| Contents |
A communal art. "We are from different ethnic groups, but we live here as one family": the musical performance of community in a Tanzanian kwaya / Gregory Barz ; "Putting Decatur on the map": choral music and community in an Illinois city / Melinda Russell ; Singing on the steppes: Kornelius Neufeld and choral music among the Mennonites of Russia / Wesley Berg -- Grassroots aesthetics. Concord and discord: singing together in a Sardinian brotherhood / Bernard Lortat-Jacob, translated and edited by Marc Benamou ; Music and morality : John Curwen's tonic sol-fa, the Temperance Movement, and the oratorios of Edward Elgar / Charles Edward McGuire ; Accounting for taste: choral circles in early Soviet workers' clubs / Amy Nelson -- Minority identities. Spiritual singing brings in the money: the Fisk Jubilee Singers tour Holland in 1877 / Helen Metzelaar ; The "new Negro" choral legacy of Hall Johnson / Marva Griffin Carter ; From Communism to Yiddishism: the reinvention of the Jewish People's Philharmonic Chorus of New York City / Marion S. Jacobson -- The activist chorus. "We're singin' for the union": the ILGWU Chorus in Pennsylvania coal country, 1947-2000 / Kenneth C. Wolensky ; The voice empowered: harmonic convergence of music and politics in the GLBT choral movement / Jill Strachan -- In the Western tradition. Men and women of the chorus: music, governance, and social models in nineteenth-century German-speaking Europe / Karen Ahlquist ; Symphonic choirs: understanding the borders of professionalism / Rosalynd Smith. |
| Abstract |
The chorus and its effect on music and the world. Although organized group singing appears world wide, in a great variety of circumstances, from church to worksite, school to civic club, parlor to concert hall, amateur setting to professional, quartets to monster concerts, in groups brought together by race, class, gender, or political, social, national, or ethnic heritage, this collection is the first to give it serious musicological attention. The chorus is a musical instrument and a social organization that crosses cultural, historical, and geographical boundaries. The essays discuss an East African chorus; groups from nineteenth-century England, Germany, and America; Hall Johnson; the Fisk Jubilee Singers; early twentieth-century Russian Mennonites; barbershop; Soviet workers' clubs; a Sardinian brotherhood; women's garment workers in Pennsylvania; choral groups in a small Illinois town (Decatur); semi-professional symphony choruses; and gay and lesbian choruses. Within this wide variety, these choruses do have characteristics in common. All of them have a more or less fixed membership. They all rehearse and perform, distinguishing between preparation and a culminating musical event given for listeners. They all have a chosen repertoire. They all have acknowledged musical leaders. With one exception, their members are not soloists; sounds are produced by an aggregate of voices, either in sections or by the chorus as a whole (the performances of the Sardinian brotherhood in Lortat-Jacob's essay are solo quartets selected from the membership). However, the choruses do not necessarily read from musical scores or sing "classical" music. And none creates income for its members individually. The accompanying CD illustrates virtually all the choruses or traditions presented in the book. |
