THE COLLABORATIVE ARRANGEMENTS OF ALICE PARKER AND ...

ungraven images and boundless mystery; their melodies, shaped and worn by life-times and
Niagaras of tears, are as perfect as anything I know in music…In the great folk-hymns and
spirituals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there is a directness and dignity, a fervor of
utterance, and a humility which invoke man’s nobility, and to me, a spark of divinity.” 77
Robert Paul Drummond, an elder in the Primitive Baptist church and scholar of its music,
asserts that the folk hymn was not intended for use in choral settings, as Primitive Baptists had
no choirs and no “advanced” singers who might desire more complex and challenging music. 78
Yet the hauntingly beautiful melodies and rich texts of the folk hymn have spawned a host of
choral arrangements that range from simple, unaccompanied two-part pieces to complex and
gaudy arrangements that retain little of the original spirit of the folk hymn. Drummond
maintains that among the various choral arrangements based on folk hymns, the Shaw-Parker
arrangements excel in that they retain the character of the original folk hymns through their
balance of polyphony and economy. He states:
The choral arrangements of Parker and Shaw are among the most conservative treatments of the
folk hymns available. The goal of the arrangers was to remain as close as possible to the original
spirit and character of the American folk hymn by drawing most of the musical ideas, harmonies,
textures, embellishments, etc. from the melody itself, while taking full advantage of the technical
and interpretive abilities of a contemporary professional choral ensemble. It is the opinion of the
present writer that no better choral arrangements of the literature exist. 79
That Parker and Shaw are commended for having retained the folk hymn’s original spirit
and character despite the fact that they applied many arranging techniques to these modal
melodies is a testimony of their arranging skill. The early American folk hymn tunes are all built
77 Robert Shaw, from the lecture “Worship and the Arts,” given at Memorial Church, Harvard University, November
10, 1981; quoted in Robert Blocker, ed., The Robert Shaw Reader (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004): 368.
78 Robert Paul Drummond, “A History of Music among Primitive Baptists Since 1800 (Folk-Hymns, Choral, White
Spirituals, Sacred),” (D.A. dissertation, University of Colorado, 1986): 226.
79 Ibid., 305.
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