Join the Celebration for Our Founder!
ChoralNet users, grab your tablet, laptop or phone and head for a shady spot. There is a story that needs telling. A hero gave us 20 years of his life so that we could find help when we need it, repertoire that matters and a place to feel part of a community. Dr. James D. Feiszli is the hero of our tale.
Before writing this article I didn’t really know Dr. Feiszli. I have never met him outside of ChoralNet. What I did know was that he was caring and altruistic and he created and directed ChoralNet for many years. What I learned and I hope you will get out of his story is a sense of kinship. As choral directors we all share of ourselves, spending more time at work than with out families, involving ourselves in the lives of our singers, fundraising, and hours upon hours of preparation. Does it matter? Does any of it really matter? Of course it does and Jim is a man we can empathize with and look up to. He did not take the easy path and it has made all the difference!
This article is part of a short series to honor our founder. The Composers of Choral Music Community and Our Musical Life Inc. are hosting a celebration of thanks called the Showcase Dare. Composers, conductors and lyricists are invited to participate and encouraged to show their appreciation for the man that gave us this valuable resource. Comment below with what ChoralNet means to you and participate in the Showcase Dare. More info is available on last Sunday’s ChoralBlog or come the Showcase Dare August 2015 community: https://choralnet.org/list/page/469189
Do you remember the world before the Internet, no email, no Google, no online reference materials? It was a time when your social network was made up of your family, co-workers and people you actually had lunch with. That’s the world from which our tale begins. It is not a short story. I wanted to bring light to a subject only a few know anything about. We will start this week with the early days of ChoralNet. I interviewed Dr. Feiszli for this blog series. We’ll let him tell the story.
Q: What was your original purpose in creating Choralist, the precursor to ChoralNet?
A: When I came to SDSM&T in 1983, I was one of two collegiate choral conductors in the state with a doctorate and the only music faculty at this science and engineering institution. Coming from the ivory-tower stratosphere of Arizona State University, a very large music school with plenty of colleagues, I was suddenly isolated from professional collaboration at a scholarly research level.
At ASU, I was in charge of computer applications for the School of Music at a time when very few understood or wanted to understand the potential for data storage and retrieval and communication. At SDSM&T, everyone (well, maybe not the Liberal Arts types so much!) knew that personal computing was about to change the universe of computing which, heretofore, had been reserved to mainframes and computer technicians. I got my hands on the first PCs made available to faculty at this technological school and began to use it for developing a database for my choral reference library and school inventory.
SDSM&T, being a research institution with strong connections to government funding, was among the first universities with access to the ARPANET – forerunner to the Internet. By 1987, I was able to end my exile in isolation by being able to access the libraries of other research institutions connected to the Internet; e.g. Stanford, Harvard, ASU, UC-Boulder, etc. Yay!
Today it seems inconceivable, but at that time only those who had connections to either research institutes or government branches such as the Library of Congress had access to the Internet and its new form of communication – electronic mail. I quickly re-connected with my research advisor, Dr. Robert D. Reynolds, who had always been one of those who appreciated new technologies – although I have to admit, when I was the first music doctoral candidate in the history of ASU to use a word processor for my dissertation, he was dismayed at how quickly I returned corrected drafts! A good friend, he introduced me via e-mail to others who dealt with musicology and choral music and whose universities were also connected to the Internet (a fairly small crowd).
By about 1992, Walter Collins at the University of Colorado and I had become email acquaintances. Walter, a former national president of ACDA and former president of IFCM, was retired from UC, but still very active in the choral world with many colleagues and former student now in positions of importance across the world. His successor at UC-Boulder, Lynn Whitten was at that time the national president-elect of ACDA. We discussed how interesting it would be to find a way to use this technology to develop better communications in the choral world. Rob Reynolds, by this time had already instigated an e-mail discussion/communication forum (AMSlist) for the American Musicological Society, of which Water and I were both members. Rob introduced us to another technology wizard, composer Mark Gresham of Atlanta, who as a non-academic had discovered how to access the Internet and proved invaluable in these discussions.
Q: Who were the collaborators?
A: The real “Gang of Four” were Walter, Rob. Mark, and me
But there was a catalyst that moved this from a discussion into reality. I had never stopped developing my own choral music library, which now exceeded 5500 items each with about 30 key fields. I called it CHOREF (note the name?). Jean Sturm, a brilliant French research chemist and amateur choral director – whose professional chemistry efforts, BTW, helped kick off the human genome database, had developed database software for his chemistry research. It wasn’t long before he adapted it for use for his personal choral reference library, which he labeled MUSICA, and began to develop it into a powerful choral music database.
