During
the holidays is a great time to look for new music for your chapter or
your quartet. Evergreen District of the barberhop Harmony Society has a huge collection legal music for you to select
from and order up to as many copies as we have stored. Download the
spreadsheets to see what we have waiting. There's a list of sheet music -
and also older portfolios and manual for you all to pick from.
Read through the titles (which also lists arrangers and number of legal copies) If you find titles that you’d like to have, send Ken Galloway an email listing the ones that you are interested in. He will reply and work out the details. Again, kengalloway@gorge.net
Note: Legal music can be given away to other singers, but it can not
be sold (which is tempting). The music has been donated by EVG Chapters
and some songs we have up to 100 clean, legal, copies.
And so, ...
I scanned and found nothing I want to order, since the Rose City Timberliner's Chorus maintains a similar library. We are currently filing lots of loose music into the four cabinets. After that, we can make a similar index. Maybe we'll offer a similar service and/or send the scores to the District to distribute.
• An Oxford comma walks into a bar where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.
• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.
• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.
• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.
• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”
• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.
• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.
• A question mark walks into a bar?
• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.
• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out -- we don't serve your type."
• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.
• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.
• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.
• A synonym strolls into a tavern.
• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.
• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.
• Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.
• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.
• An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.
• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.
• A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned a man with a glass eye named Ralph.
• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.
• A dyslexic walks into a bra.
• A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.
• A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.
• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.
• A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony.
Short answer: Nobody knows yet. Click here to help fund the answer.
Long answer:
There is lots of news crossing my desk from choral
and singing experts and not-so-experts about "safe singing distances" while we are amid the Covid-19 pandemic. It's all guesses, everything from 3 feet to 24 feet to "wear masks"
and "we can't wear masks" to "who cares" and "nothing is safe". Some
notable answers:
Stay home if ill. Fever is a sure indicator of illness
Wear a mask in public
Do not touch your face
Maintain 6' social distancing
Avoid crowds
Wash your hands often
and:
Ask volunteers at higher risk — those who are older, have underlying health conditions or are pregnant — to stay home as much as possible and take extra precautions to stay healthy.
Local cultural, civic and faith gatherings are allowed...
for up to 25 people
provided physical distancing can be in place.
Large gatherings and events are not possible until a
reliable treatment or prevention is available. As a result, these are
cancelled or significantly modified through at least September.
Since my groups and our audiences are "at risk" and often larger than 25, the rule is still "NOT YET" til we get real answers.
So, right now, what to do? The most optimistic answer is "No
singing together yet, until we find safe ways to do it." We might know
some ways soon, so cancelling meetings and
concerts still a few weeks off is
probably premature. If a county isn't open for meetings and concerts, and preventative methods are still unknown, events can and
should be cancelled, even "at the last minute". We can and do replace the
cancelled events with online meetings and choosing later dates.
And that's what we're doing, cancelling and altering our plans, one event and one rehearsal at a time. That's the best we know right now. I know we'll meet again some sunny day.
Because I can't help it. I've always been passionate about music and everything to do with it. Playing instruments, freely singing, composing and arranging new harmonies and melodies, working with ensembles, staging and presentation, and connecting to composers and players and audiences thrill me. I always am eager for more. Even when I'd best be resting, sometimes I am awake all night and day enjoying and creating ways to make music. I have no idea why I'm made this way."
As true as that is, it didn't satisfy the question WHY. It seems obsessed, emotional. and unreasonable. I had to dig deeper to find why an intelligent, balanced, thoughtful man would foster this consuming obsession in himself. What I sent more answers the question: "Why should EVERYONE be passionate about this field?"
I'm passionate about music
because it makes everybody involved better people. It's art,
communication, teamwork, beauty, improvement, cooperation, learning,
enjoyment, and even love, all in one experience.
Yes, that's true and I'm happy. Is that a good answer for you?
quotes "Oxford American, a Magazine of the South" in 2012. The article inspects recent recordings and the political, historical, and racial nuances of the old song. I'm more practical as a musician: I want to know "How does the song actually go so we can sing it as the author intended and the audience will like it?" Well, they're right: nobody quite knows how it goes.
Steven Foster wrote the words and tune in the late 1840's, but the sheet music publications of 1848 don't agree on the details of O Susanna's exact words or rhythms. Two sheets claim "oldest publication" in 1948. New York's C. Hold Jr. publication displays "Christy Minstrels" and "G.N. Christy" prominently. Baltimore's F.D. Benteen credits "The Ethiopian Serenaders" and "Wells" for singing and writing it. Music Publisher W.C. Peters of Cincinnati had known and worked with Stephen Foster before.
Stephen Foster isn't credited on any of them, so none gets preference.
Gosh, his manuscript would be priceless, but it's nowhere to be found yet. "Beautiful Dreamer" and "Old Black Joe", we've got the mss copied online, if you care to pay to peek at them.
Where the written versions differ, I can use original recordings, but not for O Susanna. The first well-known recording, made in 1925 by vaudeville performer
Arthur Fields, sounds familiar with skipping rhythms and a bright
bounce. He doesn't sing the rhythms consistently, but he includes all
four disaster-riddled verses with cheery delivery. So it does serve as an early popular example of how at least one fellow sung it and sold a lot of copies, but decades after Stephens death in 1864 doesn't really tell us why the song was so popular in the first place
But this isn't 1848, it's 2019. So the question becomes, "How do people like to hear and sing it now". To answer that, you do a survey of regular folks and what they recall of the song. After interviewing a half-dozen folks, I learned this:
~ Almost everyone knows of "Oh, Susanna" and heard it in elementary school.
~ Almost everyone sings it in a lively tempo and snappy rhythmms
~ Everybody sings the words "Oh!, Susanna" on the notes fa fa la la, ...
~ Nobody has heard it sung fa fa fa la (as most early editions write it.)
~ Almost everyone fumbles the words.
~ Almost everyone remembers "banjo on my knee"
~ But are unsure if it's "a banjo" or "my banjo". (It's "my" in the sheet music.)
~ A few mention the word isn't "going", it's "gwine" and important to keep.
~ Most know about "come from", "Lou'siana", and "Alabama"...
~ but not exactly where "I come from" or "I'm gwine to".
~ Early editions start "I come", but a few singers start with "Oh, I come..."
~ Most know about a verse about "It rained" "the weather". Many can sing parts it.
~ Some know about a verse about a "dream the other night". Few can sing parts of it.
~ Few heard of a verse about New Orleans, maybe. None could sing any of it.
~ No one knows anything about a verse "riding a telegraph".
Those tell what's familiar and wanted in a sing-along:
I come from Alabama with my banjo on my knee.
I'm gwine to Lou'siäna my true love for to see.
It rained all night the day I left, the weather it was dry,
The sun so hot I froze to death. Suzanna, don't you cry.
Oh, Suzanna, Oh don't you cry for me.
I come from Alabama with my banjo on my knee.
I had a dream the other night when ev'ry thing was still. I though I saw Suzänna a-comin' down the hill.
The buckwheat cake was in her mouth, a tear was in her eye.
I said "I'm comin' from the South. Suzanna, don't you cry."
Oh, Suzanna, Oh don't you cry for me.
I come from Alabama with my banjo on my...
And I bet, if the singers stop right there, the audience will still sing:
While
Thom King’s iconic cartoon, “What They Think About When They Sing,” has
entertained our community for some thirty years, I am honored to have
created the first publication to reprint it with his permission and
offer him my heartfelt thanks for the clean copy.
