CJ Replay: A Choral Manifesto

“Choral music is valuable because it is an activity that is healthful, vital, and absorbing. It is valuable becauseit stimulates feelingful thought, because it reinforces our concepts of self, because it puts us in contact with the good, the deep, the shared experiences of the human soul. For these, and other reasons, choral  music continues to grow in value for the individual throughout one’s lifetime.”

 

“Choral music is valuable because it provides us a means of making contact with others through a productive communal activity. It puts us in contact with individuals of a given society, with individuals of other contemporary societies, and with individuals from throughout the history of mankind. We are made aware of those things that are common to us all as we experience art works in similar ways. We makecontact with the psyches of our forebears; we acknowledge this planet’s other current inhabitants when we have similar reactions to historical and contemporary musics. (We acknowledge those ‘others’ as people who are very much like ourselves.) Every time we feel the grandeur and reassurance inspired by Brahms’s Requiem, when we are transported by a Vittoria motet, when “Ezekiel saw de Wheel” brings us joy, we are recognizing what we have in common with Germans of the nineteenth century, with Romans of the sixteenth century, with Black Americans in this century. Through music we are able to share feelingfullness with our forebears and/or contemporaries and, thereby, shrink the planet and confirm the humanness of history.”

 

(From the Choral Journal article “A Choral Manifesto,” by Andrew Cottle)