The Joy of Communal Song

Often in Master Chorus Eastside concerts I incorporate a few sing alongs.  We included a couple in our Simply Gershwin concert last weekend, and sing alongs play an especially strong role in our All-American Independence Celebration concerts just before the 4^th of July.  We’ve done this for years, and sometimes I am asked why.  After all, it’s quite unusual for sing alongs to be a part of a choral concert.

There are several reasons for inviting our audience to join us in communal singing, but I recently read an article in the April edition of Choral Journal that crystallized one particular aspect of this issue.  The article, Exploring Communal Song and Memory Through Historical Hymnody, asks: “Are we losing a culture of song?”  It’s a good question to ask.

There have been times and places in American history when communal singing was much more prevalent: in churches, schools, during Christmas, at revival meetings, frontier gatherings, parlors, any place where people met together to share work or worship or education or fun.  Tin Pan Alley for example, the training ground for George Gershwin and the source for the sing alongs in our concert, produced sheet music for amateurs to sing and play in their homes.  And sing them America did; an entire body of work was fostered that we Americans knew and sang together as a people, not just via Tin Pan Alley, but through churches (even the racially divided American church sang many of the same hymns) and schools as well.

These songs and hymns still exist today, but I fear they are fading.  The article mentions an eight-year-old girl who knows shocking pop-song lyrics but doesn’t know Silent Night.  Music making has become increasingly electronic, concertized, media-driven, powered by amplifiers, and microphone oriented.  More and more we sit and listen as others make music.  We have a wealth of music at our finger tips, we can download almost any song we want, but…but…but… what are we losing?  A phrase surfaced in this article, a chapter title from a book (by Gabe Huck) that really grabbed my attention: Surrounded by Music, Robbed of Song. 

Robbed of song; it’s a disturbing thought.  Is it true?  I don’t know for sure, but I hope not.  At our Independence shows we invite the audience to join us in songs such as Yankee Doodle, I’ve Been Working on the Railroad, Skip to My Lou, This Land is Your Land, and the audience always responds heartily.  At our Gershwin concert nearly everyone sang our Tin Pan Alley picks.

Perhaps all is not lost yet.  As long as we are singing together, there is hope.  So join in with the great Al Jolson and sing the Tin Pan Alley hit, By the Light of the Silvery Moon!  And invite your family to sing too!

Dr. Linda Gingrich

Artistic director and conductor

Master Chorus Eastside

Thoughts on the Music & Times of George Gershwin

"…true music must reflect the thought and aspirations of the people and time. My people are Americans. My time is today.”

            George Gershwin

What can be said about the infectiousness, the smoothness, the rhythm, of George Gershwin’s music that hasn’t already been said?  Oh, one can give the bare facts: born Jacob Gershvin in 1898 in Brooklyn to an immigrant Russian Jewish family, grew up in poverty, learned to play on his brother Ira’s piano; Tin Pan Alley song plugger, creator of musicals and pop songs (most with Ira as lyricist), operas, and orchestral works; died an untimely death in Hollywood at age 39 from a brain tumor.  But those are only facts, with little flesh on their bones.  The flesh is in the music and what it reveals about American culture, and about Gershwin himself.

Gershwin occupies two spheres as a musician: the writer of entertainment music, and the writer of serious music.  And the intersection of these two spheres hasn’t always been a comfortable one.  He was a gifted melodist, had a quick ear for improvisation, loved writing show tunes, suffered from a lack of compositional training, and clearly possessed a restless and inquisitive musical spirit.  During his lifetime he enjoyed great success as a Broadway composer, but critics were often baffled by his “serious” music; they never seemed to know how to classify it.  They couldn’t label it, and often panned it.  But Americans of all stripes loved it and continue to love it, maybe because it catches and echoes back to us our own restless, driving energy, immigrant roots, and desire to have it all.

Master Chorus Eastside’s May 19 concert spans almost the entire range of Gershwin’s music: choral arrangements of early Broadway hits such as Strike Up the Band and Someone to Watch Over Me as well as more mature tunes like Love is Here to Stay and I Got Rhythm; solo renditions of The Man I Love and Somebody Loves Me; dynamic selections from Porgy and Bess such as Summertime, It Ain’t Necessarily So, and I Got Plenty of Nuthin’; and most exciting of all, a choral arrangement, with solo piano, of Rhapsody in Blue.  And just to round things off and give the perspective of Gershwin’s times, we’ve included the solos of some of his Tin Pan Alley contemporaries: Harold Arlen, Fats Waller and Irving Berlin for example, like a diamond ringed by other valuable gems.

