Everything about Barbershop Music totally explained
Barbershop harmony, as codified during the barbershop revival era (1940s-present), is a style of
a cappella, or unaccompanied
vocal music characterized by
consonant four-part
chords for every melody note in a predominantly
homophonic texture. Each of the four parts has its own role: generally, the
lead sings the melody, the
tenor harmonizes above the melody, the
bass sings the lowest harmonizing notes, and the
baritone completes the chord, usually below the lead. The melody isn't usually sung by the tenor or bass, except for an infrequent note or two to avoid awkward
voice leading, in tags or codas, or when some appropriate
embellishment can be created. Occasional brief passages may be sung by fewer than four voice parts.
According to the
Barbershop Harmony Society,
Slower barbershop songs, especially ballads, often eschew a continuous beat, and notes are often held (or sped up) ad libitum.
The voice parts in men's barbershop singing don't correspond closely to the correspondingly named voice parts in classical music. Barbershop singing is performed both by men's and women's groups; the elements of the barbershop style and the names of the voice parts are the same for both.
Ringing chords
The defining characteristic of the barbershop style is the
ringing chord. This is a name for one specific and well-defined acoustical effect, also referred to as
expanded sound, the angel's voice, the fifth voice, or
the overtone. (The barbershopper's "overtone" isn't the same as the acoustic physicist's
overtone which is known as
heterodyning).
The physics and psychophysics of the effect are fairly well understood; it occurs when the upper harmonics in the individual voice notes, and the
sum and difference frequencies resulting from nonlinear combinations within the ear, reinforce each other at a particular frequency, strengthening it so that it stands out separately above the blended sound. The effect is audible only on certain kinds of chords, and only when all voices are equally rich in harmonics and
justly tuned and balanced. It isn't heard in chords sounded on 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 the 1940s) have self-consciously tuned their dominant seventh and tonic chords in just intonation to maximize the overlap of common overtones."
What is prized isn't so much the "overtone" itself, but a unique sound whose achievement is most easily recognized by the presence of the "overtone". The precise
synchrony of the waveforms of the four voices
simultaneously creates the perception of a "fifth voice" while at the same time melding the four voices into a unified sound. The ringing chord is qualitatively different in sound from an ordinary musical chord for example as sounded on a tempered-scale keyboard instrument.
Most elements of the "revivalist" style are related to the desire to produce these ringing chords. Performance is a cappella to prevent the distracting introduction of equal-tempered intonation, and because listening to anything but the other three voices interferes with a performer's ability to tune with the precision required. Barbershop arrangements stress chords and chord progressions that favor "ringing", at the expense of suspended and diminished chords and other harmonic vocabulary of the
ragtime and
jazz forms.
The dominant seventh-type chord... is so important to barbershop harmony that it's called the "barbershop seventh..." [SPEBSQSA(now BHS)] arrangers believe that a song should contain dominant seventh chords anywhere from 35 to 60 percent of the time (measured as a percentage of the duration of the song rather than a percentage of the chords present) to sound "barbershop."
Historically barbershoppers may have used the word "minor chord" in a way that's confusing to those with musical training. Averill suggests that it was "a shorthand for chord types other than major triads", and says that the use of the word for "dominant seventh-type chords and diminished chords" was common in the late nineteenth century. A 1910 song called "Play That Barber Shop Chord" (often cited as an early example of "barbershop" in reference to music) contains the lines:
'Cause Mister when you start that minor part
I 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...' It's the 'consummation' devoutly wished by those of us who love Barbershop harmony. If you ask us to explain ... why we love it so, we're hard put to answer; 'that's where our faith takes over.'" Averill notes too the use of the language of addiction, "there's this great big chord that gets people hooked." An early manual was entitled "A Handbook for Adeline Addicts".. Although the Mills Brothers are primarily known as jazz and pop artists and usually performed with instrumental accompaniment, the affinity of their harmonic style with that of the barbershop quartet is clearly in evidence in their music and most notably, perhaps, in their best-known gospel recording, "Jesus Met the Woman at the Well", performed a cappella. Their father founded a barbershop quartet, the Four Kings of Harmony, and the Mills Brothers produced at least three records in which they sang a cappella and performed traditional barbershop material.
