Alice Parker
A number of the selections on our current program have been composed or arranged by woman composers. The best-known of them, Alice Parker (born 1925), worked with Robert Shaw for many years, arranging familiar tunes from many traditions for choral performance. Though both names are usually listed as arrangers on their many joint publications, I once heard Mr. Shaw say that Ms. Parker did all the work; he just cleaned it up for performance. Her simple arrangement of the Gregorian melody O Come O Come Emmanuel is just right, in every respect: she invests this well-known, well-loved hymn with warmth and dignity through antiphonal use of the men’s and women’s sections of the choir, enriching it harmonically but never weighing down the crystalline character of the chant. I have sung many, many of her arrangements, and invariably find them to be this good— respectful, unobtrusive, a joy to sing.
Judith Weir
Judith Weir (born 1954), sets the plainsong Rorate caeli desuper (Drop down, ye heavens, from above). She begins with a simple fauxbourdon— the voices singing a perfect fourth apart, lending a distinctly medieval character to the piece. She then brings her setting forward several centuries by employing parallel thirds, evolving finally into a rich, 8-part climax before returning to something more akin to her language earlier in the piece. She departs further from her source material than Alice Parker does, but always with reference to the early source of the chant. Effectively, she presents a thousand years of European liturgical development in one short, inclusive setting of this Advent text; we sense the universal, ageless plea for salvation through her music, as well as through the words.
Elizabeth Poston
Elizabeth Poston (1905-1987), like Judith Weir, was English, but turns to early American shape note hymnody for inspiration in her anthem, Jesus Christ the Apple Tree. The angularity of her melody line, though not authentically pre-common practice (it is not, for instance, pentatonic, as many shape note tunes are), lends an overall impression of antiquity. One commentator on YouTube goes so far as to say the work is not original, rather a reworking of a pre-existent shape note tune, though I find no evidence for this elsewhere. Like Weir, she begins simply, adding harmonic complexity as she adds voices, then returning to unison (in canon) at the end. I find this piece more “composed” than the two preceding ones, more personal.
Undine Smith Moore
The fourth woman composer on our program, Undine Smith Moore (1904-1989), also excelled at arranging preexisting material— in her case, African American spirituals. Called the “Dean of Black Women Composers,” Ms. Moore was trained as a pianist and was active as a teacher throughout her career; it wasn’t until the 1950s that she discovered her knack for arranging of spirituals, which she transcribed as her mother sang them. An article by Helen Walker-Hill is quoted in a Wikipedia entry as stating, “[Moore’s] ‘black idiom’ was the use of additive and syncopated rhythms, scale structures with gaps, call and response antiphony, rich timbres, melody influenced by rhythm, the frequent use of the interval of the third and, less frequently, fourths ad fifths, non-homophonic textures, and the deliberate use of striking climax with almost unrestrained fullness.” I could not better describe the character of I Believe This Is Jesus, the piece Chorale will sing at our concert.