Modern Collegiate A Cappella Essay -- Music Art Cultural Essays Histor

Modern Collegiate A Cappella Introduction A cappella is a relatively young art form that is catching the interest of many people across the nation. The popular movement is believed to have been started in 1909, when part of the Yale Glee Club broke off and formed the Yale Whiffenpoofs, the first collegiate a cappella group; the Whiffenpoofs exist to this day, and the a cappella movement has only grown in popularity. Throughout the middle decades of the 20th century, professional a cappella groups attracted a lot of attention for their renditions of popular songs. As this new progressive style caught on, the a cappella art form evolved from its roots in harmonically complex barbershop quartets into a more modem and freely structured type of music. The trend-setting groups remained attentive to musicality, but left behind the rigidity commonly associated with barbershop performance. Songs like "Mr. Sandman," by the Chordettes, and "It Won't Be Very Long," by the Soul Stirrers, showed people that a cappella could be exciting and also that it could tackle a multitude of musical genres. The next big developments in a cappella came on the collegiate front. While professional groups retained their popularity, their numbers did not increase much toward the end of the 20th century. On the other hand, the number of college groups skyrocketed during this same time period. According to the Mainely A Cappella website's history of a cappella, since 1989, there have been about 20 new groups formed at schools across the nation every year. 1 This paper suggests that the reason for the drastic spike in collegiate interest in a cappella is because students began to realize the wide range of creative expression that can be achieve... ...ed methods of making music. 3 Quotation from Michael Kendall's "Philosophy of Music Education." See reference list. Works Cited: 1.Bethel College Website. Michael Kendall, "Philosophy of Music Education." http://www.bethelcollege.edu/acadb/und s/finearts/music/phil.htm. 2. Hemsley, Thomas. Singing and Imagination. Oxford University Press. 1998. 3. Mainely A Cappella website. "A Century of A Cappella." http://www.a-cappella.corn/misc/history.php. 4. Sawyer, Keith. Group Creativity – Music, Theater, Collaboration. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. 2003. 5. Singer, Irving. Feeling and Imagination – The Vibrant Flux of Our Existence. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2001. 6. Schoenherr, Steve. "Recording Technology History." http://history.acusd.edu/ mml#di ital. 7. Ward, Finke, Smith. Creativity and the Mind. Plenum Press. 1995.