Building Choral Excellence

Designed for both the practicing choral director and the choral methods student, this is a compact and comprehensive overview of the many teaching methods, strategies, materials, and assessments available for choral sight-singing instruction. Sight-singing is an important, if sometimes neglected, facet of choral music education that often inspires fear and uncertainty in student and teacher alike. Written in an accessible style, this book takes the mystery out of teaching music reading. Topics covered include the history of sight-singing pedagogy and research, prominent methods and materials, and practical strategies for teaching and assessment. This is the only book to provide such a wealth of information under one cover and will become an essential part of every choral conductor's library.

Choral Music: A Research and Information Guide, Third Edition, offers a comprehensive guide to the literature on choral music in the Western tradition. Clearly annotated bibliographic entries guide readers to resources on key topics within choral music, individual choral composers, regional and sacred choral traditions, choral techniques, choral music education, genre studies, and more, providing an essential reference for researchers and practitioners. Covering monographs, bibliographies, selected dissertations, reference works, journals, electronic databases, and websites, this research guide makes it easy to locate relevant sources. Comprehensive indices of authors, titles, and subjects keep the volume user-friendly. The new edition has been brought up to date with entries encompassing the latest scholarship, and updated references and annotations throughout, capturing the continued growth of literature on choral music since the publication of the second edition.

This essential text provides choral music educators with a well-organized, practical introduction to directing choirs and managing choral programs at the middle-school through high-school level. It offers step-by-step advice on designing and administering a choral program, from curricula to repertoire to performance, and helps instructors develop a personal philosophy of music education. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.

Presents research in voice science, and leadership and performance psychology. This volume addresses the topics relevant to choirs, and provides instruction on how to apply the concepts in day-to-day rehearsal and performance.

(Methodology Chorals). Excellence is not something stumbled upon by accident. You won't achieve great things while flailing about in paperwork nor partake of true musical artistry by folly. Success requires a concrete plan of action: a big-picture plan followed by all the little details that, together, create a complex mosaic that forms a beautiful and intricate picture of choral excellence. This practical text offers a wealth of information for running a choral program. The two successful veteran teachers offer advice for dozens of solutions to issues facing the choral director. Includes a CD-ROM of bonus material, an introduction by Paul Salamunovich, and these chapters: 1. GET READY... The Calendar for the Year, The Choir Handbook. 2. GET SET... Preparing for Class, Herhearsal Structure and Techniques, Selecting Literature, Blueprint for Teaching Choral Literature, Effective Classroom Management. 3. GO! Conducting Concert Dos and Don'ts, Memorization, Contests and Festivals, Programming Themes and Variations, Enrichment Opportunities for Students, The Blessing of Added Extras, Identifying Prospective Audiences. 4. AFTER ALL, THEY DO CALL YOU A TEACHER! Grading Policies, Paperwork, Teaching Sight-Reading and Music Literacy. 5. TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS Copyright Law for the Choral Director, The Art of the Interview, Teacher Observations and Evaluations, Professional Resources. 6. HOW TO GET ALONG AND PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS Building Your Support System, The Recruitment and Retention of Choir Students, Effective Publicity and Public Relations. HOW TO DO STUFF Fund-Raising, Uniforms, Music Library Organization and Maintentance. 8. HOW TO KEEP THE TAIL FROM WAGGING THE DOG Show, Pop, Jazz, and Swing Choirs, Chamber Singers and Madrigal Groups. 9. WHO SAYS CHOIR IS BORING? Choir Traditions, Fun and Games, Trips, Tours, Parties, and Banquets. 10. ALL THE REST THAT'S FIT TO PRINT... Topics Overlooked in MusEd 101, The Great Miscellany of It All. 11. VAULTING INTO THE BIG LEAGUES VIPs of the Profession, "You Are Cordially Invited...", International Travel Epilogue, Table of Contents for CD Appendix, Index

Choral Pedagogy, Third Edition, is the ideal text for voice teachers, choral conductors, church musicians, and professional and amateur singers who wish to develop strategies for lifelong singing. It concisely and clearly presents the principles of voice pedagogy from the perspective of both conducting and voice science in a user-friendly fashion, including helpful charts and simple anatomic diagrams. In addition, it offers teaching methods from history and philosophy, medical and voice science, and pedagogical concepts from active musical experts. Special attention is given to the needs of amateur singers and conductors. Topics covered include choral diction, posture and seating, rehearsal practices, and matters of vocal health. For the third edition, the authors have completely revised the text, updating the medical information and expanding the exercises. They have also added three new chapters: A chapter entitled "Singing in the 21st Century" that considers the vocal/choral demands of the choral repertoire being written in this century.A chapter on teaching young boys to sing written by Vic Oakes, the conductor of the Chattanooga Boys Choir.A chapter entitled "The Value of Lifelong Singing." With its updates and additions, Choral Pedagogy, Third Edition, is a valuable resource for students of choral conducting, music education, church music, and choral singing.

It is a truism in teaching choral conducting that the director should look like s/he wishes the choir to sound. The conductor's physical demeanour has a direct effect on how the choir sings, at a level that is largely unconscious and involuntary. It is also a matter of simple observation that different choral traditions exhibit not only different styles of vocal production and delivery, but also different gestural vocabularies which are shared not only between conductors within that tradition, but also with the singers. It is as possible to distinguish a gospel choir from a barbershop chorus or a cathedral choir by visual cues alone as it is simply by listening. But how can these forms of physical communication be explained? Do they belong to a pre-cultural realm of primate social bonding, or do they rely on the context and conventions of a particular choral culture? Is body language an inherent part of musical performance styles, or does it come afterwards, in response to music? At a practical level, to what extent can a practitioner from one tradition mandate an approach as 'good practice', and to what extent can another refuse it on the grounds that 'we don't do it that way'? This book explores these questions at both theoretical and practical levels. It examines textual and ethnographic sources, and draws on theories from critical musicology and nonverbal communication studies to analyse them. By comparing a variety of choral traditions, it investigates the extent to which the connections between conductor demeanour and choral sound operate at a general level, and in what ways they are constructed within a specific idiom. Its findings will be of interest both to those engaged in the study of music as a cultural practice, and to practitioners involved in a choral conducting context that increasingly demands fluency in a variety of styles.