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…
Sheet Music for “Lift Every Voice And Sing” ordered from its Marvel Publisher.
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.
Yamaha Montage custom Program designed for use in “Lift Every Voice And Sing.”
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.
Edward MacDowell (1860 – 1908) was supported by his Mother and won an international scholarship to study in Europe. Accompanied by her, he left the United States to study in Paris at age 17.
He remained in Europe, composing and teaching for eleven years. There, he had a reported association with Liszt, who heard Edward and may have provided guidance and some sponsorship.
In 1884, MacDowell married an American student of his (Marian Griswold Nevins) while still teaching in Frankfurt. He returned to the States in 1888 and became quite popular and in much in demand as a concert pianist.
MacDowell was held in such esteem that he was commissioned to teach music at Columbia University, which hitherto had no music studies, and he founded the music-studies program there. Unfortunately, his tenure was marred by accusations against him that caused him to resign. In the aftermath his health, both mental and physical, suffered and he was struck by a horse-drawn cab in 1904. He never recovered. His wife proved to be a more than capable partner and eventually continued management of their foundation after he was no long able to do so because of his health.
Mrs. Katherine Jones first taught me this piece. It is likely that I learned it to play for the National Federation of Music Clubs yearly festival competition, probably around my ninth-grade year.
I later received coaching on this piece in August, 1966 or 1967 from my Cedar Lake, IN music-camp piano instructor, Ms. Dorothy Spaulding.
Finally, I played this piece again sometime around 1971 when I accompanied two choral organizations at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). For a time, it was customary that I played an interlude during costume changes in our UAH choral concerts and performances. This was one of the pieces I played to keep the natives from becoming restless.
A Polonaise has a characteristic “dotted” rhythm and is usually in a triple meter. This particular Polonaise is in 3/4 meter. Until I was researching to write this post, it had never occurred to me that the name, “Polonaise” has an association with Poland. It does, and is one of the traditional/national dances of Poland.
There are eleven additional pieces in MacDowell’s Op. 46 suite of “virtuoso” studies. The Polonaise is the last of the pieces and is the only one of the twelve with which I ever became familiar. It is probably a good thing that I never heard the term “virtuoso” when I was learning it — or, it might have slowed my learning, or not…
What great memories I have of recording each of these Christmas Songs and Carols!
Roberta Silva and I collaborated to record twenty-two (22) Christmas pieces during four Christmas Seasons. These recordings are featured in five years of my past Christmas recording projects, and more than one recording was incorporated into other collections and projects.
For this Christmas-Project (2022), I collected all twenty-two recordings together for the first time. The combined audio-program is slightly over sixty-three (63) minutes long. I extracted each of these from five CD’s made in years past. I thought I might find some volume tweaking, at least between years, necessary. However, I left audio levels as they were originally mastered by me.
Rather than to debate with myself about program-order, I decided to present the songs in their original order by project and year. There are two exceptions: First, the version of “The Little Drummer Boy” included here is one to which I added instrumentation and “generated” vocal-harmonies that were not part of the original arrangement. Second, because Roberta’s performance of “Some Children See Him” is to me so wonderful, and usually brings tears to my eyes — I positioned it as the concluding work of this collection.
We improvised all of these arrangements except for “In the Bleak Midwinter” and “Some Children See Him,” which were arranged by Dave Grusin. I transcribed those using good speakers and ears, a sharp pencil, music-manuscript-paper, and lots of erasers. These two pieces are both on James Taylor’s Christmas Album, for which Dave Grusin arranged several of my favorite selections.
I concatenated all the songs into a single 63-minute-long audio file. For the bitrate-curious, I rendered the mp3’s that were output, at a handful of bitrate settings from 32kbps (32,000 bits-per-second) to 320kbps. 128kbps is “normal” with higher bitrates carrying more audio content that is “left out” in lower bitrate rendering. You won’t want to listen for long to the lower bitrate renderings, but I include them for those who might be interested in an a/b comparison. Be sure to listen to the 320 kbps one, it is the best.
Click on the mp3 player’s arrow to play. Then, <Click> in, or drag the player’s control-bar to advance or rewind.
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