Comprehensive Musicianship in the Choral Rehearsal

Brian CrookChristopher Urban

FeaturingHope for Resolution

andSong for the Mira

April 22, 2009

Hope for Resolution

• High School Chorus• Written for SATB, Treble choir, Violin/Flute,

Soprano Saxophone, Percussion

• The intent of this project is to show how many ways there are to teach a single piece of music from a more holistic point of view. It is highly possible to conduct a project of this nature during the course of a regular marking period. What we hope is that students that would complete this project would gain a greater interest, not only in this piece, but also in seeking a deeper meaning in other pieces that he/she may encounter.

• There are three main components to this unit. We are rehearsing the piece for the concert, participating in a composition project in which the students will construct a piece in the same fashion as Hope for Resolution, and completing a supplementary project that can be used as a learning aid for the concert itself. The idea behind this is that the students can become more familiar with the form and the process of creating the piece that they are rehearsing through the act of composition and that they can create other creative extensions on the themes and history of the piece for display and use in the school choral concert. This is all in an effort to make them into more well-rounded musicians.

Selecting the PieceWhen considering the benefits of choosing a piece like this for a high school concert, we have turned to Patricia O’Toole’s, Shaping Sound Musicians for her analytical approach to music selection.

Uniqueness• What makes Hope for Resolution so unique is the use of two vastly different tunes that have been put together to

form one song and one message. The European chant style and South African anti-apartheid songs are culturally and musically different, but both share a common theme of hope and salvation, which is why they fit so well together.

Form• There is a great balance of repetition and contrast within the piece. The chant melody doesn’t change, but the lyrics

do, and eventually it changes from one unison line to three lines in canon. Once you move into the African part, we are introduced to a new melody that eventually layers the three-line canon on top of that, creating a unique texture.

Design• One of the most captivating elements of the design of this piece is the instrumental section betwixt the chant and

anti-apartheid song that gives the opportunity for the instrumentalists to do a bit of improvisation.

Unpredictability• Just when you think that you have heard it all, during the last choruses of the piece, another choir of high womens’

voices appears atop the other two choruses.

Depth• This piece, for many, elicits repeated hearings to really understand the emotional depth.

Consistency• The pieces follows a very natural progression from simple to complex, both in its construction,

and the emotions it elicits.

Orchestration/Voicing• With a chant like there is in the beginning of the piece, you have the opportunity to use a

treble ensemble, like a middle school choir or women’s choir. This could significantly effect the timbre and texture of the performance in a positive way.

Text• The text is very fitting for the event in which the piece was arranged for. They are both texts

of hope, faith and deliverance from oppression.

Transcendence• It is safe to say that this piece provides an emotional experience on its own, but it is also the

kind of piece that, with the proper supplementary performance aspects, can leave the audience in a state of reverence.

Listen

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jZfOGeOqy0&feature=related (good beginning)

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k22Z0wdthEo (foreign language)

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaRELWOqYV0&feature=related (audience participates)

September 2009

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Composition Project

• Students will create a pair of compositions to be performed together.

• Two students will write two different 4-line poems.

• Two students will take the poems and write two melodies, in C major and in 4/4 time.

• These songs will then be performed together, for the entire class, and possibly for the concert.

EXAMPLE

Now it’s your turn!

Photo Collage

Bulletin Board

Creating a Presentation for the concert

Program Notes

Facets Model of the Piece

Historical Presentation of Apartheid

European Chant Presentation

African Chant Presentation

Create a listening activity

Who Created It?• Hope for Resolution was

arranged by Paul Caldwell and Sean Ivory

• The two pieces that it includes are a traditional European Hymn and African chant, respectively.

• Both arrangers work together frequently and have many published works.

• Ivory works as a conductor/accompanist in Grand Rapids, MI for Calvin College and Forest Hills School.

• Caldwell is the Artistic Director for the Youth Choral Theatre in Chicago, IL.

When and Where was it created?

• Hope for Resolution: A Song for Mandela and de Klerk was written in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1998.

• It is published by earthsongs under The Anton Armstrong Choral Series.

Why and for whom was it created?

• Hope for Resolution was written for Nelson Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk.

• De Klerk was president of South Africa when Mandela was released and apartheid was outlawed.

• Hope for Resolution celebrates the strides that have been made toward the freedom of people, combining it with the hope of a future free from racism and segregation.

What is it’s subject?

• The subject of this piece is freedom – specifically hope that freedom will soon be for everyone, rather than the privileged few.

• It celebrates the old and the new, combining a centuries old hymn, Of the Father’s Love Begotten, with an African freedom chant.

• Both songs are traditional but from very different cultures.

What is being expressed?

• Hope for Resolution is “a celebration of diversity. The arrangement reflects our respect for divergent musical styles and points us toward our innate (though sometimes neglected) potential for peaceful coexistence.”

• It is truly about the expression of hope that tomorrow will be better, and ergo that we can make the world a better place.

• The combining of different styles into one, reflects the unity that can be achieved.

What techniques did its creator use to help us understand what is being expressed?

• Hope for Resolution uses two very different melodies, in two different languages.

• It is scored for flute/violin (traditional instruments) and soprano sax and percussion (non-traditional instruments)

• The use of a children’s choir and a mixed chorus also helps show diversity by age.

• Finally, the piano, which continues throughout, succeeds in bringing everything together into one whole.

What kind of structure or form does it have?

• The first half of the piece is devoted to Of the Father’s Love Begotten. It begins with a unison melody and then transforms into a three-part round.

• Next the African melody is introduced and sung by a mixed chorus.

