Everybody sings. Singing in the shower, singing while doing chores, singing while listening to music. It is an unmistakable part of human culture, and it has been for an incredibly long time. So long in fact, that voice is most likely man’s first instrument (Koopman). Thus, the very first form of music was a cappella. A cappella music is simply defined as music without instrumental accompaniment (Eichenwald). However, this includes a wide variety of music forms. The most significant of these are gregorian chants, barbershop quartets, doo-wop groups, and modern pop a cappella.
I was introduced to a cappella music through YouTube, watching a modern group known as Pentatonix perform an a cappella rendition of the Evolution of Music. I immediately fell in love with the art, and was stunned by their talent, so I decided to pursue this interest. A cappella music began to consume my life in the best connotation of that phrase, but when trying to connect with others about this love, I learned that few people knew much if anything about it. Thus, I intend to share its beauty with as many people as I can.
A cappella music is an underappreciated form of art that has developed an uncanny amount since the creation of music, and it is important enough to human history that everybody should be exposed to it at some point in their lives. “The voice is presumed to be the original musical instrument” (Koopman). The first record of a group of people singing together without musical accompaniment is without a doubt Gregorian chants and church music, as explicitly stated by Saint Meinrad Archabbey.
Gregorian chants get their name from Pope Saint Gregory the Great, who is a symbol of the chant of the Roman church, and is presumed to be the composer of chant. This early form of music is incredibly simple and easy perform, because it was intended for large congregations with which to sing. It was frequently a monotone song with little to no note and rhythm variation, with a heavy focus on lyrics as opposed to musicality. However, there were more advanced sub-sects which were taught to sing somewhat more complicated music.
Soloists or small groups of singers would be taught to sing in multiple parts, still with a heavy focus on the lyrical aspect of the song, but much more interesting to hear (Archabbey). Gregorian chant clearly shows the humble beginnings of a cappella, and do to its simple and uninteresting musicality (or lack thereof), it is an incredibly rare form of music to find in any religious place or gathering area today (Moore). An intriguing part of Gregorian chants is the more advanced groups, because they split into multiple parts and sang in harmony. This was seemingly a perfect base on which to develop barbershop singing.
Barbershop singing originated from, believe it or not, barbershops. Kovalchik wrote that while sitting in wait for their haircuts and shaves, men were left waiting with nothing to do. The barber would frequently sing his own jolly tunes out of boredom, and people eventually decided to attempt to join along. They did this in a call-response method, without any musical accompaniment. They learned harmonies that stacked closely together, and eventually created a new and identifiable style of music: barbershop (Kovalchik). Barbershop is a style that is incredibly identifiable not only by its sound, but also by its look.
The Lima Beane Chorus does a brilliant job describing barbershop quartets in their roots. The classic barbershop quartet is composed of four males, a tenor, a lead singer, a baritone, and a bass. The lead is simple enough, he sings the melody. The tenor sings a third above the melody, making a ringing harmonic sound. The bass creates foundation for the whole group, while the baritone fills in whatever role is left and necessary. He can sing higher or lower than the lead, depending on what is missing from the famous “barbershop seventh chord”. This chord’s official name is a harmonic seventh, ut it was nicknamed the “barbershop seventh chord” due to its proliferance in barbershop quartets. Out of a full scale, the harmonic seventh includes the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and lowered 7th notes. Simply a 1-3-5 chord would create a simple major chord with a happy, basic sound, but the lowered seventh creates a very close chord full of tension and begging for conclusion (The Lima Beane Chorus). When thinking of a barbershop quartet, the first thought that comes to mind is likely four men in red and white striped suits, with a straw hat and a cane in hand.
Kovalchik writes that this look comes from when barbershop music first became very popular. Performers would wear very distinctive colors and patterns so that people who were far away could easily see them without having to strain to find them in a crowd. Barbershop music began to fall drastically in popularity until it was nearly an extinct art. Kerr discusses a small group of people who v e lovers of barbershop and could not stand the idea of losing this long loved art form, so they formed the Society for The Preservation Of Encouragement of Barbershop Singing in America (SPEBSQSA).
