A cappella

• 1. Introduction

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  A cappella is the practice of singing without any instrumental accompaniment, and its roots stretch back well before the invention of written music. Research suggests that singing and vocables may have been among the earliest forms of human communication, predating language itself. The oldest surviving piece of music in its entirety dates to the first century AD: the Seikilos epitaph, a Greek composition. Instructions for performing music were inscribed on a cuneiform tablet around 2000 BC. What drove voices alone to carry the weight of prayer, protest, and entertainment across so many centuries? And how did a tradition born in cathedrals end up on Broadway, in barber shops, and on the television sets of millions?

• 2. Sacred Roots

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  Gregorian chant stands as one of the oldest surviving examples of a cappella practice in the Christian tradition. Jewish and Early Christian music was largely unaccompanied, though instrument use later increased in both traditions as well as in Islam. In the Byzantine Rite of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Lutheran Churches, and the Eastern Catholic Churches, music in the liturgies is performed without instruments to this day.

  The polyphony of Catholic a cappella music began developing in Europe around the 9th century AD with the practice of organum. By the 14th through 16th centuries, composers of the Franco-Flemish school, including Guillaume Du Fay, Johannes Ockeghem, and Josquin des Prez, had brought it to its height. The early polyphonies were sometimes doubled with wind instruments, string instruments, or organs. Recent evidence suggests that some early pieces by Palestrina, including those written for the Sistine Chapel, were intended to be accompanied by an organ doubling for some or all of the voices.

  Claudio Monteverdi composed his Lagrime d'amante al sepolcro dell'amata in 1610, one of his pieces that touched the a cappella style. Heinrich Schütz built on both Monteverdi and Andrea Gabrieli, writing a cappella pieces in the oratorio style traditionally performed during Easter week. Five of Schütz's Historien were Easter pieces, and of these, three dealt with the Passion from the viewpoints of Matthew, Luke, and John, all performed a cappella. The parts of the crowd were sung while the solo parts, quoting either Christ or the authors, were performed in plainchant.

  The debate over instruments in Christian worship ran deep. Protestant Reformers, including Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, John Calvin, and John Wesley, opposed instruments in worship vigorously. Zwingli was destroying organs in Switzerland, while the Church of England was burning books of polyphony. The Free Methodist Church held its ban until as late as 1955, when the 1943 Conference had first permitted local churches to decide on the use of an organ or piano before the full ban was lifted.

• 3. The Jewish Tradition

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  Philo, the Jewish philosopher born in 20 BC, helped shape the vocal tradition through his writing. Weaving together Jewish and Greek thought, Philo promoted praise without instruments and taught that silent singing, without even vocal chords, was better still. Traditional Jewish religious services did not include musical instruments, grounded in the practice of scriptural cantillation.

  The shofar remains the only temple instrument still used in the synagogue today. It is used only from Rosh Chodesh Elul through the end of Yom Kippur, without any vocal accompaniment, and is limited to a strictly defined set of sounds and specific moments in the service. The Sabbath forbids the use of instruments out of concern that players would be tempted to repair or tune them, which is itself forbidden. During the Three Weeks, instruments are prohibited entirely. Among the 49-day counting of the omer between Passover and Shavuot, many Jews observe a period of semi-mourning during which instrumental music is not allowed, giving rise to a tradition sometimes called sefirah music.

  Today, Bar and Bat Mitzvah celebrations on the Sabbath sometimes feature entertainment by a cappella ensembles, keeping this tradition alive in communal celebration.

• 4. American Roots

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  Peter Christian Lutkin, dean of the Northwestern University School of Music, founded the Northwestern A Cappella Choir in 1906. The group was described as the first permanent organization of its kind in America.

  In 1911, F. Melius Christiansen, a music faculty member at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, began a tradition that would spread across an entire region. The St. Olaf College Choir grew out of the local St. John's Lutheran Church, where Christiansen served as organist, with a choir composed at least partially of students from the nearby campus. Other conductors took note. Choral programs at colleges including Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota; Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois; Waldorf University in Forest City, Iowa; and Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, followed a similar path. These choirs typically range from 40 to 80 singers and are known for their attention to blend, intonation, phrasing, and pitch.

  In July 1943, during the American Federation of Musicians' boycott of US recording studios, the a cappella vocal group The Song Spinners had a best-seller with their recording of "Comin' In on a Wing and a Prayer." The boycott inadvertently gave a cappella recordings a commercial foothold they might not otherwise have found. In the 1950s, groups such as The Hi-Los and the Four Freshmen brought complex jazz harmonies into a cappella performance. Frank Zappa released The Persuasions' first album on his label in 1970, and in 1983, The Flying Pickets reached number one in the UK at Christmas with a cover of Yazoo's "Only You."

