Lift Every Voice And Sing – Hymn of Hope

It had been a mere 35 years since the end of the Civil War (1865) and of slavery in the United States when James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938), then 29 years old in 1900, wrote the words to “Lift Every Voice And Sing.” Two years later, his brother John Rosamond Johnson (1873-1954) composed the music of the Hymn.

I don’t remember hearing “Lift Every Voice And Sing” even once until my adulthood. Since then, I have become aware of this Hymn’s important message and promise of hope. I understand why the song has been increasingly embraced by many Folk as our unofficial National Hymn (not, Anthem). Several years ago, I first conceived to arrange this hymn for electronic instruments. While reviewing and researching other arrangements, I encountered Roland Carter’s arrangement for Choir and Piano and a performance of it, with him conducting the Winston-Salem State University (WSSU) Choir. I am rarely as emotionally moved by a piece of music, its arrangement or performance as I was by this one.

I thought, “How can I create anything as powerful as THAT?” and avoided arranging the piece, periodically revisiting WSSU Choir’s performance. In 2020, I contacted Dr. Carter to tell him how moving his arrangement and choir’s performance had been to me. I also shared that I previously intended to arrange the piece — when I found his magnificent arrangement and performance. He most graciously accepted my compliment and encouraged me to arrange the hymn. Still, I balked at the notion that I would contribute anything more meaningful.

Meanwhile, I continue to dream of accompanying a real choir, and performing this work. Will travel…

This project was born from that desire — to create an accompaniment for this hymn. Without an actual choir to record, I experimented with synthesizer vocoders to potentially create choir sounds with speech, but I judged the result as robotic and inappropriate. I decided to display the hymn’s words in synchronization with its performance and ordered sheet-music of the Carter arrangement for future reference.

Last year, because of having had success with recordings in the past, combining synthesized orchestra and vocal “programs” for previous years’ selection(s) from “The Messiah,” I began a project to orchestrate the Carter arrangement. I proposed to complete my arrangement in commemoration of Juneteenth, 2022.

Instead of “playing” each part, I entered notes into the “recording” in a manner that might be accomplished by a person with significant physical disabilities. Obviously, I was not accustomed to this workflow and it was tedious, taking much more time than if I initially played each part to record it. I could see that I would not finish by my deadline, having barely made a dent in the project by June 19, and so I put the project away again.

This year, prior to Juneteenth, I resumed work on it in earnest. I separated soprano, alto, tenor, and bass vocal parts and treated each voice distinctly, with respect to variations in timbre, pitch, and panning. Additionally, I treated the choral parts separately from the orchestral parts, even though they double the same notes. Each have their own volumes, articulations and expression. The choral portions of the composite sound are panned right (R) in stereo. Whereas, the orchestral violins, violas, cellos, and basses are left (L) in the stereo field. Finally, the piano sits towards the left (L) and is a little forward in my spatial imaging.

I customized individual programming/settings of each instrument and recorded Synthogy Ivory American Steinway for piano, Yamaha Montage for choral synthesizer sounds, and Synful Orchestra for stringed-instrument sounds. The accompanying video production is another in which I use the macOS-only FotoMagico app, that has provided me with a useful tool for the particular video workflows (with, or without music) that I have been producing.