I started this month with the song The Sound of Music, and I want to end it with another song from that musical. Edelweiss was the last song that Oscar Hammerstein II ever wrote.

First of all, let’s talk about what edelweiss is and how to say it. A-dle-vice, with a long A at the beginning. Edelweiss is a flower that grows in Austria and Germany. It’s a little white flower that grows on the hills and comes out in the early spring, peeking out from the snow. Hence the line in the song: Blossom of snow.

The musical was already in tryouts in Boston, when Rodgers and Hammerstein decided that they needed to have a song for Baron von Trapp to sing at the festival to say goodbye to Austria, the country that he loved so much. Theodore Bikel, who played the Baron had a good voice for folk music and played the guitar. So, the two set out to write a folk song.

 Folk songs grow out of a culture. Most of the time we don’t even know who originally wrote most folk music. Setting out to write something that would sound like an organic folk song is actually quite difficult. But they succeeded so well, that many people think it was borrowed from Austrian folk music and set in the musical.
Edelweiss is a simple song, that doesn’t require anything in the way of fireworks. But it does require a lot of love and delicacy in singing it.

Edelweiss, edelweiss,
Every morning you greet me.
Small and white, clean and bright,
You look happy to meet me.
Blossom of snow may you bloom and grow,
Bloom and grow forever.
Edelweiss, edelweiss,
Bless my homeland forever.
 
By the way, it is now illegal to pick edelweiss if you come upon it growing in the wild. It is now an endangered flower. Tourists were picking all of them. That’s where all the flowers have gone, tourists have picked them everyone. When will they ever learn, oh, when will they ever learn? (Sorry – went off into a different song there for a moment. I’m back now.)

When I was a teenager, I used to go to the local nursing home, (Elkins only had one) and sing for the residents there. I remember one little old man, Otto. Otto must have been in his 90s when I knew him, and was about 5 feet tall, if that. He loved it when I sang Edelweiss. It reminded him of his home in Austria. It always made him cry, but he always asked me to sing it for him. I think of Otto every time I sing it.

Music has great power. It can help us to rise up and fight for justice and equality. It can remind us of how we fell in love. And it can take us back to our youth and bring tears of nostalgia to our eyes. Music is a reflection of the society in which we live. Let’s make it a good one.
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I’ll be playing Edelweiss and some other folk-ish songs this week on my Minnich Music FaceBook page this week, so be sure to check those out. These are pivotal times we are living in. Be safe.
 
Until next time!

Yesterday was the first day of summer. As I write this there are still protests in the streets of most cities in the U.S. For the past two weeks I have been writing about music and racism. And this week, I am writing about an aria from an American opera written by two white men about African Americans in the 1930s.

Porgy and Bess was originally a 1925 book by the author DuBose Heyward entitled Porgy. By 1927, Heyward and his wife, Dorothy had turned the book into a play. By 1933, George and Ira Gershwin had entered the picture, signing a contract to turn the book/play into an opera. Let me stress here that all of these people were Caucasian.

Here’s what Wikipedia says about the plot of Porgy: The play tells the story of Porgy, a disabled black beggar who lives in the slums of Charleston, South Carolina. It relates his efforts to rescue Bess, the woman he loves, from Crown, her violent and possessive lover, and a drug dealer called Sporting Life. All of the characters in the opera are people of color. All of the people writing the opera were white.

I am not saying that Porgy and Bess is not a great opera, it is quite possibly the greatest American opera ever written. It has managed to cross the bounds of what is opera and what is musical theatre. It has consistently had only people of color in the cast. No black-face here, thank goodness. I am just saying that the people behind the production were all white.

What I really want to look at this week is the song Summertime, a beautiful aria. (Remember that aria is just the fancy, Italian way of saying a song in an opera. It translates directly as air.) Summertime is the first thing you hear when the curtain rises. The character, Clara, is holding her baby and singing a lullaby. That’s right, Summertime, the song that you hear divas going full-volume on is a lullaby.