So kick back, whether at our concert or anywhere else, and enjoy the rhythms and melodies of George Gershwin, and hear his people—us—and his times—twentieth-century America—in its music.

Dr. Linda Gingrich

Artistic director and conductor

Master Chorus Eastside

The Artistry of the Gershwin Brothers II: Love Walked In

Several weeks ago I examined the artistry of the Gershwin brother’s Love is Here to Stay, one of the numbers in Master Chorus Eastside’s upcoming Simply Gershwin concert.  Here is another number MCE will perform in a choral arrangement, a lesser known one but just as beautiful and artful, Love Walked In.  The melody was written in 1930 but no lyrics were added until 1937, when the Gershwins were preparing the score for the film The Goldwyn Follies, shortly before George’s death from a brain tumor.  Seven years between tune and text, and yet they work together very, very well indeed.

The tune is simply constructed.  It’s actually the chorus with the verse left out, as so often happened with parlor and Tin Pan Alley songs and even many Broadway numbers.  It’s in two parts: the first part consists of two 4-bar phrases and an 8-bar phrase, and the second consists of two 4-bar phrases and a 10-bar phrase, all of which are exact or near exact repeats of one another.  But the genius lies in the interlacing of the lyrics, especially “love” and “one,” and the way the melody underscores their relationship.

Here is a rendition by the unforgettable Ella Fitzgerald.

Notice how the tune lingers caressingly on the first word, “Love,” and then moves upward in quarter notes on “walked right in,” as if striding into the room alongside love.  I’ll call it the striding motive.  Those quarter-note strides feel even more solid because they outline the tonic chord, or key, of the piece, a very stable chord.  Think of it as the home key, or chord; love walked into home.

The opening phrase repeats, complete with striding motive, but this time ascends even higher on “sunniest day”—how appropriate!—before arriving at the highest note so far on the word “One,” a mini-climax, followed by the striding motive once again, this time on that “magic moment” when Love walked in.  From that first “One” it gradually descends and relaxes over eight bars as the heart recognizes love’s wordless “hello.”

The opening phrase returns in part two, this time with “One look and I” as the signature word and striding motive.  This repeats insistently as the second phrase rises through the striding motive to the very same high note on “One” as at the mini-climax.  Is this the ultimate climax then?  Not quite, for it abruptly drops and then moves through the striding motive one last time to the highest note of all, a whole-step higher than the mini-climax, on the word “found.”  In a string of alliteration the first phrase “forgot” the past, the second phrase “found” its “future,” and now the third phrase “found” a whole new world.  These alliterative words tie the second half together, while the word “one” unites the entire piece, as does the striding motive that both “walked” and “looked.”  And of course the word “love” as well, for it repeats three times at the end in a kind of reverse striding motive as it “walks in” and settles down, once again at home.

Did Ira sense any of this, consciously or unconsciously, as he penned the lyrics?  Did George alter the tune in any way to fit Ira’s words?  I suspect they had worked together as a team for so long that they knew one another down to their toes, knew what would work with one another’s gifts.  All we really need do is sit back, listen, and savor that ineffable something called artistry.

Dr. Linda Gingrich

Artistic Director and Conductor

Master Chorus Eastside

Tin Pan Alley, Gershwin and Irving Berling

Master Chorus Eastside’s Simply Gershwin concert on May 19 focuses mainly on the music and poetry of George and Ira Gershwin, but it also includes tunes from some of his contemporaries, including those who were Tin Pan Alley musicians.

Tin Pan Alley occupied the place in turn-of-the-20^th-century musical America that the recording and media industry occupy today: a way to popularize music for the masses.  It was an actual place in New York—28^th Street between 5^th and 6^th Avenues—during an actual time—late 1800s through at least the 1930s—where an actual industry flourished—the music publishing business.  Today a plaque marks the area.

But it was much more than that; it was a symbol of American musical energy.  And it marked a cultural shift.  Because of Tin Pan Alley, publishers moved from producing sheet music mainly for professionals to producing for the burgeoning number of every-day Americans who took up piano playing after the Civil War.  They demanded music to play for pleasure, and publishers were happy to provide it.  And because popular styles ranged from blues to jazz to Broadway, Tin Pan Alley aided the mixing of African American music into the mainstream.

