Choral Composition

This is an annotated bibliography to books, recordings, videos, and websites on choral music. This book will serve as an excellent tool for librarians, researchers, and scholars in sorting through the massive amount of new material that has appeared since publication of the previous edition.

Musical works for chorus are among the great masterpieces of 20th-century art. This guide, the first truly comprehensive volume on the choral music of the last century, covers the spectacular range of music for vocal ensembles, from Saint-Saens to Tan Dun. The book will be essential to every choral conductor and a valuable resource for choir members, choral societies and choruses.

This comprehensive handbook details the fundamentals and forms of choral composition and expands upon the coverage and number of topics in Archibald T. Davison's 1945 classic text Choral Composition. Historical trends in choral composition are traced with a special emphasis on the profusion of changes that occurred throughout the twentieth century, particularly since 1950. Early chapters focus on characteristics of voice, notation, text, devices, part writing, a cappella and instrumental accompaniments, and choral forms. Hines goes on to analyze the utilization of soloists and choruses with instrumental chamber ensembles, orchestra, and the role of the chorus in opera, operetta, musicals, and music theater. A final chapter addresses practical concerns: music publication and how the artist can function effectively in that world.

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.

Bringing together perspectives on history, global activity and professional development, this Companion provides a unique overview of choral music.

A History of Western Choral Music explores the various genres, key composers, and influential works essential to the development of the western choral tradition. Author Chester L. Alwes divides this exploration into two volumes which move from Medieval music and the Renaissance era up to the 21st century. Volume II begins at the transition from the Classical era to the Romantic, with an examination of the major genres common to both periods. Exploring the oratorio, part song, and dramatic music, it also offers a thorough discussion of the choral symphony from Beethoven to Mahler, through to the present day. It then delves into the choral music of the twentieth century through discussions of the major compositional approaches and philosophies that proliferated over the course of the century, from impressionism to serialism, neo-classicism to modernism, minimalism, and the avant-garde. It also considers the emerging tendency towards nationalistic composition amongst composers such as Bartók and Stravinsky, and discusses in great detail the contemporary music of the United States, and Great Britain. Framing discussion within the political, religious, cultural, philosophical, aesthetic, and technological contexts of each era, A History of Western Choral Music offers readers specialized insight into major composers and works while providing a cohesive understanding of choral music's place in Western history.

Focus: Choral Music in Global Perspective introduces the little-known traditions and repertoires of the world’s choral diversity, from prison choirs in Thailand and gay and lesbian choruses of the Western world to community choruses in the Middle East and youth choirs in the United States. The book weaves together the stories of diverse individuals and organizations, examining their music and pedagogical practices while presenting the author’s research on how choral cultures around the world interact with societies and transform the lives of their members. Through an engaging series of portraits that pushes beyond the scope of extant texts and studies, the author explores the dynamic realm of world choral activity and repertoire. These personal portraits of musical communities are enriched by sample repertoire lists, performance details, and research findings that reposition a once Western phenomenon as a global concept. Focus: Choral Music in Global Perspective is an accessible, engaging, and provocative study of one of the world’s most ubiquitous and socially significant forms of music-making.

Nineteenth-Century Choral Music is a collection of essays studying choral music making as a cultural phenomenon, one that had an impact on multiple parts of society. Rather than merely offering a collection of raw descriptions of works, the contributors focus their discussions on what these pieces reveal about their composers as craftsmen/women. Major works as well as other equally rich parts of the repertoire are discussed, including smaller choral works and contributions by composers such as Fanny Mendelssohn, Amy Beach, Charles Stanford,