S

"So Sweet Is She" by Patty Stair

1916

So Sweet Is She was composed in 1916, rather late in Patty Stair's career. Written for four-part men's voices, this piece is somewhat unique for Stair, who was better known for composing women's choral pieces such as Minuet and Little Dutch Lullaby. Stair was active with several women's music organizations in Cleveland, including the Rubenstein Club and the Women's Music Teachers Club.

This madrigal would have been apt for the large number of men's glee clubs gaining popularity at the turn of the twentieth century, especially in collegiate settings. Its often-set text is the closing stanza of The Triumph of Charis, a poem by Benjamin Johnson (1572-1637), an English Renaissance dramatist, poet, actor, and contemporary of William Shakespeare. It is a love song that likens the author's lover to the softness of the lily, the pelt of a beaver, the down of a swan, or the bud of a brier.

Stair sets the text in a chordal style with the melody nearly always in the first tenor voice. It is in three verses—each verse more developed harmonically—and a coda that recalls the final words of each verse: "so white, so soft, so sweet is she." Though it is set with close voicing, Stair avoids any use of "barbershop harmonies," opting instead for sonorities reminiscent of those employed by Johannes Brahms in his part-song settings.

Related Resources

• So sweet is she : madrigal for men's voices a capella

"Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" by Harry Thacker Burleigh

date

Burleigh arranged Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child for solo voice in 1918. He created a setting for women's chorus the following year, dedicated to The Schumann Club, conducted by Percy Rector Stephens.

The alto carries the stately melody accompanied by a mournful, falling motive in the two soprano lines on the word "oh." The top-voiced harmonization is creative, and the melodic writing is vocally demanding. The work climaxes on a high, five-part divisi chord at the penultimate statement of the text, "A long way from home." The work ends pp in augmented note values on a hopeful D-major chord.

Related Resources

• Sometimes I feel like a motherless child : Negro spiritual

"Song for a May Morning" by Patty Stair

1914

Patty Stair wrote Song for a May Morning in 1914 to address the needs of the burgeoning women's musical clubs that gained popularity during the first part of the twentieth century. The piece begins with a lively duet between the upper two voices. The alto parts join the texture in close imitation of the top voices. A homophonic section follows featuring more adventurous harmonies and chromatic passing tones for "the songs that banish winter's fret." A recapitulation of the opening imitative music precedes a concluding homophonic statement in praise of spring: "Insistent voices ne'er forget the message of the daffodil, the gospel of the violet."

Related Resources

• Song for a May morning : women's voices
• Song for a May morning : four-part song for women's voices

"Southern Lullaby" by Harry Thacker Burleigh

date

One of Burleigh's original compositions, Southern Lullaby, was published in 1920 by G. Ricordi & Co., New York, in editions for both solo voice and for unaccompanied mixed chorus with soprano and tenor solos. The text is by poet George V. Hobart (1867-1926), a Burleigh acquaintance from Nova Scotia. They both became charter members of the American Association of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), founded in 1914. Burleigh inscribed the SATB version of Southern Lullaby to the Burleigh Club of New Bedford, Massachusetts, conducted by Mrs. Addie R. Covell. Several choruses dedicated to the work of Harry Burleigh existed in the early twentieth century, with names such as "Burleigh Glee Club," "Harry Burleigh Chorale," and "Burleigh Choral Society."

The unaccompanied work opens with the chorus providing a homophonic, hummed accompaniment to the solo soprano melody, "De night am long an' de col' win' roar, Yo' Pappy he doan come hom no mo', sleep li'l' chile, go sleep." Burleigh uses seventh chords and a greater degree of chromaticism than that found in his spiritual settings, e.g., at "An' do he hear yo' Mammy moan?" A tenor solo opens the second verse accompanied by SSAA humming, "De stars am hid an' de sky am black. . . . Yo' Pappy am gone, an' he doan come back." Burleigh's demanding concert work ends pp on an eight-part divisi chord with the soprano soloist on a high A-flat.

Related Resources

• Southern lullaby : for mixed voices S.A.T.B.

"Spelling Bee" by Septimus Winner

1875

Though he wrote and published many choral arrangements, Winner was not primarily a choral composer. Like Stephen Collins Foster (1826-1864), his choral writing was limited to close harmony settings of song choruses, usually no longer than a few pages.

Spelling Bee, written in 1875 and published in Philadelphia by the Lee & Walker Company, followed that model. The same company also published Winner's most famous song, Listen to the Mockingbird, purchased from Winner for five dollars. That song sold twenty million copies between 1855 and 1955.

Spelling Bee has a lilting dancelike melody with a strummed-mandolin style piano accompaniment. The playful verses, which invite the listener to take part in the fun, are followed by the nonsensical choral refrain, "B, A, Ba, B, E, Be, B, I, Bickibi, B, O, Bo, Bickibibo, B, U, Bu, Bickibibobu." Under the last system, Winner wrote, "Repeat the chorus several times at the end of the second verse, taking a new letter at each repeat."

Though not originally considered one of Winner's more popular songs, Spelling Bee achieved immense popularity as Swinging the Alphabet, a novelty song sung by the Three Stooges in their 1938 film, Violent Is the Word for Curly. It was the only full-length song performed by the Three Stooges in their short films, and it marked the only time they mimed to their own pre-recorded soundtrack.

Related Resources

• "Spelling bee" : humorous song and chorus

"Summer Wind, Song of Sylphs" by Edward MacDowell

1902

This is the last of MacDowell's original choral works to be published, written while he was teaching at Columbia University. The text's poet, Richard Hovey (1864-1900), also taught at the university. The text from Hovey's epic poem, Launcelot and Guenevere, depicts the light summer breeze and imbues it with human qualities: "Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet. / The fleet wind's footing / is light on the roses / where ever he goes is / the lilt of his luting." MacDowell uses "sweet, sweet, sweet" reiterations in the poetry as opening, intermediary, and closing refrains, each time set differently. This work contains a disjunct melodic contour, and the texture is mostly homophonic. MacDowell marks much of the piece at a very soft dynamic with the exception of a one-measure fortissimo phrase, "The lark flies flinging his song on the wind." The harmonic language is quite coloristic.

Related Resources

• Summer wind ; Song of sylphs : from Richard Hovey's Launcelot and Guenevere

"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" by Harry Thacker Burleigh

1920

Burleigh's arrangement of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot was originally published for solo voice in 1917 following the success of Deep River. This famous spiritual was first introduced to the concert stage by the Fisk Jubilee Singers in 1871. While the biblical basis for the spiritual's text can be found in II Kings: 2, 11, the origin of the piece is more closely associated with the abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad, where it served as a coded signal song. Burleigh 's setting was published in 1920 for mixed chorus by G. Ricordi & Co., New York. Antonín Dvořák, Burleigh's professor at the National Conservatory of Music, used the tune of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot in his Symphony No. 9, "From the New World."

The SATB version of Burleigh's solo setting was arranged by Nathaniel Clifford Page (1866-1956). The piano accompaniment uses a repetitive, falling-chord figure throughout to create the "swing low" aural imagery. Page departs from the usual homophonic, chordal texture to introduce a brief imitation between the soprano and tenor on the second phrase of the spiritual. At the end of the opening refrain, Burleigh writes an eight-measure extension before moving into the first verse. Having cadenced in the tonic key of A-flat, Burleigh begins the extension with the head-motive harmonized in F minor. Then, shockingly, the motive is harmonized in F-flat major before moving directly back to A-flat in the next measure.

Related Resources

• Swing low, sweet chariot : chorus for mixed voices : Negro spiritual