gehrkens. Music in the Grade Schools. Boston: C. C. Birchard, 1934. The subsequent research summarized by Marilyn Pflederer Zimmerman in 1971 focused on how high students could sing; Gehrkens was one of the few to mention the lower limit. (Musical Characteristics of Children. Washington: Music Educators National Conference, 1971.)
3. Orpha K. Duell and Richard C. Anderson. "Pitch Discrimination Among Primary School Children." Journal of Educational Psychology 58:315-318:1967.
4. "Charles A. Fullerton Papers." University of Northern Iowa, Rod Library website.
5. Irma H. Collins. Dictionary of Music Education. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2013. 108.
6. George N. Heller. Charles Leonhard. Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1995. 119.
7. Collins. 282.
8. Irving Wolfe, Beatrice Perham Krone, Max T Krone, and Margaret Fullerton. Together We Sing series. Chicago: Follett Publishing Company, 1955
9. Irving Wolfe, Beatrice Perham Krone, and Margaret Fullerton. Together We Sing series. Chicago: Follett Publishing Company, 1963.
10. Girl Scouts. Senior Round Up, Farragut State Park, Idaho, 1965. "Kum-Ba-Yah." The 7" album was made by Maxwell House Coffee and distributed as a promotion. The entire recording was uploaded to YouTube by grettajetta on 3 November 2015.
11. Larry Eisenberg remembered meeting Seeger at Idyllwild in 1957. Larry Eisenberg. "It’s Me, O Lord." Tulsa: Fun Books, 1992. 63.
12. Carl Sandburg’s The American Songbag, published in 1927 by Harcourt, Brace, was reissued as Carl Sandburg’s new American Songbag in 1950 by Broadcast Music.
13. John Lomax and Alan Lomax released American Ballads and Folk Songs in 1934. Macmillan reprinted it in 1943, and nearly every year after that through 1951, according to WorldCat.
14. Heller. 61. Heller’s source was Eunice Boardman, who was then one of Leonhard’s students. She was mentioned in the post for 24 June 2018.
15. Leonhard, Discovering. 4:38.
16. Leonhard, Discovering. 4:40.
17. Leonhard, Discovering. 4:80.
18. Leonhard, Discovering. 4:93.
19. Carl Martin was listed as the illustrator for the volume. I could find nothing about him on the internet.
20. Heller. 10.
21. Heller. 24.
22. Heller. 44.
23. Heller. 46.
24. Heller. 50.
25. Heller. 60.
26. Heller. 72.
Wednesday, July 4, 2018
Hornsby Middle School - Kumbaya
Topic: Pedagogy - Duration
The use of the piano as the regulator of vocal and instrumental music could disguise problems. Louise Kifer Myers noted poor singers "can sing along a fraction of a second behind the leaders and will seemingly be doing well," but they never actually become any better at singing on key [1] and they never learn to read music.
Secondary school teachers were the ones left to address those weaknesses. Karin Pendley Koser remembered her high school choir director in Decatur, Georgia, was the one who "taught us to sight-read, how to breathe, how to enunciate." [2]
Musical notation for vocal music only became necessary when the Medieval Roman Catholic church wanted all its congregations to use the same tunes for the same purposes. Modern reproduction methods emerged after the invention of the printing press and the development of complex instrumental music. Indeed, the technology used to teach orchestra members their parts evolved with the genre, according to Deborah Saidel. [3]
As mentioned in the post for 27 June 2018, the first pages of all modern band method-books began with illustrations of the staff, appropriate clef, and names of notes. They devoted a few exercises to matching sounds from the instruments to the notes, then introduced the idea of duration with whole notes. They mentioned 4/4 time and had students count out a tune before they played it.
There was nothing intuitive about the symbols used to denote relative duration. The melody was marked by dots that rose or fall on a series of horizontal lines. Even if one couldn’t connect the symbols to specific tones, one could visualize a tune’s arc.
Tonal duration was denoted by variations to those dots. Outlined circles were held longer than ones filled in. Perpendicular lines, with or without flags, and small dots were added to further differentiate time lengths.
As soon as possible, instruction manuals had students play together in unison so they absorbed the idea they all had to have the same sense of how long to hold a note. The tendency when they were starting was to hold them for the pleasure in the sound.
Shorter durations were then introduced: some editors used the half-note, and others the quarter-note. [4] At that point instrumental groups were able to play their first song: "Hot Cross Buns" or "Cardiff by the Sea." [5]
When young musicians moved beyond the two basic durations, short and long, they had to learn to interpret temporal symbols as they played. Isiah Boone used "Kumbaya" to drill Augusta, Georgia, middle school students in sight reading a melody that included eighth notes and whole notes. He began by saying "one two one two ready play." At the beginning of each line he repeated "one two play."
Music teachers were essentially conservative. They often used methods they remembered from childhood that had worked for them. Merry Texter noted Boone’s method of counting was introduced in an 1887 band book published in Missouri. William Sewell, who taught bands while in was a college student, [6] recommended:
"It is well . . . to count a measure in the time it is desired the piece should be played. . . . Always say ‘play’ instead of the last count, thus in 4-4 time count, ‘1, 2, 3, play;’ in 2-4 time, ‘1, play;’ in 3-4 time, ‘1, 2, play,’ etc." [7]
At time the video was made most commercial band books came with CDs. However, in 2012, Brandon McDonald found many band-method book editors and publishers lacked the imagination or experience to integrate digital versions into their texts. [8]
If Amazon was any indicator, individuals returning to their instruments were more savvy, perhaps because they understood the discipline that comes from playing with others. J. Pierson recommended "learning the tunes by reading but as soon as possible, close the book and repeatedly play along with the CD from memory. This will develop feel and rhythm." [9]
Another customer, who had used Essential Elements when he was in middle school, said "This is still a solid book to progress from and the online mp3 accompaniment definitely helps you play along with a band." [10]
Of course, band directors know many of their students don’t practice, and all the digital tools in the world won’t motivate them. Like Boone, they have to work with them during class. Another member of that Decatur, Georgia, high school choir remembered that for auditions
"Mr. Short wouldn’t let me pick anything I already knew. Had to pick something I didn’t know, go in the practice room for 10 minutes, then come out and sing it. It was his way of making sure we had learned to READ MUSIC." [11]
"Kumbaya" wasn’t as simple as it seemed because each line began with two quarter notes, followed by a dotted-quarter, eighth, and half notes. The four girls shown in the video had mastered creating tones: only one person squeaked one time in the last line. Remarkably, they were able to handle the multi-note phrasing of the final "Lord." However, while they started each line together, they had a hard time staying together during the initial short-shorter-long phrase that tested their understanding of duration.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: none
Instrumental Group: four girls playing clarinets
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Conductor: Isiah Boone
Credits
"old negroe spiritual"
Notes on Lyrics
There were none
Pronunciation: Boone introduced it as kum BY yah
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: the melody was played twice through without breaks or intended variations
Notes on Performance
Occasion: section class
Location: school room with painted brick walls
Microphones: none
Clothing: school clothes
Notes on Movement
The girls were seated on flat-bottomed chairs with one music stand.
Notes on Performers
W. S. Hornsby Middle School had a little over 300 students in grades six to eight in 2017. The student body was 96% Black. [12] The Hornsby neighborhood had been developed on the flood plain of the Savannah river by a local African-American entrepreneur. [13]
Boone graduated with a degree in music from Georgia Southwestern State University in 2009 where his primary instrument was drums. While he was taking classes, he also was teaching percussion in local high schools. He began working at Hornsby in July 2016. [14]
Columbia High School in Decatur, Georgia, was discussed in a post for 12 August 2018.
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Rudimental Reality on 2 October 2017.
End Notes
1. Louise Kifer Myers. Teaching Children Music in the Elementary School. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1956 edition. 63.
2. Karin Pendley Koser. "Madison ‘Reb’ Short Was My Choral Director." Facebook group. Comment posted 23 February 2013.
3. Deborah J. Saidel. "Musical Notation, Music Performance and Technology: A Long Term Synergistic Relationship." Class paper. Virginia Commonwealth University, 8 December 2014. 8. Its Ram Pages website.
4. Of the four commercial books containing "Kumbaya," two used the half note (Standard, Tradition), and two the quarter note (Accent, Elements, Elements 2000). See post for 27 June 2017 for publishing details.
5. Standard used "Cardiff" for its first melody. The others used "Hot Cross Buns."
6. Obituary for W. J. Sewall. Moberly [Missouri] Monitor-Index, 18 February 1957. 5. Also, TJYahoo. "William Jesse Sewall." Find a Grave, 28 May 2008. Updated by NJBrewer. Sewall was a foreman in a Carthage, Missouri, print shop when his book was published, and later bought the newspaper. He played brass instruments in the city’s Light Guard Band.
7. W. J. Sewall. The Band Man’s Handbook. Carthage, Missouri: Press Book and Job Printing House, 1887. 21. Quoted by Merry Elizabeth Texter. "A Historical and Analytical Investigation of the Beginning Band Method Book." PhD dissertation. The Ohio State University, 1975. 59-60. She noted: "Sewall’s directions for giving the signal to play is not only interesting, it describes a technique that is still common today."
J. R. McEntyre and Harry Haines said the modern method of counting "one and" was introduced in the Haskell Hart Drum Method. (Rhythm Master. Book 1. Eb Alto/Baritone Saxophone. San Antonio: Southern Music Company, 1992. 32.)
Haskett W. Harr wrote: "The use of the voice allows even greater division of notes than the foot. In a measure of 4/4 time count 1-2-3-4, one beat for each quarter note. To divide the quarter note into eighth notes and count them, add the word "and" after each number, thus: 1 and (&) 2 & 3 & 4 &. The quarter notes may be divided into sixteenth notes and easily counted by the added the letter "E" after the 1, and the syllable "Ah" after the AND, thus: 1 e & ah 2 e & uh 3 e & uh 4 e & ah." (Drum Method. Book 1. Chicago: Cole Publishing Company, 1937. 12.)
Lawrence Welk famously simplified this to "and uh 1 and uh 2."
8. Brandon K. McDannald. "A Comparative Summary of Content and Integration of Technological Resources in Six Beginning Band Methods." MA thesis. University of Central Missouri, May 2012.
9. J. Pierson. Comment posted to Amazon website for Essential Elements 2001, Book 1, B Flat Trumpet on 5 August 2017.
10. Amazon Customer. Comment posted to Amazon website for Essential Elements 2001, Book 1, B Flat Trumpet on 21 November 2016.
11. Trina Landrum Miller. Short Facebook group. Undated comment. Short published a set of method books to teach his high school vocal music students to sight read. Madison D. Short. The Right to Sight-Sing Music. Stone Mountain, Georgia: Madison Music Publications, 1978. Four volumes.
12. Georgia. Governor’s Office of Student Achievement. Georgia Schools Grades Reports. "W.S. Hornsby Middle School." State website.
13. Walter Spurgeon Hornsby founded the Pilgrim Health and Life Insurance Company in 1898 [15] and opened his real estate company in 1926. [16] The subdivision was built sometime before he died in 1956. [17]
14. "Isiah Boone." LinkedIn
15. "Walter Spurgeon Hornsby" 124-126 in History of the American Negro and His Institutions. Edited by Arthur Bunyan Caldwell. Atlanta: A. B. Caldwell Publishing Company, 1917. 126.
16. "Hattie B. Hornsby." Who’s Who in Commerce and Industry 14:625:1965.
