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Choral Music
Choral Music can be broken down into two distinct categories. Music created for a functional purpose (sacred) and music created for artistic purposes. (secular.)
Choral music existed in the 18th and 19th centuries but was very different from the music of today. Most choral music was sung for religious purposes or was sung with just a melody line and very little accompaniment. Most choral music of this period was plain, monotonous and very uninspiring.
With the beginning of music education in universities in the 1800s, new technology, available resources and musical organizations such as the Stoughton Music Society (1786) and the Boston Handel and Haydn Society (1815) choral music expanded its reach and was available to more people into the late 19th century and into the 20th century. Also, in the late 19th century, fairs, conventions and choral competitions created opportunities for choral groups to perform their music and improve the quality of their sound.
The Beginnings of Music in America
The Puritans and other groups that immigrated to America for religious freedoms, had a very narrow focus when it came to music in general. Directed by religious rather than artistic reasons, the Puritans sang mostly hymns in unison without accompaniment. However, in the beginning of the colonial period, colonists focused on the basic necessities such as food, shelter and clothing, and as the people became more affluent and needed other distractions, music became more important to them. Once again, Psalm singing and other musical traditions from the European Reformation dominated the church music liturgy. Folk music was also sung for special occasions, but it was choral music in church that created the demand for choral singing. The choir was there to assist the congregation in hymns but also began to offer another more complex anthem for the choir to offer their own worship contributions.
The 18th Century
As we move into the 18th century, the New England colonies established themselves and created their own musical identities. Since they didn’t have the education and experiences of their European counterparts, the music wasn’t as sophisticated. They didn't have the advantage of having wealthy patrons commission works as in Europe and there were no musical families or musical prodigies. Composers began to create unique American sounds based on their own culture and experiences. Singing schools and singing teachers filled the need for more advanced singing and created music for churches and church choirs. Once again, sacred music was the primary focus but some secular music was created. Composers in New England were known as the First New England School or Yankee Tunesmiths. William Billings was a member of this group of composers. His music led to higher achievements in choral music and created a musical culture that has made today's music possible.
With the outbreak of the Civil War, choral music was not pursued and the birth of folk music took its place.
We will start our concert with a piece called America, My Home,
America, My Home (2015), is a compilation of two popular patriotic songs, “My Country ‘Tis Of Thee“(1831) and “America, The Beautiful“(1882). Samuel Francis Smith wrote the lyrics to “My Country, ‘Tis Of Thee” and set it to a familiar tune “God Save The King”. He desired to write a patriotic song for America evoking the history and landscape of the country. Katherine Lee Bates wrote the words to “America, The Beautiful “in 1882 following a visit to Pikes Peak in Colorado. Samuel Ward then set the poem to music in 1910. It quickly became one of the most popular patriotic songs of the time.
When Jesus Wept (1770) is one of the most famous and recognizable songs written by William Billings. This song is written in canon form, which means the same melody is sung by multiple voices. William Billings (1746-1800) is known as the “Father of American Choral Music” and first professional composer and was the first to write and publish choral works. He was a tanner by trade and a self-taught musician who was part of the First New England School or Yankee Tunesmiths. Billings style of composing included the use of fugues, open fifth cadences, unusual voice leading and the use of melody in all the parts. The music of Billings is probably the most sung from this musical time period.
American Folk Music
Folk music consists of many different types or genres of music, traditional music, traditional folk music, contemporary folk music, vernacular music, or roots music. The music is American, because even though it had its beginning in Europe, it used the American culture and people to change it into something unique to our country. American folk music is a broad category of music including bluegrass, gospel, old time music, jug bands, Appalachian folk, blues, Cajun and Native American music. Folk music, usually sung by repetition, speaks to the "ordinariness of life, " the relationships of ordinary people to music and the relationship of music to the lives of people over time.
We will sing a medley of three popular folk songs of the period that I am sure you will all recognize.
Americana, Folk Song Suite is a suite of three folk songs from the early to mid-1800s, “Shenandoah”, “Skip To My Lou” and “Sweet Betsy From Pike”. The origins of “Shenandoah” and “Skip To My Lou” are unknown because they were passed down from generation to generation in the oral tradition. “Shenandoah” was sung by fur traders on the Missouri River and possibly refers to the daughter of Oneida chief Shenandoah. The song “Skip To My Lou” is a pioneer song and dance and it is believed that “Lou” is Scottish for loo (love). It was popular in pioneer, settler and the Appalachian communities. “Sweet Betsy From Pike”, attributed to John A. Stone, is a song from the California Gold Rush and describes the journey from Pike County, Missouri to California. The song's lyrics are about Betty and her lover, Ike and their long hard journey across the country to California using humor to describe their westward migration. The song was popular in the California mining camps of the mid-1800s.
