Choral piece rationale: The Sewers of the Strand Jordan Armstrong Sewers of the Strand is a comedy song, by British

comedian Spike Milligan, from the Goon Show. It was not originally composed for a choir, but was arranged this way in the SCUNA and UNCS Songbook in 1971. The originaly version that Ill play for you now was sung only by Spike Milligan, and mainly consists of talking, as well as various percussive elements such as pops. This was a piece of music that I sung with an SATB choir made up of musically gifted high school students, from various high schools. We learnt the piece as an encore piece for an end of year recital that was put on. The recital was full of traditional choral music, by composers such as Palestrina and Byrd. This piece was chosen as something completely different to what we had been studying, for a bit of fun, and to teach the choir about how to swing. The piece uses many different choral technques to highlight the intended comedic nature. The lyrics firstly are comedic, as it is an old fashioned love song, about a poor newly wed British couple taking their honeymoon in a sewer. In bar 21, the basses have a spoken part, where they exclaim the word folks!, which really plays into the old fashioned styling of the piece. In bar 30, the tenors, also exclaim the word pong, for comedic effect. Two bars later, the basses have a gliss, and the piece ends with the whole choir glissing and making a plopping noise like this. The glissandos, exclamations and sound effects make it clear to the audience that the choir are spoofing traditional barbershop styled love songs. Its also quite a lot of fun for the choir, and gives them the opportunity to sing something they wouldnt otherwise get the opportunity to sing. The focus is more on performing and making people laugh, rather than learning challenging choral works, so it is an ideal work for choirs that are used to singing advanced repertoire. An advanced high school chorale or chamber choir would be ideal. In terms of the swung rhythm, this song is a great introduction on how to read swung notation. An advanced high school choir would likely have little exposure to swing music, and will need to be taught that instead of reading what the quavers straight, as they are written on the page, that the first quaver is dotted, and the second quaver shortened. The swung parts can be found from bars 1-9 , and then 13 through to the end, excluding the straight tenor and bass part in bar 18. The parts of this piece that may be challenging include the high tenor and bass parts in bars 17-19, and the higher part in the basses in bars 14-16. The tenors and basses will need to have individual attention paid to them to be able to pitch these notes accurately. There are a few phrases that are also quite long, where the choir will have to have quite good breath control, such as in bars 9-13, the alto and bass parts. Sopranos may find it difficult to pitch their entry at bar bar 17, as they dont really have a note to listen out for to pitch the G #. A few of the rhythms will need clarification.

However, the notes of the piece arent particularly challenging, as there arent any significant leaps in intervals. I would teach this piece to an upper high school choir, as some of the rhythms may prove difficult for younger year groups.