Library Exhibits at the Lucille Caudill Little Fine Arts & Design Library: The Choral

"Camerata: A Guide to Organizing and Directing Small Choruses" distinguishes itself from all other works on choral conducting by starting at the very beginning--the conception and purpose of an ensemble--and continuing through all other aspects of rehearsing and organizing a chorus to performance and reception. Wenk offers basic information on getting started, recruiting singers, planning programs, rehearsing music, publicizing concerts, sharing responsibilities, financing the operation, knowing the law, and finally getting better. He also offers detailed suggestions for creating an executive group to manage the choir as well ideas for repertoire and programming. In addition to a step-by-step guide, Camerata provides a wealth of supplementary material including a prospectus, a statement of goals and means, programs, organizational documents, a singer's guide, documents for organizing a folksong competition, a list of websites for publishers and choral federations, and an annotated bibliography of works on choral conducting. Wenk also includes more than twenty original Christmas carols and carol arrangements for performance by your small chorus. This work will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in starting a new choral organization or improving an existing ensemble. Although the book focuses on chamber choirs, Wenk's practical suggestions, based on more than forty years of experience as a choral conductor, can be easily applied to any choral organization.

What role does contemporary choral activity play in the construction of social and musical meaning? How can historical knowledge and analysis shed light on contemporary choral problems and possibilities? And how can choral research promote the development and expansion of new music today? Questions like these are addressed in this anthology from a wide range of disciplines and perspectives. The book comprises a selection of papers presented at the International Conference on the Concepts and Practices of Choral Singing in Lund, Sweden, in October 2012. The aim of the conference was to highlight the contemporary dynamic developments in choral research, and to explore interdisciplinary investigations and interaction between practice-based and historical approaches. In the introductory chapter, the editors describe choral practice as a field of simultaneous (re)presentation, (re)production and (re)creation, and suggest that these three aspects may be seen as umbrella themes for the fifteen chapters of the anthology. The authors come from Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Germany, United Kingdom, Portugal and Belgium, and explore choral practice from differing theoretical and methodological starting points. Together, they contribute to a transdisciplinary discussion about the origins, functions and meanings of choral singing.

This wide-ranging contribution to the study of nationalism and the social history of music examines the relationship between choral societies and national mobilization in the nineteenth century. From Norway to the Basque country and from Wales to Bulgaria, this pioneering study explores and compares the ways choral societies influenced and reflected the development of national awareness under differing political and social circumstances. By the second half of the nineteenth century, organized communal singing became a primary leisure activity that attracted all layers of society. Though strongly patriotic in tone, choral societies borrowed from each other and relied heavily on prominent German or French models. This volume is the first to address both the national and transnational significance of choral singing.

In this striking book, Glenn Watkins investigates these variable roles of music primarily from the angle of the Entente nations' perceived threat of German hegemony in matters of intellectual and artistic accomplishment--a principal concern not only for Europe but also for the United States, whose late entrance into the fray prompted a renewed interest in defining America as an emergent world power as well as a fledgling musical culture. He shows that each nation gave "proof through the night"--ringing evidence during the dark hours of the war--not only of its nationalist resolve in the singing of national airs but also of its power to recall home and hearth on distant battlefields and to reflect upon loss long after the guns had been silenced. Watkins's eloquent narrative argues that twentieth-century Modernism was not launched full force with the advent of the Great War but rather was challenged by a new set of alternatives to the prewar avant-garde. His central focus on music as a cultural marker during the First World War of necessity exposes its relationship to the other arts, national institutions, and international politics. By turns music challenged or supported the legitimacy of war, chronicled misgivings in miniature and grandiose formats alike, and inevitably expressed its sorrow at the final price exacted by the Great War. Proof through the Night concludes with a consideration of the post-Armistice period when, on the classical music front, memory and distance forged a musical response that was frequently more powerful than in wartime.