Barbershop harmonies remain in evidence in the a cappella music of the black church. The popular,
Christian a cappella group
Take 6 started in
1980 as The Gentleman's Estate Quartet with the tight, four-part harmony by which barbershop music is known. Early on, the quartet added a fifth harmonic line, but the group's pedigree, like barbershop music, is traceable directly to the black church--and the jazzy renditions of artists like the Mills Brothers, as well.
Organizations
Barbershop Harmony Society
The revision of a cappella singing was taken up again when a tax lawyer named Owen C. Cash decided that for the art to die out would be a shame. He garnered support from an investment banker called Rupert I. Hall. Both came from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Cash was a true partisan of quartet singing who advertised the fact that he didn't want a cappella to fall by the wayside. A meeting was called and at 6.30 pm on Monday
April 11,
1938, 26 men gathered on the roof garden of the Tulsa Club in the Alvi Hotel. They eventually burst into four part harmony singing. The police were called and had to ask the participants to "keep it down". The sound of their singing had reached ground level and all traffic stopped to listen, wondering where the harmonic sound was coming from.
Cash had struck a chord, albeit unwittingly, and soon, across North America, men responded in their thousands and later in the same year the "Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America" was set up, known by the acronym S.P.E.B.S.Q.S.A. at a time when many institutions in the United States were in the habit of using multiple initials to denote their function. More recently, the name was changed to the simpler "Barbershop Harmony Society".
Female Barbershop music and "Beautyshop" quartets
Traditionally, the word "barbershop" has been used to encompass both men's and women's quartets singing in the barbershop style.
Harmony, Inc. calls itself "International Organization of Women Barbershop Singers" while
Sweet Adelines International calls itself "a worldwide organization of women singers committed to advancing the musical art form of barbershop harmony."
A few women's quartets, particularly in U.S. schools, have used the term "beautyshop quartets" for women's quartets singing in the barbershop style.
Notable female quartets include:
- The Cracker Jills with Renee Craig
- Ambiance
- The Chordettes, who recorded a number of mainstream popular hits during the 1950s, notably Mr. Sandman
Barbershop groups with both male and female members are known as
mixed barbershop groups.
Organization
Singing
a cappella music in the barbershop style is a hobby enjoyed by men and women worldwide. The hobby is practiced mostly within one of the three main barbershop associations, which have a combined membership in the neighborhood of eighty thousand.
The primary men's organization in the US and Canada is the
Barbershop Harmony Society. Women have two organizations in North America,
Sweet Adelines International and
Harmony Incorporated.
Sweet Adelines, Inc was founded in 1945 by Edna Mae Anderson of
Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Harmony, Incorporated split from Sweet Adelines in 1957 over a dispute regarding admission of black members. SPEBSQSA and Sweet Adelines at that time restricted their membership to whites, but both opened membership to all races a few years later. All three organizations comprise choruses and quartets that perform and compete regularly throughout the US and Canada, and Sweet Adelines International also has a portion of its membership outside North America.
Organizations affiliated with the Barbershop Harmony Society and Harmony Incorporated exist in the
United Kingdom,
The Netherlands,
Germany,
Ireland,
South Africa,
Scandinavia,
New Zealand,
Australia,
Japan, and elsewhere. Some national and regional barbershop groups include:
Sweet Adelines International (SAI) (External Link
)
Harmony, Inc. (HI) (External Link)
Barbershop in Germany (BinG) (External Link)
British Association of Barbershop Singers (BABS) (External Link)
Ladies Association of British Barbershop Singers (LABBS) (External Link)
Dutch Association of Barbershop Singers (DABS) (External Link)
Ladies Association of Dutch Barbershop Singers (Holland Harmony) (External Link)
Society of Nordic Barbershop Singers (SNOBS) (External Link)
Southern Part of Africa Tonsorial Singers (SPATS)
New Zealand Association of Barbershop Singers (NZABS) (External Link)
Australian Association of Men's Barbershop Singers (AAMBS) (External Link)
Irish Association of Barbershop Singers (IABS) (External Link)
A worldwide association for mixed groups, the Mixed Harmony Barbershop Quartet Association (External Link), was established in 1995 to reflect the growing popularity of male-female barbershop singing.
