The Answering Voice

Open your ears and voices to a new way of understanding counterpoint. Drawing on her fifty years of composing and teaching, Alice Parker envisions a theory or composition class where everyone sings. Great melodies are the basic material: they teach us how to create great responses.

Instead of a written line constructed by ancient rules, two singers play a game in song. One sings the melody in a way that invites an answer, and the other improvises an immediate response. Often the answering voice finds only one or two notes to echo – but these are the beginning of a two-part choral arrangement that grows out of the melody itself. Musicians learn how to enter fearlessly into group improvisation, and then how to plan an entire arrangement based on improvised ideas. Creating that second voice is both a challenge and a delight. It is in many ways the beginning of the craft of the composer.