Barbershop music

Barbershop music is an a cappella style of singing that emphasizes four-part vocal harmony. The performers sing in consonant chords, or notes that are pleasing when combined, such as middle C and the G above it. A traditional barbershop quartet comprises four singers, while a barbershop chorus is made up of multiple persons singing each of the four parts. Traditionally, barbershop singers were male, but in modern times some barbershop groups that include women may also have alto and soprano parts.

Barbershop music has been performed for centuries. Although its precise origins are open to speculation, in popular culture it has played an important role at social gatherings for men. This was particularly true of barbershops, which were social centers for men in the nineteenth and early-to-mid twentieth centuries. While a cappella performance remains popular in the twenty-first century, barbershop singing is less common.

Background

The word cappella is Italian for “chapel.” In early choral arrangements, sheet music might include the instruction a cappella, which would indicate to performers that they should sing “in the style of the chapel.” Unaccompanied singing dates to prehistory, but musical notation, or writing the notes of what and how to sing, appears in the archaeological record on a cuneiform tablet from about 1400 BCE Babylonia, or modern-day Iraq. This tablet records a composition of three-part harmony. Similar music notation used in modern times emerged in Ancient Greece. For example, Pythagoras (c. 570 – 500 BCE) was interested in the numerical qualities of music and created the tetrachord, or four notes of a scale. A Roman, Beothius, built on the Pythagorian theories of music and math in the sixth century when he wrote De Institutione Musica, or The Principles of Music.

Musical notation was further developed by St. Isidore, a Spanish scholar, in 650 CE. At that time, vocal chants were popular, but Isidore recognized that knowledge of music endured only if people remembered it and passed it on. His system used neumes, which were instructions above the text that indicated how the note should be sung in relation to the previous note; however, it showed only the next note to be higher or lower, and gave no indication of the notes themselves.

Italian music scholar Guido d’Arezzo developed a new system in approximately 1000 CE. He used staves of four lines and grouped pitches into what he called hexachords. He also invented solfege, which is commonly known as do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do. In modern times, the stave has five lines. Further improvements over the centuries included the invention of symbols to indicate how long a note was to last. By the seventeenth century, musical notation looked much as it does in modern times.

Musical notation became standardized. This allowed music to be shared over time and distance and changed the character of popular music. The first known reference to music associated with a barber’s business was made by Samuel Pepys in his journal in 1660. He writes that he and others passed the time aboard a ship making “barber’s music.” Researchers believe that men waiting their turn performed music on instruments in the shop, which were popular gathering places, hence Pepys’s description of amateur instrumental music.

Starting in the late nineteenth century, African Americans began to harmonize popular songs, folk songs, and spirituals. The qualities of the music appealed to performers who adapted it for use in minstrel shows. As the technology developed, predominantly white professional singers recorded music in this style and newly written songs were added to the repertoire.

Overview

Barbershop music is an a cappella form of four-part harmony that became popular in the United States early in the twentieth century. Popular groups of the era included the American Quartet, Haydn Quartet, and Peerless Quartet. They performed four-part harmony arrangements of popular songs of the day. Some of these, including “Shine On, Harvest Moon” and “Sweet Adeline,” became standards of barbershop singing. Although jazz displaced barbershop in popular music during the 1920s and 1930s, new arrangements of show tunes such as “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” and “In the Good Old Summer Time” renewed interest in the style and fans created multiple professional and amateur quartets.

Barbershop music is mostly homophonic, which means the vocal parts move together. The harmonies follow the main melody, which is provided by the lead singer. The music is homorhythmic, meaning the harmonies all have the same rhythm. Homorythmic harmonies are typical of other forms of music, including hymns. Four perfectly harmonized voices create a harmonic coincidence, which is described as a fifth voice.

Classic barbershop is performed by four male singers: a baritone, bass, lead, and tenor. The lead sings the melody with which the others harmonize. The bass voices the lowest notes in the chords. The baritone harmonizes below the lead singer but not as low as the bass. The tenor harmonizes above the lead. Barbershop choruses also use this four-part harmony.

In modern times, barbershop quartets frequently include women, who might sing any of the four traditional voice parts. All-female barbershop groups are known as Sweet Adelines quartets.

Performers may become members of a variety of barbershop music societies. The Barbershop Harmony Society (BHS) was founded in 1938 as the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America (SPEBSQSA) and is based in Nashville, Tennessee. It is among the oldest still operating in the twenty-first century. Sweet Adelines International (SAI), a society for women, was founded in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1945. Harmony, Inc., another women’s barbershop group, was formed in 1959 by women who left Sweet Adelines because it changed its bylaws to limit membership to white women only. All three groups are racially diverse in modern times. BHS opened its ranks to people of all races and ethnicities in 1963, and began admitting women in 2018, although individual chapters could choose to continue to exclude women.

Some barbershop groups have become well known or been composed of famous persons. The Singing Senators, formed in 1995 and active for several years, comprised four Republican members of the US Senate: John Ashcroft, Larry Craig, Jim Jeffords, and Trent Lott. Barbershop quartets known as the Dapper Dans perform at Disney theme parks.

Bibliography

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