17. W. S. Hornsby Middle School. "2017-2018 School Profile and Special Programs." School website.
The use of the piano as the regulator of vocal and instrumental music could disguise problems. Louise Kifer Myers noted poor singers "can sing along a fraction of a second behind the leaders and will seemingly be doing well," but they never actually become any better at singing on key [1] and they never learn to read music.
Secondary school teachers were the ones left to address those weaknesses. Karin Pendley Koser remembered her high school choir director in Decatur, Georgia, was the one who "taught us to sight-read, how to breathe, how to enunciate." [2]
Musical notation for vocal music only became necessary when the Medieval Roman Catholic church wanted all its congregations to use the same tunes for the same purposes. Modern reproduction methods emerged after the invention of the printing press and the development of complex instrumental music. Indeed, the technology used to teach orchestra members their parts evolved with the genre, according to Deborah Saidel. [3]
As mentioned in the post for 27 June 2018, the first pages of all modern band method-books began with illustrations of the staff, appropriate clef, and names of notes. They devoted a few exercises to matching sounds from the instruments to the notes, then introduced the idea of duration with whole notes. They mentioned 4/4 time and had students count out a tune before they played it.
There was nothing intuitive about the symbols used to denote relative duration. The melody was marked by dots that rose or fall on a series of horizontal lines. Even if one couldn’t connect the symbols to specific tones, one could visualize a tune’s arc.
Tonal duration was denoted by variations to those dots. Outlined circles were held longer than ones filled in. Perpendicular lines, with or without flags, and small dots were added to further differentiate time lengths.
As soon as possible, instruction manuals had students play together in unison so they absorbed the idea they all had to have the same sense of how long to hold a note. The tendency when they were starting was to hold them for the pleasure in the sound.
Shorter durations were then introduced: some editors used the half-note, and others the quarter-note. [4] At that point instrumental groups were able to play their first song: "Hot Cross Buns" or "Cardiff by the Sea." [5]
When young musicians moved beyond the two basic durations, short and long, they had to learn to interpret temporal symbols as they played. Isiah Boone used "Kumbaya" to drill Augusta, Georgia, middle school students in sight reading a melody that included eighth notes and whole notes. He began by saying "one two one two ready play." At the beginning of each line he repeated "one two play."
Music teachers were essentially conservative. They often used methods they remembered from childhood that had worked for them. Merry Texter noted Boone’s method of counting was introduced in an 1887 band book published in Missouri. William Sewell, who taught bands while in was a college student, [6] recommended:
"It is well . . . to count a measure in the time it is desired the piece should be played. . . . Always say ‘play’ instead of the last count, thus in 4-4 time count, ‘1, 2, 3, play;’ in 2-4 time, ‘1, play;’ in 3-4 time, ‘1, 2, play,’ etc." [7]
At time the video was made most commercial band books came with CDs. However, in 2012, Brandon McDonald found many band-method book editors and publishers lacked the imagination or experience to integrate digital versions into their texts. [8]
If Amazon was any indicator, individuals returning to their instruments were more savvy, perhaps because they understood the discipline that comes from playing with others. J. Pierson recommended "learning the tunes by reading but as soon as possible, close the book and repeatedly play along with the CD from memory. This will develop feel and rhythm." [9]
Another customer, who had used Essential Elements when he was in middle school, said "This is still a solid book to progress from and the online mp3 accompaniment definitely helps you play along with a band." [10]
Of course, band directors know many of their students don’t practice, and all the digital tools in the world won’t motivate them. Like Boone, they have to work with them during class. Another member of that Decatur, Georgia, high school choir remembered that for auditions
"Mr. Short wouldn’t let me pick anything I already knew. Had to pick something I didn’t know, go in the practice room for 10 minutes, then come out and sing it. It was his way of making sure we had learned to READ MUSIC." [11]
"Kumbaya" wasn’t as simple as it seemed because each line began with two quarter notes, followed by a dotted-quarter, eighth, and half notes. The four girls shown in the video had mastered creating tones: only one person squeaked one time in the last line. Remarkably, they were able to handle the multi-note phrasing of the final "Lord." However, while they started each line together, they had a hard time staying together during the initial short-shorter-long phrase that tested their understanding of duration.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: none
Instrumental Group: four girls playing clarinets
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Conductor: Isiah Boone
Credits
"old negroe spiritual"
Notes on Lyrics
There were none
Pronunciation: Boone introduced it as kum BY yah
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: the melody was played twice through without breaks or intended variations
Notes on Performance
Occasion: section class
Location: school room with painted brick walls
Microphones: none
Clothing: school clothes
Notes on Movement
The girls were seated on flat-bottomed chairs with one music stand.
Notes on Performers
W. S. Hornsby Middle School had a little over 300 students in grades six to eight in 2017. The student body was 96% Black. [12] The Hornsby neighborhood had been developed on the flood plain of the Savannah river by a local African-American entrepreneur. [13]
Boone graduated with a degree in music from Georgia Southwestern State University in 2009 where his primary instrument was drums. While he was taking classes, he also was teaching percussion in local high schools. He began working at Hornsby in July 2016. [14]
Columbia High School in Decatur, Georgia, was discussed in a post for 12 August 2018.
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Rudimental Reality on 2 October 2017.
End Notes
1. Louise Kifer Myers. Teaching Children Music in the Elementary School. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1956 edition. 63.
2. Karin Pendley Koser. "Madison ‘Reb’ Short Was My Choral Director." Facebook group. Comment posted 23 February 2013.
3. Deborah J. Saidel. "Musical Notation, Music Performance and Technology: A Long Term Synergistic Relationship." Class paper. Virginia Commonwealth University, 8 December 2014. 8. Its Ram Pages website.
4. Of the four commercial books containing "Kumbaya," two used the half note (Standard, Tradition), and two the quarter note (Accent, Elements, Elements 2000). See post for 27 June 2017 for publishing details.
5. Standard used "Cardiff" for its first melody. The others used "Hot Cross Buns."
6. Obituary for W. J. Sewall. Moberly [Missouri] Monitor-Index, 18 February 1957. 5. Also, TJYahoo. "William Jesse Sewall." Find a Grave, 28 May 2008. Updated by NJBrewer. Sewall was a foreman in a Carthage, Missouri, print shop when his book was published, and later bought the newspaper. He played brass instruments in the city’s Light Guard Band.
7. W. J. Sewall. The Band Man’s Handbook. Carthage, Missouri: Press Book and Job Printing House, 1887. 21. Quoted by Merry Elizabeth Texter. "A Historical and Analytical Investigation of the Beginning Band Method Book." PhD dissertation. The Ohio State University, 1975. 59-60. She noted: "Sewall’s directions for giving the signal to play is not only interesting, it describes a technique that is still common today."
J. R. McEntyre and Harry Haines said the modern method of counting "one and" was introduced in the Haskell Hart Drum Method. (Rhythm Master. Book 1. Eb Alto/Baritone Saxophone. San Antonio: Southern Music Company, 1992. 32.)
Haskett W. Harr wrote: "The use of the voice allows even greater division of notes than the foot. In a measure of 4/4 time count 1-2-3-4, one beat for each quarter note. To divide the quarter note into eighth notes and count them, add the word "and" after each number, thus: 1 and (&) 2 & 3 & 4 &. The quarter notes may be divided into sixteenth notes and easily counted by the added the letter "E" after the 1, and the syllable "Ah" after the AND, thus: 1 e & ah 2 e & uh 3 e & uh 4 e & ah." (Drum Method. Book 1. Chicago: Cole Publishing Company, 1937. 12.)
Lawrence Welk famously simplified this to "and uh 1 and uh 2."
8. Brandon K. McDannald. "A Comparative Summary of Content and Integration of Technological Resources in Six Beginning Band Methods." MA thesis. University of Central Missouri, May 2012.
9. J. Pierson. Comment posted to Amazon website for Essential Elements 2001, Book 1, B Flat Trumpet on 5 August 2017.
10. Amazon Customer. Comment posted to Amazon website for Essential Elements 2001, Book 1, B Flat Trumpet on 21 November 2016.
11. Trina Landrum Miller. Short Facebook group. Undated comment. Short published a set of method books to teach his high school vocal music students to sight read. Madison D. Short. The Right to Sight-Sing Music. Stone Mountain, Georgia: Madison Music Publications, 1978. Four volumes.
12. Georgia. Governor’s Office of Student Achievement. Georgia Schools Grades Reports. "W.S. Hornsby Middle School." State website.
13. Walter Spurgeon Hornsby founded the Pilgrim Health and Life Insurance Company in 1898 [15] and opened his real estate company in 1926. [16] The subdivision was built sometime before he died in 1956. [17]
14. "Isiah Boone." LinkedIn
15. "Walter Spurgeon Hornsby" 124-126 in History of the American Negro and His Institutions. Edited by Arthur Bunyan Caldwell. Atlanta: A. B. Caldwell Publishing Company, 1917. 126.
16. "Hattie B. Hornsby." Who’s Who in Commerce and Industry 14:625:1965.
17. W. S. Hornsby Middle School. "2017-2018 School Profile and Special Programs." School website.
Sunday, July 1, 2018
Hilltop Christian School Band - Kum Ba Ya
Topic: Pedagogy - Duration
Cultural groups as diverse as the Welsh, many Africans, and some Slavs created and maintained complex group singing traditions. Such musicality was rejected by English and Scots followers of Jean Calvin. While Shakespeare used patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables, they defined their songs by the number of syllables in a line: long meter had four lines of eight syllables (8-8-8-8), short meter had four six-syllable lines (6-6-6-6) and common meter alternated the two line lengths, (8-6-8-6). Text were associated with tunes with the same metric counts.
John Wesley reintroduced harmony after he observed the effects of singstunden [1] in the Moravian religious colony he visited in Saxony. [2] His preface to a 1761 hymn collection tried to reconcile his innovations with earlier styles of psalm singing. Wesley enjoined members to "sing lustily and with good courage" like Puritans, but also to "strive to unite your voices together, so as to make one clear melodious sound." [3]
Once the tradition of group singing was lost, it was difficult to reestablish. The bar line became the device singing teachers used to organize groups who counted beats in a measure rather than syllables in a line. Lowell Mason’s hymn collection from 1848 was transitional: it used bars and single numbers at the beginning to indicate the number of beats in a measure: 2, 3, 4. [4]
He had tried to introduce the contemporary European time-signature format of 4/4 in his 1841 collection, [5] but was met with resistence. A member of the Church of the Brethren complained, "these multiplied varieties" of rhythm or meter found in some books "are not only unnecessary and useless, they are positively injurious, and only tend to involve the subject in difficulties." [6] Jesse Bowman Aikin argued there were only three types of "measures—equal, unequal, or compound." [7]
"To keep time, we must beat time, and when one mode of each measure only is used, correctness in keeping time is soon attained. The habit is soon formed of appropriating one beat to each half-note, or its equivalent, whether in equal or unequal measure." [8]
While Mason and Bowman were discussing meter, that was only a means to address the underlying problem that adults had to be taught to follow a leader and start, continue, and end a phrase together. The closer one was to the Calvinist belief in personal grace, the more difficult it was for a music director to overcome habits of individual action.
