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January 31, 2006
Alice Parker
Joanna: The next composer I'm studying is Alice Parker. I knew her back from Covenant days, from singing her arrangements of shape-note hymns in chorale. Back then, I knew very little (until my class in hymnology) about shape-note hymns. Her arrangements were incredibly haunting. "What Wondrous Love is This" and "Hark I Hear the Harps Eternal" reduced me to tears more than once.
Amazing things I've discovered about her in the past few days:
*She studied composition as an undergraduate, but rejected the atonal (dissonant and difficult) aesthetic of her time (very gutsy!). Instead, she got a master's degree in choral conducting, and then began arranging tunes for Robert Shaw. Then she derived her own musical language (modal and contrapuntal) from her experience in arranging folk music and hymns, wanting to use a musical language that could be instantly comprehensible to many people. She says that her job isn't to "fit into" the twentieth-century (or into any century!), but to write what she hears as authentically as possible. I feel very inspired by her choice: as a composer, I've struggled with the aesthetics of complexity, atonality, and experimentation that are often idealized in the university system (one professor used to tell me to use the "three v's" more in my music: violence, volume, and velocity). It just isn't me ! I've been in a compositional slump for a couple of years now, but now she's inspired me to find some alternate ways of expressing myself through composition.
*She didn't see raising childred as a detriment to her career, but as an opportunity to fine-tune her craft through work on smaller projects.
*She has an incredible approach to hymnody: by studying the historical context of the hymns and understanding the multitudinous styles found in ordinary hymnals, people can get away from bland singing styles. For example, she teaches people to bring out the fluidity of chant based hymns, while emphasizing the dance basis of many folk hymns.
*She wrote several operas, including Singer's Glen, a historical reenactment of a shape-note tunebook compiler's life (the opera I'll focus on in this chapter). Music to tell the history of music, very cool!
*She's 80 years old and still active traveling and teaching seminars on hymnody!
dissertation | By Tim and Jo | 01:30 PM
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Comments
Cool!
Love these peaks into your diss! keep 'em coming!
Interesting about incorporating a musical language from her experience with folk/hymn tradition. Makes me thing about the ubiquity of chant in the polyphonic tradition. (though I know they're completely different...)
Posted by: Jeannette at January 31, 2006 03:17 PM
Yay! It's nice to have an audience--sometimes writing it can be a lonely process. Yeah, I like your chant/polyphony analogy. It's like chant forms the basis for a new language (just like her arranging hymns created a basis for her language).
Posted by: Jo at January 31, 2006 03:35 PM