One of my favorite Alice Parker pieces is her arrangement of “Vive L’Amour.”
This week I’m recommending some favorite Alice Parker arrangements and compositions from across her fruitful 6-decade career writing choral music.
Today: Vive L’Amour (link to publisher site)
Genre: Folk Song
Voicing: TTBB A cappella
This piece is a tour de force! Unison singing in the perfect key, exploring the full range of comfortable TTBB singers, brilliant linear writing (check out the resultant harmony of in the two-part lines in verse 3), comedy, and more. The piece is an absolute standard of the TTBB repertoire and it stands up.
I programmed this arrangement this year after my students sang another setting of the tune with a 7-12 combined choir. At first hesitant to be singing the “same” song, they quickly came around and for some it was their favorite piece. The reason, of course, is the writing. The Parker/Shaw writing is so logical, fun to sing, and compelling that it inspired better and better performances from my students.
Video: Here’s my 2011-12 Rockford Aces performing it in Cincinnati at the 2012 World Choir Games.
A final performance practice note. I knew Alice well enough to state with full confidence that her core belief was that only 5-10% of what she envisioned could make it to the page. She anticipated – she expected – that choral musicians would use her score as a starting point for a rich interpretation, and she was bored with performances that used the score as the endpoint rather than the beginning. You must have strong musical instincts and understanding of the tradition, but you must go beyond the score.