Without any formal education, children acquired their culture’s basic vocal skills. Arnold Gesell’s team found many kindergarten-aged children in the late 1930s had learned to sing along with phonograph records. [9] At that point, before they could read, Karl Gehrkens suggested teachers could exploit their listening skills by singing "in a light voice, absolutely true to pitch" and having their students sing with them. [10]
The burden placed on teachers to maintain perfect pitch every time they sang was eased when pianos became available in schools after World War II. [11] After that children could be taught to match their voices to it while they sang with the teacher and class. By the 1960s, Frank Churchley remembered Canadian school music-books provided collections of age-appropriate songs [12] for a teacher who "pounds out the notes, and mindlessly gets the kids to just follow." [13]
The skill of singing with the piano became fundamental to all further music training. Along with providing standardized sounds, the accompaniments marked rhythms. Many were no more than melodies and chords at the beginnings of phrases or measures. Implicitly, they taught singers to follow its lead to stay together.
Joseph Maddy transferred singing skills to instrumental music in 1923. He suggested students:
"Learn each tune by singing it with the Do, Re, Mi syllables, using a perfectly smooth, soft, steady tone in rather slow time. Then play it in the same way with a steady breath, making the instrument sound as nearly like your singing as possible." [14]
Harold Rusch, who came of age in the 1930s, [15] revived the method in his instrumental method book for elementary schools in 1961. He began with children’s songs like "Three Blind Mice" and "Mary Had a Little Lamb," which he printed with notes, fingerings, and words. [16]
David Wright employed several of these techniques with students in a small Antioch, California, elementary school to encourage them to transfer habits formed in church to instrumental ensembles. He chose a familiar song, "Kumbaya," for a public performance. Then, because Hilltop Christian included vocal music in its program, he could assume his students already had sung in groups. He realized his students were so occupied with mastering their instruments and reading the music, they hadn’t yet had time to learn how to follow his lead. Thus, he had a pianist maintain the tempo by playing chords, much like she would have done for a religious service.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: none
Instrumental Soloists: none
Instrumental Groups: three clarinets, two flutes, three saxophones
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Conductor: David Wright
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
There were none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: slow
Basic Structure: played melody through twice
Instrumental Style: unison
Notes on Performance
Occasion: sacred concert
Location: stage, perhaps in a chapel
Microphones: one floor mike at the front of the stage in the center
Clothing: black slacks and black or white tops
Notes on Movement
The eight musicians sat in a semi-circle on cushioned straight-backed chairs. Wright stood a little to the side and used a baton in his right hand. Four people sat behind them who might have played other instruments or had other parts in the concert.
Notes on Performers
Wright had a bachelor’s degree in music from Mount Saint Mary’s College in Los Angeles and a masters in music from California State University, East Bay. He taught during the day in the Mount Diablo schools, and participated in Hilltop’s after-school program. His instrument was the flute. [17]
Hilltop Christian was a small school with eight to twelve students in a grade. The surrounding community of Antioch, California, had become a bedroom community for Oakland and San Francisco. The Seventh Day Adventist student body was less than 25% white [18] and the band director was an African American. While the eight young musicians could have constituted an entire grade, they were not typical of the school. Four looked white and four did not. This was essentially a wind ensemble, and all the clarinet and flute players were girls. The saxophone players were boys.
Availability
YouTube: "Kum Ba Ya." Uploaded by cornell7ant on 10 March 2013.
End Notes
1. Singstunde were singing sessions where the song leader used verses from multiple hymns that were related to the day’s sermon or theme. They could last hours, and usually were held as part of the evening services at the Moravian colony at Herrnhut, Saxony. (C. Daniel Drews. "Moravian Worship: The Why of Moravian Music." 29-43 in The Music of the Moravian Church in America. Edited by Nola Reed Knouse. Rochester: University Rochester Press, 2008. 34.)
2. Bertrand Harris Bronson. "Some Aspects of Music and Literature." 91-118 in Bronson. Facets of the Enlightenment. Berkeley: University of California Press 1968. On Wesley, 12.
3. John Wesley. "Directions for Singing." Select Hymns: with Tunes Annext. London: 1761. Reprinted in Martin V. Clarke. "John Wesley’s ‘Directions for Singing’: Methodist Hymnody as an Expression of Methodist Beliefs in Thought and Practice." Methodist History 47:196-209:2009. 196. Emphasis in original.
4. Lowell Mason and George James Webb. The Psaltery. Boston: Wilkins, Carter, and Company, 1848 edition.
5. Lowell Mason. Carmina Sacra. Boston: J. H. Wilkins and R. B. Carter, 1841.
6. J. B. Aikin. The Christian Minstrel. Philadelphia: T. K. Collins, Jr., 1853 edition. 5.
7. Aikin. 4. Equal was variation of Xx where formula was division by halves. Unequal was Xxx where division by thirds. Compound was multiples of 3/4 like 6/8.
8. Aikin. 5. Aiken was a pioneer in the development of shaped-note song books.
9. Arnold Gesell and Frances L. Ilg. The Child from Five to Ten. New York: Harper and Row, 1946. 83. They said children preferred records to radio because they could replay them. Later, video channels and CDs would provide the same control.
10. Karl Wilson Gehrkens. Music in the Grade Schools. Boston, C. C. Birchard and Company, 1934. 33.
11. Some schools always had pianos, but the depression made them a luxury item and war shortages made them scarce.
12. Frank E. Churchley. Interviewed by Betty Hanley. "Frank E. Churchley: Gentleman, Scholar, Teacher." March 2005. 42. For more on Churchley, see the post for 25 July 2018.
13. Churchley. 36.
14. Joseph E. Maddy and Thaddeus P. Giddings. Universal Teacher. Cornet or Trumpet. Elkhart, Indiana: C. G. Conn, Ltd., 1923. 1. For more on Joseph Maddy, see the post for 27 June 2018.
15. Rusch was born in 1908 and studied at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Lawrence University. (Dutch Wikipedia. "Harold W. Rusch.") Rusch was mentioned in the post for 27 June 2018.
16. Harold W. Rusch. Hal Leonard Elementary Band Method. Bb Cornet or Trumpet. Winona, Minnesota: Hal Leonard Music, Inc., 1961.
17. "David Wright." Hilltop Christian School website.
18. "Hilltop Christian School." Niche website.
Cultural groups as diverse as the Welsh, many Africans, and some Slavs created and maintained complex group singing traditions. Such musicality was rejected by English and Scots followers of Jean Calvin. While Shakespeare used patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables, they defined their songs by the number of syllables in a line: long meter had four lines of eight syllables (8-8-8-8), short meter had four six-syllable lines (6-6-6-6) and common meter alternated the two line lengths, (8-6-8-6). Text were associated with tunes with the same metric counts.
John Wesley reintroduced harmony after he observed the effects of singstunden [1] in the Moravian religious colony he visited in Saxony. [2] His preface to a 1761 hymn collection tried to reconcile his innovations with earlier styles of psalm singing. Wesley enjoined members to "sing lustily and with good courage" like Puritans, but also to "strive to unite your voices together, so as to make one clear melodious sound." [3]
Once the tradition of group singing was lost, it was difficult to reestablish. The bar line became the device singing teachers used to organize groups who counted beats in a measure rather than syllables in a line. Lowell Mason’s hymn collection from 1848 was transitional: it used bars and single numbers at the beginning to indicate the number of beats in a measure: 2, 3, 4. [4]
He had tried to introduce the contemporary European time-signature format of 4/4 in his 1841 collection, [5] but was met with resistence. A member of the Church of the Brethren complained, "these multiplied varieties" of rhythm or meter found in some books "are not only unnecessary and useless, they are positively injurious, and only tend to involve the subject in difficulties." [6] Jesse Bowman Aikin argued there were only three types of "measures—equal, unequal, or compound." [7]
"To keep time, we must beat time, and when one mode of each measure only is used, correctness in keeping time is soon attained. The habit is soon formed of appropriating one beat to each half-note, or its equivalent, whether in equal or unequal measure." [8]
While Mason and Bowman were discussing meter, that was only a means to address the underlying problem that adults had to be taught to follow a leader and start, continue, and end a phrase together. The closer one was to the Calvinist belief in personal grace, the more difficult it was for a music director to overcome habits of individual action.
Without any formal education, children acquired their culture’s basic vocal skills. Arnold Gesell’s team found many kindergarten-aged children in the late 1930s had learned to sing along with phonograph records. [9] At that point, before they could read, Karl Gehrkens suggested teachers could exploit their listening skills by singing "in a light voice, absolutely true to pitch" and having their students sing with them. [10]
The burden placed on teachers to maintain perfect pitch every time they sang was eased when pianos became available in schools after World War II. [11] After that children could be taught to match their voices to it while they sang with the teacher and class. By the 1960s, Frank Churchley remembered Canadian school music-books provided collections of age-appropriate songs [12] for a teacher who "pounds out the notes, and mindlessly gets the kids to just follow." [13]
The skill of singing with the piano became fundamental to all further music training. Along with providing standardized sounds, the accompaniments marked rhythms. Many were no more than melodies and chords at the beginnings of phrases or measures. Implicitly, they taught singers to follow its lead to stay together.
Joseph Maddy transferred singing skills to instrumental music in 1923. He suggested students:
"Learn each tune by singing it with the Do, Re, Mi syllables, using a perfectly smooth, soft, steady tone in rather slow time. Then play it in the same way with a steady breath, making the instrument sound as nearly like your singing as possible." [14]
Harold Rusch, who came of age in the 1930s, [15] revived the method in his instrumental method book for elementary schools in 1961. He began with children’s songs like "Three Blind Mice" and "Mary Had a Little Lamb," which he printed with notes, fingerings, and words. [16]
David Wright employed several of these techniques with students in a small Antioch, California, elementary school to encourage them to transfer habits formed in church to instrumental ensembles. He chose a familiar song, "Kumbaya," for a public performance. Then, because Hilltop Christian included vocal music in its program, he could assume his students already had sung in groups. He realized his students were so occupied with mastering their instruments and reading the music, they hadn’t yet had time to learn how to follow his lead. Thus, he had a pianist maintain the tempo by playing chords, much like she would have done for a religious service.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: none
Instrumental Soloists: none
Instrumental Groups: three clarinets, two flutes, three saxophones
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Conductor: David Wright
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
There were none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: slow
Basic Structure: played melody through twice
Instrumental Style: unison
Notes on Performance
Occasion: sacred concert
Location: stage, perhaps in a chapel
Microphones: one floor mike at the front of the stage in the center
Clothing: black slacks and black or white tops
Notes on Movement
The eight musicians sat in a semi-circle on cushioned straight-backed chairs. Wright stood a little to the side and used a baton in his right hand. Four people sat behind them who might have played other instruments or had other parts in the concert.
Notes on Performers
Wright had a bachelor’s degree in music from Mount Saint Mary’s College in Los Angeles and a masters in music from California State University, East Bay. He taught during the day in the Mount Diablo schools, and participated in Hilltop’s after-school program. His instrument was the flute. [17]
Hilltop Christian was a small school with eight to twelve students in a grade. The surrounding community of Antioch, California, had become a bedroom community for Oakland and San Francisco. The Seventh Day Adventist student body was less than 25% white [18] and the band director was an African American. While the eight young musicians could have constituted an entire grade, they were not typical of the school. Four looked white and four did not. This was essentially a wind ensemble, and all the clarinet and flute players were girls. The saxophone players were boys.
Availability
YouTube: "Kum Ba Ya." Uploaded by cornell7ant on 10 March 2013.
