 Contents:
Melodious Accord Receives NYSCA Grant
Here's To You!
Editorial
January In New York
The View From Here
The Song Of Poetry
Comments After Sings
For Treble Voices
Home Page
The News Stand
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Melodious Accord Receives NYSCA Grant
The New York State Council on the Arts has awarded Melodious Accord, Inc. a generous grant in support of A Family Reunion, the latest recording in The Alice Parker Recording Project. Alice gives her perspective on the process of that recording in her editorial on page 3. We are most grateful to the Council for their support of our ongoing Recording Project and we appreciate their commitment to the support of the arts in general.
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Here's To You!
Each year at this time we like to acknowledge publicly the generosity of all the individuals who have contributed to MELODIOUS ACCORD during that year, and 2003 was a year in which you have been particularly loyal to the mission of MELODIOUS ACCORD . Our donor list includes over 200 names from across the country and we are especially pleased that some of you have chosen to honor others through your gift to MELODIOUS ACCORD.
In an economic time when non-profit organizations struggle for support, you have been there for us and continue to provide the primary financial foundation for all our various endeavors. This past year we were also fortunate to receive grants from the Aaron Copland Music Fund and the New York State Council on the Arts. Added to our individual contributions, this has made it possible for us to make two more recordings for the Alice Parker Recording Project. Our experience with A Family Reunion has spurred us forward with the hope of recording a second opera this fall. The Ponder Heart, based on the novella by Eudora Welty, will be an even bigger project than A Family Reunion, but what wonderful text and melodies to work with. We think this would be an exciting way to lead into our 20th year as an organization!
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Editorial
Recording "A Family Reunion"
The Great-Aunts welcome the arriving families to an outdoor picnic spot somewhere in these United States, sometime between 1850 and the present. The Young Couple bring their baby, the disorganized family centers around three chattering daughters, the organized family marches in to Work, for the Night is Coming, and finally Grandfather arrives, so all can eat. They remember long-ago times, join in a square dance, and celebrate their togetherness with Home, Sweet Home and two wonderful Spirituals. This is a 'back-yard opera', in one act (about one hour), based on songs found in sources published between 1820 and 1850. It has been performed by church groups in Oklahoma and Pennsylvania, colleges in Minnesota and Virginia, high schools in Missouri and Florida, and other community ensembles. There are twelve solo roles, ten instrumentalists, and two choruses of adults and children, respectively.
I've always thought it would make a wonderful Hallmark Special for Thanksgiving, but that hasn't happened. We hope that recording it will bring not only delightful listening but also more performances. For those who value our heritage of folk songs like Billy Boy and Sally Goodin, 'home' songs like Long, Long Ago, Stephen Foster's Some Folks, and dance tunes like Weevily Wheat, these bring back a vanished era when people really did 'sing together and eat together, as families do.'
The decision to record this shortest of my four operas set in motion a complex series of events that stretched over six months. First were the business details: where and when to record, negotiating with contractors for singers and players, and fixing details with the recording engineer. That's relatively straightforward compared to my task of preparing the scores. I wrote the work in 1975, partially supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and since then have conducted it about twelve times. Each performance is some-what different, and changes have been made: I need to decide which ones to keep. I need to rethink it as it is listened-to but not seen, and make discreet cuts. It's amazing how long that takes -- and how expensive it is to print new scores so that the changes are clear.
Next comes work on the full score and parts. These also need a lot of cleaning up: there are some numbers that need new orchestration, and several that need adjusting to cuts made in the choral scores. Since the engineer will be following the score closely, he needs to see exactly what each instrument is doing; and his score and mine need to agree. More printing! And checking the parts is one of the most concentrated tasks: if there is any variance from the full score, it means wasted, expensive rehearsal time.
