Chester

 

George Washington wrote about hearing his Revolutionary War troops singing it.  Thomas Jefferson played it in his violin recitals.  Paul Revere made the printing plates for it.

"Chester" is a patriotic anthem sung during the American Revolutionary War composed by William Billings (October 7, 1746 – September 26, 1800). Billings is regarded as the first American choral composer and leading member of the First New England School. 

Named after a pretty much random city, Billings wrote the first version of Chester for his 1770 songbook The New England Psalm Singer, and made improvements for this version in his The Singing Master's Assistant (1778). 

I've arranged it in 2026 for Barbershop chorus, mostly putting Billing's descant-like "treble" in the baritone, and melodic "tenor" in the lead.

Let tyrants shake their iron rod,
And Slav'ry clank her galling chains,
We fear them not, we trust in God,
New England's God forever reigns.

Howe and Burgoyne and Clinton too,
With Prescot and Cornwallis join'd,
Together plot our Overthrow,
In one Infernal league combin'd.

When God inspir'd us for the fight,
Their ranks were broke, their lines were forc'd,
Their ships were Shatter'd in our sight,
Or swiftly driven from our Coast.

The Foe comes on with haughty Stride;
Our troops advance with martial noise,
Their Vet'rans flee before our Youth,
And Gen'rals yield to beardless Boys.

What grateful Off'ring shall we bring?
What shall we render to the Lord?
Loud Halleluiahs let us Sing,
And praise his name on ev'ry Chord.

 

Happy Semiquincentennial

 

We're all going to talk about this, so I'm taking notes: 2026 is... 

"The United States Semiquincentennial,^[a] also called the Bisesquicentennial, the Sestercentennial, or the Quarter Millennium, will be the 250th anniversary of the United States Declaration of Independence. "  I'd say Independence Day, July 4 1776, isn't really the date we got the "United States of America":

June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed a resolution that used the name “United Colonies”: "Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved,”

June 28 1776, Thomas Jefferson’s draft version of the Declaration started with the following sentence: “A Declaration of the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in General Congress assembled.” but that version wasn't passed...

July 2 1776, the Second Continental Congress made a unanimous resolution and

July 4, 1776 the Declaration of Independence as signed by 23 Congressmen starts with “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.” No capital letter in "united" nor anywhere in the document, but "United Colonies" is.

July 8, 1776 the words “United States of America” appeared in the first draft of the Articles of Confederation.  The Articles weren’t ratified by the states until March 1781.

August 1776,  government inspectors approved that official gunpowder met standards by stamping “U.S.A.” on the casks. 

September 9, 1776, Congress moved that where "the words ‘United Colonies’ have been used, the stile be altered for the future to the “United States.”

September 3, 1783: The Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary war with "Prince George the Third" and the "United States of America". Unusual for the era, it was written in English, not French. It recognizes the "free sovereign and independent states". 

September 17, 1787, The Constitution that formed the nation itself was signed during the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention.

June 21, 1788, the Constitution is fully ratified by the States, officially forming the United States of America. 

I'd say we really don't get the USA's 250th until 2038. Lets have a party now anyway: September 9, 1776 works, too.

references:
https://constitutioncenter.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Semiquincentennial
https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/ruffdrft.html 
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/paris.asp

 

   

In the Bleak Midwinter

The problem is that the original poem 

A Christmas Carol

By Christina Rossetti

 

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;

Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.

In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed

The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,

Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;

Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,

The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,

Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;

But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,

Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;

Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

Copyright Credit: Christina Rossetti, “A Christmas Carol” from The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine vol. 3 (1871-1872 Nov-Apr), ed. by J. G. Holland. New York: Scribner & Co: 1872. Public Domain.

has A) unusual words, construction and omission making it grammatically difficult to understand, and B) irregular word stress that no melody can fit every syllable of every verse into the same rhythm.  Google Holst's In the Bleak Midwinter to see how different editors solve these in different ways, but Holst himself provided this to Ralph Van Williams for The English Hymnal in 1906:

  

We'll decide soon what verses and rhythms the Rose City Timberliners Chorus will sing in December 2025.

Refs:

http://www.voice-mentor.com/scores/In_The_Bleak_Midwinter.png 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53216/in-the-bleak-midwinter 

https://hymnary.org/hymnal/EH1906?page=0

https://voyagerofhistory.wordpress.com/2021/12/24/in-the-bleak-midwinter-origins-of-a-christmas-carol/ 

About the Star-Spangled Banner

Verse Four speaks to me today:

O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their lov'd home and the war's desolation!
Blest with vict'ry and peace may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserv'd us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto - "In God is our trust,"
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Verse one is a question.  The most requested song in the U.S., well-known all over the world, hard to sing, harder to sing well,

https://amhistory.si.edu/starspangledbanner/pdf/ssb_lyrics.pdf

asks "does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?" Francis Scott Key, captured and held on a British vessel during the War of 1812, wrote about night and smoke obscuring the rebel's stars-and-stripes flag  over Fort McHenry. "Did it still fly" was unknown to him.

We rarely sing it as a question.  Key's verse two thru four and confirm the flag is flying, so we proudly belt it out verse one, affirming the flag flies where citizens of the United States of America WILL bravely fight for home and freedom.

Free Barbershop Music Score Reference

 From Evergreen District's Monthly Newsletter

FREE MUSIC

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.

The only cost to you is the postage.

The site reads:

FREE SHEET MUSIC TO REPURPOSE 

 Download the either the spreadsheet or the pdf  

SHEET MUSIC SPREADSHEET

SHEET MUSIC PDF FILE

FREE BOOKS (SPREADSHEET)

FREE BOOKS LIST (PDF)

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.

 

 

A grammar joke walks into a bar.

 

• 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.

 

Hah! Detailed explanations at

https://lindaksienkiewicz.com/bar-jokes-and-grammar/ 

 

All the best.  GS

We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when.

Singers, when can we meet again?

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:

American Federation of Musicians Unions Returning to Work Safely Guidelines

• Six feet/two meters between players in a room—limit number of musicians accordingly.
• Twelve feet/3.6 meters between winds/brass, singers and other musicians if in the same room.

The New York Times and the ACDA Choral Leaders' conversation in May agree  

• Don't sing together yet.  Sit tight"

Multnomah County keeps a webpage for small civic groups: https://multco.us/novel-coronavirus-covid-19/faith-based-and-community-groups-covid-19-guidance with the usual

• 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.

Oregon.gov talks about what's allowed for Multnomah County for "Phase One":

• 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.  

Happily,  dozens national and international sports and musical organizations, including the Barbershop Harmony Society, National High Schools, and the American Choral Directors Association have commissioned a study to find out the actual answers.  You can read about it and even donate at https://www.nfhs.org/articles/unprecedented-international-coalition-led-by-performing-arts-organizations-to-commission-covid-19-study/

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.

 

Yours, Gary Shannon

 

PS.  Vera Lynn, singer of We'll Meet Again, passed away June 18, 2020 at 103.  See BBC's obituary.