End Notes
1. Singstunde were singing sessions where the song leader used verses from multiple hymns that were related to the day’s sermon or theme. They could last hours, and usually were held as part of the evening services at the Moravian colony at Herrnhut, Saxony. (C. Daniel Drews. "Moravian Worship: The Why of Moravian Music." 29-43 in The Music of the Moravian Church in America. Edited by Nola Reed Knouse. Rochester: University Rochester Press, 2008. 34.)
2. Bertrand Harris Bronson. "Some Aspects of Music and Literature." 91-118 in Bronson. Facets of the Enlightenment. Berkeley: University of California Press 1968. On Wesley, 12.
3. John Wesley. "Directions for Singing." Select Hymns: with Tunes Annext. London: 1761. Reprinted in Martin V. Clarke. "John Wesley’s ‘Directions for Singing’: Methodist Hymnody as an Expression of Methodist Beliefs in Thought and Practice." Methodist History 47:196-209:2009. 196. Emphasis in original.
4. Lowell Mason and George James Webb. The Psaltery. Boston: Wilkins, Carter, and Company, 1848 edition.
5. Lowell Mason. Carmina Sacra. Boston: J. H. Wilkins and R. B. Carter, 1841.
6. J. B. Aikin. The Christian Minstrel. Philadelphia: T. K. Collins, Jr., 1853 edition. 5.
7. Aikin. 4. Equal was variation of Xx where formula was division by halves. Unequal was Xxx where division by thirds. Compound was multiples of 3/4 like 6/8.
8. Aikin. 5. Aiken was a pioneer in the development of shaped-note song books.
9. Arnold Gesell and Frances L. Ilg. The Child from Five to Ten. New York: Harper and Row, 1946. 83. They said children preferred records to radio because they could replay them. Later, video channels and CDs would provide the same control.
10. Karl Wilson Gehrkens. Music in the Grade Schools. Boston, C. C. Birchard and Company, 1934. 33.
11. Some schools always had pianos, but the depression made them a luxury item and war shortages made them scarce.
12. Frank E. Churchley. Interviewed by Betty Hanley. "Frank E. Churchley: Gentleman, Scholar, Teacher." March 2005. 42. For more on Churchley, see the post for 25 July 2018.
13. Churchley. 36.
14. Joseph E. Maddy and Thaddeus P. Giddings. Universal Teacher. Cornet or Trumpet. Elkhart, Indiana: C. G. Conn, Ltd., 1923. 1. For more on Joseph Maddy, see the post for 27 June 2018.
15. Rusch was born in 1908 and studied at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Lawrence University. (Dutch Wikipedia. "Harold W. Rusch.") Rusch was mentioned in the post for 27 June 2018.
16. Harold W. Rusch. Hal Leonard Elementary Band Method. Bb Cornet or Trumpet. Winona, Minnesota: Hal Leonard Music, Inc., 1961.
17. "David Wright." Hilltop Christian School website.
18. "Hilltop Christian School." Niche website.
Wednesday, June 27, 2018
Band Books
Topic: Pedagogy - Public Schools
Brass bands, as mentioned in the post for 13 September 2017, developed as a tool for improving the Prussian army in the 1830s. By the late nineteenth century, many towns had amateur groups. In at least some cases, they were introduced by German-speaking migrants. [1]
Merry Texter [2] suggested how-to-play books originally were written for adults. One of the very first from a hundred years before brass bands included what would become the most basic element of all subsequent books: a chart showing the keys used to produce each note of the scale.
The author, Peter Prelleur, believed individuals should learn "the entire range of the instrument" before they attempted to play tunes. [3] This was partly because he had no concept of instructional music. Instead he included "minuets, marches, rigaudons, and opera airs ‘By Mr. Handel and other Eminent Masters’." [4]
By the time Samuel Holyoke produced his Instrumental Assistant around 1800, [5] singing schools had been introduced in this country. Texter believed he used their format when he added a section on musical notation to the fingering charts. [6] He began with tunes that were "relatively simple in key, meter, and rhythm patterns," before introducing currently popular songs. [7]
Most of these early books were produced for orchestral instruments. Prelleur wrote for recorder, transverse flute, oboe, violin, and harpsichord. [8] Holyoke added the clarinet and bass-viol, but dropped the recorder and harpsichord. [9] When brass instruments appeared in this country, nothing was available.
In 1829 Ezekiel Goodale observed chaos because "the books now in general use are designed to afford a knowledge of some one particular instrument, but offer no rules to assist the learner on other instruments, or to direct him in his practice with other performers." [10]
Goodale suggested uniform collections "adapted to every instrument." [11] Arthur Clappé issued the first such set in 1888 with an introductory section on notation, fingering charts, scales and exercises. He adopted the idea of progressively more difficult lessons [12] introduced by Lowell Mason, [13] with instructions before each exercise. The popular tunes came after 27 exercises.
Brass bands grew in popularity with John Philip Sousa. He led the U. S. Marine Band on tours in 1891 and 1892, then retired to organize his own group that toured the country annually. He served a brief stint with the Navy Band in Chicago in World War I. [14]
Sousa’s initial popularity coincided with the rise of football rivalries. The Big Ten conference was organized as the Western Conference in 1895. [15] The University of Michigan fight song was written in 1898. [16]
The ones we played in my Michigan high school band around 1960 were all adopted just before World War I: "On Wisconsin" and the "Minnesota Rouser" were from 1909, Ohio State’s "Across the Field" and the Michigan State fight song were composed in 1915. [17]
Instrumental music training entered the public schools in the wake of World War I, according to Edward Birge. [18] These also were the years when high schools were modeling themselves on colleges with local football conferences. Joseph Maddy "became the first regular supervisor of instrumental music in the United States" in Rochester, New York, in 1918. [19]
With that change came the need to create books for adolescents rather than adults. A musical instrument manufacturer sponsored the first by Maddy and Thaddeus Giddings. The Universal Teacher [20] dispensed with the rudiments, scales, and drills. The two recognized:
"a pupil is impelled by many motives of which the principal one is the desire to make music on his instrument as soon as possible. Actual experience has proved that the music he wishes to bring forth from his instrument is the song that is familiar to him, the song his friends and neighbors know and like to hear. Certain songs have a universal appeal and are almost universally heard. These have been selected as the material in the Universal Teacher. This choice follows the child’s natural desire and in consequence he learns rapidly. Grown people sometimes have the mistaken impression that if the pupil plays certain exercises instead of tunes or songs, he will learn to play his instrument more quickly, but the child thinks differently and without his interest it is very difficult to get him to do anything." [21]
Songs were selected and sometimes simplified to become exercises. They were a combination of familiar melodies from classical music and songs included in community songbooks that began to be published during the war. [22]
Several other method books mentioned by Texter, which were issued in 1920s, were sponsored by text book publishers: C. C. Birchard offered one in 1926 [23] and Osbourne McConathy edited some for Oliver Ditson in 1929. [24] Most of the others were printed by small companies.
Apparently, text book publishers didn’t find the market for band training manuals remunerative. It may have been their normal hardcover volumes didn’t fit easily on music stands. Also, books tended to be selected by band directors and purchased by students, rather than by school boards. This meant companies had to keep prices low for sales that were spread over years, rather than bulk sales coordinated with institutional purchasing cycles.
The publishing industry began assuming its modern form in 1930 when Carl Fischer entered the market. [25] Texter noted the decade saw a rapid increase in the number of public school bands. In response, "seventeen method books were published, and at least eight privately-printed and miscellaneous method books were also published." [26]
The immediate stimulus may have been the popularity of dance bands like those of Paul Whitman and Benny Goodman. By the late 1930s, even boys in conservative small towns in the upper Midwest were forming ensembles. Harold and Everett Leonard Edstrom called their band Hal Leonard, because they feared their father would be offended if they used his surname. [27]
The most influential songbook from this period was Maurice Taylor’s Easy Steps to the Band. [28] He had a small band in Montrose, Pennsylvania, before he graduated from high school in 1924, then taught privately. Once he was hired by the local high school, he realized traditional methods simply didn’t work with the number of students he had.
Taylor created his own exercises, [29] and drew upon the community songster repertoire for tunes like "Polly Wolly Doodle." He also used some American folk songs like "Home on the Range" and Blow the Man Down," as well as children’s melodies like "Old MacDonald" and rounds like "Are You Sleeping."
Fewer books were published during World War II, but Mills Music issued Fred Weber’s first method book in 1945. [30] He taught music in a Michigan City, Indiana, junior high school. [31] His largest contribution was format. Each page was designed as a single lesson composed of up to ten lines of music that introduced a new note along with some aspect of music like dynamics or tempo, and some element of notation. The only changes made since by others have been the location of the comments: his were by the music; most placed them at the top of the page.
The brothers who had formed the Hal Leonard band entered the instrumental method market in 1961 [32] with one edited by a Wisconsin secondary school band teacher. [33] The Elementary Band Method recognized instrumental music was being introduced to children who had different physical abilities than adolescents. Harold Rusch used familiar nursery songs like "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and "Hot Cross Buns."
This was the period when editors began offering two books, with the first designed for beginners. The first series mentioned by Texter was published by Carl Fischer in 1957; [34] the first I found was issued by Neil Kjos in 1958. [35] The form became the standard after Weber released his First Division Band Method in 1962. [36]
Hal Leonard introduced the next round of innovations in 1990 with its Essential Elements. [37] By then the brothers had retired and sold the company to an employee. [38] Keith Mardak exploited the new copyright law to amass a large catalog of titles by buying other companies. Elements was produced to capitalize on digital technology and meet the new music education standards mentioned in the post for 24 June 2018. It added notes on "theory" and "history" by lines of music.
Elements also differed in its editorial bias. Instead of drawing upon the experience of a single, talented, high-school band teacher, it was produced by a committee drawn from university music faculties. Tom Rhodes began teaching in Texas high schools, before being hired by the University of Texas. He and Donald Bierschenk published a method book for Southern Music [39] which led to the commission from Hal Leonard. [40] The third editor, Tim Lautzenheiser, taught at Northern Michigan University. [41]
Band method books lagged behind the elementary school singing books in responding to the demands for relevance in the 1960s. Weber had introduced "When the Saints Go Marching In" in a 1962 manual, [42] but no other African-American piece was added to the common repertoire after that.
Elements followed the trend in public school music books mentioned in the post for 24 June 2018 to utilize international material. It introduced the Japanese "Sakura," the Jamaican "Banana Boat Song," [43] the Mexican "La Cucaracha," and the national anthems of Canada and Israel.
It was the first to publish "Kumbaya" as an international song from Africa. [44] The tune appeared in five other method books I’ve seen, including Bruce Pearson’s Standard of Excellence in 1993. [45] "Kumbaya" wasn’t universally accepted, and Pearson dropped it from his Tradition of Excellence in 2010. [46]
Notes on Samples
In the late 1970s, I went through all the school-music text books in the collection of the University of Michigan Music Library looking for camp songs. I recently located copies of the books that contained "Kumbaya," although I was not always able to find teacher’s editions. I do not know what happened after that date, and would be interested to hear from people who were in elementary school after 1980.
Texter compiled a list of all the commercially published band method books from catalogs, and searched to find them. Her collection went through 1973, and was as complete as she could make it.
I purchased copies of all the books that appeared in Amazon for the search criteria "band method." They usually were for cornet or trumpet, [47] but I ordered what was available when that instrument’s book was not available.
I believe my collection is fairly complete for the current century, but books published in the late 1970s and 1980s may have fallen out of print. Any comments I make about the first instance is based on what I have, and may overlook something. Please correct my errors.
