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July 2010
Vol. 25 No. 3
Contents
Time, Opera and Everyday Life
The View From Here
Alice Parker’s Melodious Accord Hymnal
debuts in Birmingham, AL
Music in the Czech Republic
From the Mail Box
January in New York:
Save These Dates!
The 2010 Melodious Accord Fellowship Program
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TIME, OPERA AND EVERYDAY LIFE
Editorial
In September, 1982, twelve performances of my opera The Ponder Heart took place at the New Stage Theatre in Jackson, MS. Based on a short novel by Eudora Welty, Miss Edna Earle Ponder tells of life in tiny Clay, Mississippi, and the comic vicissitudes of her Uncle Daniel. Now, a quarter-century later, it will receive its second presentation in a small church in Charlemont, Massachusetts,by the Musicians of Melodious Accord in an abbreviated concert version. In all the flurry of deciding what to cut, entering the manuscript into the computer, casting, etc., my mind has been ‘pondering’ the many levels of time existing concurrently in this venture.
First, there’s chronological time. 1982 seems a long time ago in my life-span: I’ve acquired grand-children, Eudora Welty has died, and the political world has undergone many changes. But the moment we enter the opera, we’re in the 1930’s, in a town where whites and blacks, rich and poor, innocents and schemers exist in a television-less culture. We meet Miss Edna Earle and Uncle Daniel, both in their fifties, the last of the richest family in the region – very different from the usual young, romantic leads. Uncle Daniel is a kind of ‘holy innocent’, who lives a charmed life: a friend to all, he has never had to cope with either love or money. These disastrous encounters form the plot.
When I’m conducting the music, I’m enmeshed in concentric circles of time. I am me, in 2010, recreating the 1930’s in songs that can only exist in time: tempo, duration, meter. But that doesn’t begin to take into account the emotional time conjured up. I remember the shock I felt when I clocked an aria I had just written that felt very long – and it lasted less than a minute.
Moreover, I’m interacting with characters who live in their own individual time: their age, and their relationship to the others in the community. The opera itself spans about five years of time. In conversation with me, Eudora herself said that the time Bonnie Dee is away is indefinite. I should have written ‘after cotton-picking’ instead of counting years,” she said. We were both dismayed to see the costumers for the production searching for clothes of 1937 as well as 1932. Their great find was a tiny antiquated shoe-store from which they bought all the stock! And, because I recalled that, I remember the women struggling into laced-up corsets, so the dresses would fit properly. Ah, the mysteries of time and memory.
Memory and time: is there anything that doesn’t shift in that space? Which thought leads me back to everyday life. There really is no past and future: there is only ‘now’, the eternal instant that seems to pass away, but doesn’t. I suppose it’s natural that in my eighty-fifth year I should be pondering (again) the nature of time – right now it seems to me like the core sample that geologists take, boring deep into the earth for layered evidence of past epochs. There’s only this moment – but it stretches deep below and high above the ‘now’, uniting past and future in memories, associations, hopes, perhaps revealing a growing understanding of lasting values and the lessening influence of the transitory.
Time: we’re in it and out of it at the same moment. Think of me, trying to keep my balance on that core, that ‘now’, dug deep into a whirling globe, at the mercy of both time and space. Thank goodness for music, which shapes time into beauty.
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THE VIEW FROM HERE
This summer is really different – there almost isn’t any view! I’m completely enclosed in green. Each tree, plant and flower has twice as many leaves and blossoms as usual, and I can’t see the mountains or the brook through this curtain. came earlier than I ever remember: in April we had wonderful warm weather for almost a week. Then May reversed the equation, with cold and windy days, with the usual fear of frost on the apple blossoms and lilacs. But they came through in fine shape, and lasted a long time in the cool days.Today the early-morning sun is waking the daylilies along the roadside. In my garden, parsley is ten inches high, early tomatoes are two inches thick, and the pole beans are beginning to climb up the tipi of branches that looms over them. Even my hopeful pumpkin plants are spreading out – and as for the lawn it’s almost hopeless. Six inches growth in one week! How can anyone keep up with that? It began with the blessed crocuses coming up under and through the snow; then masses of daffodils (Wordsworth would have rejoiced!), forsythia (why is that first yellow so violently bright?), fragrant hyacinths and tulips. Now the field flowers have taken over, turning whole meadows into the yellow of buttercups, white of daisy and Queen Anne’s Lace, blue of violets. Even the walk in the woods I so enjoy, with its occasional views of the brook tumbling down its rocky path, is changed: one has to work to find a clear picture, pushing small branches out of the way. Needless to say, I’m loving the flourish and abandon which Mother Nature is lavishing on us. What the magic combination of warmth and cool, light and dark, rain and sun that causes this fecundity? Each year follows its own pattern, responding to the changing stimuli that the day brings. We live in the midst of this mysterious process, part of and subject to the universal laws. How can we respond but with gratitude and praise?