Shaker Hymn
Our next song will be a song that was unknown until it was used by another one of our composers today, Aaron Copland, in his ballet Appalachian Spring. It represents Shaker principles of communal living and has an upbeat, dance like rhythm. The song has become very popular and has been recorded numerous times, used in schools, presidential inaugurations and even funerals. Please enjoy...
The Gift To Be Simple (Shaker song, 1848) is a dance song written by Elder Joseph Brackett from Maine. It is a worship song that speaks to a simpler lifestyle, free from distractions and filled with hope of finding the “valley of love and delight”.
Stephen Foster
Foster was considered to be the "Father of American Music" as opposed to Billings who was the "Father of American Choral Music," the distinction being that Billings only wrote for church choirs and never wrote a "popular" song. Foster on the other hand wrote over 200 songs, including "Oh Susanna," "Camptown Races," "Old Folks At Home" or ("Swanee River"), "Jeanie With The Light Brown Hair," "Beautiful Dreamer" and our selection "My Old Kentucky Home." Many of Foster's songs are still popular today. Although there was a period where Foster's songs were used in Minstrel Shows that were popular at the time, he was not a proponent of that type of trashy and offensive lyrics and sought to use words in his songs that would be better for more refined people. His output of Minstrel songs declined after the mid 1800s, and he wrote more songs that were primarily for use in a private home. Foster's music had Southern themes to them, but it was said he never lived in the South, visited it only once and lived in Pennsylvania. His family had roots in Kentucky but Foster himself only heard about the home there from his siblings.
My Old Kentucky Home (1853), one of the most popular ballads by composer Steven Foster, (1826-1864) was purportedly written as an anti-slavery song with the lyrics making a statement about the suffering of slaves separated from their families. In his autobiography, Frederick Douglass wrote “the song awakens sympathies for the slave, in which anti-slavery principles take root, grow and flourish.” It has been sung as the state song of Kentucky since 1928 and at the Kentucky Derby since 1930. The songs original lyrics included derogatory terms and were modified by the Kentucky General Assembly in 1986 to reflect the current social morals.
Spirituals
This genre of music originated with African Americans and consisted of music that was from the people and cultures with the experience of being held in bondage and being slaves. The genre comprised of work songs, plantation songs that evolved into the blues and gospel songs used in church. Their songs described the hard life they lived as an enslaved people and their hope for a better life for themselves and their children. The songs sometime contained "hidden" meanings that would describe paths for escape or other messages of hope that would not have been understood by their captors. The purpose of the songs was to create hope, provide encouragement to each other and build a sense of community for themselves as they probably came from different parts of Africa and didn't share personal experiences.
We will sing a traditional Spiritual representing music of the period.
My Lord What A Mornin’ (mid-1800s) is a traditional African American spiritual from the pre-civil war period. The origin of the song is unknown but was sung as a call and response song, that was most likely written by free, Black congregations in the North. The arrangement we will sing is by Harry T. Burleigh (1866-1949), a Black musician and arranger, who wanted to preserve the music he heard growing up. We will be singing this as he arranged it using dialect from that time.
Since we are singing songs spanning over 250 years of this country, we would be terribly remiss if we did not sing a piece from this genre of music. Also, if you look at the history of music in America, it really begins with the “melting pot” of the cultures that make up this country. From the Western European influence in the beginning, to the music and cultures of African American and Caribbean peoples in the late 1700s to Spirituals, Gospel, Jazz, Ragtime, Blues and even Rock and Roll.
Singing a spiritual authentically means singing it the way it was intended to be sung or as the arranger wrote it. In Harry T. Burleigh’s (1866-1949) “My Lord, What A Mornin’”, he wrote the dialect into the arrangement because he was transcribing the music as he heard it. I chose this spiritual and this arranger, because Burleigh was one of the first African American composers, an arranger of spirituals, and a famous baritone singer in a New York Episcopal Church. He was also instrumental in influencing Anton Dvorak for his “New World Symphony” by singing spirituals to him and compiling spirituals in his 1916 publication called “Jubilee Songs of the United States of America”. In his book, he wrote “My desire is to preserve them (the spirituals) that belong to modern methods of tonal progression without robbing the melodies of their racial flavor.” This is why he wrote them with the African American dialect intact.