I do not know the relative sales figures for different books. Texter found:
"Music publishers are loathe to divulge information regarding numbers of method books that are sold. A representative of a major method book publisher stated in an interview (March 31, 1973) that no book is kept in print by his company unless it sells at least ‘from 2,000 to 5,000 copies’ per book (i.e., per individual instrument volume) per year. His company has numerous titles in print, with some dating from 1939." [48]
When I describe a book as influential, I mean it introduced songs that were subsequently reprinted by other editors or it pioneered ways of teaching music that were copied by other publishers.
End Notes
1. This is my assertion based on the research I did on the history of May Festivals for Camp Songs. 484.
2. Merry Elizabeth Texter. "A Historical and Analytical Investigation of the Beginning Band Method Book." PhD dissertation. The Ohio State University, 1975.
3. Peter Prelleur. The Modern Musick-Master. London: Printing-office in Bow Church Yard, 1731. Quotation from Texter. 41.
4. Prelleur. Quoted by Texter. 41.
5. Samuel Holyoke. The Instrumental Assistant. Exeter, New Hampshire: H. Ranlet, 1800.
6. Texter. 43.
7. Texter. 44.
8. Texter. 40. The first three originally were described as flute, German flute, and hautboy.
9. Texter. 44. They originally were described as German flute, clarionett, and hautboy.
10. Ezekiel Goodale. The Instrumental Director. Hallowell, Maine: Glazier, Masters and Company, 1829. 6. Quoted by Texter. 46.
11. Goodale. 6. Quoted by Texter. 46. She labeled the volumes he was proposing heterogeneous method books, meaning single "books that can be used for simultaneous instruction of brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments." 8-9.
12. Arthur A. Clappé. The Band Teacher’s Assistant. New York: Carl Fischer, 1888. Described by Texter: on notation, 60, fingering charts, 61; scales, 62; progression, 61-62. The cover page said it was "a series of progressive lessons."
13. Lowell Mason was mentioned in the post for 24 June 2018.
14. Wikipedia. "John Philip Sousa."
15. Wikipedia. "History of American Football."
16. Louis Elbel. "The Victors." Wikipedia said "the song was first played publicly by John Philip Sousa and his band." (Wikipedia. "The Victors.")
17. William T. Purdy and Carl Beck. "On Wisconsin" for the University of Wisconsin. Hazel McGrath claimed Sousa called it one of "the finest of college marching songs." (McGrath. "Songs to Thee, Wisconsin!" Wisconsin Alumnus 49:16-17:March 1948. 17. Cited by Wikipedia. "On, Wisconsin!")
Floyd Hutsell. "Minnesota Rouser" for the University of Minnesota. (Wikipedia. "Minnesota Rouser.")
William Andrew Dougherty, Junior. "Across the Field" for Ohio State University. (Wikipedia. "Across the Field.")
Francis Irving Lankey and Arthur Sayles. Michigan State fight song, now called "Victory for MSU." (Wikipedia. "Victory for MSU.")
18. Edward Bailey Birge. History of Public School Music in the United States. Washington: Music Educators National Conference, 1928. 201-202. Cited by Texter. 18.
19. Texter. 17. This is the same Maddy who founded the Interlochen music camp.
20. Joseph E. Maddy and Thaddeus P. Giddings. Universal Teacher. Cornet or Trumpet. Elkhart, Indiana: C. G. Conn, Ltd., 1923.
21. Joseph E. Maddy and Thaddeus P. Giddings. Instrumental Class Teaching. Cincinnati: The Willis Music Company, 1928. 5. Quoted by Texter. 79.
22. For more on community songbooks, see the post for 24 June 2018.
23. Louis M. Gordon. Band Training Series. Boston: C. C. Birchard, 1926. Cited by Texter. 195.
24. Osbourne McConathy, Russell V. Morgan, and Harry F. Clark. The Ditson School and Community Band Series. Boston: Oliver Ditson Company, 1929. Cited by Texter. 196. McConathy was mentioned in the post for 24 June 2018.
25. Mayhew Lake. Lake’s Elementary Band Method. New York: Carl Fischer, 1930. Cited by Texter. 196. Fischer had published Clappé’s manual.
26. Texter. 88.
27. "Corporate History and Profile." Hal Leonard website. Their parents, Ernest Julius Edstrom and Lesla A. Edstrom, apparently were members of the Church of the Brethren that descended from the pietist Dunkers who settled in Germantown, Pennsylvania, before the Revolution. (NCHS. "Ernest Julius Edstrom" and "Lelsa A. Edstrom." Find a Grave website. 25 December 2015.)
28. Maurice D. Taylor. Easy Steps to the Band. Bb Cornet. New York: Mills Music, Inc., 1939. This stayed in print and my copy was reprinted by Belwin after it had been taken over by Alfred Publishing Company.
29. "Maurice D. Taylor of Montrose." Montrose, Pennsylvania, Community Foundation of the Endless Mountains website.
30. Fred Weber. Belwin Elementary Band Method. Bb Cornet (Trumpet). Melville, New York: Belwin, Inc., 1945.
31. George Butler. "Fred Weber." International Horn Society website. 1 April 2016. Confirmed by Google notices of his work as a judge and clinician.
32. Harold W. Rusch. Hal Leonard Elementary Band Method. Bb Cornet or Trumpet. Winona, Minnesota: Hal Leonard Music, Inc., 1961.
33. Dutch Wikipedia. "Harold W. Rusch."
34. C. Paul Herfurth and Hugh M. Stuart. Our Band Class Book. Book 1. New York: Carl Fischer, Inc., 1957. Cited by Texter. 195.
35. Charles Peters. Neil Kjos in 1958.
36. Fred Weber. First Division Band Method. Part One. Bb Cornet (Trumpet). First Division Publishing Company, 1962. It was kept in print by Belwin.
37. Tom C. Rhodes, Donald Bierschenk, and Tim Lautzenheiser. Essential Elements. Book 1. Bb Trumpet. Milwaukee: Hal Leonard Corporation, 1991. This version was discussed in the post for 16 August 2018.
38. Hal Leonard, History. They sold the company in 1985.
39. This may have been Harry H. Haines and J. R. McEntyre. Division of Beat. Book 1. Cornet/Trumpet, Baritone TC. San Antonio: Southern Music Company, 1980. Rhodes was listed as a contributing editor.
40. "Tom Rhodes - Class of 2003." Texas Bandmasters Hall of Fame, Phi Meta Mu, Alpha chapter website. This also had information on Donald Bierschenk
41. "About Tim Lautzenheiser." Attitude Concepts website.
42. Weber, First Division. 25.
43. "Banana Boat Song" was popularized by Harry Belafonte in 1956.
44. This version is discussed in the post for 29 July 2018.
45. The other books that contained "Kumbaya" were Bruce Pearson. Standard of Excellence. Book 1. Bb Trumpet/Cornet. San Diego: Neil A. Kjos Company, 1993. This version was discussed in the post for 29 July 2018.
John O’Reilly and Mark Williams. Accent on Achievement. Book 1. Bb Trumpet. Van Nuys, California: Alfred Publishing Company, 1997. This version was discussed in the post for 29 July 2018.
Tim Lautzenheiser, et al. Essential Elements 2000. Book 1. Bb Trumpet. Milwaukee: Hal Leonard Corporation, 1999. This version was discussed in the post for 16 August 2018.
Jim Evans. Band Folio. Band Method. Book 1. 2000. Available free on-line. This version was discussed in the post for 9 August 2018.
Sandy Feldstein and Larry Clark. The Yamaha Advantage. Book 1. Clarinet. New York: Carl Fischer, 2001.
46. Bruce Pearson and Ryan Nowlin. Tradition of Excellence. Book 1. Bb Trumpet/Cornet. San Diego: Neil A. Kjos Company, 2010.
47. Cornets and trumpets were essentially the same: they had the same lengths of tubing coiled in different ways. Cornets were used by military and brass bands, while trumpets were used by orchestras and symphonies. Louis Armstrong changed from cornet to trumpet in the early 1920s because trumpets were preferred by jazz bands. The change from cornet to trumpet as the primary label for method books lagged behind popular music taste. The first to use trumpet was Art Jenson in 1970. [49] After The Yamaha Band Student in 1988, [50] it became the standard.
48. Texter. 1.
49. Art C. Jenson. Learning Unlimited. Level One. Trumpet/Cornet. Winona, Minnesota: Hal Leonard Corporation, 1973.
50. Sandy Feldstein and John O’Reilly. Yamaha Band Student. Book 1. Bb Trumpet/Cornet. Van Nuys, California: Alfred Publishing Company, 1988.
Brass bands, as mentioned in the post for 13 September 2017, developed as a tool for improving the Prussian army in the 1830s. By the late nineteenth century, many towns had amateur groups. In at least some cases, they were introduced by German-speaking migrants. [1]
Merry Texter [2] suggested how-to-play books originally were written for adults. One of the very first from a hundred years before brass bands included what would become the most basic element of all subsequent books: a chart showing the keys used to produce each note of the scale.
The author, Peter Prelleur, believed individuals should learn "the entire range of the instrument" before they attempted to play tunes. [3] This was partly because he had no concept of instructional music. Instead he included "minuets, marches, rigaudons, and opera airs ‘By Mr. Handel and other Eminent Masters’." [4]
By the time Samuel Holyoke produced his Instrumental Assistant around 1800, [5] singing schools had been introduced in this country. Texter believed he used their format when he added a section on musical notation to the fingering charts. [6] He began with tunes that were "relatively simple in key, meter, and rhythm patterns," before introducing currently popular songs. [7]
Most of these early books were produced for orchestral instruments. Prelleur wrote for recorder, transverse flute, oboe, violin, and harpsichord. [8] Holyoke added the clarinet and bass-viol, but dropped the recorder and harpsichord. [9] When brass instruments appeared in this country, nothing was available.
In 1829 Ezekiel Goodale observed chaos because "the books now in general use are designed to afford a knowledge of some one particular instrument, but offer no rules to assist the learner on other instruments, or to direct him in his practice with other performers." [10]
Goodale suggested uniform collections "adapted to every instrument." [11] Arthur Clappé issued the first such set in 1888 with an introductory section on notation, fingering charts, scales and exercises. He adopted the idea of progressively more difficult lessons [12] introduced by Lowell Mason, [13] with instructions before each exercise. The popular tunes came after 27 exercises.