• Finally the chant melody is placed on top of the African melody and everyone sings to the end.

What does it sound or look like?

• This piece builds from small to large. It starts out with a single melody accompanied by piano and ends with a full 8-part chorus with instruments.

• There is a joy that you can here in listening to Hope for Resolution. It literally gives you goose-bumps, and shows that we can achieve something greater than ourselves.

Photo Collage

Program NotesHope for Resolution was arranged by Paul Caldwell and Sean Ivory in 1998 by combining a European chant melody and a South African anti-apartheid song. It was written for Nelson Mandella and Frederik Willem de Klerk, the daring men that worked together to bring an end to apartheid in South Africa.

Sean Ivory (b. ), is currently the conductor of the Grand Rapids Symphony Youth Chorus in addition to being a choral educator at Forrest Hills Central High School. He is a graduate of Northwestern University and Michigan State. His choirs have toured all over the world. He has had several successful collaborations with Paul Caldwell, including Hope for Resolution.

Paul Caldwell (b. ), is serving as the Artistic Director of the Youth Choral Theatre of Chicago. Until recently, he was also the Music Director of the American Boychoir’s summer festival. His works have been recorded by prestigious choir from all around the world.

The piece is unique in the fact that it combines two very different musical styles from two very different eras, both centered around the idea of peace, hope and reverence.

Here is the text of the European chant:

Of the Father’s love begotten,E’er the worlds began to be.He is Alpha and Omega,He the source, the ending he. Of the things that are, that have been,And that future years shall see,Ever more and ever more. Oh, that birth, forever blessed,When the Virgin full of grace,By the Holy Ghost conceiving,Bare the saviour of our race. And the babe, the world’s redeemer,First revealed his sacred face,Ever more and ever more. O ye heights of heav’n adore him,Angel hosts his praises sing,Pow’rs, dominions bow before him,And extol our God and King. Let no tongue on earth be silent,Ev’ry voice in concert ring,Ever more and ever more.

Combined with the translated text of the anti-apartheid song: Nation do not cry.Jehovah will protect us.We will attain freedom.Jehovah will protect us.

Evaluation

• Teacher Evaluation – using a rubric with extensive comments

• Self-Evaluation – using scales and comments.

• Peer evaluation – using only comments

• For the composition assignment, the rubric will consist solely of teacher comments, rather than numerical grades. This allows the teacher and the student to concentrate on the aesthetic qualities of the composition without being tied to specific quantitative judgments.

Concert

• This concert will take us through the emotions post September 11th.

• We start with shock, and move through grief, patriotism, and so on, until we get to hope for the future.

• The end of the concert is Hope for Resolution signifying that hope and promise of tomorrow.

• A group of students is responsible for writing the program notes.

Help Lord! from Elijah Felix Mendelssohn

Lacrymosa W.A. Mozart

Over There! Irving Berlin

Do you hear the people sing? From Les Miserables Claude-Michel Schönberg

What’s Goin’ On? Marvin Gaye

arr. by Brian Crook

Hope for Resolution arr. by Paul Caldwell and Sean Ivory

Any questions???

Song for the Mira

• Song for the Mira is a Canadian folk song written in 1975 by Allister MacGillivray, about the Mira River in Nova Scotia. It is a slow moving river, about 34 miles long, and home to many boaters and vacationers who enjoy the scenery and the water. One of the most popular swimming spots on the Mira is Marion Bridge, mentioned in the refrain of the song.

Listen

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRbqRqMMUoQ

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Sz6_GTrmJM&feature=related

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nas9mnZjoHA&feature=related

Score Study

• Colors to indicate aspects of the score: time signature, texture, dynamics, etc.

• The students then use those colors to create a listening map that is related to all of the different elements of the piece.

Journal Questions

• Students are asked to respond to the following prompts at the end of classes.

• Some days there are prompts; other times it is simply a free write.

• Not all the questions specifically reference Song for the Mira; students will respond to other pieces that we are working on as well.

What emotion do you feel while singing/listening to Song for the Mira? Does it change? If so, where?

What musical elements create that emotion?

• The song starts out happy, but almost a little longingly. The person wants to be at the Mira again. It changes at the end, where the person is even more happy and now the longing is gone because he is going back to the Mira. The change in text is the main change of emotion, but perhaps the slowing down helps as well. There is a sort of contentedness with the end.

• Happy. At the end. It’s just different.

Describe the story of Song for the Mira? What can you relate it to in your own lives? Explain.

• I think Song for the Mira is about a young adult who has gone away from home, perhaps he is a businessman. And one night at a bar with friends this person is recounting stories about his home on the river. He tells about going fishing and hanging out with friends, the bonfires and the ghost stories they would tell, and how kind everyone is. He compares that to the cities and towns that he’s been in now for business and he wants to go home. So he tells everybody goodbye, wishes them luck, and sets out to go home again. After visiting my cousins on Long Island for two weeks in the summer, I was really missing the Adirondacks and was very happy to come home.

• There’s this guy and he sings about the places he’s been that he wants to return to, and at the end he does. I’m happy to come home from school each day.

Which of the pieces is your favorite and why? Which is your least favorite and why?

What do we need the most work on in Song for the Mira? What is the best

about it?

Write your own story in the lyrical style of Song for the Mira.

Concert

• Pieces from around the world.

• This could very easily combine with a band or orchestra concert program featuring folk songs or international pieces.

• This concert assembles pieces from a variety of cultures and places around the globe, with Song for the Mira representing Canada.

Resources

• All rubrics from http://www.rcampus.com

Any questions???