  The collegiate world took notice as a cappella groups multiplied throughout the 20th century. The Rensselyrics of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, established in 1873 as the RPI Glee Club, is perhaps the oldest known collegiate a cappella group. The Whiffenpoofs of Yale University, formed in 1909, once included Cole Porter among their members. John Legend sang with the Counterparts at the University of Pennsylvania. Sara Bareilles was a member of Awaken A Cappella at UCLA. Mindy Kaling sang with the Rockapellas at Dartmouth College. Mira Sorvino was a member of the Harvard-Radcliffe Veritones.

• 5. Barbershop's Rise

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  Barbershop music is among the uniquely American art forms that brought a cappella into a highly organized competitive tradition. The earliest documented quartets all began in barber shops. In 1938, the first formal men's barbershop organization was formed under the name Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America, later rebranded in 2004 as the Barbershop Harmony Society. By the time of the name change, the organization had grown to roughly 22,000 members across approximately 800 chapters in the United States and Canada.

  Women's barbershop organized separately. In 1945, Sweet Adelines formed as the first women's barbershop group. By 1953 it had become an international organization, though it did not change its name to Sweet Adelines International until 1991, and subsequently changed it again to SingUnited International in 2026. Headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the organization grew to nearly 25,000 members singing in English, with choruses in most of the fifty United States and in countries including Australia, Canada, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. More than 1,200 registered quartets and 600 choruses carry the tradition forward today.

  A second women's barbershop organization, Harmony, Incorporated, followed in 1959. Founded on democratic principles it has maintained since its formation, Harmony, Inc. holds more than 2,000 members across the United States and Canada and uses the same contest rules as the Barbershop Harmony Society.

• 6. Stage and Screen

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  A cappella has been used as the sole orchestration for original commercial Off-Broadway works only four times. The first was Avenue X, which opened on the 28th of January 1994 and ran for 77 performances. Produced by Playwrights Horizons, with book by John Jiler and music and lyrics by Ray Leslee, its score drew primarily on doo-wop, fitting a plot centered on doo-wop group singers of the 1960s.

  In 2001, The Kinsey Sicks starred in DRAGAPELLA! at New York's Studio 54. That production received a Lucille Lortel nomination for Best Musical and a Drama Desk nomination for Best Lyrics. In October 2010, Perfect Harmony, a comedy about two high school a cappella groups vying for a national championship, made its Off-Broadway debut at Theatre Row's Acorn Theatre on 42nd Street after an earlier run at the Stoneham Theatre in Stoneham, Massachusetts.

  The fourth a cappella musical to reach Off-Broadway was In Transit, which premiered on the 5th of October 2010, produced by Primary Stages. Written by Kristen Anderson-Lopez, James-Allen Ford, Russ Kaplan, and Sara Wordsworth, it is set primarily in the New York City subway system and incorporates vocal beat boxing through a subway beatboxer character. Actor and beat boxer Chesney Snow performed this role in the 2010 production. In 2011, the production received four Lucille Lortel Award nominations including Outstanding Musical, and won the Drama Desk award for Outstanding Ensemble Performance. In December 2016, In Transit became the first a cappella musical on Broadway.

  Television extended the reach of a cappella further still. In December 2009, The Sing-Off debuted on NBC, featuring eight groups from the United States and Puerto Rico competing for $100,000 and a recording contract with Epic Records/Sony Music. The panel of judges included Ben Folds, Shawn Stockman, and Nicole Scherzinger. The first season was won by Nota, an all-male group from Puerto Rico. Subsequent seasons were won by Committed, Pentatonix, Home Free, and The Melodores from Vanderbilt University.

• 7. The Voice as Instrument

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  Beatboxing, more precisely called vocal percussion, has become a defining feature of modern a cappella, brought into the mainstream by the hip-hop community where rap is frequently performed without instruments. Contemporary a cappella groups such as Pentatonix, Rockapella, Straight No Chaser, The House Jacks, and Naturally Seven have built careers around this approach. Naturally Seven recreates entire songs using vocal tones for every instrument.

  The tradition of voices standing in for instruments goes back further than beatboxing. In the 1960s, the Swingle Singers applied their voices to Baroque and Classical music, emulating instrument parts directly. The Mills Brothers were among the earliest 20th-century practitioners of this method. Bobby McFerrin built his reputation on instrumental emulation as a solo vocal artist.

  On their 1966 album titled simply Album, Peter, Paul and Mary included the song "Norman Normal," on which all sounds, vocal and instrumental alike, were created solely by Paul's voice. In 2015, a cappella artist Jacob Collier recorded a version of "Jerusalem" that was selected by Beats by Dre for use in their "The Game Starts Here" campaign for the England Rugby World Cup. Smooth McGroove rose to prominence in 2013 with a cappella covers of video game music tracks posted to YouTube, bringing the approach to a new generation of listeners who had grown up alongside gaming culture.