Shenandoah

We have had a number of requests (especially from you good people on the Music K-8 Mailing List) to do an arrangement of this beautiful folk song. The story goes that Shenandoah was an Indian Chief whose daughter was loved by a white man. Not wishing to deceive the chief, the white man declared his love openly for the maiden, hence the song. (To some of us, Shenandoah is a river and a valley in Virginia, but that's another story...)

While we are very pleased with our lush orchestration of this tune on the recording, we will readily admit that just playing the piano part is a lot of fun, too. Nonetheless, we recommend using the recording at least as a reference for interpretation of style, dynamics, pronunciations, and other musical nuances.

Our arrangement of the song begins and ends with a soloist. A second soloist joins in shortly after the beginning to complete the first time through the song. At the pick-ups to measure 27, the entire ensemble enters, divided into three parts. You will note that part 3 is written in bass clef for your changing, changed, and lower voices. As always, all parts are optional. Even the solos can be sung by groups or alternating solos or the entire ensemble. Whatever works is fine.

For flexibility, we have included an optional unison version on the recording (track 34) so that you can hear how it will work and use it as a teaching tool for your students.

If you do decide to tackle the parts, consider using older students for parts 2 and 3. Junior high or high school students would enjoy joining their younger peers in a song like this. You could also have them reinforce part 1. To learn the parts, we suggest you do what we did: Play each individual line over and over on piano with each group until they can comfortably perform it a cappella. Then when they join together, it is much easier. We have found this to be true whether singers can read music or not.

By the way, our first soloist was Holly Stroop and our second one was Kristen Swanson. They did a nice job, didn't they?