This was also known as The Barbershop Harmony society. The SPEBSQSA raised awareness for the potential fall of barbershop music and drastically increased its popularity, and still spreads the magic of barbershop to this day. Their goal is to prevent barbershop style music from ever dying off, and they so far are incredibly successful (Kerr). There are currently over 80,000 people worldwide who participate with the SPEBSQSA, and that number is constantly increasing. Barbershop, while mostly composed for four male singers, attracts a much wider audience than just men.
Women began to express their interest in barbershop music, so they created their own version of the SPEBSQSA. The Sweet Adelines is a group of 23,000 women around the world who sing in barbershop quartets and other larger ensembles with a barbershop sound (Sweet Adelines). Women have a a very different vocal range than men, so their music is arranged slightly differently. Instead of a bass, baritone, lead, and tenor, female barbershop quartets have an alto 1, alto 2, lead, and soprano.
As stated by the Sweet Adelines website, the timbre of female singers’ voices creates a very different sound than classic male barbershop quartets, but they still maintain the harmonic seventh chord style. The creation of this group was a brilliant advancement in musical history, as it allowed for barbershop to be performed by the entire population as opposed to just fifty percent (Sweet Adelines). A style of music that is easily mistaken to be barbershop is known as doo wop. Doo wop groups generally included three to six men, ideally with a bass, baritone, lead, tenor 2, and tenor 1 (Koopman).
The main difference between barbershop and doo wop is that doo wop music utilizes several different nonsensical sounds and noises to create rhythm and harmonies, while barbershop quartets would almost always sing words, echoing the lead or harmonizing in time with him. For instance, doo wop bass singers would sing a “doomph doomph” sound to imitate an upright bass, or s tenor would sing “shang-a-lang” to emulate a guitar (Koopman). While doo wop groups were very popular for about a ten year period, they were did not sing very complex music.
They rarely utilized the potential of minor chords, which could have added an incredible amount of musical variety, let alone rhythmic variety, lyrical changes, or even vocal parts, all according to John Koopman. Doo wop music was almost never performed by female singers, which seriously limited the the amount of potential variety for the style itself. Doo wop groups were only popular for a very short period of time, the 1950s-1960s, however they are arguably the main influence of groups like the Beach Boys, who rose to fame throughout the 60s (Koopman).
The Beach boys employed the use much more mature musicality by including chordal variety and faster, more complicated rhythms. This led their fan base to drastically increase, resulting in their still being popular in modern music. After all this development, a cappella music finally appeared to come to a halt. No new styles were being created, and groups were losing popularity. Eichenwald wrote that the main fan base was made up of college students who sang in a cappella groups, and even these were not viewed as popular by the majority of people.
However, the development drastically increased after the airing of The Sing-Off. An NBC journalist wrote that the SingOff was an NBC program that aired from 2009 until 2014. It was a competition similar in format to many other singing contests (The Voice, The X Factor, etc. ), except for one major difference; it was solely for a cappella performers. Groups ranging from small sizes of four to massive choirs of 25 would compete for a $100,000 recording contract, which would grant any group with sufficient talent the resources to become popular.
This show was wildly successful, and several of its winners used their winnings to the fullest, eventually becoming the most famous a cappella groups worldwide. Pentatonix was the season three winner of The Sing-Off (NBC), and was the group that unleashed my love for a cappella music. They are a band of five incredibly talented musicians, a bass, a baritone, a male alto, a soprano, and a vocal percussionist. As written by themselves, Pentatonix is known for their covers of famous songs, and their incredible talent to emulate instruments with only five voices.
This group’s unique style of a cappella music has helped to reintroduce a cappella to the world of modern music; their ability to make nic sounds and perform other forms of vocal acrobatics has attracted attention from all over the world, influencing countless other people to create their own a cappella groups in their honor. A cappella music has come an incredible distance to become what it has today, and thus it is vital to keep the art alive. It has been a part of humanity for longer than orchestras, bands, and sports, yet it has never had as big of a swell of popularity as today’s.
A cappella music has inspired me to learn to sing, which is one of my favorite activities, and I would never have had known without being exposed to a cappella. It is imperative that a cappella music stays alive for just as long as any other art, because the impact it can have on a life is truly incredible. Humans have access to the world’s first and best instrument, the voice, and need to use it to its fullest extent: a cappella. “A good quartet is like a good conversation among friends interacting to each other’s ideas. ” (Getz).