A cappella is a term describing choral singing without instrumental accompaniment. A cappella, or alla cappella, is an Italian phrase meaning “in the chapel style.” Some music historians believe that a cappella originally described the unaccompanied choral singing that took place in the Sistine Chapel, in the Vatican in Rome, during the 1500’s. The singers were performing music by composers such as Giovanni Palestrina. However, composers such as Josquin Desprez had been writing music for unaccompanied voices in the late 1400’s. For hundreds of years, the term referred only to unaccompanied sacred music, such as motets (a vocal composition intended for use in a church service). However, since the 1800’s, a cappella has been used to describe all types of unaccompanied choral or group singing of both religious and nonreligious works.
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Typical a cappella forms include church motets and psalms, and some folk song arrangements, English madrigals and glees, and romantic part songs of the 1800’s and 1900’s. Part songs are written for two or more performers. Each singer has a different part, or two or more performers sing each part. Most such songs written before 1600 have parts for four to six singers and are sung a cappella.
The spirituals developed by enslaved Africans on plantations in the southern United States during the 1700’s and 1800’s added a new dimension to the a cappella style. In many such spirituals, voices were made to imitate instruments. These a cappella arrangements have their origins in African music, where the voice may even be used to imitate a drum. Such authentic African a cappella performances can be heard today in the work of groups such as Ladysmith Black Mambazo, from South Africa.
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During the 1900’s, barbershop music emerged as a particularly American form of a cappella singing. Barbershop quartet singing is a style of harmony using four voices that form a complete four-part chord on almost every note. Jazz, blues, and gospel singing all used a cappella arrangements alongside accompanied singing, using a form of musical part-writing called close harmony. In close harmony, the total span of musical pitches from the highest to the lowest voices in a piece is normally confined to about two octaves. Close harmony arrangements are thus often written for men’s voices, women’s voices, or for a mixture of baritone, tenor, and alto voices.
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A tradition of a capella singing dates back several centuries in the United Kingdom. During the late 1900’s and early 2000’s, a capella singing also became popular at United States colleges and universities.
