Adrienne Tindall of Darcey Press
Jeannine: Please introduce yourself and Darcey Press to our readers
Adrienne Tindall, AAGO: I have an A.B. in Music (Composition) from Vassar College and a B. Mus. and a M.M. (Organ) from the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago IL. I served as the organist at First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Glenview, IL from 1974 to 2012. I am a Life Member of Hymn Society of the US and Canada and a Charter member of the North Shore Chapter, AGO with a Dual Membership in the Chicago Chapter AGO. I am the owner of Darcey Press. (www.darceypress.com)
Jeannine: The Darcey Press publications are known for their excellence! Excellence in compositions, composers represented, and their published format. Please give us some of the history of your work as Darcey Press.
Ms. Tindall: Christian Science churches do not have a choir; they have soloists who lead the congregation in the hymns, plus sing a solo that relates to the (lesson) sermon for the day. In the 1980s I started writing sacred solos which were appropriate for use in the services. DARCEY PRESS, my business alias, grew out of two volumes of solos I had ready to be published, and no publisher interested in publishing them. So I published them myself, hiring a music engraver to create the music pages while I prepared the foreword, table of contents, index, for the two books.
Austin Lovelace, a friend from Board work for the North Shore Chapter, AGO, had critiqued the solos for me (later Jack Goode helped, when Austin moved away from this area). After those books were available, and after computers made it possible for people like me to create the music pages, I bought a music program called “SCORE.” I told Austin if he would write me a collection of sacred solos, I would publish it right after I finished my own Volume III, which was half done at that point. He had 15 manuscripts in my hands before I could write six. So his book was next, and thus started DARCEY PRESS. Now, 30 years later, there are 11 solo collections plus a small sheet music solos.
Next came an interest in publishing solo organ music. Hymn tune compositions are a particularly valuable repertoire for church use; a composition on a tune of one of the day’s hymns is a particularly apt enrichment for worship, I believe. The result is definitely congregation friendly, an important plus.
Again, Austin’s great capability provided manuscripts almost instantaneously. His “A Musical Gift” was the first book of chorale preludes I published; four other small collections followed, by Robert Powell, Peter Hodgson, and Jack Goode. In each case I suggested possible (public domain) tunes, sending photocopies of them with the text they set in my hymnal, to inspire the composer.
36 Chorale Preludes for Two Manuals and Pedal included Austin, Jack Goode, myself, and several composers Austin suggested I contact.
For the seven volumes of variations on hymn tunes, 83 Musical Gifts Parts 1, 2, 3 and 120 More Musical Gifts, Parts 4, 5, 6, 7, I placed a “Call for Compositions” in “The American Organist.” About 40 composers have been published in DARCEY PRESS collections at this time. Note Austin’s “How do I Love Thee(se Variations)? Let me count the ways....” (funny re “Call”)
Jeannine: Tell us about your newest books, New Songs for New Singers.
Ms. Tindall: New Songs for New Singers was an adventure into secular music. When my eldest two granddaughters, Darcey (yes, her name) and Hillary, were in high school I noted how the repertoire seemed limited to old familiar Italian, etc., repertoire, or modern show tunes. So I embarked into songs written for young voices re range, breathing, etc., using memorable public domain texts and original texts that are worthwhile, and had four composers (Austin, Jack, Robert Powell, myself) write settings. A most interesting part of this was to get each of the composers to set “The Passionate Shepherd” by Christoper Marlowe (“Come Live With Me and Be My Love”), and “The Nymph’s Reply” by Sir Walter Raleigh. I still enjoy comparing the four different treatments!
Jeannine: In 2013, 35 compositions published by Darcey Press were selected for the “Festivals Bulletin 2013” as National Federation of Music Clubs Festival pieces. Congratulations!
Ms. Tindall: Thank you. New Songs for New Singers introduced me to the National Federation of Music Clubs. I sent in the two New Songs volumes for their review, and 17 songs were chosen as Contest Pieces in their 2008-2009-2010 Bulletin. 13 remain in the 2011-2012-2013 Bulletin. For this latter Bulletin, I sent DP organ collections to their church organ music reviewer, and 22 pieces from the DARCEY PRESS organ collections were added as contest pieces. DARCEY PRESS is very proud of the fact.
Jeannine: What are your thoughts regarding music for worship?
Ms. Tindall: DARCEY PRESS has grown and responded to my own interests, and is very grateful for the contributions of the composers it publishes. I serve in general as a provider of ideas and as a “hands on” editor of the manuscripts that come in. In all cases I am looking for useful, interesting, and inspiring music appropriate for church services, usually quick to prepare, congregation friendly, and almost exclusively based on hymn tunes.
Jeannine: What I find especially attractive about your publications is that you have the performing organist in mind.