Companies contracted with composers and lyricists to write songs for popular consumption, and then hired song pluggers to promote those songs to publishers, producers, music stores, performers, and anyone else who might buy.  It is thought that the sound of all those pluggers pounding away all day on tinny pianos was the source of the name Tin Pan Alley.  George Gershwin became a song plugger at age 15 and scored his first national Tin Pan Alley hit at age 19 with Swanee.

The list of Tin Pan Alley composers is long and stellar: George M. Cohan, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Hoagy Carmichael, Scott Joplin, Fats Waller, to name a few; and of course the immensely successful Irving Berlin.

His biggest Tin Pan Alley hits include numbers we still sing today: Alexander’s Ragtime Band, God Bless America, and a little number called Blue Skies.  It first appeared in 1926 in a Broadway show, but it was apparently inspired by the birth of his daughter.  MCE will perform a choral arrangement that skips with giddy joy and indulges in some playful musical witticisms in the middle section.  Here it is performed by the Walt Whitman High School Chamber Singers.

Did you catch the quick little musical quotations in the scat-singing middle section?  If you can name them, add them to the comment box below!

Dr. Linda Gingrich

Artistic Director and Conductor

Master Chorus Eastside

The Artistry of the Gershwin Brothers: Love is Here to Stay

A recent conversation with a Master Chorus Eastside singer regarding a number in our upcoming May 19 Simply Gershwin concert set me pondering the consummate artistry of George and Ira Gershwin.  As we talked about one of their best known songs, Love is Here to Stay, I suddenly found myself laying out an analysis of the skillful interworking of music and poetry as if I had studied it in depth.  I hadn’t!  It was simply there, in the bones of the piece, and it quite unexpectedly rose to the surface, beautifully executed in a way that elevates it above the run-of-the-mill Broadway tune.

But first, here it is, sung by Johnny Mathis in his inimitable style.

Notice how the music expresses the unease conveyed in the opening lyrics; the world is an unpredictable and incomprehensible place, so the melody “capers” agitatedly, with repeated descending leaps, quick-changing, restless harmonies, and phrase endings that seem to hang questioningly in the air.  That is, until “we’ve got something permanent;” there the tune begins to steady, moving by step instead of leap, and a bright D major chord suddenly converges with “I mean in the way we care,” as if throwing a beam of light on the lyric.

And then comes the famous refrain, “It’s very clear,” and the melody arcs upward in optimism and then settles to rest in a simple, two-note inflection on “our love is here to stay,” a complete antithesis of the opening.  Phrases end with long-held whole notes, the harmonic rhythm slows its pace; and then that prolonged, immovable note on the word “stay”—delicious!

Whole notes disappear, downward trending tune and quickly passing chord changes return as the lyrics address the “passing fancies” of radio, telephone and movies (just think about the ongoing transformation of telephones and media in this last decade!), but still the melody moves serenely, by steps, not leaps, suggesting permanence in the face of an inconstant world.

This stability is underscored by the return to the opening bars of the refrain.  And then the “passing fancies” melody reappears, this time set to “the Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble,” the tune gradually sinks like collapsing rocks, and rapid harmonies slide downward,  tumble and crumble before our eyes.

“But…” and that word soars high in the air like a beacon of hope…”our love is here to stay,” and stay and stay with that satisfying long note and final chord rooted in the tonic key.

This is mature Gershwin, full of meaning and expressiveness in music and poetry.  It was the last piece the brothers wrote together because George died in 1937 shortly after writing the tune.  Savor its artistry.

 

Dr. Linda Gingrich

Artistic Director and Conductor

Master Chorus Eastside

Show Tunes: America's Art Songs?

In preparing the music for Master Chorus Eastside’s upcoming Simply Gershwin concert on May 19, I’ve been pondering the apparent disconnect in classical music between the European art song and American show tunes, Tin Pan Alley hits and parlor songs.  Some of these tunes clearly exist only for their entertainment value (not necessarily bad!) and only go skin deep, but others just as clearly achieve depths of expression, poetry and style that set them on a par with the best European art songs.  Could it be that the classical world is missing a bet when it overlooks these American gems?

I, like every other budding voice major, studied gobs of art songs, especially from that old standby, Twenty-Four Italian Songs and Arias.  How many of us have heard Caro mio ben massacred in student recitals?!  And yet it can be lovely when in the hands of an accomplished performer, such as Montserrat Caballe. This number is all about loving and receiving only scorn in return!