Brass bands grew in popularity with John Philip Sousa. He led the U. S. Marine Band on tours in 1891 and 1892, then retired to organize his own group that toured the country annually. He served a brief stint with the Navy Band in Chicago in World War I. [14]
Sousa’s initial popularity coincided with the rise of football rivalries. The Big Ten conference was organized as the Western Conference in 1895. [15] The University of Michigan fight song was written in 1898. [16]
The ones we played in my Michigan high school band around 1960 were all adopted just before World War I: "On Wisconsin" and the "Minnesota Rouser" were from 1909, Ohio State’s "Across the Field" and the Michigan State fight song were composed in 1915. [17]
Instrumental music training entered the public schools in the wake of World War I, according to Edward Birge. [18] These also were the years when high schools were modeling themselves on colleges with local football conferences. Joseph Maddy "became the first regular supervisor of instrumental music in the United States" in Rochester, New York, in 1918. [19]
With that change came the need to create books for adolescents rather than adults. A musical instrument manufacturer sponsored the first by Maddy and Thaddeus Giddings. The Universal Teacher [20] dispensed with the rudiments, scales, and drills. The two recognized:
"a pupil is impelled by many motives of which the principal one is the desire to make music on his instrument as soon as possible. Actual experience has proved that the music he wishes to bring forth from his instrument is the song that is familiar to him, the song his friends and neighbors know and like to hear. Certain songs have a universal appeal and are almost universally heard. These have been selected as the material in the Universal Teacher. This choice follows the child’s natural desire and in consequence he learns rapidly. Grown people sometimes have the mistaken impression that if the pupil plays certain exercises instead of tunes or songs, he will learn to play his instrument more quickly, but the child thinks differently and without his interest it is very difficult to get him to do anything." [21]
Songs were selected and sometimes simplified to become exercises. They were a combination of familiar melodies from classical music and songs included in community songbooks that began to be published during the war. [22]
Several other method books mentioned by Texter, which were issued in 1920s, were sponsored by text book publishers: C. C. Birchard offered one in 1926 [23] and Osbourne McConathy edited some for Oliver Ditson in 1929. [24] Most of the others were printed by small companies.
Apparently, text book publishers didn’t find the market for band training manuals remunerative. It may have been their normal hardcover volumes didn’t fit easily on music stands. Also, books tended to be selected by band directors and purchased by students, rather than by school boards. This meant companies had to keep prices low for sales that were spread over years, rather than bulk sales coordinated with institutional purchasing cycles.
The publishing industry began assuming its modern form in 1930 when Carl Fischer entered the market. [25] Texter noted the decade saw a rapid increase in the number of public school bands. In response, "seventeen method books were published, and at least eight privately-printed and miscellaneous method books were also published." [26]
The immediate stimulus may have been the popularity of dance bands like those of Paul Whitman and Benny Goodman. By the late 1930s, even boys in conservative small towns in the upper Midwest were forming ensembles. Harold and Everett Leonard Edstrom called their band Hal Leonard, because they feared their father would be offended if they used his surname. [27]
The most influential songbook from this period was Maurice Taylor’s Easy Steps to the Band. [28] He had a small band in Montrose, Pennsylvania, before he graduated from high school in 1924, then taught privately. Once he was hired by the local high school, he realized traditional methods simply didn’t work with the number of students he had.
Taylor created his own exercises, [29] and drew upon the community songster repertoire for tunes like "Polly Wolly Doodle." He also used some American folk songs like "Home on the Range" and Blow the Man Down," as well as children’s melodies like "Old MacDonald" and rounds like "Are You Sleeping."
Fewer books were published during World War II, but Mills Music issued Fred Weber’s first method book in 1945. [30] He taught music in a Michigan City, Indiana, junior high school. [31] His largest contribution was format. Each page was designed as a single lesson composed of up to ten lines of music that introduced a new note along with some aspect of music like dynamics or tempo, and some element of notation. The only changes made since by others have been the location of the comments: his were by the music; most placed them at the top of the page.
The brothers who had formed the Hal Leonard band entered the instrumental method market in 1961 [32] with one edited by a Wisconsin secondary school band teacher. [33] The Elementary Band Method recognized instrumental music was being introduced to children who had different physical abilities than adolescents. Harold Rusch used familiar nursery songs like "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and "Hot Cross Buns."
This was the period when editors began offering two books, with the first designed for beginners. The first series mentioned by Texter was published by Carl Fischer in 1957; [34] the first I found was issued by Neil Kjos in 1958. [35] The form became the standard after Weber released his First Division Band Method in 1962. [36]
Hal Leonard introduced the next round of innovations in 1990 with its Essential Elements. [37] By then the brothers had retired and sold the company to an employee. [38] Keith Mardak exploited the new copyright law to amass a large catalog of titles by buying other companies. Elements was produced to capitalize on digital technology and meet the new music education standards mentioned in the post for 24 June 2018. It added notes on "theory" and "history" by lines of music.
Elements also differed in its editorial bias. Instead of drawing upon the experience of a single, talented, high-school band teacher, it was produced by a committee drawn from university music faculties. Tom Rhodes began teaching in Texas high schools, before being hired by the University of Texas. He and Donald Bierschenk published a method book for Southern Music [39] which led to the commission from Hal Leonard. [40] The third editor, Tim Lautzenheiser, taught at Northern Michigan University. [41]
Band method books lagged behind the elementary school singing books in responding to the demands for relevance in the 1960s. Weber had introduced "When the Saints Go Marching In" in a 1962 manual, [42] but no other African-American piece was added to the common repertoire after that.
Elements followed the trend in public school music books mentioned in the post for 24 June 2018 to utilize international material. It introduced the Japanese "Sakura," the Jamaican "Banana Boat Song," [43] the Mexican "La Cucaracha," and the national anthems of Canada and Israel.
It was the first to publish "Kumbaya" as an international song from Africa. [44] The tune appeared in five other method books I’ve seen, including Bruce Pearson’s Standard of Excellence in 1993. [45] "Kumbaya" wasn’t universally accepted, and Pearson dropped it from his Tradition of Excellence in 2010. [46]
Notes on Samples
In the late 1970s, I went through all the school-music text books in the collection of the University of Michigan Music Library looking for camp songs. I recently located copies of the books that contained "Kumbaya," although I was not always able to find teacher’s editions. I do not know what happened after that date, and would be interested to hear from people who were in elementary school after 1980.
Texter compiled a list of all the commercially published band method books from catalogs, and searched to find them. Her collection went through 1973, and was as complete as she could make it.
I purchased copies of all the books that appeared in Amazon for the search criteria "band method." They usually were for cornet or trumpet, [47] but I ordered what was available when that instrument’s book was not available.
I believe my collection is fairly complete for the current century, but books published in the late 1970s and 1980s may have fallen out of print. Any comments I make about the first instance is based on what I have, and may overlook something. Please correct my errors.
I do not know the relative sales figures for different books. Texter found:
"Music publishers are loathe to divulge information regarding numbers of method books that are sold. A representative of a major method book publisher stated in an interview (March 31, 1973) that no book is kept in print by his company unless it sells at least ‘from 2,000 to 5,000 copies’ per book (i.e., per individual instrument volume) per year. His company has numerous titles in print, with some dating from 1939." [48]
When I describe a book as influential, I mean it introduced songs that were subsequently reprinted by other editors or it pioneered ways of teaching music that were copied by other publishers.
End Notes
1. This is my assertion based on the research I did on the history of May Festivals for Camp Songs. 484.
2. Merry Elizabeth Texter. "A Historical and Analytical Investigation of the Beginning Band Method Book." PhD dissertation. The Ohio State University, 1975.
3. Peter Prelleur. The Modern Musick-Master. London: Printing-office in Bow Church Yard, 1731. Quotation from Texter. 41.
4. Prelleur. Quoted by Texter. 41.
5. Samuel Holyoke. The Instrumental Assistant. Exeter, New Hampshire: H. Ranlet, 1800.
6. Texter. 43.
7. Texter. 44.
8. Texter. 40. The first three originally were described as flute, German flute, and hautboy.
9. Texter. 44. They originally were described as German flute, clarionett, and hautboy.
10. Ezekiel Goodale. The Instrumental Director. Hallowell, Maine: Glazier, Masters and Company, 1829. 6. Quoted by Texter. 46.
11. Goodale. 6. Quoted by Texter. 46. She labeled the volumes he was proposing heterogeneous method books, meaning single "books that can be used for simultaneous instruction of brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments." 8-9.
12. Arthur A. Clappé. The Band Teacher’s Assistant. New York: Carl Fischer, 1888. Described by Texter: on notation, 60, fingering charts, 61; scales, 62; progression, 61-62. The cover page said it was "a series of progressive lessons."
13. Lowell Mason was mentioned in the post for 24 June 2018.
14. Wikipedia. "John Philip Sousa."
15. Wikipedia. "History of American Football."
16. Louis Elbel. "The Victors." Wikipedia said "the song was first played publicly by John Philip Sousa and his band." (Wikipedia. "The Victors.")
17. William T. Purdy and Carl Beck. "On Wisconsin" for the University of Wisconsin. Hazel McGrath claimed Sousa called it one of "the finest of college marching songs." (McGrath. "Songs to Thee, Wisconsin!" Wisconsin Alumnus 49:16-17:March 1948. 17. Cited by Wikipedia. "On, Wisconsin!")
Floyd Hutsell. "Minnesota Rouser" for the University of Minnesota. (Wikipedia. "Minnesota Rouser.")
William Andrew Dougherty, Junior. "Across the Field" for Ohio State University. (Wikipedia. "Across the Field.")
Francis Irving Lankey and Arthur Sayles. Michigan State fight song, now called "Victory for MSU." (Wikipedia. "Victory for MSU.")
18. Edward Bailey Birge. History of Public School Music in the United States. Washington: Music Educators National Conference, 1928. 201-202. Cited by Texter. 18.
19. Texter. 17. This is the same Maddy who founded the Interlochen music camp.
20. Joseph E. Maddy and Thaddeus P. Giddings. Universal Teacher. Cornet or Trumpet. Elkhart, Indiana: C. G. Conn, Ltd., 1923.
21. Joseph E. Maddy and Thaddeus P. Giddings. Instrumental Class Teaching. Cincinnati: The Willis Music Company, 1928. 5. Quoted by Texter. 79.
22. For more on community songbooks, see the post for 24 June 2018.
23. Louis M. Gordon. Band Training Series. Boston: C. C. Birchard, 1926. Cited by Texter. 195.
24. Osbourne McConathy, Russell V. Morgan, and Harry F. Clark. The Ditson School and Community Band Series. Boston: Oliver Ditson Company, 1929. Cited by Texter. 196. McConathy was mentioned in the post for 24 June 2018.
25. Mayhew Lake. Lake’s Elementary Band Method. New York: Carl Fischer, 1930. Cited by Texter. 196. Fischer had published Clappé’s manual.
26. Texter. 88.
27. "Corporate History and Profile." Hal Leonard website. Their parents, Ernest Julius Edstrom and Lesla A. Edstrom, apparently were members of the Church of the Brethren that descended from the pietist Dunkers who settled in Germantown, Pennsylvania, before the Revolution. (NCHS. "Ernest Julius Edstrom" and "Lelsa A. Edstrom." Find a Grave website. 25 December 2015.)
28. Maurice D. Taylor. Easy Steps to the Band. Bb Cornet. New York: Mills Music, Inc., 1939. This stayed in print and my copy was reprinted by Belwin after it had been taken over by Alfred Publishing Company.
29. "Maurice D. Taylor of Montrose." Montrose, Pennsylvania, Community Foundation of the Endless Mountains website.
30. Fred Weber. Belwin Elementary Band Method. Bb Cornet (Trumpet). Melville, New York: Belwin, Inc., 1945.
31. George Butler. "Fred Weber." International Horn Society website. 1 April 2016. Confirmed by Google notices of his work as a judge and clinician.
32. Harold W. Rusch. Hal Leonard Elementary Band Method. Bb Cornet or Trumpet. Winona, Minnesota: Hal Leonard Music, Inc., 1961.
33. Dutch Wikipedia. "Harold W. Rusch."
34. C. Paul Herfurth and Hugh M. Stuart. Our Band Class Book. Book 1. New York: Carl Fischer, Inc., 1957. Cited by Texter. 195.
35. Charles Peters. Neil Kjos in 1958.
36. Fred Weber. First Division Band Method. Part One. Bb Cornet (Trumpet). First Division Publishing Company, 1962. It was kept in print by Belwin.
