March, 2005
Volume 20, No. 2

Contents:

Developing Vocal Tone

Our Annual Thanks To Friends Of Melodious Accord

Study With Alice

The View From Here

Update On Fellows Programs

Polyphony Camp

From The Mailbox

Home Page
The News Stand

DEVELOPING VOCAL TONE
Editorial

My first contact with excellent choral singing came at age 16 when I attended a Summer Vocal Camp at Westminster Choir College. I loved the music and singing and teachers and being in the midst of a group that loved it too. But I found out that I was a very mediocre singer - I was singled out by John Finley Williamson himself as a 'typical teen age voice' - soft, breathy, no support, limited range. Over four summers at the one-week camp, I improved to the point of being able to do all his exercises - rapid scales and arpeggios over a wide range - but the voice, while free, was still about the size of a pinpoint.

I sang in different groups at college, but never wished to study voice: there were more important things to do. My next - or first - real audition came when I arrived in New York and tried out for the Collegiate Chorale. I didn't make it - "fine musicianship, but no tone." I asked Mr. Shaw if I could please sit in on rehearsals - he countered by saying he'd hear me himself to judge. So, I sang (in that minute voice) the Beethoven "Ich liebe dich" as he, two other chorus members, and the accompanist were dissolving in silent laughter. When I finished, he waited a moment, then said "Fantastic intonation" - and said I could come sing if I always sat in the back row and never intruded on his ears.

That was fine with me - I was the back corner alto, and learned a lot more about singing from his inventive warm-ups and the great music we were performing. I began working with some singers as accompanist/coach (for repertoire, not tone!) and hearing more and more what constituted a 'good' voice.

In the following years I married a wonderful baritone (most of the solos in the arrangements were written for him), and learned still more from accompanying him. Then, watching my children learn to sing was fascinating. They grew up with good singing around them all the time, and could echo almost anything they heard with unselfconscious abandon. I sang with Sunday School classes and with the Cub Scouts - wherever I was. And all this time I was working on the arrangements with Shaw, and getting to think more and more like a singer - being aware of breath, support, diction, and primarily the needs of the song.

How would this song want to sound? High or low? Rich or reedy? Young or old? Indoors or outdoors? Thinking of these different possibilities constantly enriched my understanding of the variety of sounds the human voice can produce - and in the attempt to make my voice embody them, quite without conscious effort

on my part, the voice began to grow.

I think the real catalyst was when I learned to 'line out' songs to a group. The ideal is to sing the phrase just as one would want to hear it in a wonderful performance (very communicative, lots of articulation, mood and color), and then to listen to the listeners' response. Did they get it? Not the first try, usually, so I would repeat the process until they finally realized that they had to listen to far more than the notes. The surprising discovery was that when my whole attention was on communicating the song - 'becoming' the song, in a way - my voice really began to flower, and I could enjoy listening to myself.

It's still no great shakes as a voice - but it can do honor to a song, and I do love the feeling of singing: of channeling my whole being into that stream of sound that can so affect the listener.

So - I have an alternative to voice lessons for people scared of the idea: learn from the songs. The song will teach you how the voice should sound - listen, imagine, and try it.

The more different songs you sing (and folk songs are the foundation), the more sounds you'll have at your disposal. If you are teaching, listen for idiomatic performance of the song, and lead with your own voice, not a keyboard. Don't dominate with a loud voice: actually, sing more softly, with a 'listening-singing' attitude. This promotes a light, flexible tone which can be wonderfully expressive. I'm convinced that's what released my voice. Such as it is!

Alice Parker

IT'S HERE! Alice Parker's Hand-Me-Down-Songs A collection of 35 songs for the young and the young at heart. Edited by James Heiks, with an introduction by Alice Parker and delightfully illustrated by Thomas B. Allen. Get your family singing together! Encourage singing in your schools and neighborhood. Available now from: MELODIOUS ACCORD, INC. P. O. Box 20801 Park West Station New York, NY 10025-1516 Or from our Online Catalog. $4.95 each plus shipping and handling.

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OUR ANNUAL THANKS TO FRIENDS OF MELODIOUS ACCORD

Once more we express our gratitude to all those who contributed to Melodious Accord during this past year and made it possible for us to bring you: Alice Parker in your neighborhood for a Work- shop or SING, Fellowship Programs for composers, song leaders, and other musicians, recordings such as our new release: O Sing the Glories, and the first book of Alice Parker's Hand-Me-Down-Songs.

From large awards by foundations and granting agencies, such as the New York State Council on the Arts who have recently awarded us a second grant in support of the Alice Parker Recording Project, to small individual gifts of $10, we are grateful to you all for your support.

Many, many thanks.

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Study with
Alice Parker

THE MELODIOUS ACCORD
FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM
Hawley, MA

For adventurous musicians who wish to expand their horizons:

Melodies and Arrangements: A mini-course in choral arranging based on techniques of analysis and recreation. For composers and arrangers who wish to increase their sensitivity to texts and tunes, and polish their techniques in working with great melodies.

May 16-22

Song Leading: for those wishing to foster communal singing in churches, schools and community groups. This is very different from 'choral conducting': it focuses on a love for and knowledge of true folksongs, hymns and spirituals. The leader learns to analyze and lead the songs in a way that enables others to join easily in com- municative singing.

June 6-12

Composer Workshop: for those wishing to share their work with a small, non-judgmental group. The focus is on setting texts and writing for voices, through daily assignments and discussions.

