Barbershop music

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The Dapper Dans, a barbershop quartet at Disney World
The Dapper Dans, a barbershop quartet at Disney World

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. The melody is not 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 embellishing effect can be created. Occasional brief passages may be sung by fewer than four voice parts.

According to the Barbershop Harmony Society,

Barbershop music features songs with understandable lyrics and easily singable melodies, whose tones clearly define a tonal center and imply major and minor chords and barbershop (dominant and secondary dominant) seventh chords that resolve primarily around the circle of fifths, while making frequent use of other resolutions. Barbershop music also features a balanced and symmetrical form, and a standard meter. The basic song and its harmonization are embellished by the arranger to provide appropriate support of the song's theme and to close the song effectively.

Barbershop singers adjust pitches to achieve perfectly tuned chords in just intonation while remaining true to the established tonal center. Artistic singing in the barbershop style exhibits a fullness or expansion of sound, precise intonation, a high degree of vocal skill, and a high level of unity and consistency within the ensemble. Ideally, these elements are natural, unmanufactured, and free from apparent effort.

The presentation of barbershop music uses appropriate musical and visual methods to convey the theme of the song and provide the audience with an emotionally satisfying and entertaining experience. The musical and visual delivery is from the heart, believable, and sensitive to the song and its arrangement throughout. The most stylistic presentation artistically melds together the musical and visual aspects to create and sustain the illusions suggested by the music.

– [1]

Slower barbershop songs often eschew a continuous beat, and notes are often held (or sped up) ad libitum.

The voice parts in men's barbershop singing do not 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.

Contents

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" is not 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 very precisely tuned and balanced. It is not heard in chords sounded on keyboard instruments, due to the slight tuning imperfection of the equal-tempered scale. It is for this reason that barbershoppers typically use a pitchpipe for tuning instead of keyboard instruments, though some are known to use a tuning fork.

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."[2]

What is prized is not so much the "overtone" itself, but a unique sound whose achievement is most easily recognized by the presence of the "overtone." The precise synchronization 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 e.g. as sounded on a 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 ages.

The dominant seventh-type chord... is so important to barbershop harmony that it is 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 is 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 1900 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 are 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."

He notes too that "barbershoppers almost never speak of 'singing' a chord, but almost always draw on a discourse of physical work and exertion; thus, they 'hit,' 'chop,' 'ring,' 'crack,' and 'swipe....' ....vocal harmony... is interpreted as an embodied musicking. Barbershoppers never lose sight (or sound) of its physicality."

Polk Miller's Old South Quartet, 1900-1912
Polk Miller's Old South Quartet, 1900-1912

As a result of scholarship by Lynn Abbott and Dr. Jim Henry it is now generally accepted that barbershop singing originated in African American communities in the U.S. around the turn of the 20th century, where barbershops were, and remain today, social gathering places. The tight, four-part harmony of the form has its roots in the black church, where close harmony has a long tradition.[3]

As far as research can ascertain, ‘barbershop singing’ was being sung in Europe in 1607 (or even before)that is when English settlers founded Jamestown. Their main occupation was to grow tobacco. The Spaniards had settled in what is now called Florida, forming what was probably the first permanent settlement in America.


In 1597, the ‘Thomas Morley Guide to Practical Music Making’ said of barbershop singing ‘You sing you know not what. It would seem you come lately from a barbershop.’

In the 1600’s before Mozart and Rossini dreamt of operatic barbers, there was written in a music publication an article that went as follows:- The Practice of Harmony Barbers Each barber himself, in strictest rules, Master or Batterer in the music schools How they, the mere musicians out do go These ones have more than one string to their bow. . In 1604 in the novel by Miguel D’Cevantes, Don Quixote, is a passage, ‘To make the business glow, they sang inventing harmonies as they go. Most are players or fun makers and teeth or blood letting sitters’

In the 1700’s the barbers shop was becoming less of a place to sing as fewer people wanted their hair cut. Wig making was taking over as the fashion. Perhaps this is where the African American connection comes into being.

However, a’cappella was now established in the U.S.A and continued to be used right up until the demise of vaudeville and the advent of the new fangled thing called a ‘wireless’

The revision of a’cappella singing was taken up again when a tax lawyer, called 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, Okalahoma.

Cash was a true partisan of quartet singing; who advertised the fact that he did not want a’cappella to fall by the way-side.