I was an IFCM member and noticed a small notice in the spring issue of the International Choral Bulletin that announced a workshop in Namur, Belgium (home to IFCM headquarters) in July of 1991. It asked that those interested in collaborating on a global choral music database to come to Namur and work together for a week. I decided to go, taking along my tables of data on about ten 3.5” diskettes.
That week was truly epic. The list of people who worked together in Namur became powerful figures in the choral world in years to come. Jean-Claude Wilkens was the young executive director of the IFCM. Dolf Rabus of the Marktoberdorf Festivals was there. Jean Sturm brought his MUSICA database –numbering at the time about 15,000 items. It was clear that his software and software development expertise had the capability to handle a massive project. As Yugoslavia disintegrated, a young Slovenian woman dodged the bullets flying to make the trip. That young woman, Karmina Šilec, of Carmina Slovenica fame. A young Filipino conductor was there, Jonathan Velasco, now of the University of the Philippines and a choral force all across the Pacific Rim. A German conductor was there, Manfred Bender, who now heads the Deutsches Centrum für Chormusik.
Several key decisions were made during that week: 1) MUSICA had very few pieces by U.S./Canadian publishers. I decided to upload my entire database into MUSICA increasing its holdings by about 25%. 2) IFCM asked me to be an advisor to the MUSICA project, 3) while the Internet was at that point very much a U.S. phenomenon, we all became determined to use this technology to stay in contact quickly and easily after that week ended.
I came home and told Walter (an IFCM founder as ACDA president and later an IFCM president) about the week. After spending 1992 in further communication and discussion, Walter convinced Lynn Whitten whom, as incoming ACDA president was the host of the 1993 national ACDA convention, to schedule and announce a meeting at that convention of “those interested in developing an e-mail communications list for choral music.” About twenty-five persons, including Collins, Feiszli, Gresham, and Whitten, attended that meeting. All in attendance expressed a strong desire for some form of Internet-based communication network. Shortly thereafter, Walter and I, using the University of Colorado list processor capabilities, began ACDAlist, the first e-mail list dedicated to choral music with Feiszli as the list owner/manager.
Q: For our users that were born after Web 2.0, what was the Internet like back then?
A: At that time, the Internet was largely accessed through research universities and widespread public access was non-existent. ACDAlist grew steadily. Offered as a free distribution list for electronic mail, the list had neither subscription costs for subscribers nor was it subsidized by any entity other than the University of Colorado.
Q: How busy were you when you decided to add this project to your plate? What else were you doing professionally? As a volunteer?
A: I was incredibly busy. SDSM&T had no music program when I arrived. I had convinced the university that the emerging brain research indicated that active involvement in music resulted in better thinking. Starting with my arrival at Mines in 1983, I built the music program from the ground up, securing resources, equipment, and scholarships. I took a glee club called the “Singing Engineers” and built it into an award-winning university choir whose performance records are as impressive as those of choirs from universities with accredited music programs. I successfully advocated for academic credit for ensemble music and increased music opportunities by adding new course offerings in applied music and lecture courses. By 1993, there were two fulltime music faculty with three choral ensembles and three instrumental ensembles. (Today there are eight faculty/staff persons, seven instrumental ensembles and three vocal ensembles AND a dedicated facility. When I arrived we had one room, a piano, some music stands, and a handful of instruments. You can check out the program at http://www.facebook.com/SDSMTMusicCenter and http://www.sdsmt.edu/music )
In addition, I was elected president-elect of SD-ACDA in 1987, consequently serving two terms as president, making that an eight-year commitment. And I took on my Episcopal church choir in 1984 and built that program into a fairly strong 40-voice chancel choir (performing great literature) and an elite 10-voice chapel choir that performed traditional Anglican music such as Byrd, Tallis, Howells, etc.
Q: What was ACDA’s role in helping with Choralist or ChoralNet in those early days?
A: Well, that is a difficult and perhaps politically dangerous minefield of a question.
In September of 1993, I was granted a sabbatical from SDSM&T and went to England to study Gregorian chant with Dr. Mary Berry and her Schola Gregoriana of Cambridge. I approached David Topping, who had been in San Antonio at the ACDA convention meeting and who was one of the original subscribers to the list, to ask him if he would be willing to manage Choralist while I was out of the country. David agreed and thus began a long and fruitful connection with ChoralNet, because when I returned in October I asked him to continue assisting me as co-manager.