In singing, we talk about different registers within the voice. There is a chest voice, middle register, and the head tones. The chest voice is called this because it feels like it is resonating in the chest. You can feel the vibrations there. (In actuality, the voice cannot be resonating in the chest, because that is below the vocal cords.) Then there is the middle register. Between the chest and middle range is where most people sing. Then come the head tones, so called because they feel like they are resonating in the head, in the sinus cavities. (Much more likely than the chest!)

Back to our song. In the original key of A minor, the song hovers on an F. This particular F tends to be where most sopranos have what is called a break, or if we want to get fancy, a passagio, or passage. This break is where the middle range and the head tones divide. Until the singer has learned how to bridge this passage, the voice will often break. Because of where this song lies in the soprano range, it is a very difficult song to sing well. And since it is also a lullaby, it must be sung softly. Unless you want to wake the baby.

This is also one of those songs that many people think existed before the musical, that Gershwin just used an already existing folk song and incorporated it into his opera. That is a huge compliment to the composer. He created something that sounds like it has been around for a long, long time. And it is true that, as with many folk songs, there are just about as many ways to sing Summertime, as there are people who sing it.

I will be playing some versions of Summertime this week on my Minnich Music FaceBook page this week, so be sure to check those out. If you are able, I hope that you can join the protests. These are pivotal times we are living in. Be safe.
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Until next time!

Is music racist? That’s a big question. But the big answer is: yes.

Let’s go for a little historical perspective. Ludwig van Beethoven was black. His father was German, while his mother was from Spain, and was referred to as being a “Spanish Moor.” What does that mean? Well, starting in the year 711, and ending roughly 781 years later, in the year 1492, there was an Islamic kingdom in southern Spain. This brought over a lot of people from North Africa – people of color. Now, I realize that Beethoven was born significantly after 1492. He was born in 1770, but even then, there was still a lot of darker people in Spain. The pictures of Ludwig tend to show a pale man, with a wide nose, and wild, fly-away hair. However, descriptions of him while he lived included these phrases: “His face reveals no trace of the German… He was so dark that people dubbed him ‘The Spagnol’ [dark-skinned]” “Coal-black hair… stood up around his head.” “Complexion was brownish, his hair was thick, black, and bristly” And - “Short, stocky, broad shoulders, short neck, round nose, blackish-brown complexion”

This view of Beethoven is disputed. Some biographies of the man completely overlook this, others say that “the rumors that he was black are largely dismissed by historians.” The justification for this is that in pictures he is always shown as being white. However, there exists a pencil sketch that was made of Ludwig that he had copied and gave out to friends and family. In this sketch, he could be a person of color.

I have read that his racial heritage gave him an innate knowledge of African rhythms. That part I have trouble with. To me that seems as racist as the white-washing. Why was it important to hide how dark his skin was? Because he was a great composer. Even during his life, he was acknowledged as a great composer. And how could someone so talented be black?

In the year before Beethoven died, 1826, Stephen Collins Foster was born. Foster would go on to become the father of American music, with such hits as Camptown Races and Old Black Joe. Most of his compositions are classed as parlor songs or minstrel songs. Minstrel songs were to be performed by white people in black-face makeup, using caricatures of what they thought slave dialect sounded like.

Let’s speed forward a few years, to around the turn of the 20th Century. A man generally considered to be one of the great American composers – Irving Berlin, born Israel Beilin. Many of his early compositions such as Alexander’s Ragtime Band, grew from a racist meme. The “joke” was how could a black man have such a highfalutin’ name like Alexander?

This leads us straight to Al Jolson, born Asa Yoelson. I was given the collection of sheet music that had belonged to the great-grandfather of one of my students. In the collection is a lot of first editions of Al Jolson hits, all of them with the performer in black-face. I don’t think we’ll be using those.

The opera world has promoted what it calls “color-blind casting” for decades. In the 1990s I saw an amazing production of Don Giovanni that starred an African-American man as Don Juan. But all too often what this really meant was white people playing roles that called for a person of color. I have played Madame Butterfly, an Asian woman. At least I was not put in makeup to make me look Asian. But it was only in 2015, (five years ago!) that the Metropolitan Opera company in New York City stopped putting their Otellos in black makeup.

