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Choral Journal

May Choral Journal Preview

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The newest issue of Choral Journal is available online. Following is a list of the articles you will find in this issue.

ACDA members can log in with their username and password to view and download the newest edition. You can also read our electronic version. Below is a preview of the articles you will find in this issue. If you are not already a member of ACDA, join today to start receiving your monthly Choral Journal! Associate members can join for only $45 a year.
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FOCUS ARTICLES

Building a Foundation: Interviews with International Exchange Program Conducting Fellows
by T. J. Harper with Jeffery Ames, Jihoon Park, Sara Durkin, Rodrigo Faguaga, Julie Yu, and Ken Wakia

International Conductors Exchange Program to Sweden: Building Bridges through Choral Connections by Jeremy D. Jones and Joshua Habermann

Just One Trip: The Transforming Power of Cultural Exchange by Scott Glysson

ACDA Connecting with the World Webinar Series: A Living Online Resource by Tim Sharp

ACDA Costa Rica: Breaking Boundaries in Central America by David Ramírez and Josué Ramírez Palmer

Authenticity, Collaboration, Connection, and Growth: Exploring the ACDA International Activities Mentorship Program and the Power of YOU! by Emily Williams Burch with Ashley Conway and T. J. Harper

ARTICLES

Research Report
The Power of Incarcerated Voices to Transform Community: Research from a Women’s Prison Choir by Amanda Weber

Rehearsal Break
What’s in a Name? by Stuart Chapman Hill

2021 Summer Festival and Workshop Listings

Book Reviews

CJ Replay: An American Mass

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The December 2020 issue of Choral Journal is online and features an article titled “An American Mass: Celebrating Our Shared Music In An Ancient Form” by Carlton E. Kilpatrick III. You can read it in its entirety online at acda.org/choraljournal. Following is a portion from the introduction

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The Mass is a treasured form in the Western canon of music and liturgy. A celebration of the sacrifice offered for the forgiveness of sins in the early Christian faith, it is still part of the worship in modern Catholic denomination.

Settings of these ancient texts have been continuously performed both in liturgy and in concert for hundreds of years. From plainchant settings by anonymous monks to the high drama of majestic settings by Mozart, Beethoven, and Haydn for chorus, soloists, and orchestra, the Mass text continues to provide inspiration for composers.

Mass settings appear less frequently among the non-idiomatic compositions of Black composers. Marques Garrett’s online resource of “Non-Idiomatic Choral Music of Black Composers”1 identifies fifteen, only a few of which utilize the forces of mixed choir and orchestra. When the search is stretched to idiomatic music, defined here as gospel, spirituals, jazz, hip-hop, and rap (among others), more examples exist, including the well-known Gospel Mass composed in 1978 by Robert Ray.

In that same year, André Thomas, a first-year doctoral student at the University of Illinoi–Champaign–Urbana, performed as a pianist and singer in the premiere performances of Robert Ray’s newly composed Gospel Mass.2 Some forty years later, Thomas would find himself surrounded by signs that he should pursue a Mass project of his own. The resulting work blends both the idiomatic and non-idiomatic aspects of Thomas’s compositional oeuvre, resulting in a work that is in his unique voice—an American voice.

Mass: A Celebration of Love and Joy is written in a Missa Brevis format with a complete Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei in English translation.

NOTES

1 Marques L.A. Garrett, “Beyond Elijah Rock: The Non-Idiomatic Choral Music of Black Composers,” accessed September 21, 2020, https://www.mlagmusic.com/research/beyond-elijah-rock.

2 Details about Thomas’s life and the writing of the Mass come from an interview with the author conducted in July 2020. Details about the Negro spiritual can be found in André J. Thomas, Way Over in Beulah Lan’: Understanding and Performing the Negro Spiritual (Dayton, OH: Heritage Music Press, 2007).

CJ Replay: Marianna von Martines’s Dixit Dominus

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The April issue of Choral Journal is online and features an article titled “Marianna von Martines’s Dixit Dominus: A Stylistic Synthesis” by Joseph Taff. You can read it in its entirety online at acda.org/choraljournal. Following is a portion from the introduction.

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Born in Vienna in 1744, Marianna von Martines received a thorough grounding in Baroque compositional techniques, but lived and worked in an era when a newer, more “galant” style had become fashionable.