A month in advance, I talk over all the solos with the contractor, and assign the roles. My wonderful Musicians of Melodious Accord have all the voice types needed -- we mail them their scores for advance study. I've already talked with the conductor of the Children's Choir and sent them their music. Trying to decide which music to record at each session almost defeats me: each number has a different combination of voices and instruments and there seems to be no way to do it efficiently. We end up with all the children (and singers and players) at the first session, and a mix of solos, choruses and dialogue at the other two.
We record at one of our favorite spots: James Chapel at Union Theological Seminary. Since the school is not in session, it's nice and quiet -- until we hear jack-hammers in the next room. Horrors! The authorities are contacted, and finally the reconstruction stops until we are finished. The first session feels like a cast of millions: there are many more children than I'd expected, plus all their parents and some siblings. Quiet! This is also my first meeting with the instrumentalists: I've learned to trust the contractor, and these players are excellent. The whole group is patient as we fix the microphone placement and make tests of loud and soft. Then the actual recording goes quite smoothly, and the time races by. The young singers are amazingly professional, and we get finished just within the time limit.
At the second session, we tackle the arriving and leaving scenes, which call for complex patterns of different groups at the solo microphones. Have we achieved the sonic illusion of groups coming and going? Listen to the CD when it comes out, and let us know. The singers are beginning to grow into their roles, and the different 'families' take on more color. The players enter into the fun and are wonderfully relaxed in coping with last-minute requests. There is much to accomplish this day: we do it, and then find the next day that the final mopping-up is easy. We go our separate ways with good feelings -- and maybe a year from now I'll learn what we've accomplished.
There's a huge elation in working with professionals, and in the recording process which allows us to correct mistakes immediately. My main focus as conductor is the over-arching line, the sense of immediacy that entices the listener into the song. My recording engineer is the one who calls for the small splices that supply a missing consonant, or obliterate an outside noise. Our collaboration on the editing process is always a pleasure, but slow in getting finished because of our complicated schedules. So don't count the weeks or even months until it comes out -- but come out it will, and then you, too, can be a member of this singing Family.
Alice Parker
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January in New York
Five Fellows returned to a different kind of Reunion this year. Since there was no concert with rehearsals, there were two full days for discussion and score study. We looked at the structure of the Bach Jesu, Meine Freude and the Poulenc Gloria, which led to lively talk on many varied aspects of choral music. The time together, sharing meals and conversation, was very rewarding, and we'll want to open up this Retreat to a wider group in the years ahead.
More than one hundred people braved the cold winds and icy streets to attend the SING on Sunday afternoon, as we honored Martin Luther King, Jr. with Spirituals led by Pamela Warrick-Smith and Alice Parker. Also present at Middle Collegiate Church were the Jerriese Johnson East Village Gospel Choir, whose gifted singers ignited the sanctuary with several rhythmic songs.
If you would be interested in participating in "January in New York," contact us through kholt@melodiousaccord.org.
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The View From Here
Winter Waters
I'd forgotten how the brook looks when its ice cover is melting. The snowy surface begins to develop holes through which black water can be seen; then the holes enlarge and become ringed with the yellowish mush of melting snow. If the warm weather continues, it takes only a day or two for the cover to be gone, and we're in the beginning of the spring flood.
But it's much too early, now in February, to be thinking of spring. It's much easier to recall the January just past, the coldest in living memory. There was day after day of not only sub-freezing but sub-zero weather, with unfailing weekend storms that tied up traffic, school trips, winter sports, church (we sat and sang with our coats on in our difficult-to-heat sanctuary).and most socializing. But it takes more than snow, ice and fog to stop my intrepid neighbors, and we've all survived thus far.