I have overlooked the vast amount of music that is out there. These are but a few examples, but I think they are indicative of the whole. Music, as all art, reflects the time in which it was composed. Are we getting better? Yes, I think we are. Is our music more reflective of inclusion and respect? Yes. Do we still have a long way to go? Damn straight we do.

Until next time!

It is known that music can stir the emotions. After all, the British poet William Congreve wrote in 1697 that “music hath charms to soothe a savage breast.” I know, people tend to think the quote is about savage beasts, but the actual quote is savage breast.

It’s no surprise that drums and bugles have been going into battle with armies for ages. Not only could orders be sent via the music, but faltering hearts could be encouraged by the sound of the drums and trumpets.
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Is it any surprise then, that songs have long been a part of our protests, too? We Shall Overcome has been a part of protests since 1945 when it was sung at a strike against the American Tobacco Company in Charleston, South Carolina.

But, where did the song come from? That gets a little complicated because it is a folk song. Parts of the melody seem to go back to a song called, No More Auction Block for Me, which also bears a striking resemblance to an even older song called, O Sanctissima.  

However, everyone seems to agree that the words began with the Reverend Charles Albert Tindley. Reverend Tindley was born in 1951, in Berlin, Maryland. A black man, his father was a slave, while his mother was free. Though he was never enslaved, he grew up around slaves.

After the Civil War, Tindley moved to Philadelphia, where he worked, with no pay, as the sexton of the Bainbridge Street Methodist Episcopal Church. He was never able to go to school, but he worked on his own, learning Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He gained his ordination based on his test scores. Eventually, he became the pastor of the same church where he had worked as sexton, cleaning the floors.

In 1900, Reverend Tindley started publishing hymns that he had written. Among the most popular today are I’ll Understand It Better, By and By, and I’ll Overcome Someday. The opening verse seems particularly a propo today.

The world is one great battlefield,
With forces all arrayed:
If in my heart I do not yield,
I’ll overcome someday.
I’ll overcome someday,
I’ll overcome someday.
If in my heart I do not yield,
I’ll overcome someday.

By 1909 the song, We Will Overcome was known. While the melody is different from that written by the Reverend Tindley, the words are very similar.

But it was in 1945 that the song came to the forefront of protest movements, as We’ll Overcome. Union organizer, Zilphia Horton heard the song. Along with organizing unions, Horton was the music director for the Highlander Folk School, where she liked to end each day’s meetings with We Will Overcome.

It was here that the song came to the attention of Pete Seeger. Seeger was hugely influential in the burgeoning folk movement that was sweeping through American music. Seeger was also part of the burgeoning Civil Rights movement. At some point, Seeger decided to change the word Will to the word Shall. He liked the alliteration of We Will, but also knew that Shall was an easier word to sing. The Ah vowel allows the mouth to open more, making the sound easier to achieve. The slow rhythm of the song allows for “lining”.  “Lining” is the act of chanting out the next line of a song so that the singers, who might not have the words, would know what was coming next. This comes from churches that did not have hymnals, either from poverty, illiteracy, or both. But this lent itself quite well to the protest song concept, where the words could be adapted to each occasion.

About the song, Pete Seeger had this to say: “It’s the genius of simplicity. Any fool can get complicated.”
The song has been translated into many different languages and used in many different settings. But it always is an anthem of hope.

Hope is something that I need right now, and I imagine that you do, too. What songs give you hope? What songs do you find yourself singing in this time of pandemic and riots? We Shall Overcome.
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I’ll be playing this and other songs that give me hope on my Minnich Music FaceBook page this week, so be sure to check those out.
 
Until next time!

The year is 1938. A family of 12 took a train from Austria to Italy, eventually finding their way to England and then the United States. They settled in Stowe, Vermont, which reminded them of the Austrian Alps they had left behind.