---Alice Parker
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ALICE PARKER’S MELODIOUS ACCORD HYMNAL DEBUTS IN BIRMINGHAM, AL
Hundreds of hymnodists from across the United States and Canada met July 11-15 at the annual meeting of The Hymn Society in the US and Canada in Birmingham, AL where Alice Parker’s Melodious Accord Hymnal was introduced to an appreciative audience of hymn composers, poets, church musicians, educators, and singers.
This new Hymnal contains 150 tunes composed and/or set by Alice Parker. Many are her own settings of texts ranging from Biblical texts to contemporary poets. Intended for ‘choirs and adventurous congregations’, the hymns include many titles familiar to those who have sung them in Parker-Shaw arrangements.
The style of the hymnal is uniquely ‘Alice’. As she says in her Preface: Each page is set up to give the pertinent information needed to perform the music well. There are mood-sonority indicators and metronome markings; style hints and breath marks . . The ending of each tune shows how to return to the next verse.”
There are historical, geographical, stylistic and mood indices, as well as the familiar first-line and tune-name listings. She concludes: “The intent is that singing in church should take its proper place in the broad stream of musical culture. . . We can make wonderful music in our sanctuaries.”
Available now on the Melodious Accord website:
www.melodiousaccord org
For multiple copies please contact us directly at: store@melodiousaccord.org
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MUSIC IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC
Alice shared with us a brochure, Czech Music, published by the Tourism Bureau of the Czech Republic where she recently vacationed with her family. The brief adapted section of the brochure below reveals the proud history of music and music education in this tiny republic that would fit 122 times into the area of the United States. Are there lessons to be learned from the birthplace of Mahler, Dvorák, Smetana, and Janáček? Is this a possible goal for us? Think about it.
The Czech lands have long been recognized as among the most musical of the European nations, and are frequently referred to as the Conservatory of Europe. Since the Middle Ages music has permeated the everyday lives of the Czech people and in the 18th century, the popular saying “Every Czech—a musician” emerged. Since that time music lessons have become part of general education in schools. Apart from the church milieu, musicians established town and military bands under the patronage of societies promoting domestic performance of music. Virtually every town and village throughout the country boasts a remarkable musical history. In addition to singing, every village teacher, known as a cantor [from the word cantare—to sing] was able to play various instruments, compose music, conduct singers and choirs, teach music theory and give music lessons.Music was considered a part of general education and at least one lesson a day had to be taught at schools.
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FROM THE MAIL BOX
After receiving the Sampler: “What a delight! I first went through it singing each tune . . . then played through them all and looked at texts (Watts bears up well!) Now I am eager to sing them with a group. . . . I love your many indices – especially the one on musical styles – first reducing each to a one-word description but expanding/clarifying in the Introduction. What a good idea!”
Mary Oyer, IN
I can’t tell you how much my choir and I love your Hymnal Sampler. It is fabulous. We are working our way through it (so far we’ve sung ten), introducing the congregation to the hymns. They are always such a great marriage of words to music and tune to harmony . . .”
Beth Neville, VA
“Last year a friend told me how much she missed four-part hymn singing in her ‘Praise Music’ church, and I suggested that she read Melodious Accord: Good Singing in Church, and start her own group. Today she was excited to tell me that she has formed such a group which meets at her home on Sunday afternoons. Alice’s book has been a great help and inspiration.’ Maybe the “old” will become the “new” for these worshipers! ”
Marian Thomas, KS
At a Conference} “You spoke about the natural following of a solo voice in new hymn singing, rather than the organ. We immediately implemented this. Now I play one verse, the minister sings verse one, then all sing verse one to the end. It is magic. They all join in as if they’d been singing it for years. So simple, so brilliant. Thank you.
Karen Schuessler, ONT
JANUARY IN NEW YORK:
SAVE THESE DATES!
Following the success of last year’s Score Study based on Hymns, we are expanding this program to five full days from Monday January 17th (Martin Luther King Day) to Friday January 21st. Our text will be The Melodious Accord Hymnal and the class will include discussions of hymn-writing (both tunes and texts), historical and stylistic analysis, song-leading, worship planning and congregational involvement.
Composers and poets, organists and choir directors, song leaders, worship planners and hymn singers will find this a stimulating and rewarding week.
For more information, contact www.melodiousaccord.org
THE 2010 MELODIOUS ACCORD
FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM
Interested in study with Alice Parker?
Visit our website: www.melodiousaccord.org for
information and details on 2010 programs.
Copyright 2010
Melodious Accord, Inc.
All rights reserved
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Send requests to
96 Middle Road
Hawley, MA 01339
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