But back to the streams: I've never seen them so transformed. A thick icy crust had formed over Singing Brook and the Chickley and Deerfield Rivers, of an incredible pale green color, with only intermittent glimpses of flowing water beneath. This was in turn covered by about a foot of fresh snow, turning all these natural waterways into sparkling, tree-lined highways, level and wide, with no hint of the stones and rapids beneath. These were indistinguishable from the meadows on either side, so that our landscape looked eerily different, bereft of flowing water. Salmon Falls, on the Deerfield, was frozen in mid-spate for its entire width, as if touched by magic. When the first thaw came, the ice began to break up as in the arctic: glaciers calving into the flow. And ice dams formed, backed up by long stretches of pulverized chunks, forming a Martian landscape.
Winter water shows up in another place -- icicles hanging from the eaves of our houses. These present a splendid display, tempered only by the realization that it's escaping heat that causes them, and thus the most lavish displays are in the least efficient dwellings. But no one would wish them gone when the full moon catches them of a cold night, lighting them with an almost too-theatrical blue sheen. The master electrician is at work always on these cold nights: stars blazing, the moon announcing its arrival between the trees, then reflected full in the fields of ice. One awakens in the night to find the house filled with light, and the woods outside transformed by diagonal blue tree-shadows. Is this truly dark New England? Or am I on a stage set for a winter ballet?
I finally took down the Christmas lights last week -- they saw me through six weeks of the shortest days, and now in the lengthening afternoons I can see, but not yet feel, the slow turning of the seasons. Green is a long way off: there are six weeks still of winter water, teasing us by its alternate presence and absence. I wouldn't wish it any other way.
Alice Parker
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The Song Of Poetry
Hilton Als, in a New Yorker article, writes:
When I asked (Derek) Walcott about the use of free verse in poetry, he was disdainful. "What's free about it?" he said. "As if the self is enough to make a poem. What makes a poem is the discipline inherent in making a poem. Trying to fit feelings in the requisite number of syllables and lines, disciplining one's feeling."
In an earlier conversation, he had told me, "The concept of song has gone out of contemporary poetry for the time being, and has been out of contemporary poetry for a long while. All those attributes, like rhyme, complexity, or rigidity of meter, have gone. If music goes out of language, then you are in bad trouble."
from "The Islander, Derek Walcott's Caribbean epic."
The New Yorker, Feb. 9, 2004. P.42
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Comments after SINGS
"When I read in the paper that you would be leading a hymn-sing, I called my friend Becky and said, 'Do you want to do something uplifting Friday morning?' With the blast of Michigan winter weather we had all week we were not certain until we started out whether or not we'd make it, but we did, and even though the hymn-sing was considerably shorter than we'd expected, it was worth every minute, for our spirits were truly uplifted."
Marilyn Unruh, Niles, MI
"Thank you for the simplicity and beauty of your SING.
In an age of over-the-top everything, it was a great joy to see you lead us in Swing Low with pure gestures of humble confidence."
Nick Page, Boston, MA
"Singing with ears and hearts instead of eyes and minds."
Hal Peterson, Union, WV
"You totally changed my way of looking at traditional hymns."
Janice Scudder, Portland, OR
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For Treble Voices
Here are some Alice Parker works for treble voices and instruments that you may not be familiar with:
Commentaries (1978) for two choruses with full orchestra
(SSA/SSAA), interweaving the poetry of Emily Dickinson and folk songs; on rental from Hinshaw. 40"
Earth, Sky, Spirit (1986) for SSA with full orchestra, based on Native American texts, premiered by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, R. Shaw conducting; on rental from ECS. 20"
Alaskan Totems (2001) for SA with fl, ob, cl, vc, perc (or piano), five poems by Sheila Nickerson based on Tlingit folklore, on rental from Alice Parker Music Co. 15"
Whole Earth Songs (1992) for SA with piano, on light poetry by Alice Parker about recycling, on rental from Alice Parker Music Co. 13"
Women on the Plains (1988) for SSA with piano, on Canadian folksongs, available from Treble Clef Publishers #117-8-9. 9"
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© March 2004 MELODIOUS ACCORD, INC.
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The Melodious Accord Newsletter is published three times a year, reaching 4000 musicians in the United States and Canada.
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