37. Tom C. Rhodes, Donald Bierschenk, and Tim Lautzenheiser. Essential Elements. Book 1. Bb Trumpet. Milwaukee: Hal Leonard Corporation, 1991. This version was discussed in the post for 16 August 2018.
38. Hal Leonard, History. They sold the company in 1985.
39. This may have been Harry H. Haines and J. R. McEntyre. Division of Beat. Book 1. Cornet/Trumpet, Baritone TC. San Antonio: Southern Music Company, 1980. Rhodes was listed as a contributing editor.
40. "Tom Rhodes - Class of 2003." Texas Bandmasters Hall of Fame, Phi Meta Mu, Alpha chapter website. This also had information on Donald Bierschenk
41. "About Tim Lautzenheiser." Attitude Concepts website.
42. Weber, First Division. 25.
43. "Banana Boat Song" was popularized by Harry Belafonte in 1956.
44. This version is discussed in the post for 29 July 2018.
45. The other books that contained "Kumbaya" were Bruce Pearson. Standard of Excellence. Book 1. Bb Trumpet/Cornet. San Diego: Neil A. Kjos Company, 1993. This version was discussed in the post for 29 July 2018.
John O’Reilly and Mark Williams. Accent on Achievement. Book 1. Bb Trumpet. Van Nuys, California: Alfred Publishing Company, 1997. This version was discussed in the post for 29 July 2018.
Tim Lautzenheiser, et al. Essential Elements 2000. Book 1. Bb Trumpet. Milwaukee: Hal Leonard Corporation, 1999. This version was discussed in the post for 16 August 2018.
Jim Evans. Band Folio. Band Method. Book 1. 2000. Available free on-line. This version was discussed in the post for 9 August 2018.
Sandy Feldstein and Larry Clark. The Yamaha Advantage. Book 1. Clarinet. New York: Carl Fischer, 2001.
46. Bruce Pearson and Ryan Nowlin. Tradition of Excellence. Book 1. Bb Trumpet/Cornet. San Diego: Neil A. Kjos Company, 2010.
47. Cornets and trumpets were essentially the same: they had the same lengths of tubing coiled in different ways. Cornets were used by military and brass bands, while trumpets were used by orchestras and symphonies. Louis Armstrong changed from cornet to trumpet in the early 1920s because trumpets were preferred by jazz bands. The change from cornet to trumpet as the primary label for method books lagged behind popular music taste. The first to use trumpet was Art Jenson in 1970. [49] After The Yamaha Band Student in 1988, [50] it became the standard.
48. Texter. 1.
49. Art C. Jenson. Learning Unlimited. Level One. Trumpet/Cornet. Winona, Minnesota: Hal Leonard Corporation, 1973.
50. Sandy Feldstein and John O’Reilly. Yamaha Band Student. Book 1. Bb Trumpet/Cornet. Van Nuys, California: Alfred Publishing Company, 1988.
Sunday, June 24, 2018
Eunice Boardman - Kum Ba Yah
Topic: Pedagogy - Pubic Schools
There always has been a discrepancy between how children learn and how they are taught. Philosophers since Jean-Jacques Rousseau have argued children learn as their bodies and minds develop, and teachers would be well advised to match their methods to nature.
The posts on how children learn music [1] and the ones on lullabies [2] suggested children absorbed their aesthetic senses long before they ever babbled a tune or banged a table or shook a noise maker suspended over their cribs. No teacher began with a tabula rasa.
Formal vocal music training in the United States was an offshoot of Protestants’ need to sing in church. It assumed congregants were literate enough to read the Bible. However, music was expensive to reproduce, and early hymn books only gave names of familiar tunes with texts.
Later music leaders wanted to eliminate the monotony by introducing new tunes. But first, they had to teach people to read music. Early singing-school books began with sections of music fundamentals. Whether people in the sporadic schools actually learned to sight read, or learned the songs as they sang them from a leader who could read wasn’t recorded. The presence of a few in a community who could sing from printed notes was enough to introduce variety into the repertoire.
Lowell Mason took music training into the public schools in Boston in 1838, [3] and in 1864 he published the first graded series of music books in this country. [4] As schools grew from one-room multi-purpose buildings into elementary and secondary schools, the number of levels expanded from Mason’s three.
The first school collections, like Pat’s Pick in Michigan, [5] resembled the community songsters published during and after World War I. [6] They relied on public domain material including Stephen Foster and Civil War songs, religious works like "Shall We Gather at the River," rounds, and British tunes like "Comin’ thro’ the Rye" and "Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes." Henry Pattengill believed:
"Songs for youth should be cheery, lively, and catchy. Let there be much singing by rote. Sing for the fun of it. Teach the good old songs by heart. Sing for opening, sing for closing, sing between meals." [7]
The textbook industry developed to support school boards. It was only a matter of time before it offered series with unique books for each elementary-school grade. Some early ones in The Progressive Music Series were organized to introduce elements of music like "Melodies in the Major Scale; the Quarter-Note Beat." [8]
Many of the lyrics were written specifically for the books to European folk tunes. They didn’t completely abandon the community song repertoire. A collection edited by the Progressive Music team in 1932 included a section of "Assembly and Community Songs" in addition to the pedagogical ones. [9]
After World War II, public school singing books contained even more specially composed songs, leavened with songs children already knew like "Grand Old Duke of York" [10] and "Old MacDonald Had a Farm." [11] Lilla Bell Pitts encouraged the use of folk material [12] like "Donkey Riding," but did not use folk melodies for the original texts. [13] Community songs were not included except for Christmas carols and some religious items. [14]
In the 1960s, publishers were criticized because their texts were bland and ignored the contributions of women, African Americans, and other cultural groups. Textbook editors responded by expanding their pool of songs.
Eunice Boardman and Beth Landis had issued a fourth grade book in 1966 [15] that contained 105 songs. [16] Only 13 came from African Americans, Africans, Arabs, Asians, or Spanish-speaking countries. They revised the book in 1971, keeping the basic format, but changing the 116 songs so 39 came from previously underrepresented groups. [17]
Still, there were none that were identified as African American. Instead, five were described as "Spirituals" in the headnotes seen by students. [18] "Kumbaya" was introduced as one of the four African songs. [19] While the women added Native American songs, they dropped the only Irish song and had nothing from four other large immigrant groups: Poles, Italians, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans. [20]
In the 1970s, school districts started cutting their budgets for music. Currently, music educators think they can justify music classes if they imitate science courses and provide a rigorous curriculum. In the 1990s, the National Association of Music Educators developed standards that defined "the knowledge, skills, and understanding that all students should acquire in the arts." [21]
It no longer was enough to know how to sing or play an instrument. Now the well-trained child was expected to improvise, compose, analyze and describe what he or she heard, and understand "music in relation to history and culture." [22]
The version of "Kumbaya" that appeared in the Boardman and Landis singing book had an illustration that showed six children, three males, three females. Three had dark skins. One white girl was blond, the second was brunette, and the white boy had red hair. The caption read: "This song comes from Africa. People everywhere enjoy singing it."
The song was included in a section of "Music from Far Away." The editors suggested teachers ask their nine-year-old students to find Africa on a map. They assumed the children would already know it was important because the "ancestors of many Americans came from Africa."
Having placed the song in its cultural context, elementary school music teachers were expected to explain "kumbaya" meant "come by here" and recognize it as a "song of worship" like the previously mentioned "Rocka My Soul." The latter was described as a "rousing spiritual" that "expresses feelings of well-being and joy." [23]
Boardman and Landis suggested that once children knew the song, teachers could go farther and discuss how their students should "sing this song to communicate the feelings expressed in the words." This was supposed to lead to an introduction of concept of dynamics and phrasing, with variations in crescendos-decrescendo patterns in each line.
Next students were given more information on finding a home tone and recognizing a key. They were asked to translate the "Kumbaya" tune into numbers: 1 3 5 5 5 6 6 5. They could also play the chords in the book on their autoharps, sing along to a piano accompaniment, or listen to an a capella baritone recording.
Credits
"African Folk Song." No publishing credit was given.
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: no notes given
Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: four-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 3/4
Tempo: slowly
Key Signature: no sharps or flats
Autoharp Chords: C F G G7
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: one syllable to one note, except for final "Lord." A descant was provided with the piano accompaniment, if the teacher wanted to explore harmony with "Kumbaya."
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: the piano played the melody with the right hand and chords with the left. The chords sounded at the beginning of each measure and each phrase. The final line had chords for every beat.
Notes on Performers
Boardman earned her music degrees from Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, Columbia Teacher’s College, and the University of Illinois. She taught music in Iowa public schools before becoming a university professor. [24]
Landis earned her music degrees from the universities of Denver and Michigan. She later became music director for the Riverside, California, public schools. [25] Sam Hinton remembered she staged an annual sixth-grade sing where all the schools in the district sang a "stirring arrangement of the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’" that was "augmented by a section of bass voices borrowed from the music department on the Riverside Campus of the University of California, with an added flourish of trumpets from the brass section of the U C Riverside band." [26]
Availability
Book: "Kum Ba Yah." 34 and 236 in Exploring Music 4. Edited by Eunice Boardman and Beth Landis. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971 teacher’s edition.
End Notes
1. See the posts for 21 September 2017 - 1 October 2017 or click on the "Learning Music" topic in the index at the right of the screen.
2. See the posts for 3 January 2018 - 27 January 2018 or click on the "Lullabies" topic in the index at the right of the screen.
3. Wikipedia. "Lowell Mason."
4. Lowell Mason. The Song-Garden. Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1864.
5. Henry R. Pattengill. Pat’s Pick. Lansing: Henry R. Pattengill, 1905. When I was doing research on camp songs in the 1970s, several people told me they had used this when they were in school.
6. An example of a community songster was one edited by John Beattie, et al. The Golden Book of Favorite Songs. Minneapolis: Schmitt, Hall and McCreary, 1915. My sixth grade teach used this book in the 1955-1956 school year. It included more of the Scots, Irish, and English songs and fewer religious songs than Pat’s Pick.
7. Pattengill. Frontis page.
8. Horatio Parker, Osbourne McConathy, Edward Bailey Birge, and W. Otto Miessner. The Progressive Music Series. Book Two. Boston: Silver, Burdett and Company, 1920 edition.
9. Osbourne McConathy, W. Otto Miessner, Edward Bailey Birge, and Mabel E. Bray. The Music House: One-Book Course. New York: Silver Burdett Company, 1938 edition.
10. John W. Beattie, Josephine Wolverton, Grave V. Wilson, and Howad Hinga. The American Singer. New York: The American Book Company, 1954. Book 3 At the time Beattie edited The Golden Book he was music supervisor for the Grand Rapids, Michigan, public schools. When he edited this book, he had retired from Northwestern University’s School of Music.
11. Lilla Bell Pitts, Mabelle Glenn, Lorrain E. Watters, and Louis G. Wersen. Our Singing World. Boston: Ginn and Company, 1959 edition. Grade 3, Singing and Rhyming.
12. Brian Shifflet. "A History of Ten Influential Women in Music Education 1885-1997." MMus. Bowling Green State University, 2007. 33, 34. Most of his information came from Gerald L. Blanchard. "Lilla Belle Pitts: Her life and Contributions to Music Education." EdD dissertation. Brigham Young University, 1966.