That is a far less dramatic ending than the movie gave them. In The Sound of Music, they hike over the Austrian Alps while the choir sings Climb Every Mountain loudly behind them. On Julie Andrews variety show, the real Maria von Trapp told Julie that when escaping from the Nazis, one does not sing at the top of one’s lungs.

Yes, there was a Maria von Trapp. She was a postulant (kind of a beginning level of nun), when she was called to the von Trapp home to be the nanny, first of one of the children, who was sick, and later all seven of them. She did marry the Baron, who was twice her age, in 1927 (not just before they escaped). Together, they had three more children. They did tour the world as The Trapp Family Singers. And the great-great grandchildren are still performing.

I don’t want to spend too much time on the musical as a whole because I really want to talk about the title song: The Sound of Music. I am sure that some of you are groaning about now. I know, the song has become associated with everything that is cliched. But sometimes cliché isn’t bad.

I contend that every accidental, every change from the rhythm is a clue to the singer, a hint about the character that is singing, and a hint about what the composer intended. And Richard Rodgers gives the singer a lot of clues in this song.

While the movie cut the opening of the song, on stage there is an opening verse. I love the verse. It is pretty much a recitative, meaning that it is almost as if it were spoken. There are some wonderful bits that slip from major to minor and back again, as Maria sings about needing to leave the hills to go back inside.

My day in the hills, has come to an end, I know
A star has come out to tell me it’s time to go.
But deep in the dark green shadows
Are voices that urge me to stay.
So I pause and I wait and I listen
For one more sound,
For one more lovely thing that the hills might say.
 
In the accompaniment for this section, there are high notes that shimmer above the melody, just like stars shining down on the singer.

Then there is a brief pause. A moment of silence, as the singer takes in what the hills are saying to her.

The hills are alive with the sound of music,
With songs they have sung for a thousand years.
The hills fill my heart with the sound of music.
My heart wants to sing every song it hears.
 
This last phrase is sung on an ascending line until it reaches the word song. Why not continue the line going up? Perhaps so that your heart can hear nature’s song. If the line continued upwards, hearing anything else might be difficult.

But, regardless, we have reached a different part of the song.

My heart wants to beat like the wings of the birds that rise from the lake to the trees.

There is a strong beat that lies underneath this sentence, that feels just like the strong beat of the bird’s wings.

My heart wants to sigh like a chime that flies from a church on a breeze,

The word flies is the high point of this phrase. It can become onomatopoetic. (Onomatopoeia is when the word sound like what it is – usually associated with words like bang. But in this case, I think it can work.) The word can fly by emphasizing the fl sound, and then allowing the y sound to trail off a bit.

To laugh like a brook when it trips and falls over stones on its way,

Here the accompaniment takes on the feel of the stream underneath the singer’s words. And the words trip and falls can once again take on onomatopoetic qualities.

To sing through the night like a lark who is learning to pray.

This is my favorite line in the entire song. I have mentioned before that we had a canary when I was growing up. His name was Hansel. Hansel and I would sing duets a lot. He loved this phrase too and could always be counted upon to swell to the occasion. He gave me a perfect example of what this line meant.

And now we come full circle, to a repeat of the beginning of the refrain.

I go to the hills when my heart is lonely.
I know I will hear what I’ve heard before.
My heart will be blessed with the sound of music
And I’ll sing once more.
 
Those last two lines bring tears to my eyes every time. They perfectly encapsulate what music, what singing means to me. And to end the song with the acknowledgement that you will sing again. How powerful. What an acclamation.

In the play and in movie, this song ends quietly. Sometimes I end it quietly, and sometimes I feel it needs a big, high ending. That depends on when in a program I am singing it, and where.

As I said earlier, I know that many people hear this song and groan. I hope that looking into it in a little more depth has given you a better appreciation of how beautifully Richard Rodgers music and Oscar Hammerstein’s words meld together into an almost perfect package.
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I’ll be playing this song and a few others from The Sound of Music this week on my Minnich Music FaceBook page this week, so be sure to check those out.
 
Until next time!