First, let’s discuss the dialect. There are several reasons for the dialect that you hear being sung in spirituals. The earliest spirituals were songs sung in the fields for encouragement and for the enslaved people to give each other hope. These spirituals eventually made their way into their places of worship. Because these people came from several different places in Africa and the Caribbean, not only could they not communicate with their captors, but they also could not communicate with each other. Forced to learn English from people with a southern accent, they also had to deal with limitations from their own languages. For example, there is something call a “TH Stop” that created an issue for them to say words with a TH sound. So “the” becomes an easier “d” sound “de”. The letter “g” is removed as well as “r’s”. Also sounds were changed to remove harsh letters to make them more fluid, e.g. “that” to “das”, or “this” to “tis”. This was a way to remove the harsher sounds of the English language and make it sound more like their native language. The 1800 census reflects that “ninety percent of the African American population was concentrated in the southeastern region of the United States”. According to scholar Felicia Barber, professor of music at Yale University, “three major languages, and or dialects were commonly spoken among African Americans: 1) Louisiana Creole; 2) Gullah/Geechee languages of North and South Carolina to Jacksonville, FL.; and 3) African American English dialect. These three languages appear in published African American spirituals”.
Now let’s discuss the appropriateness of a choir, especially a predominantly white choir with white directors, singing an African American spiritual. According to arranger, composer and Temple University professor Rollo Dilworth, “cultural misappropriation or “objectionable cultural appropriation” occurs when "members of one culture (outsiders) take for their own, or their own use, creations belonging to members of another culture (insiders)”. Dilworth states “if the dialect is in the arrangement…use it.” He also says, “use the dialect in an informed way, not mockery.” He suggests that directors should use the dialect to tell the story and be authentic to the culture. Another director, Anton Armstrong of St. Olaf University says that singing spirituals authentically speaks to the “faith, hope and relief from pain” and allows for the “humanity of the spirituals.” He says directors “need to pay homage to the music and the people” and that using dialect is “the seasoning” in the music. Finally, Dilworth says, “I feel that it’s so important that my singers not just have a one-dimensional choral experience, they need to learn about how music in other countries and other traditions is performed.” He is more concerned with a subtler kind of disrespect saying, “sometimes there isn’t as much care taken with music…regarding it as not important, not as sophisticated, so they don’t need to treat it in the same way as they would treat Bach, for example.”
Below is a link to a webinar on this specific topic entitled Spiritual Roundtable featuring Anton Armstrong of St. Olaf University, Andre Thomas of Florida State University, Eileen Guenther, author of “In Their Own Words: Slave Life and the Power of Spirituals.” This is a 57-minute video, but if you have the time to view it, I think you will find it to be a great resource from some very qualified people on the subject.
https://youtu.be/0yeiGNRnpMM?si=UxHcVoq9rW0HINgG
Bring A Little Water, Sylvie (mid 1800s) is attributed to Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter, a blues and folk song singer from the 1930s but has also been attributed to an African American work song from the mid-1800s. The story reflects a man in the field calling to his wife, Sylvie, asking her to bring him something to drink because he has been working and is thirsty. The song’s theme is about hard labor in the work camps and uses rhythm and call and response to create synchrony among the workers.
We will close our first half with a song by Irving Berlin (1888-1989). Berlin was a Russian-born American composer and a songwriter that has written a large part of the "American Song Book." Some of Berlin's songs have become popular and are still sung today. He started his career by writing "Alexander's Ragtime Band," and continued writing such hits as "Easter Parade," "Puttin' On The Ritz," "Cheek To Cheek," and "White Christmas" to name a few and the two that we will sing today, "God Bless America" and "Blue Skies."
God Bless America (1918) is an American patriotic song written by Irving Berlin in 1918 and revised in 1938. Written as a prayer, this song was very personal to Berlin and was written as an expression of gratitude to a country that took him in as a Russian immigrant. It was popularized by Kate Smith in her radio shows.
Blue Skies (1926) is another popular song of over 1,500 songs written by Irving Berlin. It is said that he wrote it after the birth of his first daughter to showcase his love of his wife and new baby girl. The lyrics “Blue days, all of them gone, nothing but blue skies, from now on” perfectly capture his sentiment.
Stomp Your Foot (1952) was written by composer Aaron Copland (1900-1990), who was known as the “Dean of American Music.” Copland's music evokes the American landscape and pioneer spirit. Copland is best known for his orchestral works like "Appalachian Spring," "Fanfare For The Common Man," "Billy The Kid," and "Rodeo."
