One of my favorite Alice Parker pieces is her arrangement of “Shenandoah.”
This week I’m recommending some favorite Alice Parker arrangements and compositions from across her fruitful 6-decade career writing choral music.
Today: Shenandoah (link to publisher site)
Genre: American Folk Song
Voicing: TTBB with guitar or piano
Is there any more archetypal folk song than Shenandoah? A recent search on J.W. Pepper revealed more than 200 available settings from virtually every choral arranger you can think of. And yet, I don’t know of one that better captures the emotion of the piece than the Parker-Shaw arrangement. It was released as part of their Sea Shanties album, though sea shanty might not be what comes to mind when you first think of Shenandoah.
That’s the key to unlocking the piece and Parker’s setting, though. It’s yearning in musical form, longing for a home that’s far away. It’s a lullaby of a shanty, and you can imagine it sung, accompanied by the waves rocking a boat at anchor.
The setting is long for a choral arrangement – over 4 minutes, closer to 5 depending on tempo. It requires deep attention to tell its story. And despite the challenges, it sings incredibly well, reads easily, and features a beautiful tenor solo. It’s published with piano accompaniment that can fairly easily be translated to guitar, and I advise it: the piece comes to life with guitar in a way it simply can’t with piano. It’s integral to the story. (I might be able to help you find a notated guitar accompaniment…)
Alice Parker was often hilarious, always brilliant, but also completely unafraid to be earnest; it’s a rare commodity in a culture built on irony. That makes it an incredibly powerful piece to program, especially for a tenor-bass ensemble.
Video: The Rockford Aces (2024) with Brian Morris, guitar
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.