THE COLLABORATIVE ARRANGEMENTS OF ALICE PARKER AND ...

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Alice Parker (b.1925) and Robert Shaw (1916-99) created over two hundred
arrangements of carols, early American folk hymns, love songs, sea shanties, hymns, Irish songs,
spirituals, and Stephen Foster songs for audio recordings made by the Robert Shaw Chorale
between 1950 and 1967 for the RCA Victor Corporation. The Parker-Shaw arrangements have
been popular over the years with choral conductors because they are well-crafted, earnest and
passionate, and are fun to sing and hear. Their accessibility and lively sense of musical
intelligence make them excellent vehicles for training developing singers in the art of four-part a
cappella singing, particularly in building skills in contrapuntal independence, text expression,
and rhythmic vitality and precision.
Despite their quality and importance, the Parker-Shaw works have never the received the
complete cataloguing and investigation they warrant. Scholarship on the subject includes several
pages in Joseph A. Mussulman’s biography of Robert Shaw, an article by Parker in the April
1996 edition of the Choral Journal that covers much of the same material, and two dissertations
on Parker and her work, which only peripherally mention the collaboration. 1
1 Joseph A. Mussulman, Dear People…Robert Shaw: A Biography, (Chapel Hill, NC: Hinshaw Music, 1996): 174-
178; Alice Parker, “Parker-Shaw Memories,” Choral Journal 36, no. 9 (April, 1996): 15-18; Janice Elaine Miller
Long, “Alice Parker: Analytical Notes on the Cantatas, an Annotated Catalogue, a Complete Works List, and a
Biography,” (DMA dissertation, College Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinatti, 1979): 116; and John
Arthur Latta, “Alice Parker: Choral Composer, Arranger, and Teacher” (Ed. D. dissertation, University of Illinois at
Urbana/Champagne, 1986): 77-85. Parker has expressed frustration at inaccuracies within the latter dissertation.
(Email communication with author, 19 Feb. 2010)
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