A meeting was called and at 6.30 pm on Monday April 11th 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 Signing in America ‘was set up

It was known by the acronym S.P.E.B.S.Q.S.A. This was at a time when many institutions in the States, were in the habit of using multi initials to denote their function

However, S.P.E.B.S.Q.S.A. was changed to a simpler ‘B.Q.S.’ --Barbershop Quartet Society and this too was changed a couple of years ago to ‘B.H.S.’, ‘Barbershop Harmony Society’


The first uses of the term were associated with African Americans. Henry notes that "The Mills Brothers learned to harmonize in their father's barber shop in Piqua, Ohio. Several other well-known African American gospel quartets were founded in neighborhood barber shops, among them the New Orleans Humming Four, the Southern Stars and the Golden Gate Jubilee Quartette."[4]. 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 capella music of the black church. The popular, Christian a cappella group Take 6[5] 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.

  • Abbott, Lynn. Play That Barber Shop Chord: A Case for the African American Origin of Barbershop Harmony. American Music 10 (1992) 289-325.
  • Henry, James Earl. The Origins of Barbershop Harmony: A Study of Barbershop's Links to Other African American Musics as Evidenced through Recordings and Arrangements of Early Black and White Quartets. Ph. D diss., Washington University, 2000

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."

Some 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:

Barbershop groups with both male and female members are known as mixed barbershop groups.[8]

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. 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:

A worldwide association for mixed groups, the Mixed Harmony Barbershop Quartet Association [12], was established in 1995 to reflect the growing popularity of male-female barbershop singing.

  • Acoustix, 1990 International Quartet Champions
  • American Quartet
  • The Boston Common (quartet), 1980 International Quartet Champions. Many (including FRED) believe they should have won much earlier. To quote a FRED song, "They won in 74 and 75 and 77 and 78 and 79 and finally in 80. What were you thinking!?"
  • 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 Fishbowl Boys, started in 2006, one of South Australia's youngest quartets, and current Australian school barbershop champions[9]
  • Four Voices, 2002 International Quartet Champions
  • FRED, 1999 International Quartet Champions, Comedy Quartet
  • The Gas House Gang, 1993 International Quartet Champions (from St. Louis, Missouri)
  • Gotcha!, 2004 International Quartet Champions
  • Happiness Emporium[13], 1975 International Quartet Champions - Still active and performing
  • The Haydn Quartet, early 1900s quartet
  • Max Q (quartet), 2007 International Quartet Champions
  • Metropolis, International Medalist Quartet (2002-2006), 1998 Grand National A Cappella Champions (Harmony Sweepstakes), Popular Comedy Quartet
  • Michigan Jake, 2001 International Quartet Champions
  • Nightlife, 1996 International Quartet Champions, all four were members of the Masters of Harmony (see choruses below) at the time of their win in Salt Lake City, UT. Only the second quartet to achieve this honour (first was Bluegrass Student Union).
  • Platinum, 2000 International Quartet Champions
  • Power Play, 2003 International Quartet Champions
  • Realtime, 2005 International Quartet Champions
  • Reprise, 2001 International Collegiate Champions
  • The Singing Senators, a quartet of Republican U.S. Senators
  • The Suntones, 1961 International Quartet Champions
  • Vocal Spectrum[14], 2004 collegiate champions and 2006 International Quartet Champions

Barbershop Harmony Society's Barberpole Cat Songs "Polecats" — songs which all Barbershop Harmony Society members are encouraged to learn as a shared repertoire — all famous, traditional examples of the genre:

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:

"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.

  1. ^ Definition of the Barbershop Style, from the Contest and Judging Handbook. Barbershop Harmony Society (2002-07-11). Retrieved on 2007-06-06.
  2. ^ Averill, Gage (2003). Four Parts, No Waiting: A Social History of American Barbershop Harmony. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-511672-0. 
  3. ^ http://www.singers.com/gospel/gospelgroups.html
  4. ^ http://www.barbershop.org/web/groups/public/documents/pages/pub_cb_00167.hcsp
  5. ^ http://www.singers.com/take6.html
  6. ^ http://www.singers.com/barbershop/crackerjills.html
  7. ^ http://www.singers.com/barbershop/ambiance.html
  8. ^ http://www.singers.com/barbershop/mixedbarbershop.html
  9. ^ AAMBS 9th National Convention: Quartet Schools Competition Results (PDF). AAMBS (2007-09-27). Retrieved on 2007-10-03.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbershop_music"
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