Her contemporaries often noted and praised the balance of old and new stylistic qualities in her composition. English music historian Charles Burney, who visited the Martines family in 1772, called Marianna’s arias “very well written, in a modern style; but neither common, nor unnaturally new,” and cited Martines’s teacher, mentor, and housemate Metastasio’s description of one of her psalm settings as “a most agreeable Mescolanza…of antico e moderno.” Metastasio himself wrote to a friend that Martines “chose to avail herself of both the grace of the modern style, avoiding its licenses, and the harmonious solidity of the old ecclesiastical style, divested of its Gothicisms.” Burney’s and Metastasio’s remarks are often cited and echoed in more recent literature on Martines and her style. They do not specify what stylistic elements diff erentiated “antico” from “moderno,” or what elements Martines drew from each source. Nonetheless, they make it clear that synthesis of old and new styles was a key piece of Martines’s compositional approach.

The Martines family was well connected at the Habsburg court in Vienna. Her eldest brother “served as tutor to at least three of the sixteen royal children born to [Empress] Maria Theresa,” and the other three Martines brothers were all esteemed soldiers or civil servants; the entire family was granted noble status in 1774, the year Marianna composed her Dixit Dominus. The royal family’s enjoyment of Marianna’s music likely contributed to her family’s status. An 1846 biographical article on Martines in the Wiener allgemeine Musik-Zeitung mentions that the Empress would often ask Martines to perform for her, and that her son Joseph II would sometimes turn pages for Martines.6

Robert Gjerdingen notes that “the cultured nobility” of eighteenth-century Europe were expected to embody a certain “collection of traits, attitudes, and manners” encapsulated by the versatile adjective “galant,” and that galant manners were expressed through music as well, in a courtly style “grounded in a repertory of stock musical phrases.” Martines would undoubtedly have been expected to display galant qualities in both her musical performances and social dealings at court.

Martines’s musical education nevertheless provided her with ample exposure to Baroque musical style. In an autobiographical letter, she lists Handel, Lotti, and Caldara among her chief influences; even when discussing her more contemporary role models, she cites three composers at least thirty years older than she (Hasse, Jomelli, and Galuppi). This emphasis on emulating older music is unsurprising given that her education was directed chiefly by Metastasio, who was born in 1698.
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ACDA members can log in with their username and password to view and download the newest edition. You can also read our electronic version. Below is a preview of the articles you will find in this issue. If you are not already a member of ACDA, join today to start receiving your monthly Choral Journal! Associate members can join for only $45 a year.

April Choral Journal Preview

by Leave a Comment

The newest issue of Choral Journal is available online. Following is a list of the articles you will find in this issue.

ACDA members can log in with their username and password to view and download the newest edition. You can also read our electronic version. Below is a preview of the articles you will find in this issue. If you are not already a member of ACDA, join today to start receiving your monthly Choral Journal! Associate members can join for only $45 a year.
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Marianna von Martines’s Dixit Dominus: A Stylistic Synthesis by Joseph Taff

Mozart, Süßmayr, and Musical Propaganda: Revaluing Political Choral Music for Modern Performance by Mark Nabholz

Interview with Three Canadian Choral Composers by Geoffrey Bell

On the Voice
Categorizing and Notating Timbres for Vocal Ensembles by Fahad Siadat

Conducting during COVID: What is possible and how has the role of the conductor changed? by Rachel Carlson and Scot Hanna-Weir

Research Report
Choral Rehearsals During COVID: Examining Singer Engagement by Matthew Swanson, Eva Floyd, and David Kirkendall

Choral Reviews

CJ Reply: Critical Pedagogy and the Choir

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The February issue of Choral Journal is online and features an article titled “Critical Pedagogy and the Choir” by Simon Hill. You can read it in its entirety online at acda.org/choraljournal. Following is a portion from the introduction.

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What is critical pedagogy?