Notable artists
Quartets
The Haydn Quartet, an early 1900s quartet also known as the Edison Quartet
American Quartet
The Buffalo Bills, 1950 International Quartet Champions, appeared in stage and screen productions of The Music Man, frequently appeared on Arthur Godfrey's radio show
The Dapper Dans of Disneyland, regularly appearing at Disneyland and Disneyworld, as The Be Sharps in a Simpsons episode, and as the Singing Busts in Disney's 2003 Haunted Mansion movie
The Singing Senators, a quartet of U.S. Senators
Choruses
BHS
The Vocal Majority, based in Dallas, TX eleven-time International Chorus Champions
The Masters of Harmony, six-time International Chorus Champions. Based in Los Angeles County, California.
The Louisville Thoroughbreds, seven-time International Chorus Champions from Louisville, Kentucky.
The Alexandria Harmonizers, based in Alexandria, VA. four-time International Chorus Champions.
Chorus of the Chesapeake, two-time International Champion chorus, based in the Baltimore, MD area.
The Westminster Chorus, a youth barbershop chorus in California started by young members of the Masters of Harmony are the 2007 International Chorus Champion.
BABS
Cambridge Chord Company, twice European champion barbershop chorus and British Association of Barbershop Singers gold medalists, "Choir of the World" International Eisteddfod 2004. Based in England.
SAI
North Metro Chorus, three-time Sweet Adelines International Chorus Champions from Toronto, Ontario.
The Rich-Tone Chorus, four-time Sweet Adelines International Chorus Champions from Richardson, Texas.
Melodeers Chorus, four-time Sweet Adelines International Gold Medal chorus from Northbrook, Illinois.
Typical barbershop songs
Barbershop Harmony Society's Barberpole Cat Songs "Polecats" — songs which all Barbershop Harmony Society members are encouraged to learn as a shared canonic repertoire — all famous, traditional examples of the genre:
"Down Our Way"
"Down by the Old Mill Stream"
"Honey/Li'l Lize Medley"
"Let Me Call You Sweetheart"
"My Wild Irish Rose"
"Shine on Me"
"The Story of the Rose" ("Heart of My Heart")
"Sweet Adeline"
"Sweet and Lovely"
"Sweet, Sweet Roses of Morn"
"Wait 'Til the Sun Shines, Nellie"
"You Tell Me Your Dream (I'll Tell You Mine)"
There are also several other well-known songs in the genre. Some are considered standards, such as "From the First Hello" and "Goodbye, My Coney Island Baby", while others are well-known because notable quartets are associated with them. An example of the latter is "Come Fly with Me", which gained popularity through association with the 2005 international quartet champion, Realtime.
Examples of other songs popular in the barbershop genre are:
"Alexander's Ragtime Band"
"Bright Was the Night"
"Come Fly with Me"
"Darkness on the Delta"
"From the First Hello to the Last Goodbye"
"Goodbye, My Coney Island Baby"
"Hello My Baby"
"I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen"
"Shine On Harvest Moon"
"Sweet Georgia Brown"
"When My Baby Smiles at Me"
"Yes, Sir, That's My Baby"
Referents in popular culture
"Lida Rose" is a song beloved to barbershoppers from Meredith Willson's musical comedy The Music Man. A barbershop quartet forms an integral part of the story, and was played by the Buffalo Bills onstage and in the screen adaptation.
In television
In The Simpsons episode Homer's Barbershop Quartet, Homer Simpson, Seymour Skinner, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon and Barney Gumble have their own barbershop quartet.
On the television series Family Guy, barbershop quartets are sometimes used, and at the same time parodied, in episodes such as Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire and Sibling Rivalry.
In the popular TV show Scrubs, four of the employees of the hospital form a barbershop quartet which has been called "Ted's Band", "The Worthless Peons", and most recently, "Foghat". The quartet is played by the real-life group The Blanks.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Barbershop Music'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://barbershop_music.totallyexplained.com">Barbershop music Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