Now, one must understand the nature of all professional (and volunteer) organizations. The hired staff, from executive directors to secretaries usually wield more power than the elected officers because the former remain in place while latter rotate in and out. In the case of professional organizations, some people run for office to create a credential as well as to serve the organization. It advances their career. The fulltime staff often develop a guardianship mentality for the organization that goes beyond service to the elected leadership. In the case of Gene Brooks, ACDA’s executive director, he had singlehandedly built ACDA from a small, run-out-of-a-closet kind of operation into a powerful and respected national organization. He had secured funding and support to build a national headquarters and created the juggernaut of conferences that we have today. Gene’s opinions matter greatly in the professional choral world. The elected leadership had to listen and, usually, agree with his decisions because of that that he had done so much for the organization and was doing a great job running it.
By that point (fall of 1993), there were about 100 subscribers to ACDAlist. Gene Brooks was notoriously skeptical of all things computer, refusing to even turn one on. Well, some enthusiastic person, I do not recall who (wasn’t me), got a notice posted in the Choral Journal about ACDAlist and urging everyone with email access to join. Now, naïve me, I had assumed all along that this list was officially OK with Gene and the elected Board. Lo and behold, when I got back from sabbatical in October there was fax in my mailbox (remember faxes?) from the national ACDA president, dated two months earlier, in essence asking, “who the hell are you and who said you could use the term ACDAlist?” Now, mind you, I had just come off eight years of ACDA leadership service and had declined to run for division president because of ACDAlist. And Lynn Whitten was the current national President-Elect!
So, I copied the fax into an email and submitted to the subscribers of ACDAlist asking what they thought we should do – kill the list? (Lynn and Walter were both subscribers). Shit-storm. First of all, the sender of the fax was angry because he thought I’d been ignoring him, and then he was furious that I would publicize this fax. Some subscribers expressed dismay that the list wasn’t “official” and quit. I, of course, thought it had all been cleared up there somewhere. But the majority of the list subscribers (99% ACDA members, BTW), said, “No matter what, do not kill the list. Change the name if necessary.” So we changed the name to Choralist. Lynn Whitten meanwhile vowed to bring the effort up to the national Board for official sanction. But the damage had been done. The rest of the officers declined to sanction the list and we continued to operate with no official standing.
It was during that fall that widespread and public access to the Internet began to become more available. More and more universities became connected and commercial entities such as Compuserve and AT&T began offering e-mail services to the general public. Consequently, subscribership on Choralist soared. By the end of 1993, the list had nearly 200 subscribers, with more subscribing daily.
Q: What changed that led Choralist to become ChoralNet?
A: As Choralist grew, other services were added. The Choralist Resource Site (CRS) was created late in 1993 using SDSM&T computer services. The CRS provided an online file cabinet (early cloud!) for users of Choralist, with archives of past list messages, compilations of information derived from list discussions, and other information helpful to choral musicians who had access to the Internet. I formed a Choralist Advisory Group (CAG) in early 1994. This CAG was comprised of persons in the choral field from across the globe who used and had interest in developing the use of online computing for the benefit of choral music. Members of every part of the choral world were part of the CAG from the beginning to provide feedback on the growth and interest in Choralist. Another list – CAGlist – was created using SDSM&T list servers to facilitate their communications.
From the fall of 1994 to the summer of 1995, Choralist experienced incredible growth and many of the problems that were appearing with e-mail lists of all types across the Internet. Because of the difficulties inherent in the early days of electronic mail communication – no vocal inflection, no body language, no face to connect to words – these early users of lists tended to understand and react to e-mail differently than they would to normal face-to-face or even telephone conversation. “Flame wars” begin when parties insist on redressing perceived grievances in a public forum. Serious users of the lists became disgusted and left. Attempts to mediate or mitigate were perceived as censorship. List traffic began to degenerate as serious users left and casual or uninformed users dominated the e-mail messages. By the summer of 1995, Choralist had close to 2000 subscribers – a very large list for any kind of focused use. We found it difficult to maintain any type of medium that would satisfy even a majority of subscribers. Looking back now in this age of texting (and auto-correct!) this all seems so ridiculous, but it was a huge problem.
To top it all off, in 1995 we all became aware of a new aspect of the Internet – the use of actual graphics and the beginning of what would become the Worldwide Web. Again, it seems improbable now, but in those early days not everyone had access to the computing power or Internet transmission to allow access to the web. So we had to tread a fine line between those two very different types of users.