Since the release of Paulo Freire’s seminal work Pedagogy of the Oppressed, a singular definition and application of critical pedagogy has been elusive. Broadly speaking, critical pedagogy may be summed up in Freire’s original term conscientização, which roughly translates as conscientization. Conscientization refers to the process by which the unjust workings of a society are realized by the oppressed. The oppressed are then able to reclaim their right to speak as liberated persons, thereby transforming both themselves as individuals and the societies in which they live.1

Freire’s pedagogy stems from his work in educating the illiterate peasant population of Brazil in the mid twentieth century. However, when Freire speaks of the oppressed and the oppressor, he is not just speaking to Brazilians of the time. Freire’s critical pedagogy may be applied in any context and across disciplines.

As choral conductors and educators, where in our field can we fi nd the oppressed and oppressors? How can we transform our practices? How can we facilitate the process of conscientization among our singers? Using strong words such as oppressed and oppressor to describe the choral field might seem jarring, but by using these terms, we are not defining choral music as an innately unjust or oppressive art form. Instead, we are acknowledging the hierarchical nature of our field.

Since the relationship between conductor and choir naturally lends itself to a system of hierarchy (oppressor and oppressed), we can ask how critical pedagogy can guide us to a more liberated system. In this new mode, conductor and ensemble can work together dialogically to transform themselves and the world in which they live.

Critical pedagogy does not begin with predetermined answers; it begins with a problem. Through problem-posing, “People develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they fi nd themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation.”2

Critical pedagogy for choir could invite dialogue around a problem which exists in the world outside of the rehearsal space. It could also present a problem found within the confines of the choral classroom. It is essential that the unveiling of the world comes from within—the choristers—rather than from the conductor telling them what the world is and how they exist within it. Critical pedagogy is a collective process of both discovering and engaging with the world.

Notes

  1. Donaldo Macedo, introduction to Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 50th Anniversary Edition, by Paulo Freire (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2018): 16.
  2. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 50th Anniversary Edition, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2018): 83.

CJ Replay: COVID and the Choral Educator

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The February issue of Choral Journal is online and features an article titled “COVID and the Choral Educator: Preparedness, Perceptions, Attitudes, and a Way Forward” by Scott Rieker and Irene Apanovitch-Leites. You can read it in its entirety online at acda.org/choraljournal. Following is a portion from the introduction.

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Until recently, integrating technology into choral education has been—at best—supplemental to day-to-day instruction. Due to the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in the spring semester of 2020, however, choral education had to move from its traditional, in-person modality, to a form of information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled distance learning. To fully understand the impact of moving from in-person to online instruction in a choral setting, we must consider teachers’ feelings of preparedness before the pandemic, the adaptations teachers made during the pandemic, and any shifts in perceptions and attitude regarding their experience. Using the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK, later TPACK) framework for professional development as a theoretical lens, this mixed-methods study aimed to answer the following research questions:

(1) Given the sudden shift to online learning in the spring semester of 2020, to what extent do choral music educators feel their past training has prepared them for teaching in a post-COVID-19 environment?

(2) In the online or blended instructional environment of COVID-19-impacted education, what skills, abilities, and resources did choral educators employ, and how were these acquired?

(3) How did the experience of instruction during COVID-19 shift the perceptions and attitudes of choral music educators?

(4) What conclusions can be drawn from the data about the professional development needed for choral music educators in online or blended instructional environments?

The purpose of this study was to provide a snapshot of choral educators’ attitudes and perceptions at this moment in history, reveal the extent to which music educators feel their current training can serve them in a post-COVID teaching environment, and inform future professional development and teacher training programs on what is needed to prepare educators to adapt, should another pandemic occur. Existing research on the intersection of technology and music education is already fairly extensive.

Consequently, for this study, we limited our review of literature to three main topics: the roles technology plays and could play in choral music education, the impact of digital literacy—of both students and teachers—on effective implementation of technology, and on avenues to professional development that are authentic and effective for choral music educators. Obviously, inquiry into any sort of technology is fast-moving, and we hope our study will be a meaningful contribution. A list of the resources we drew upon is provided at the conclusion of the article.

STUDY OVERVIEW

To better understand the impact of moving from in-person to online instruction in a choral setting, our study sought to explore teachers’ feelings of preparedness before the pandemic, the adaptations teachers made during the pandemic, and any shifts in perceptions and attitude regarding their experience through the use of a robust and wide-ranging survey.

View this full article (and more!) in the February 2021 issue of Choral Journal, available online at acda.org

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