Between Alice Parker and Eudora Welty: My Experience in the Opera The Ponder Heart

A recent photo of Alice Parker. Inset: Eudora Welty, when I was her neighbor, ca. 1980

 

I'm pleased to learn from a web search that composer Alice Parker received an award for "Sacred in Opera" from the National Opera Association just last year. We go way back. I thought of her last week when I saw her name on music that our choir director pulled out of our library, the pages yellowed with age.

In 1982, with the Choral Society of Jackson, Mississippi, I sang in a workshop production of Alice Parker's fourth opera The Ponder Heart, her text drawn entirely from the novel by Pulitzer-winning writer Eudora Welty, lifelong resident of Jackson. We were to sing the score for potential investors who might be persuaded to fund a full-scale production.

Alice Parker was well-known to all American choral singers for her arrangements of Negro Spirituals and other sacred folk material. The music was published as "the Robert Shaw" series, after the famed choral conductor. Her name was always in smaller print than his, but the arrangements were all hers.

At our first rehearsal, she was courtly, commanding, unflappable and always ready to laugh. In my mind, I see high heels, flowing skirt, tightly cinched waist, straight back, a scarf, and firm hair -- but my memories of her blend with images of elegant movie stars of her vintage -- Lauren Bacall, for instance.

The small town setting of Miss Welty's novel gave Parker opportunities to write in different styles of what we today might call Americana: shape-note singing, blues, and gospel. But I was a music nerd less excited by simple folk tunes than by techniques she used to layer authentic material into the texture of her dramatic story.

My favorite instance of a technical twist was in Parker's arrangement of a sentimental gospel song that began with the words, "Somewhere the sun is shining." In the story, the central character "Uncle Daniel" Ponder falls in love with a certain soprano in the church choir. Given the perception that sopranos are enamored of their upper registers, Alice Parker arranged the soloist's music in a different meter from the choir's, allowing her a couple extra beats to massage her high notes while the choir waltzed on in strict time. (I think we sang in 6/8 while the soprano had some measures in odd meters).

At one rehearsal, the director handed me freshly-composed music for the big trial scene in act II. I was to play it on the piano for the chorus while Miss Parker, in another room, rehearsed the leads. We were all sight-reading, and I recall that it was difficult material with dissonances and varying meter -- my favorite things! After a couple of hours, when Alice Parker heard her music for the first time, I was playing it. The next day, she brought in new music for the same scene, throwing out everything we'd worked on.

I was enraptured, not disappointed. That year I'd been singing with a cassette tape of Marry Me a Little, a musical revue made up entirely of songs cut from Stephen Sondheim's musicals. Having put so much effort into a number that was cut from the opera, I felt that I had paid my dues to join the exalted company of musical theatre professionals.

When we performed the score at New Stage Theatre, located in the neighborhood where both Eudora Welty and I lived, it was a social occasion. Drinks and finger food were laid out on long tables; the musicians took seats on one side of the room, while the wealthy guests sat on the other. Just before we started, Ms. Welty approached and asked me, "Young man, may I have this seat?" She sat at my side throughout the performance.

The guests backed a full-scale production by New Stage. Immersed in my second year of teaching, I did not participate in that one, though I did go to see it, of course. I remember thinking that it was a sweet story, but not one to excite you. The critic from The New York Times said pretty much the same thing. Edward Rothstein concluded, "But what made the music work was some of what Miss Welty called the Ponder heart – a love of simplicity, good humor and plain speaking."

The opera was cited for recognition of Sacred in Opera along with her operas on more overt religious themes. In their citation, the National Opera Association wrote that all of Parker's operas demonstrate “what it means to live a productive life as a member of a community, whether that community is a town, an extended family, or a musical or faith tradition.”

I'll admit that I thought Alice Parker was ancient in 1982. Actually, she was then seven years younger than I am now, and she's still active. If you're Googling yourself, Ms. Parker, and you see these lines, come on to St. James Episcopal in Marietta, GA for our All Saints service, and hear us do your music.

[Update: Alice Parker died on Christmas Day, 2023.]