Choral composer, RIP
RIPThe Washington Post eulogises Alice Parker, composer of 500 choral arrangements, who died on Christmas Eve, aged 98.
As a music student at the Juilliard School in the late 1940s, she resisted (“like crazy,” she emphasized) the formal structure of 12-tone music, a style that builds a composition by combining all 12 notes of the chromatic scale in a fixed order. The forces tugging at Ms. Parker were different: the simplicity of folk music and hymns, and the sounds and senses from her summers spent in western Massachusetts at her family’s property, named Singing Brook Farm.
She began to experiment with a pared-down musical palette. That led her to a choral impresario, Robert Shaw. First she was Shaw’s student, and later she formed a 20-year collaboration with his Robert Shaw Chorale.
I loved singing her arrangements.
Me, as well. I wonder how many people here will even know who she is. It seems that orchestras and opera are the big deal here.
Very successful alumn who was a rebel! RIP
She might have used Mr. Copland as a mentor.
Even Copland succumbed to serialism in the end. I give Ms. Parker enormous credit for the strength of character to resist the Accepted Style of the day.
I had the privilege of conducting Ms Parker in an alumni choir at her alma mater, Smith College in the early 1990’s during commencement weekend. Even at the height of her regard, she was unfussy and took her place within the alumni choir at Helen Hills Hills Chapel that Sunday morning. I was in awe, as a young conductor, to have the great Alice Parker under my temporary charge. The angels are receiving the sweetest of souls and a fine musician for their ranks. RIP.
I’ve known and loved this wonderful woman and her family for over 60 years. Our Alice is a giant musically, a profound soul and I ache. Alice wrote a hymn conducted a choir of Dr. John Austin and my friends including Lucy Shelton at our wedding 1975. She lead an anthem sung at my father’s funeral 1976 and then at my mother’s funeral 2008. She “adopted” my mother as her sister so I considered Alice my “adopted” aunt. My heart aches. I I’ll share more to Molly and Liza and siblings later. For now, I weep.
Love without ceasing to you dearest Alice wherever you are now.
Kristin P Bergfeld
My deepest condolences! I took a week long choral arranging workshop with Alice in the late 80’s, and used everything I soaked up from her that week throughout my teaching career. Ten (maybe 15?) years after that week, at a conference, I took an hourlong session with her. At the end, I introduced myself, she remembered my name and the piece I arranged for that first class. I’ve loved singing her music, and reading Melodious Accord through the years. Rest in peace beautiful woman
A good deal of her music arrangements of early American hymnody is published by GIA and can be found at giamusic.com. I love her unfussy and fun arrangements from “Sacred Harmony” and other sources – her passing is a real loss to choral singers, but her music an on-going gift. R.I.P., Alice.