The Music of South Boundary

South Boundary strives for a variety of a cappella musical styles in TTBB voicings. We purposely take the risk of being too eclectic as we attempt to learn and to sing material from many styles as American male interpreters of material not necessarily American in origin and sometimes not even composed for men. We will take musical risks. We expect to take our best shots at interpretation of these styles but get the best help we can in making our offerings “authentic” and “accessible”. We do expect to be entertaining. Men have been singing for a long time and we hope to learn as much as we can about how they sang then and might sing today.

Vocal jazz, shaped notes, barbershop, traditional glee club, collegiate a cappella, cowboy ballads, sacred settings of the Mass and other scriptural passages, chant, renaissance motets, art songs, work songs, spirituals and more are in our sights. We expect to sing mostly in English but hope ultimately to tackle Welsh, Spanish, Latin, Scottish dialects and more as we encounter different musical ideas.

We intend to perform without musical direction, handling our performance in effect as a “very large quartet”. As such, we have much to learn internally about taking visual and musical cues from each other to sing and act as a unit.

Below is a listing and brief description of many of our current pieces and some small samples of our sound. Have a listen!

Thomas Tallis’ beautiful “If Ye Love Me” represents the work of the Renaissance and pushes us back in time to the mid-16th century.

“The 34th Psalm” is a setting of scripture arranged and performed in the Shaped Note tradition popularized in New England singing schools in the late 18th century and preserved today by Sacred Harp and Northern Harmony. It is a robust and energetic style. You can experience another setting of this style in the Civil War movie, “Cold Mountain”.

Stephen Foster, one of the greatest American songwriters of the 19th century wrote his wonderful “Beautiful Dreamer”. The language of the song is certainly of another era, but we could fall in love with someone who felt like this about us even today.

“Oh Bury Me Out on the Lone Prairie” is a cowboy ballad. One of our younger members has abandoned thoughts of cremation in preference to a prairie cemetery upon considering this song’s sentiments. This song features first tenors.

The spiritual, yet another American contribution, “Standin’ in the Need of Prayer” is a testimony to the human condition. It is a joy to feel these great rhythms and sing the great ideas of our own spiritual needs.

Male quartet singing on and off street corners has long been a fixture of American popular song. David Wright, one of the finest arrangers for the Barbershop Harmony Society prepared this delightful example of mid 20th century doo-wop, “Hello Mary Lou”

The Whiffenpoofs, world famous members of the Yale Glee Club, popularized their theme song. Though you probably won’t recognize the first part of the song, you will want to sing along on the last part of “The Whiffenpoof Song”.

“Take Me Out to the Ballgame” (with a twist) is a salute to the great American pastime and it contains a musical joke almost worth the price of admission by itself.

Ernani Aguiar is a contemporary Brazilian composer whose high-energy Latin setting of “Salmo 150” is a musical challenge but a brilliant piece of modern composition (and great fun to sing).

“I Vow to Thee, My Country” is a sacred/patriotic piece written by Gustov Holst in 1921 and is a setting of a text by Cecil Spring-Rice. It has become a popular hymn tune, in fact was played at the ceremonial occasion of the USCA graduation in May 2008.

“Ar Hyde Y Nos (All Through the Night)” comes to us from the Welsh male voice choir tradition. When we find someone who can help us with the Welsh, we expect to learn a verse or two in the original language. In the meantime, English will have to do.

The industrial revolution era weavers of Scotland were a proud lot and South Boundary try a little dialect in the work song, “Wark O’ the Weavers”, translations available on request.

We search pre-Industrial Revolution into the prodigious output of the Scottish Bard, Robbie Burns and sing three of his works, “Auld Lang Syne”, “A Man’s a Man For A’ That” and one of times greatest love ballads, “Oh My Love is Like a Red Red Rose”

We visit the Great White Way with “Maria” from West Side Story and “Lida Rose” from the Music Man.

Franz Biebl produced a now-classic arrangement of “Ave Maria” which was popularized by Chanticleer, and will stretch us with its seven parts and its Latin text.

Robert Shaw and Alice Parker produced a great arrangement of “Vive L’Amour”. This traditional American tune seems a natural for a bunch of guys who love to sing.

The vocal jazz idiom claims the Four Freshmen as one of its founders and we have found an arrangement of “It’s a Blue World” that will stretch our chord vocabularies and our ears.

Anglican chant has a niche role in choral music and we have taken a setting from the Anglican Psalter and written what we call “The Tourists Psalm”, a parody telling the tale of an American in Paris, not the one you know.

And we have commissioned a Tessa Teddar setting of “I’ve Been Workin’ on the Railroad” for a piano duet and our dozen or so singers. This departure from our a cappella intention should be entertaining with a couple of fancy showmen/piano players (but there is an a cappella version for when they are not there, train sounds and all”.

We have also performed with Tessa’s Mid-Kentucky Chorus a portion of her (locally) famous Abraham Lincoln Suite.

Pop music from the 50/s and 60’s has contributed a great deal to popular culture and to our repertoire. “Be True to Your School”, Eight Days a Week”, “Good Night Sweetheart”, “I’m Into Something Good”, and “The Way You Do the Things You Do” have become crowd favorites.

We have sung with others, Randall Thompson’s “Frostiana”, Wilhousky’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic:, John Rutter’s “When the Saints Go Marching In”, “Side By Side” arranged by Jay Altouse and “Sentimental Journey” arranged by Hawley Ades.

We perform a South African “challenge song” with our young colleagues from Chukker Creek Elementary aka Boundary Boys titled “Sangena”

We have found some choruses from Scott Joplin’s Ragtime opera “Treemonisha” and hope to perform it in the future with a full orchestra. Stay tuned.

Please contact Bill Riehl if you wish to have a chat about musical styles as sung by men throughout the ages.

Musical Director
Bill Riehl
briehl@mac.com
803-336-8802