So in November 1995, after much debate among the CAG, Choralist was transformed into ChoralNet, which included Choralist, the CRS, CAGlist, and CHOREF (by then an on-line choral music database because Jean Sturm had steadfastly refused to place MUSICA online – another story!). Choralist’s purpose and operation was modified so that it could become the one common bulletin board for the online choral world. It became a moderated list – meaning that all messages sent to Choralist went first to a moderator, who would then approve or disapprove its posting to the list. Two new e-mail lists were begun to provide forums for the two basic groups of online choral musicians who had been using Choralist: ChoralAcademe – designed for choral music researchers and professionals, and ChoralTalk –a forum for more informal and extended discussion of choral music topics on a more general plane. ChoralTalk was also linked via an electronic gateway at Loma Linda University in California to rec.music.makers.choral – a Usenet newsgroup. Finally, as the capstone to this new enterprise, the ChoralNet Web Site (CWS) was created, running on SDSM&T webservers. At this juncture, Feiszli retained list management of ChoralAcademe and CAGlist and created and maintained the CWS, CRS, and CHOREF, while Topping moderated and managed Choralist and ChoralTalk.
In early 1996 IFCM, having decided to expand their presence on the Internet, approached me about a merger of efforts. I traveled to Namur to meet with Jean-Claude Wilkens, Claude Tagger (president), and others of the IFCM management. After returning to the U.S. and consultations with Topping and the CAG, it was decided that ChoralNet would be designated an official project of the IFCM. Finally! Some official professional recognition! ChoralNet became the website for IFCM and Feiszli their webmaster. As more and more webpages became required for the operation of ChoralNet, David Topping became more involved in those aspects of the ChoralNet operation as well, eventually taking over more of Feiszli’s work so that he could focus on political and managerial aspects of ChoralNet.
1997 and 1998 were tumultuous years for ChoralNet as Topping and Feiszli began to see their work become ever more central to the global online choral community but also realizing that they could not continue to operate alone as they had been doing. Finally, in early 1997, ACDA came to see that this Internet thing was not going to go away. We were approached and asked to develop and host the official ACDA website. ACDA would establish funding for a ChoralNet Manager, which David Topping filled. ChoralNet also worked with Chorus America and the European Federation of Young Choirs to develop other services, among them the web message boards EuroChoralTalk – modeled after the original ChoralTalk, and Foro de Musica Coral Latinoamericana – a Spanish-language forum for the Latin American choral community.
ChoralNet lost two of its most important champions during these years. Walter Collins was stricken by a brain aneurysm in May 1997 and passed away during emergency surgery. Then, early the next year Claude Tagger, President of IFCM, passed away of similar causes.
In November 1998, John Vucurevich, a businessman from Rapid City, South Dakota, issued a $5000.00 challenge grant to ChoralNet to provide an impetus for further development of ChoralNet operations. The first result of this grant was a fund drive which netted ChoralNet another $7000.00 from ChoralNet users. By July 1999, ChoralNet had filed and received approval as a non-profit corporation in the state of South Dakota and set up its own dedicated web server. The ChoralNet Board of Directors held their first meeting in August, extending over a period of ten days and held completely online, during which they
- ratified a constitution and bylaws
- approved an organizational structure
- elected officers
- assigned members to specific tasks
The ChoralNet corporate structure provided for four sub-committees to operate and oversee ChoralNet operations, each headed by a Vice-President. The Vice-Presidents as well as a Treasurer, Secretary, and President were elected by the Board. Those eight persons formed an Executive Committee to which the Manager is also an ex-officio member. This change, from an operation which was largely the province of two people, to a jointly-owned consortium of many people began to lay the groundwork to ensure the viability of ChoralNet for the future.
ChoralNet filed for and received non-profit, tax-exempt status as a 501(c)3 corporation from the U.S. government in 2000. In early 2001, Chorus America became the third major association to join the ChoralNet consortium and discussion was underway with Europa Cantat by summer of that same year. The needs of such a consortium created an ever-larger and complicated technical demand on the ChoralNet webserver causing ChoralNet to upgrade to more expensive options. The association partners responded by paying $2000.00 each towards the server costs.
That first ChoralNet Board of Directors was comprised some pretty good folks.
