Here is my proposal. This is ROUGH, but feedback/ideas are welcome. It has changed a little since I wrote this. Now I will attempt to place current performance practice of spirituals into a context of a folk revival and answer questions about "authenticity" using Taruskin's et. al. views on authenticity in the Early Music Revival movement as a model.
Since the advent of groups such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers, spirituals have been performed mostly by classically trained singers singing from written arrangements. The purpose of my paper will be to explore the tension between what is considered correct performance practice today and what we know about the way that spirituals were originally sung. I would like to probe the question of how this type of performance came to be seen as correct or authentic and what the implications of this performance style are on the genre as a whole. What would we know about spirituals if they hadn’t been written down and arranged by Harry T. Burleigh and others and if this new performance style had not been created? How did the current practice go from being considered an incorrect, “tamed” version of spirituals to a cultivated, valid performance tradition? How do these opposing dichotomies—the way spirituals are now sung and the way they were originally sung—influence performers today? Do new spiritual arrangements and performances constitute a change from conceptual mode of “folk music” to “art music,” or do these new interpretations just constitute more “re-fashioning” and “re-creation” of the source material in a new context, a continuation of typical folk music processes? Through my research, I expect to find that the genre of spirituals as we know it today is a constructed genre, originally made for political or financial reasons (think of the Fisk Jubilee Singers and the money they raised for their university). I also expect to find that we likely would have lost many of the tunes that are now so familiar to us had it not been constructed in this way, or at the very least that these tunes would be known by very few individuals. I will consult biographies of individuals like Harry T. Burleigh and Moses Hogan as well as histories of groups like the Fisk Jubilee Singers (Dark Midnight When I Rise by Andrew Ward). I will also rely heavily on first-hand descriptions of spiritual performances both by slaves in their original contexts and by more Westernized groups such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers. These exist both in reviews from journals and in letters and diary entries. Another important source of information will be books on “correct” performance of spirituals, such as the one by André Thomas. I may also interview Dr. Stucky in the voice department, who has presented on spiritual performance. I will also look for any recordings that claim to be more authentic by presenting spirituals as they would have been sung. This will probably not be incredibly fruitful, as these recordings will have been made after the abolition of slavery, but it is worth pursuing just in case.
I'm researching the Edward ballad, tracing from roughly its appearance in Bishop Percy's *Reliques* through a number of variants recorded in Appalachia and northern European countries to a few "art" settings by composers (both solo instrumental and various vocal arrangements by Loewe, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, and Brahms) and finally finishing with more modern interpretations by groups like Oysterband. What I'm hoping to do is use "Edward" as a door to walk through some considerations of the art/folk/pop triangle and the various ways a single text is manipulated.
I'm working on an analysis of the term "indie classical"...
ReplyDeleteHere is my proposal. This is ROUGH, but feedback/ideas are welcome. It has changed a little since I wrote this. Now I will attempt to place current performance practice of spirituals into a context of a folk revival and answer questions about "authenticity" using Taruskin's et. al. views on authenticity in the Early Music Revival movement as a model.
ReplyDeleteSince the advent of groups such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers, spirituals have been performed mostly by classically trained singers singing from written arrangements. The purpose of my paper will be to explore the tension between what is considered correct performance practice today and what we know about the way that spirituals were originally sung. I would like to probe the question of how this type of performance came to be seen as correct or authentic and what the implications of this performance style are on the genre as a whole. What would we know about spirituals if they hadn’t been written down and arranged by Harry T. Burleigh and others and if this new performance style had not been created? How did the current practice go from being considered an incorrect, “tamed” version of spirituals to a cultivated, valid performance tradition? How do these opposing dichotomies—the way spirituals are now sung and the way they were originally sung—influence performers today? Do new spiritual arrangements and performances constitute a change from conceptual mode of “folk music” to “art music,” or do these new interpretations just constitute more “re-fashioning” and “re-creation” of the source material in a new context, a continuation of typical folk music processes?
Through my research, I expect to find that the genre of spirituals as we know it today is a constructed genre, originally made for political or financial reasons (think of the Fisk Jubilee Singers and the money they raised for their university). I also expect to find that we likely would have lost many of the tunes that are now so familiar to us had it not been constructed in this way, or at the very least that these tunes would be known by very few individuals. I will consult biographies of individuals like Harry T. Burleigh and Moses Hogan as well as histories of groups like the Fisk Jubilee Singers (Dark Midnight When I Rise by Andrew Ward). I will also rely heavily on first-hand descriptions of spiritual performances both by slaves in their original contexts and by more Westernized groups such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers. These exist both in reviews from journals and in letters and diary entries. Another important source of information will be books on “correct” performance of spirituals, such as the one by André Thomas. I may also interview Dr. Stucky in the voice department, who has presented on spiritual performance. I will also look for any recordings that claim to be more authentic by presenting spirituals as they would have been sung. This will probably not be incredibly fruitful, as these recordings will have been made after the abolition of slavery, but it is worth pursuing just in case.
I'm researching the Edward ballad, tracing from roughly its appearance in Bishop Percy's *Reliques* through a number of variants recorded in Appalachia and northern European countries to a few "art" settings by composers (both solo instrumental and various vocal arrangements by Loewe, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, and Brahms) and finally finishing with more modern interpretations by groups like Oysterband. What I'm hoping to do is use "Edward" as a door to walk through some considerations of the art/folk/pop triangle and the various ways a single text is manipulated.
ReplyDeleteAh! I need to return those books to the library for you. Will do tomorrow!!!
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