In eulogizing composer Ron Nelson and hornist Hermann Baumann earlier today, I failed to notice Alice Parker has also died. Parker, the eminent choral composer, director, and teacher, wrote more than 500 arrangements and original compositions. With her music in the repertoire of churches and choral societies everywhere, she was one of the most frequently performed and heard of contemporary composers, with weekly auditors in the thousands.
A native New Englander, Parker largely ignored contemporary trends in composition, instead often drawing inspiration from folk music and hymn tunes. As a composer for voice, she was also attracted to poetry. Her musical output was enormous. Among her original works were 11 song-cycles, 11 works for chorus and orchestra, 33 cantatas, 47 choral suites, and more than 40 hymns. She also composed four operas and authored at least five books.
Parker saw music as a unifying force. Her final work, “On the Common Ground,” completed in 2020, was an appeal to a country deeply divided by politics and values.
“Beauty awakens the sense, in us, of our vulnerability as human beings,” she commented in 2017. “It’s why you feel like crying when you see a gorgeous sunset, or hear a Bach solo cello suite, or a gorgeous melody, or a little kid singing.”
“When we sing something perfectly lovely together… and it really clicks, you have this marvelous feeling of brotherhood in the room,” she stated elsewhere. “We are all human beings. We are all feeling this emotion together at the same time. And this is uniting us. We are not separate.”
Parker died on Christmas Eve. She was 98 years-old.
I borrowed some of this information from an appreciation in today’s Washington Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2023/12/29/alice-parker-composer-choral-dies/
