Our Story
Melodious Accord, Inc. began at Singing Brook Farm in the hills of western Massachusetts in the summer of 1984. Alice Parker and a small group of friends gathered to lay out goals and make plans for establishing a small not-for-profit corporation dedicated to bringing together composers, performers, and listeners in the creation and re-creation of music.
The name expresses our deeply held beliefs in melody, in the possibility of accord rather than discord, and the combination, what happens in the lives of people who sing together. It comes from verse 2 of a setting of Psalm 100 by James Montgomery. Followers of Alice Parker’s music will recognize this as the text to the 4th movement of one of her most frequently performed works, the Melodious Accord cantata.
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O enter his gates with thanksgiving and song,
Your vow in his temple proclaim.
His praise with melodious accordance prolong,
And bless his adorable Name.
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Our familiar logo was designed for us in 1990 by R. O. Blechman, the illustrator and cartoonist whose wavy-line works are especially well known from their appearances on the cover of the New Yorker and the pages of the New York Times. The two bird-notes, singing to and for each other, express our philosophy of joy in melody, and the sharing of it.
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