Dr. Michael Anderson, University of Chicago at Illinois
Carl Ashley, Minister of Music, Westside Baptist Church, Boynton Beach, FL
Brent E. Boyko, Telecommunications Dept., Loma Linda University Medical Center
Sylvia Bresson, SUISA, Copyright Society for Music, Rohr, Switzerland
Ian Bullen, Small World International Distribution, Vancouver British Columbia, Canada
Dr. Kerry P. Burtis , Crescenta Valley High School, La Crescenta, CA
David Otis Castonguay, Radford University, Radford, Virginia
Kendall G. Clark, Southern Methodist University, Dallas TX
Dr. Timothy G. Cooper, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada
Julio Dominquez, Camerata ad Libitum Chamber Choir, Ponteareas, Spain
John Drotleff, Hiram College, Hiram, Ohio
Dr. R. Paul Drummond, Central Methodist College, Fayette, MO
Monika Fahrnberger, Wien, Austria
Dr. James D. Feiszli, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Rapid City, SD
Matthew P. Fritz, University of Missouri at Kansas City
Dr. Charles L. Fuller, Ouachita Baptist University, Arkadelphia, AR
Mark Gresham, Lux Nova Press, Atlanta, Georgia 30307
Carol Hague, Vankleek Hill, Ontario, Canada
Monica J. Hubbard, Altadena, CA
Erik Reid Jones, Washington, DC
Dr. James Kempster, Pacific Union College, Angwin, CA
Gene N. Lebrun, Lynn, Jackson, Schultz, and Lebrun, Rapid City, SD (attorney)
Tom Merrill, Summit Country Day School, Cincinnati, OH
Dr. Tony A. Mowrer, Rochester College, Rochester Hills, MI
William “Nick” Nicholson, SARLYN Publications, Sudbury, MA
Alan Prater, Mills, Timmons, & Flowers, Shreveport, LA
Dr. Robert D. Reynolds, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
Dr. Patricia Romza, St. Michael’s College, Colchester, VT
Thomas D Rossin, EXULTATE, Eagan, MN
Tadej Sadar, Slovenian National Catholic Radio, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Dr. Michael Shasberger, Augustana Lutheran Church, Denver, CO
Allen Simon, Palo Alto, CA
Haven L. Stuck, Lynn, Jackson, Schultz, and Lebrun, Rapid City, SD
David B. Topping, Tempe, AZ
Ronald R. Weiler II, Detroit Country Day School, Beverly Hills, MI
Jerry Westerman, Petoskey Middle & High School, Petoskey, MI
Dr. Lynn Whitten, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO
Terra Widdifield, Gateway Music Festivals & Tours, Inc., Monticello, MN
This large Board of Directors, all volunteers, was designed to be a working Board with each member assigned to fulfill specific tasks. Such a structure caused problems when real world obligations interfered with ChoralNet work. ACDA, which had made an initial commitment of two years for the Manager funding, was still funding the Manager position – a situation which made David Topping ACDA’s employee, rather than ChoralNet’s. He served as ACDA’s webmaster in addition to his ChoralNet duties. The addition of Chorus America to the consortium created additional work for the Manager and for Allen Simon, ChoralNet’s Vice-President for Website Management. Although by this time, most or all of the list moderation was being done by members of the List and Forum Management committee, it was becoming impossible for ChoralNet to attempt to provide a unified portal for the choral world and simultaneously provide services to the associations at the same time.
Finally, at the 2002 World Choral Symposium in Minneapolis, we held a general assembly and worked out a better organizational management plan, cutting the Board down to seven members with each supporting entity having a board seat and officers elected from those seven members. In addition to the supporting professional organization partners we began to solicit website advertising and commercial partners, thereby putting the organization on a more established path.
Q: Once ChoralNet was well established, how many hours a week did you spend there? What was your official role?
A: For the majority of these years I spent 20 hours a week on ChoralNet business. I was the registered agent for the organization and had to submit papers to the state and the IRS every year. Did the trademark registrations, ran the meetings, oversaw everyone else, maintained the administrative website, etc. I was the elected president for all but two years when I was the secretary instead, allowing Michael Shasberger (the ACDA representative) to be president just to ease our always-prickly connection with Lawton. I was the official IFCM representative through most of these years and an advisor to IFCM, Europa Cantat, and MUSICA.
Q: What did you miss out on because you were helping us?
A: Advancing myself professionally, I guess. One might say that I garnered quite the reputation for ChoralNet but, unfortunately, no one seemed to think of me as choral conductor, especially as I teach at an institution where there is no music major. I’m actually pretty good. Took my choirs to international competition in Ireland in 2006 and brought back three first-place trophies. But I wasn’t spending time doing self-promotion. I also had little time to spend with my original research as a wannabe musicologist.
ChoralBlog readers, I hope you have gotten something out of this early history of ChoralNet. Jim’s altruistic endeavors have benefitted us all. Come back next week for the next part of the story!
Thanks to composer David Cope for use of his picture in our Showcase Dare graphic.
James D. Feiszli says
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