THE COLLABORATIVE ARRANGEMENTS OF ALICE PARKER AND ...

Diego that she married Thomas Pyle, who sang with the Robert Shaw Chorale and assisted Shaw
in various capacities, and with whom she raised five children. During years of motherhood she
taught private piano and musicianship, worked with music in the Sunday School of Riverside
Church, and turned the Cub Scout troop into a Singverein. 15 She was widowed in 1976. On
June, 2011, she received the sixth of her honorary doctoral degrees. Today, at age 86, Parker
continues to compose, teach, and conduct workshops, “creating communities of sound through
singing” through her organization, Melodious Accord. 16
The Genesis of the Collaboration
In 1948, the Robert Shaw Chorale first toured the United States and was signed to an
exclusive recording contract by RCA Victor. Shaw wished to record only choral masterworks,
but RCA Victor also wanted recordings of the Shaw Chorale performing light popular music, in
the hope that these would sell well to the American public, and thus fund the Chorale’s
recordings of classical music. 17 As Shaw considered the limited time available in his schedule
for producing such arrangements, he remembered Parker’s facility in research, her background in
composition, and her easy-going temperament. He approached her with the suggestion that she
seek out appropriate melodies and texts, and compose a series of arrangements that the two could
rework together before the recording session. 18
Shaw believed that the best approach would be to produce albums of folk materials that
would be both attractive to singers and listeners as well as inexpensive to produce. Only
15
Long, “Alice Parker,” 116-117.
16
The organization’s website is http://melodiousaccord.org.
17
Approximately 70 albums in all were recorded by the Robert Shaw Chorale. See Mussulman, Dear People, 274-
278 for a selected discography.
18
Parker, “Parker-Shaw Memories,” Choral Journal 36, no. 9 (April, 1996): 15.
10