13. Pitts.
14. Pitts. Also, Beattie, The American Singer.
15. Eunice Boardman and Beth Landis. Exploring Music 4. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966 teacher’s edition.
16. They included many more pieces of music in their introductions to classical music. I only included pieces with words that were meant to be sung.
17. Many of the international songs also appeared in songbooks published by Lynn Rohrbough’s Cooperative Recreation Service in Delaware, Ohio.
18. The spiritual kept from the 1966 edition was "My Lord What a Morning." Several of the spirituals added in 1971 came from camp meetings and were not uniquely African American. They included "This Little Light of Mine," "Rocka My Soul," "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," and "Trouble in Mind."
19. The 1966 African song was the white’s "Marching to Pretoria." The other new African songs in 1971 were a "Congo Lullaby" and "Laboring Song."
20. The 1971 book included the Jamaican "Banana Boat Song" popularized by Harry Belafonte. There was one Mexican song in 1966, and two more in 1971.
22. National Association for Music Education website. Quoted by Brandon K. McDannald. "A Comparative Summary of Content and Integration of Technological Resources in Six Beginning Band Methods." MA thesis. University of Central Missouri, May 2012.
22. "MENC: The National Association for Music Education and the Nine National Music Education Standards." Its website.
23. Boardman, 1971. 4.
24. "Eunice Boardman Papers, 1942-1997." University of Illinois library website.
25. "Mu Phi Epsilon Foundation Receives Large Gifts." Mu Phi Epsilon, The Triangle 101:14:Spring 2007.
26. Sam Hinton. "A Naturalist in Show Business." April 2001. University of California San Diego library website.
There always has been a discrepancy between how children learn and how they are taught. Philosophers since Jean-Jacques Rousseau have argued children learn as their bodies and minds develop, and teachers would be well advised to match their methods to nature.
The posts on how children learn music [1] and the ones on lullabies [2] suggested children absorbed their aesthetic senses long before they ever babbled a tune or banged a table or shook a noise maker suspended over their cribs. No teacher began with a tabula rasa.
Formal vocal music training in the United States was an offshoot of Protestants’ need to sing in church. It assumed congregants were literate enough to read the Bible. However, music was expensive to reproduce, and early hymn books only gave names of familiar tunes with texts.
Later music leaders wanted to eliminate the monotony by introducing new tunes. But first, they had to teach people to read music. Early singing-school books began with sections of music fundamentals. Whether people in the sporadic schools actually learned to sight read, or learned the songs as they sang them from a leader who could read wasn’t recorded. The presence of a few in a community who could sing from printed notes was enough to introduce variety into the repertoire.
Lowell Mason took music training into the public schools in Boston in 1838, [3] and in 1864 he published the first graded series of music books in this country. [4] As schools grew from one-room multi-purpose buildings into elementary and secondary schools, the number of levels expanded from Mason’s three.
The first school collections, like Pat’s Pick in Michigan, [5] resembled the community songsters published during and after World War I. [6] They relied on public domain material including Stephen Foster and Civil War songs, religious works like "Shall We Gather at the River," rounds, and British tunes like "Comin’ thro’ the Rye" and "Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes." Henry Pattengill believed:
"Songs for youth should be cheery, lively, and catchy. Let there be much singing by rote. Sing for the fun of it. Teach the good old songs by heart. Sing for opening, sing for closing, sing between meals." [7]
The textbook industry developed to support school boards. It was only a matter of time before it offered series with unique books for each elementary-school grade. Some early ones in The Progressive Music Series were organized to introduce elements of music like "Melodies in the Major Scale; the Quarter-Note Beat." [8]
Many of the lyrics were written specifically for the books to European folk tunes. They didn’t completely abandon the community song repertoire. A collection edited by the Progressive Music team in 1932 included a section of "Assembly and Community Songs" in addition to the pedagogical ones. [9]
After World War II, public school singing books contained even more specially composed songs, leavened with songs children already knew like "Grand Old Duke of York" [10] and "Old MacDonald Had a Farm." [11] Lilla Bell Pitts encouraged the use of folk material [12] like "Donkey Riding," but did not use folk melodies for the original texts. [13] Community songs were not included except for Christmas carols and some religious items. [14]
In the 1960s, publishers were criticized because their texts were bland and ignored the contributions of women, African Americans, and other cultural groups. Textbook editors responded by expanding their pool of songs.
Eunice Boardman and Beth Landis had issued a fourth grade book in 1966 [15] that contained 105 songs. [16] Only 13 came from African Americans, Africans, Arabs, Asians, or Spanish-speaking countries. They revised the book in 1971, keeping the basic format, but changing the 116 songs so 39 came from previously underrepresented groups. [17]
Still, there were none that were identified as African American. Instead, five were described as "Spirituals" in the headnotes seen by students. [18] "Kumbaya" was introduced as one of the four African songs. [19] While the women added Native American songs, they dropped the only Irish song and had nothing from four other large immigrant groups: Poles, Italians, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans. [20]
In the 1970s, school districts started cutting their budgets for music. Currently, music educators think they can justify music classes if they imitate science courses and provide a rigorous curriculum. In the 1990s, the National Association of Music Educators developed standards that defined "the knowledge, skills, and understanding that all students should acquire in the arts." [21]
It no longer was enough to know how to sing or play an instrument. Now the well-trained child was expected to improvise, compose, analyze and describe what he or she heard, and understand "music in relation to history and culture." [22]
The version of "Kumbaya" that appeared in the Boardman and Landis singing book had an illustration that showed six children, three males, three females. Three had dark skins. One white girl was blond, the second was brunette, and the white boy had red hair. The caption read: "This song comes from Africa. People everywhere enjoy singing it."
The song was included in a section of "Music from Far Away." The editors suggested teachers ask their nine-year-old students to find Africa on a map. They assumed the children would already know it was important because the "ancestors of many Americans came from Africa."
Having placed the song in its cultural context, elementary school music teachers were expected to explain "kumbaya" meant "come by here" and recognize it as a "song of worship" like the previously mentioned "Rocka My Soul." The latter was described as a "rousing spiritual" that "expresses feelings of well-being and joy." [23]
Boardman and Landis suggested that once children knew the song, teachers could go farther and discuss how their students should "sing this song to communicate the feelings expressed in the words." This was supposed to lead to an introduction of concept of dynamics and phrasing, with variations in crescendos-decrescendo patterns in each line.
Next students were given more information on finding a home tone and recognizing a key. They were asked to translate the "Kumbaya" tune into numbers: 1 3 5 5 5 6 6 5. They could also play the chords in the book on their autoharps, sing along to a piano accompaniment, or listen to an a capella baritone recording.
Credits
"African Folk Song." No publishing credit was given.
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: no notes given
Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: four-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 3/4
Tempo: slowly
Key Signature: no sharps or flats
Autoharp Chords: C F G G7
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: one syllable to one note, except for final "Lord." A descant was provided with the piano accompaniment, if the teacher wanted to explore harmony with "Kumbaya."
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: the piano played the melody with the right hand and chords with the left. The chords sounded at the beginning of each measure and each phrase. The final line had chords for every beat.
Notes on Performers
Boardman earned her music degrees from Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, Columbia Teacher’s College, and the University of Illinois. She taught music in Iowa public schools before becoming a university professor. [24]
Landis earned her music degrees from the universities of Denver and Michigan. She later became music director for the Riverside, California, public schools. [25] Sam Hinton remembered she staged an annual sixth-grade sing where all the schools in the district sang a "stirring arrangement of the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’" that was "augmented by a section of bass voices borrowed from the music department on the Riverside Campus of the University of California, with an added flourish of trumpets from the brass section of the U C Riverside band." [26]
Availability
Book: "Kum Ba Yah." 34 and 236 in Exploring Music 4. Edited by Eunice Boardman and Beth Landis. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971 teacher’s edition.
End Notes
1. See the posts for 21 September 2017 - 1 October 2017 or click on the "Learning Music" topic in the index at the right of the screen.
2. See the posts for 3 January 2018 - 27 January 2018 or click on the "Lullabies" topic in the index at the right of the screen.
3. Wikipedia. "Lowell Mason."
4. Lowell Mason. The Song-Garden. Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1864.
5. Henry R. Pattengill. Pat’s Pick. Lansing: Henry R. Pattengill, 1905. When I was doing research on camp songs in the 1970s, several people told me they had used this when they were in school.
6. An example of a community songster was one edited by John Beattie, et al. The Golden Book of Favorite Songs. Minneapolis: Schmitt, Hall and McCreary, 1915. My sixth grade teach used this book in the 1955-1956 school year. It included more of the Scots, Irish, and English songs and fewer religious songs than Pat’s Pick.
7. Pattengill. Frontis page.
8. Horatio Parker, Osbourne McConathy, Edward Bailey Birge, and W. Otto Miessner. The Progressive Music Series. Book Two. Boston: Silver, Burdett and Company, 1920 edition.
9. Osbourne McConathy, W. Otto Miessner, Edward Bailey Birge, and Mabel E. Bray. The Music House: One-Book Course. New York: Silver Burdett Company, 1938 edition.
10. John W. Beattie, Josephine Wolverton, Grave V. Wilson, and Howad Hinga. The American Singer. New York: The American Book Company, 1954. Book 3 At the time Beattie edited The Golden Book he was music supervisor for the Grand Rapids, Michigan, public schools. When he edited this book, he had retired from Northwestern University’s School of Music.
11. Lilla Bell Pitts, Mabelle Glenn, Lorrain E. Watters, and Louis G. Wersen. Our Singing World. Boston: Ginn and Company, 1959 edition. Grade 3, Singing and Rhyming.
12. Brian Shifflet. "A History of Ten Influential Women in Music Education 1885-1997." MMus. Bowling Green State University, 2007. 33, 34. Most of his information came from Gerald L. Blanchard. "Lilla Belle Pitts: Her life and Contributions to Music Education." EdD dissertation. Brigham Young University, 1966.
13. Pitts.
14. Pitts. Also, Beattie, The American Singer.
15. Eunice Boardman and Beth Landis. Exploring Music 4. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966 teacher’s edition.
16. They included many more pieces of music in their introductions to classical music. I only included pieces with words that were meant to be sung.
17. Many of the international songs also appeared in songbooks published by Lynn Rohrbough’s Cooperative Recreation Service in Delaware, Ohio.
18. The spiritual kept from the 1966 edition was "My Lord What a Morning." Several of the spirituals added in 1971 came from camp meetings and were not uniquely African American. They included "This Little Light of Mine," "Rocka My Soul," "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," and "Trouble in Mind."
19. The 1966 African song was the white’s "Marching to Pretoria." The other new African songs in 1971 were a "Congo Lullaby" and "Laboring Song."
20. The 1971 book included the Jamaican "Banana Boat Song" popularized by Harry Belafonte. There was one Mexican song in 1966, and two more in 1971.
22. National Association for Music Education website. Quoted by Brandon K. McDannald. "A Comparative Summary of Content and Integration of Technological Resources in Six Beginning Band Methods." MA thesis. University of Central Missouri, May 2012.
22. "MENC: The National Association for Music Education and the Nine National Music Education Standards." Its website.
23. Boardman, 1971. 4.
24. "Eunice Boardman Papers, 1942-1997." University of Illinois library website.
25. "Mu Phi Epsilon Foundation Receives Large Gifts." Mu Phi Epsilon, The Triangle 101:14:Spring 2007.
26. Sam Hinton. "A Naturalist in Show Business." April 2001. University of California San Diego library website.
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