Ms. Tindall: Yes, I’ve also focused on performer friendly volumes: the solo collections are sold in sets of two books: one book is saddles stitched (stapled) for the soloist to use, and each piece (virtually all are four pages long) has only one page turn; the other book is for the organist to use, and each piece (four pages long) has two foldout pages, so there are no page turns for the organist.
Foldout pages are also used in the 7 books of hymn tune variations. These have resulted in a very enjoyable interaction with my composers. As I lay out the books, I may find that two page spreads will leave a blank page because of the length of surrounding variations. I’ve dubbed these “opportunity pages” and invited the composer to write a one-page variation to take advantage of the space. Once or twice they would have an added opportunity, because the new variation required two pages, so a single blank page was still available.
Jeannine: Besides providing wonderfully useful music for church musicians, festival pieces, and new music for new singers, what are your other interests?
Ms. Tindall: My other great love is hymns/tunes themselves. Nothing is more inspiring to me than “ . . . a well-thought-out, well written, theologically valid, uplifting, memorable, vitally communicating hymn text, married to a heartfelt, compelling hymn tune with a satisfying harmonization, thereby made available to be sung by people expressing their praise and gratitude to God.” (See Tindall, Encounter with Erik Routley, “Prelude,” p. 1).
My current “Watts Project” involves a rather daring basis: I’ve read through all Watts’ psalm versions (almost 300), edited them lightly and carefully (no “sons of men,” minimal “thee, thy, thou,” etc.) and am setting them to tunes inspired by and written for them by composers who have come forward through my “Call for Hymn Tunes,” published in the HSUSC (Hymn Society of the US and Canada) magazine, The Hymn, as well as The American Organist and The Diapason.
Jeannine: Church musicians often use the summer months for refreshment, education and planning. Where can one find/peruse/and purchase your collections?
Ms. Tindall: www.darceypress.com continues as the website where the above books are available, along with several other items. Music stores also can order them, presumably so a customer can look them over. I try to find an exhibitor to make them available at all AGO conventions.
Summertime is a wonderful time to consider adding variety to one’s repertoire. DARCEY PRESS invites you to enter “AGOCP” as a discount code on anything you’d care to order. Music is not returnable these days, though, so try one or two books to make sure they are interesting to you. You can click on the word “Composers,” under the banner at the top of the Home Page, to learn a bit about these talented AGO members who answered the various calls for compositions. And I shall continue to enter hymn tunes in SCORE, to set the texts of my Watts Project! I’m hoping to get it published this year.
Jeannine: Please introduce yourself and Darcey Press to our readers
Adrienne Tindall, AAGO: I have an A.B. in Music (Composition) from Vassar College and a B. Mus. and a M.M. (Organ) from the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago IL. I served as the organist at First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Glenview, IL from 1974 to 2012. I am a Life Member of Hymn Society of the US and Canada and a Charter member of the North Shore Chapter, AGO with a Dual Membership in the Chicago Chapter AGO. I am the owner of Darcey Press. (www.darceypress.com)
Jeannine: The Darcey Press publications are known for their excellence! Excellence in compositions, composers represented, and their published format. Please give us some of the history of your work as Darcey Press.
Ms. Tindall: Christian Science churches do not have a choir; they have soloists who lead the congregation in the hymns, plus sing a solo that relates to the (lesson) sermon for the day. In the 1980s I started writing sacred solos which were appropriate for use in the services. DARCEY PRESS, my business alias, grew out of two volumes of solos I had ready to be published, and no publisher interested in publishing them. So I published them myself, hiring a music engraver to create the music pages while I prepared the foreword, table of contents, index, for the two books.
Austin Lovelace, a friend from Board work for the North Shore Chapter, AGO, had critiqued the solos for me (later Jack Goode helped, when Austin moved away from this area). After those books were available, and after computers made it possible for people like me to create the music pages, I bought a music program called “SCORE.” I told Austin if he would write me a collection of sacred solos, I would publish it right after I finished my own Volume III, which was half done at that point. He had 15 manuscripts in my hands before I could write six. So his book was next, and thus started DARCEY PRESS. Now, 30 years later, there are 11 solo collections plus a small sheet music solos.
Next came an interest in publishing solo organ music. Hymn tune compositions are a particularly valuable repertoire for church use; a composition on a tune of one of the day’s hymns is a particularly apt enrichment for worship, I believe. The result is definitely congregation friendly, an important plus.
Again, Austin’s great capability provided manuscripts almost instantaneously. His “A Musical Gift” was the first book of chorale preludes I published; four other small collections followed, by Robert Powell, Peter Hodgson, and Jack Goode. In each case I suggested possible (public domain) tunes, sending photocopies of them with the text they set in my hymnal, to inspire the composer.
36 Chorale Preludes for Two Manuals and Pedal included Austin, Jack Goode, myself, and several composers Austin suggested I contact.
