Barbershop music
The melody is not usually sung by the tenor or baritone, except for an infrequent note or two to avoid awkward voice leading, in tags or codas, or when some appropriate embellishment can be created.
"[1] Slower barbershop songs, especially ballads, often eschew a continuous beat, and notes are often held (or sped up) ad libitum.
Aside from the bass, the voice parts in barbershop singing do not correspond closely to their classical music counterparts; the tenor range and tessitura are similar to those of the classical countertenor (including the fact that they sing their highest notes primarily in falsetto, as a countertenor would), the baritone resembles a high lyric baritone in range and a tenor in tessitura, and the lead generally corresponds to the tenor of classical repertoire, with some singers possessing a tessitura more similar to that of a high baritone.
For example, favored chords in the jazz style are characterized by intervals which do not audibly ring, such as diminished or augmented fifths.
It is not heard in chords sounded on modern keyboard instruments, due to the slight tuning imperfection of the equal-tempered scale.
Gage Averill writes that "Barbershoppers have become partisans of this acoustic phenomenon" and that "the more experienced singers of the barbershop revival (at least after 1938) have self-consciously tuned their dominant seventh and tonic chords in just intonation to maximize the overlap of common overtones."
However, "In practice, it seems that most leads rely on an approximation of an equal-tempered scale for the melody, to which the other voices adjust vertically in just intonation.
A 1910 song called "Play That Barber Shop Chord"[6] (often cited as an early example of "barbershop" in reference to music) contains the lines: 'Cause Mister when you start that minor partI feel your fingers slipping and a grasping at my heart,Oh Lord play that Barber shop chord!Averill notes the hints of rapture, "quasi-religion" and erotic passion in the language used by barbershoppers to describe the emotional effect.
He quotes Jim Ewin as reporting "a tingling of the spine, the raising of the hairs on the back of the neck, the spontaneous arrival of goose flesh on the forearm ... the fifth note has almost mysterious propensities.
[8] Historical memoirs and journalism indicate a strong tradition of quartet singing among young African American men, gathering informally to "crack up a chord".
[7] This was acknowledged as early as 1882, when a New York Age writer traced the development of this singing as a home-grown amusement, arising from the exclusion of Black people from theaters and concert halls.
[7] Jazz musician Louis Armstrong told of having harmonized on New Orleans street corners as a boy, and NAACP executive secretary James Weldon Johnson "grew up singing barbershop harmony".
Modern barbershop quartets often costume themselves in gaudy versions of the vaudeville dress of this time, with boaters and vertically striped vests.
[7][12][13] The modern era of barbershop music is accepted to have begun with a 1940s revival, though opinions as to the genre's origins vary with respect to race, gender, region, and context.
[19][20] The revival of a cappella singing took place circa 1938 when tax lawyer Owen C. Cash sought to save the art form from the threat of radio.
[24] Sweet Adelines International, a worldwide organization of women singers, was established in 1945 by Edna Mae Anderson of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
[26][27] In 1957, several members of Sweet Adelines International (SAI) broke from the organization in protest of the policy limiting membership to Caucasian women.
In 1958, chapters from Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Orillia, Ontario, also left SAI to form Harmony, Incorporated.
[29] In 1963, a Sweet Adeline chapter in Ottawa, Ontario was threatened with expulsion after accepting a black woman, Lana Clowes, as a member.
[30] As a result, Ottawa's Capital Chordettes left SAI to become the seventh chapter to join Harmony, Incorporated.
A VLQ possesses greater flexibility than a standard quartet, since they can perform even with one or more singers missing, as long as all four parts are covered.