October 17-23

For further information, contact Kay Holt at 413-536-1753

or kay@aliceparker.com

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THE VIEW FROM HERE
Waiting

There's an expectancy in the air before a snowfall. I've been trying to determine what causes it. Is it air pressure? The combination of lowering sky and lack of wind? An absolute whiteness of sky and earth (previous snowfall)? Is it silence? Whatever it is, it's pervasive and persuasive, inviting attention, ever so quietly building expectation that is fulfilled when the first flakes begin to fall.

And the falling has incredible variation. Last week the flakes were so big they looked like golf balls. Right now, the temperature is about 30, and they are so small they're almost invisible - well on their way to turning into rain, which is the disappointing forecast. When the weather really means business, the air itself is almost white with the multiplicity of small flakes, and one has the sensation of being within a cloud of discrete atoms, falling, falling, falling.

In a gale, when the wind is added, there are incredible curves in the air - an updraft here, around the corner of the house there, sculpting ridges in the fields and great drifts in inconvenient locations. Here on the edge of the forest, it all stays remarkably white, even at the edge of the road, and I'm spared the gray mess that lines the town streets. The landscape is always changing: a tree trunk outlined, iced branches providing horizontal strokes to the verticals of the woods, a wind-swept meadow next to a huge drift. The brook itself is varied each day in changing patterns of ice and flow, with tumbled ice-sheets in odd, geometric, snow-covered shapes. Yesterday there was a twelve-foot long, foot-thick shelf at a sharp angle above a submerged rock. Tomorrow it will be gone.

My main company is a lively flock of chickadees, which visit often to feast on the sunflower seeds I provide. There's also a chipmunk who has discovered hog-heaven, and I have to chase him off with a door slam. He, however, keeps returning, and does deserve his fair share!

February at this latitude and altitude is itself an act of waiting. We hear rumors of buds pushing through soil farther south, but they won't come here for two months yet. Patience is needed - and the ability to discern and enjoy the tiny changes that will lead inexorably to spring. Blessed are they that shovel snow and feed the birds and wait!

Alice Parker

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UPDATE ON FELLOWS PROGRAMS

Two groups met last Fall here in Hawley. Two composers enjoyed an October week of listening, discussing and exploring: Andrew Bertoni from Oberlin, OH ("The Fellowship is absolutely essential to writing for the voice."), and Scott Solak from Washington DC ("I leave here anxious to put the lessons I have learned to use.")

A large group of Song Leaders convened in November: Rachel Allen, PA ("We breathed life into songs!"); *Mitzi Scott ("To learn is to change."), Taylor Davis ("Fundamental melody is often neglected."); and *Sid Davis from TX ("Refuel, refocus, relearn and unlearn as we sing together."); Eileen Heaton ("How to free myself to be 'in' the song rather than 'doing it'.") and Cullie Treichler, OR ("It's all about relationships. I didn't know I could improvise!"); and Pam Porter from Heath, MA ("It's about the meaning of our singing and how to bring it to life.") They practiced different styles of folksinging during the week, and then joined the local community in a delightful SING.

And the new/old group this year was January in New York, which convened back in 1989 as the first Fellowship Class, and was superseded by the Hawley programs in 1997. This year's session consisted of three days of score study (Bach, Haydn & Parker) with lots of discussion. Participants were: Sandra Gillette, MI; *David Bridges, TN; Laurie Mueller, PA; Carrie Finlayson, CT; Beverly Seng, VA; John Yarrington, TX; Ann Hudson, OH; Mark Ball, KS; and Eric Birk, NY.

(* = previous attendee)

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POLYPHONY CAMP

My treasured friend and colleague Anne Heider runs a summer program that deserves to be widely known and emulated. Here's her abbreviated description.

Polyphony Camp is a summer adult education program presented by Bella Voce "her professional chorus in Chicago". It's not about performance, but about sharing the experience of a cappella singing. About forty singers (SATB) meet once a week for five weeks, standing or sitting in a large circle, starting with rounds and progressing to 16th c. madrigals and motets. What I'm encouraging is the gentle art of listening while singing... What's remarkable is how quickly this random assemblage of singers begins to make truly beautiful music.

The dates this year are August 4 to September 1.

For more information, contact Anne at: aheider@bellavoce.org

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FROM THE MAILBOX

"Now I let the choirs sing by ear each rehearsal ...Let them imitate, harmonize and improvise...All

my rehearsals are more fun now that we sing without music for a portion of the time."

Nancy Grundahl, MN

"I told the congregation that we would use a very old method to learn a new hymn. Within minutes the entire group was joining in and loving the singing...Ah, the power of lining out!"

Anne Wheeler, AL

Several people responded to the Editorial
Musical Analysis: Discovering What's There.

"That's so dead-on close to what I have always done in my own music preparation...A remarkably clear way of describing the process."

Ara Berberian, TX.

"Right on, and what music making is all about...Just reading it is an inspiration."

Vance George, CA.

"It's the best brief statement on the importance of analysis for conductors I've seen...."shows" how form relates to composers' intended continuity of sound..."

Sam Young, TN.

"I teach an introductory course in Art and Music. . .I would love to distribute your article to my students."

Barbara S. Stone, IL.

Coming:
'O Sing the Glories'

Another recording will be released this spring by GIA: seventeen of Alice Parker's anthems commissioned over the past twenty-five years by church groups for many kinds of celebratory or memorial occasions. They are based on Old and New Testament verses, folk melodies and soaring poetry, and set for a wide range of choral sounds from a cappella madrigal to triumphant paeans of praise for voices, trumpet and organ. Watch for the first announcement of its release on our website at: www.melodiousaccord.org.

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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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