"Stomp Your Foot" was written for a choral square dance scene and closing first act number in his opera “The Tender Land”. The opera is the story of a Midwest family in the depression era, and the coming of age of the opera’s main character, Laurie. Copland wrote the opera after viewing photographs from the depression and reading a poem by James Agee, “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.” The song, “Stomp Your Foot,” in the context of the opera portrays a social get together and is meant to show a sense of community. My interpretation of the middle section, and that of other directors who have directed this piece, is that Copeland is using these lyrics for the women to make fun of the men. Reading the lyrics, the women sing “men must labor to be happy, plowing fields and planting rows.” Then they say “ladies love a life that’s easy, ……” as well as a lot of other tasks. The men respond with “Ladies love their fine amusement……,” showing that they really do not know (or understand) all the things the women really do. The way I want to have this section come across is that the women are singing in a high pitched, bright sound and using facial expressions making fun of the men. When the women list all the tasks that they do compared to the few tasks the men do, you can see how imbalanced the individual responsibilities are. The other thing to remember is that in 1935, this would have been an accurate representation of farm life in the Midwest, showing the roles of men in the field and women in the home. So, while I agree if this opera was set in the present time, it would most definitely be misogynistic and inappropriate, if we look at it at the time it was written, it is historically accurate and appropriate.
Modern Music from Today
We begin singing selections that are from the modern era of music. A time where composers look back and take inspiration from texts written by authors of the past. This music can include multi-part harmonies, sometimes six and eight part close harmonies, complex rhythms and lush melodies. The composers use the music to evoke the story of the text by creating word paintings using dynamics, inflection, choral emphasis and the shaping of the musical phrases.
Sure On This Shining Night (2005) is a musical setting of another of James Agee’s poems. Morten Lauridson (b. 1943) set the poem to music of our arrangement in 2005, which was also first set to music by Samuel Barber in 1940. The text comes from Agee’s poem “Description of Elysium,” in which he writes about hope, despair and the wanderings of man between life and death…shining nights and star-made shadows. Lauridson is an American composer and teacher at USC Thornton for 52 years until his retirement in 2019. He was named as an "American Choral Master" by the National Endowment for the Arts and recieved the National Medal of Arts from President George W. Bush in 2007. His most famous choral piece is "Lux Aeterna" and is taken from a Latin sacred setting.
Finally, women in choral music
Women's contribution to the world of music was always eclipsed by male composers and was always frowned upon. Whether it was classical music or choral, there were very few women composers and women were always discouraged from becoming professional musicians. It wasn't until the late 20th century that women were taken seriously. Women choral composers are now a major part of the American choral community, and their music is being sung by choirs of all kinds. Women have also become directors and conductors of major orchestras and choirs. We will be singing a song from Elaine Hagenberg, one of those up-and-coming women composers.
O Love (2020) is a reimagined choral ballad by Elaine Hagenberg with text by George Matheson from his 1882 hymn “O Love That Will Not Let Me Go.” The hymn is a story of heartbreak and finding faith amid personal tragedy. Hagenberg uses her faith as inspiration for her pieces and her lush melodies and harmony take the listener on a journey from heartache to hope.
To Sit And Dream (2022) is a musical setting by Rosephanye Powell of a 1926 poem by Langston Hughes. The poem speaks to dreams, a new world and the power of hope and transformation in our problem world. Powell sets the mood in a dream-like musical setting, deftly using jazz rhythms, dissonance and harmonies to represent Hughes’ dream of a new world. Rosephanye Powell is an American choral composer, singer and professor of music at Auburn University. Her unique style of music draws from African American influences using melodies, rhythms and vocal textures.
The Seal Lullaby (2005) is from an 1893 story by Rudyard Kipling, “The White Seal,” Eric Whitacre wrote the music in 2005 for a possible movie. Listen to the slow swells of the sea and the rocking of a mother holding her child. Whitacre is a modern choral composer who has reinvigorated choral music with his multi-part music and harmonies. Whitacre resisted singing in choirs and wanted to become a rock star in his early years. He finally joined a choir in college and was quoted as saying "In my entire life I had seen in black and white, and suddenly everything was in shocking Technicolor. It was the most transformative experience I've ever had—in that single moment, hearing dissonance and harmony, and people singing...". At the time, he didn't read music but decided to change his college major and graduated with a bachelor's degree in music composition. He is credited with creating the first virtual choir during the recent pandemic and it included over 17, 000 voices from over 120 countries.
We conclude our celebration of 250 years of American choral music by singing a dramatic and powerful song from 1861. Our song is an arrangement by Peter Wilhousky which provides a powerful setting, evoking strong feelings of patriotism using choral dynamics and is a perfect ending of our tribute to 250 years of American Choral Music.
Battle Hymn Of The Republic (1861) with lyrics by Julie Ward Howe and music by William Steffe is originally from an abolitionist song called “John Brown’s Body”. Howe created new lyrics to the melody that reflected her ideas of the battle between the north and the south.
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