For the seven volumes of variations on hymn tunes, 83 Musical Gifts Parts 1, 2, 3 and 120 More Musical Gifts, Parts 4, 5, 6, 7, I placed a “Call for Compositions” in “The American Organist.” About 40 composers have been published in DARCEY PRESS collections at this time. Note Austin’s “How do I Love Thee(se Variations)? Let me count the ways....” (funny re “Call”)
Jeannine: Tell us about your newest books, New Songs for New Singers.
Ms. Tindall: New Songs for New Singers was an adventure into secular music. When my eldest two granddaughters, Darcey (yes, her name) and Hillary, were in high school I noted how the repertoire seemed limited to old familiar Italian, etc., repertoire, or modern show tunes. So I embarked into songs written for young voices re range, breathing, etc., using memorable public domain texts and original texts that are worthwhile, and had four composers (Austin, Jack, Robert Powell, myself) write settings. A most interesting part of this was to get each of the composers to set “The Passionate Shepherd” by Christoper Marlowe (“Come Live With Me and Be My Love”), and “The Nymph’s Reply” by Sir Walter Raleigh. I still enjoy comparing the four different treatments!
Jeannine: In 2013, 35 compositions published by Darcey Press were selected for the “Festivals Bulletin 2013” as National Federation of Music Clubs Festival pieces. Congratulations!
Ms. Tindall: Thank you. New Songs for New Singers introduced me to the National Federation of Music Clubs. I sent in the two New Songs volumes for their review, and 17 songs were chosen as Contest Pieces in their 2008-2009-2010 Bulletin. 13 remain in the 2011-2012-2013 Bulletin. For this latter Bulletin, I sent DP organ collections to their church organ music reviewer, and 22 pieces from the DARCEY PRESS organ collections were added as contest pieces. DARCEY PRESS is very proud of the fact.
Jeannine: What are your thoughts regarding music for worship?
Ms. Tindall: DARCEY PRESS has grown and responded to my own interests, and is very grateful for the contributions of the composers it publishes. I serve in general as a provider of ideas and as a “hands on” editor of the manuscripts that come in. In all cases I am looking for useful, interesting, and inspiring music appropriate for church services, usually quick to prepare, congregation friendly, and almost exclusively based on hymn tunes.
Jeannine: What I find especially attractive about your publications is that you have the performing organist in mind.
Ms. Tindall: Yes, I’ve also focused on performer friendly volumes: the solo collections are sold in sets of two books: one book is saddles stitched (stapled) for the soloist to use, and each piece (virtually all are four pages long) has only one page turn; the other book is for the organist to use, and each piece (four pages long) has two foldout pages, so there are no page turns for the organist.
Foldout pages are also used in the 7 books of hymn tune variations. These have resulted in a very enjoyable interaction with my composers. As I lay out the books, I may find that two page spreads will leave a blank page because of the length of surrounding variations. I’ve dubbed these “opportunity pages” and invited the composer to write a one-page variation to take advantage of the space. Once or twice they would have an added opportunity, because the new variation required two pages, so a single blank page was still available.
Jeannine: Besides providing wonderfully useful music for church musicians, festival pieces, and new music for new singers, what are your other interests?
Ms. Tindall: My other great love is hymns/tunes themselves. Nothing is more inspiring to me than “ . . . a well-thought-out, well written, theologically valid, uplifting, memorable, vitally communicating hymn text, married to a heartfelt, compelling hymn tune with a satisfying harmonization, thereby made available to be sung by people expressing their praise and gratitude to God.” (See Tindall, Encounter with Erik Routley, “Prelude,” p. 1).
My current “Watts Project” involves a rather daring basis: I’ve read through all Watts’ psalm versions (almost 300), edited them lightly and carefully (no “sons of men,” minimal “thee, thy, thou,” etc.) and am setting them to tunes inspired by and written for them by composers who have come forward through my “Call for Hymn Tunes,” published in the HSUSC (Hymn Society of the US and Canada) magazine, The Hymn, as well as The American Organist and The Diapason.
Jeannine: Church musicians often use the summer months for refreshment, education and planning. Where can one find/peruse/and purchase your collections?
Ms. Tindall: www.darceypress.com continues as the website where the above books are available, along with several other items. Music stores also can order them, presumably so a customer can look them over. I try to find an exhibitor to make them available at all AGO conventions.
Summertime is a wonderful time to consider adding variety to one’s repertoire. DARCEY PRESS invites you to enter “AGOCP” as a discount code on anything you’d care to order. Music is not returnable these days, though, so try one or two books to make sure they are interesting to you. You can click on the word “Composers,” under the banner at the top of the Home Page, to learn a bit about these talented AGO members who answered the various calls for compositions. And I shall continue to enter hymn tunes in SCORE, to set the texts of my Watts Project! I’m hoping to get it published this year.