Choral Journal

The latest issue of Choral Journal is online and features an article titled “His Light Still Shines:
An Artistic Style for Moses Hogan Spirituals” by Loneka Wilkinson Battiste. You can read it in its entirety online at acda.org/choraljournal. Following is a portion from the introduction

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The popularity of Moses Hogan’s music is likely connected to the ways in which his musical background informed the creativity found in his arrangements. Both music of the African American Baptist church and jazz, historically attributed to African Americans, embody what Olly Wilson described as specific conceptual approaches to music making that are common in West African and African American musics: the organization of rhythm based on the principle of rhythmic and implied metrical contrast, singing or playing an instrument in a percussive manner, the use of call-and-response, a high density of musical events, and the tendency to incorporate body movements in the music making process.4 The first four of these approaches are common in Moses Hogan spirituals.

Choral Tone
An ideal choral tone for Moses Hogan spirituals was described by former members of his ensembles and expert choral conductors as warm, rich, round, dark, and heavy, with a slightly lighter tone used for fast pieces and darker sounds used on slow pieces. Hogan handpicked his ensemble members to include a mixture of younger and older voices, lighter and darker voices, all of which blended together to create a particular sound that Hogan desired for his arrangements. His method for creating a choral tone specific to his arrangements through the member selection process is context-specific. Singers must refrain from artificially altering the sound to produce exaggerated approximations of a dark choral tone.

There are additional characteristics of Hogan’s ensembles one might consider for each section of the ensemble. In Hogan’s arrangements, not only does the soprano line usually carry the melody, there are often very high obbligato parts written for the soprano voices.

View this full article (and more!) in the December 2020 issue of Choral Journal, available online at acda.org.

The December 2020 issue of Choral Journal is online and features an article titled “R. Nathaniel Dett’s The Chariot Jubilee: An Instrument for Fostering Racial Harmony” by Jason Max Ferdinand. You can read it in its entirety online at acda.org/choraljournal. Following is the introduction. You can read the full article in the December 2020 issue.
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The progress of people of African heritage in classical music offers an intricate portrait that has not always been clearly visible. However, their contribution can be readily seen in Negro spirituals, jazz, gospel, and other American popular styles. Jazz rhythms and blues intervals infuse concert music of Ives, Gershwin, and Copland in America; Ravel, Milhaud, and Dvořák abroad; and many more recent composers from both sides of the Atlantic. Yet, many music history books offer an inadequate account of the many significant contributions to Classical music composition from persons of African descent such as Robert Nathaniel Dett.

Over the last century and a half, however, it has been demonstrated that both classical music and Black music have become diverse and nuanced. This article seeks to position Robert Nathaniel Dett’s The Chariot Jubilee for SATB, solo, orchestra, and organ as an instrument for fostering racial harmony during a time in American history in which it is much needed.

View this full article (and more!) in the December 2020 issue of Choral Journal, available online at acda.org.

The latest issue of Choral Journal is online and features an article titled “The Whitfield Sound: Unearthing Foundational Elements of Contemporary Gospel Music” by Brandon Waddles. You can read it in its entirety online at acda.org/choraljournal. Following is a portion from the introduction

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Toward the latter half of the twentieth century there was a focal shift in the gospel music scene. The city of Detroit, a major transportation hub during the Great Migration along with Chicago, the birthplace of Black gospel music, produced a new crop of gospel musicians with fresh ideas. Rev. Charles Craig, Rev. James Cleveland, Rev. Charles Nicks, and Dr. Mattie Moss Clark were chief among those who helped to create the sophisticated sound of gospel music that Detroit became known for, compared to the more visceral utterings of Chicago’s home-grown traditional style.

Thomas Whitfield (1954-1992), a Detroit native, was born and reared during the height of this new era of classic gospel music. What he heard and experienced inside and outside of the church inspired him to foster a style of gospel music that would permeate the scene and redefine the genre in myriad ways, including harmony, compositional structure, and textual significance. The sound Whitfield forged in the last two decades of his life is the predominant aural aesthetic of contemporary gospel music.

The defining features of the Whitfield Sound are as follows:
1) the redefining of the choral sound in gospel music;
2) the blending of gospel, jazz, and classicism;
3) the creation of orchestral textures in gospel music; and
4) the deepening of intimacy in gospel song lyrics.

From a musical standpoint, sophistication and elegance lies at the foundation of Whitfield’s writing. From a spiritual standpoint, the message within him music was unadulterated in its intent and presentation. The Whitfield Sound is the sonic bridge between the gospel music of past and present.

View this full article (and more!) in the December 2020 issue of Choral Journal, available online at acda.org