Art songs, whether Italian or German or French or whatever, are nearly always about love: requited, unrequited, accepted, rejected, longed for, delighted to be free of, you name it, they sing about it, with passion, lyricism, and sophistication.

Is that so different from, say, Jerome Kern’s Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man, or Harold Arlen’s Let’s Fall in Love, or George Gershwin’s Love Walked In?

This doesn’t begin to touch Bess, You Is My Woman Now, from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, or Kern’s Ol’ Man River from Showboat, or Bernstein’s Maria from West Side Story or Rogers and Hammerstein’s Oh What a Beautiful Mornin’ from Oklahoma.  They are so stunning, so obviously a cut above, and so wonderfully evocative of the American spirit that even though they hale from Broadway (even Porgy and Bess in the beginning), their place in the art song genre has long been accepted.  But I would argue that many other show and parlor tunes should be reexamined as legitimate art songs that capture the essence of the American soul.  I’ve watched the faces of many MCE members as we’ve prepared choral arrangements of some of these numbers.  This music speaks to us!

So enjoy a true classic right now: Ella Fitzgerald singing Gershwin’s I Got Rhythm.  If this isn’t art song, then nothing is!

Dr. Linda Gingrich

Artistic Director and Conductor

Master Chorus Eastside

The Vulgarian and the Choir

It’s not at all uncommon for singers and those who love singing in choirs to ponder what it is that makes the art of communal singing so magical.  Uniquely to singers, our bodies are our instruments, which has a tremendous effect on us psychically and physically, but to my knowledge few have followed this line of thinking very far.  Until recently, that is.  Just this week I came across Andrew Corsello’s article, The Vulgarian in the Choir Loft, in which he bares his soul, in almost poetic terms, regarding his newly acquired choir habit.  For a self-described vulgarian, he captures the unknown essence of singing with amazing perception, and even delicacy at times.  Perhaps it takes a vulgarian to really see it!  And it certainly takes a good writer to describe it.

He begins by painting a picture of himself as a true vulgarian, one who, as a child for example, pocketed change from the church collection plate.  A counselor once asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up.  His answer: a military dictator, “who spends his days ordering smarter, more attractive, more popular people to perform humiliating monkey tricks for his amusement.  All of it televised, of course.”  Her response? “Oh Andrew, you’ll never be a choirboy, will you?”

Apparently he easily carried this natural contrariness into adulthood, and it meshed quite well with his chosen career as a journalist.  But then one day the choirmaster of his church asked…no, compelled…him to join one of the church’s choirs, and it spurred a journey that surely resonates with every singer in the world, for he discovered that singing, and especially singing in a chorus, makes a difference in his life—in a way, makes him a choirboy.

He calls singing nakedness, “a far more fathomless form of nakedness than that achieved by the removal of clothes.” A piano remains a piano whether the player is happy or sad, but “when you are your own instrument, it gets very emotional…to do singing right, you have to get in touch with something deeply personal about yourself.  It is almost impossible…to lie when you sing.”

When Corsello asked his choir master why we sing what we sing, he replied, "It basically comes down to essences, our carnal and spiritual selves, and trying to touch what is outside the fleshy realm.”

And yet the fleshy realm is very active.  “Frequent singing tunes you to your physical aspect in a way that makes you think, strangely, My body was present all along and I never even knew it. There is…a sense of how physically unnatural one's life was prior to singing.”  I find that a remarkable statement.  I have sung since I can remember, as the most natural thing in the world.  I had no life prior to singing!

And so his choir has taught Corsello something about himself.  He has discovered “that I have spent the past three decades dedicating myself almost exclusively to solo pursuits… The ambition has always been for voice—not just to acquire it, but to impose it. In a way, my job is but a refined and slightly less violent version of my childhood fantasy of one-man dictatorship; a license to subvert whatever and whoever comes before me, including myself.”  And this has nudged him to look outward.

An extraordinary journey of self-discovery!  And all because he joined a choir.

The entire article can be found here.

The Vulgarian in the Choir Loft

If you sing in a choir, cherish the experience.  And go out and listen to other choirs.  Support this art that feeds us, whether observer or participant, on so many levels.

Dr. Linda Gingrich

Artistic Director and Conductor

Master Chorus Eastside