Ch 4: The Keyboard Accompaniment

Question 1

THE ROLE OF THE ACCOMPANIMENT

• 1) Enhance the mood of the text and reinforce the style as projected by the vocal setting.
• 2) Provide tonal centers and harmonic structure, metric pulse, and rhythmic impetus, and interest through counterpoint and embellishment
• 3) Aid singers in providing pitches which anticipate vocal entrances, doublings of difficult vocal leaps and chromatic passages, and reinforcement of rhythmically difficult vocal figures.
• 4) Provide contrast to vocal sections through instrumental introductions, interludes, and endings.
• 5) Prepare the audience for a sudden change of mood.
• 6) “Fill” the space while the voices rest.
• 7) Contribute to the energy level and growth of the arrangement.
• 8) Unify the arrangement.
• 9) Be silent (or extremely thin and quiet) when the poignancy, pathos, humor, smoothness, or excitement of an unaccompanied passage is more effective.

1) Enhance the mood of the text and reinforce the style as projected by the vocal setting.

• The mood may be generated by the accompaniment (thus influencing the listener’s perception of the text.) EXAMPLE 4-1
• Choral arrangments may be divided roughly into three basic stylistic categories
  
  • secular/traditional
  • sacred
  • jazz/pop/rock
• Secular/traditional styles
  
  • Because this music is based on European and American folk traditions, accompaniments should be essentially triadic, metrically clear, and rhythmically repetitive
  • EXAMPLE 4-2. illustrates slight variety, clear phrase delineation, and support for the vocal lines, all within a very simple style of the tune.
• Sacred arrangements
  
  • Project the emotional spectrum from the meditative to the joyous
  • Roots in Western European religious art music
  • Essentially triadic and metrically clear, but greater complexity is sometimes achieved through frequent use of nonharmonic tones such as
    
    • Passing
    • Neighbor
    • Pedal tones
    • Suspensions
  • Nonharmonic tones are used to in the accompaniment to color rather simple vocal parts or to lend support to the linear counterpoint of the vocal part themselves. EXAMPLE 4-3
• Contemporary Jazz, Rock, and Pop Styles
  
  • Synthesize European and African music in varying degrees
  • Relies on a steady pulse against which frequently syncopated lines and chords sound.
  • The harmonic material covers the spectrum from the triads predominating in much rock to the thirteenth chords with chromatic alterations of progressive jazz.
  • Melodic material may be generated from conventional (major, minor, or modal) scales or from the blues scale.

2) Provide tonal centers and harmonic structure, metric pulse, and rhythmic impetus, and interest through counterpoint and embellishment

• EXAMPLE 4-4 shows how arranging concerns can be dealt with quite simply.
  
  • All five chords cited serve to define the key of B♭
  • The pitches of the accompaniment are limited to chord tones, thus clarifying the harmonic structure and progression while at the same time providing good voice leading (the first notes of each chord to sound form a descending line: B♭-A-G-F-E♭)
  • By beginning the accompaniment’s ascending pattern on the downbeat, the meter is defined.
  • The persistent eighth-note figure helps to define the meter and provide the gentle momentum called for by the text.
• As a general rule, the less these elements are present in the vocal writing, the more they must be present in the accompaniment.
• A unison vocal line will usually require an accompaniment that fills out the harmony.
  
  • A vocal line of half notes will require notes of shorter duration in the accompaniment. In this way a balance is achieved for the listener.

3) Aid singers in providing pitches which anticipate vocal entrances, doublings of difficult vocal leaps and chromatic passages, and reinforcement of rhythmically difficult vocal figures.

• One of the greatest dangers is expecting too much from a choir.
  
  • Unlike the writer who is working in solitude, often with the aid of a piano, the singer is performing amid twelve to one hundred other singers, most of whom may be singing other material, and none of whom can reach out to an instrument for periodic pitch confirmation.
• The arranger must anticipate challenges to the singers and support them–keeping in mind that the younger or less experienced singers, the more such support is necessary
  
  • Prepare vocal entrances by giving their first pitches in the accompaniment (preferably in the same register), or by making their entrance pitch “inevitable” as shown in EXAMPLE 4-5.
    
    • The anticipation of the unison a♭ is made possible by the scalar run in the accompaniment, even though a modulation is also taking place
  • Double awkward leaps or extensive chromatic passages in inner voices where the lines may be difficult to pre-hear, or in the melody or bass for the sake of choral intonation.
  • The accompaniment must also have its own linear and harmonic logic, so the doubling should be made part of the ongoing texture.
  • EXAMPLE 4-6 the right hand part of the accompaniment reinforces the soprano leap and then confirms the harmonies while supporting the vocal syncopation and capturing the overall style of the passage. Such support is essential for, say, the average high school chorus

4) Provide contrast to vocal sections through instrumental introductions, interludes, and endings.

• Keyboard accompaniments may provide introductions, interludes, and endings to establish or change the mood, key center, tempo, meter, or style. The chorus may be involved in these changes as well, but the role of the accompaniment here is usually crucial.
• The timbral contrastt provided by the solo piano or organ contributes a new ( and often much needed) dimension to the arrangement.
• Generally, the longer and more involved the arrangement, the more such sections are appropriate.
• The accompaniment may help to delineate the arrangement’s formal shape.
  
  • The source melody itself may be
    
    • Strophic (A, A1, A2, etc)
    • Sectional (AABACA)
• With strophic form, the accompaniment may group certain verses together, or interest and growth may be brought to the strophic tune by a slight (or dramatic) change in the accompaniment with each verse. PROVIDE EX on bottom of p 36
• The sectional nature of other source melodies may be emphasized by a corresponding sectionalization of the accompaniment or de-emphasized by a little change in the accompaniment from one section to the next: PROVIDE EXAMPLE P 37 TOP
  
  • Here the accompaniment tends to connect the A, A1, B, and A1 sections while helping to focus upon the contrasting nature of the C section. The final A2 returns essentially to the source melody’s opening material but is linked to C through the accompaniment texture or style.

5) Prepare the audience for a sudden change of mood.

• EXAMPLE 4-7: A single gesture or several measures in the accompaniment can prepare the audience for a change in key, tempo, mood, or style. This must be done only if the text warrants it and if the arrangement’s pacing is well served. The two-part arrangement of Sing a Rainbow is in the form:
  
  • A B A1 Interlude A B1 A2
• While most of the arrangement employs an accompaniment that is high in a register or lyrical in nature or both, the interlude and following A section employs a low, repetitive accompaniment figure for contrast.
• The interlude beginning in measure 4 of the example, serves to create the new mood and break up the eight-bar phrasing of each section of the source melody.

6) “Fill” the space while the voices rest.

• Singers need to breathe and the audience needs to breathe psychologically along with the singers, but usually, the energy level must be maintained. To allow for both, the accompaniment must fill the space between vocal phrases and lead the singers and audience into the next phrase. The fill provides contrast but must be appropriate to the passage. EXAMPLE 4-8 illustrates this device in two very different styles.

7) Contribute to the energy level and growth of the arrangement.

• Most arrangements move from the simple to the more complex in order to keep the listener involved.
• Certain elements that contribute to growth–extended range, change of register, faster rhythms INSERT p 37 bottom, number of pitches sounding at once–can be most easily executed in the accompaniment.
• EXAMPLE 4-9 exhibits very common accompaniment patterns found here in one arrangement. Note that such dramatic changes contribute to the formal design of the arrangement.

PG 42

Answer 1

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