Tuning the Duke

Dear Bob, and Paul and others.

I've put up a simple unison version of Duke Ellington's "Come Sunday" at
:-

http://homepages.which.net/~alison.monteith3/2.gif

I'll be working on this as a SA men version with my Community choir. My
full arrangement has some simple harmonisation and a few canon entries
and drones which I've written in to help them cope with parts, so the
tuning of that doesn't really concern us here. What I'm interested in
here is bars 5 and 6 and bars 15 and 16.

In the first of these, 5 & 6, I can hear all sorts of possibilities for
tuning this descending melody. Bear in mind that the choir is 'a
cappella' and that many are beginners and they don't know anything other
than unaccompanied singing because I won't use piano during
rehearsals.(I was going to say they don't know anything better, but
accompaniment isn't really better). I'm concentrating on intonation,
blend and 'purity' (whatever that is), and I'd be interested in any
comments or suggestions as to how you might tune this descending segment
for choir and how you might teach it. The harmony is a simple iim9, V9,
I landing on Bflat major (seventh). I suspect most of the crunchy stuff
lies around the V9 bar, ie bar 6.

Bars 15 and 16 interest me for the bluesiness of the c sharp (the
harmony is II9, V7sharp 5 in the key of Bflat), but I think something
could be done with the lead in to that c sharp.

Anyway, I'm interested in any leads as I'm sneaking microtonality in by
the back door with the choir. They do whatever I tell them so I'm going
to have some fun.

Best Wishes to All.