OK, I am into the next layer of working on these, studying the text notes that precede the Table of COntents (TOC). I had to completely reorganize, enlarge, and refurnish my home office to be ready to work today!
I've cross-referenced the notes into the song pages so that as I get to each song I can check back on the commentary.... there is some clear guidance on xliii &ff about fitting text to tune, refrain lines/choruses; I read this as congruent with my experience of the genre in general where what Allen is calling the refrain equates to the response part of a call/response pattern, where there may or may not also be a consistent chorus that includes or builds on the refrain (response).
In addition to using the commentary hints, I anticipate that as I absorb each tune in my head it will arrange itself into the kind of pattern I know from working with other spirituals and hundreds of black gospel songs, extensions from the spirituals or founded in them.... my goal is to "catch" what the songs meant to the people, and the feelings that underlay the song structures, so that as I work on them I can let them move in their own way. I am so grateful to the Lomaxes for the LOC collection of authentically-sung spirituals! That's my main Berlitz school for the tune-language and structural expression-- it's all in my head.
As far as the really slow ones, and naming that type, the Allen text has a word I just noticed: "strainfull"... for things in life and concepts that are deep, difficult, and troubling. Because, as quoted on xxii, "it can't be sung widout a full heart and a troubled sperrit." So, "strain"s?
I'm going to start with the rowing/shouting songs:
5 8 14 17 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 36 46 47 52
INPUTTERS PLEASE NOTE
I'm mindful of how these will actually be USED once they are made acccessible online. They need to approximate how a singer would actually SING them, as whole songs. Therefore--
For any new inputs, PLEASE copy/paste as needed to include the repeats indicated, and if it has a chorus, two runs of the chorus (once and then a repeat) even if the repeat of the chorus is not indicated in the dots. (This is correct, per commentary.)
Please continue to put whole-tune variations in separate (b) tune files. (These are really version-- variants-- not variations.)
Please handle phrase-length variations by incorporating them in the tune-- a verse or two of the regular tune, then a verse with the variation, etc. There are some hints in the commentary that they tried this approach too, where you may find a song that has lots of lines but the text repeats within it? That's what they were doing-- giving a representative version of how and where a variation might be used, but making clear in the commentary that their placement of it is arbitrary and that the singer would vary when and where they were so moved.
As I work though the submitted songs, I'll make these modifications if needed if they are simple copy/pastes; otherwise I'll bounce them back to the original inputter for a little restructuring. I don't think of any of the already-submitted songfiles as wrong, or as wasted effort; most of these structural changes are simple copy/paste edits.