The Sacred Harp Singers Music

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The first group I sat in on was the South Milwaukee High School choir. It was female dominated, with an average size around twenty individuals. In their first piece, Idumea, also known as Am I Born to Die, the choir made the choice of replacing the violin with the cello, making the song deeper and more sonorous. The second aspect I noticed was the hints of call and response within the song, with a smaller group starting and then the entire choir joining in. The song was a powerful piece about the Rapture, and although Christian, was part of the Sacred Harp Singers’ repertoire, an aboriginal group. This basis gives reason to the emphasis on the downbeat of each measure, as Dennee remarked, and led into his addition of stomping to enhance the style of music being expressed. His final amendment to the song was the spreading out of each member in the group, putting at least a good three feet between each individual. This space allowed more room for the sound to build and echo, and led to a deeper timbre of their collective voices. …show more content…
This became clearer as the choir was instructed to accent the words differently in the piece, emphasizing the pitch on the most important words to make the message of the song stronger, ex: ‘weak,’ ‘weak,’ then, ‘strong’ to create the correct contrast between the words. Also added was the amendment of vowel pronunciation. By changing the phonics of ‘ee’ to ‘eh,’ the song had a clearer sound with a more mature tone for their collective voice. They achieved this through a physical-recognition exercise that involved the choir members to place their hands downward on their cheeks, framing their jawline, and then practicing the phrase. By feeling how their jaw and muscles moved in tandem to form the sound, they were able to control it
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