Recorded Concert Spirituals: A Guide for the Solo Vocalist

A book project with the goal of documenting commercially produced recordings of Negro spirituals composed for solo concert vocalists. Portions of this information is currently available on the online site, The Spirituals Database (http://spirituals-database.com). Over 5,600 entries cover more than a century of recordings on compact discs, long-playing albums, 78 rpm records, 45 rpm discs, digital streamed files, audio cassettes, as well as demonstration recordings from musical score collections. The book’s goal is to assist the vocalist, the vocal coach/teacher or the accompanist who is looking for these recorded resources. These recordings serve as an opportunity for the singer, voice instructor or other musician to discover resources that enhance their study of concert spiritual performance in a studio, concert, service or competition setting. Even the composer, music historian, educator, librarian, researcher, or the enthusiast who simply wants to hear these great songs performed will have reason to seek out information about the wide range of recordings. Recordings include a variety of vocal and/or instrumental accompanying forces–such as chorus, piano, orchestra, guitar, flute, violin, etc.; however, those forces are always secondary to the role of the vocal soloist in the listed performance. Also, the voice type (soprano, mezzo-soprano, contralto, countertenor, tenor, baritone, bass-baritone, bass) of the soloist is included to assist those who are looking for recordings by a specific voice type. Two distinct features of the guide will include identification of concert spiritual composers on tracks where this information was not provided on the recording itself. This information will be obtained from research of secondary resources or from an aural review of the recording. Since dialect in performance is a critical factor in the interpretation of concert spirituals, an aural assessment of the level of dialect used in selected recording is included