Camerata: A Guide to Organizing and Directing Small Choruses distinguishes itself from all other works on choral conducting by starting at the very beginning the conception and purpose of an ensemble and continuing through all other aspects of rehearsing and organizing a chorus to performance and reception. Wenk offers basic information on getting started, recruiting singers, planning programs, rehearsing music, publicizing concerts, sharing responsibilities, financing the operation, knowing the law, and finally getting better. He also offers detailed suggestions for creating an executive group to manage the choir as well ideas for repertoire and programming. In addition to a step-by-step guide, Camerata provides a wealth of supplementary material including a prospectus, a statement of goals and means, programs, organizational documents, a singer s guide, documents for organizing a folksong competition, a list of websites for publishers and choral federations, and an annotated bibliography of works on choral conducting. Wenk also includes more than twenty original Christmas carols and carol arrangements for performance by your small chorus. This work will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in starting a new choral organization or improving an existing ensemble. Although the book focuses on chamber choirs, Wenk s practical suggestions, based on more than forty years of experience as a choral conductor, can be easily applied to any choral organization."

Ein Buch mit 26 Liedern, gesetzt und teilweise komponiert von Jobst-Hermann Koch, dem ehemaligen Kantor a.D. der St. Nicolai Kirche in Lemgo, Lippe, der auch als Musiklehrer am Engelbert-Kampfer Gymnasium unterrichtete und jetzt weiterhin Orgelkonzerte gibt. Alle Stucke in diesem Buch sind gesetzt fur einen vierstimmigen Chor mit Klavierbegleitung. A book with 26 songs arranged, and partially composed, by the retired choir director (St. Nicolai church in Lemgo, Germany), music teacher, and organist Jobst-Hermann Koch who continues to give organ concerts. All songs in this book are arranged for SATB voices with keyboard accompaniment.

Camerata: A Guide to Organizing and Directing Small Choruses distinguishes itself from all other works on choral conducting by starting at the very beginning the conception and purpose of an ensemble and continuing through all other aspects of rehearsing and organizing a chorus to performance and reception. Wenk offers basic information on getting started, recruiting singers, planning programs, rehearsing music, publicizing concerts, sharing responsibilities, financing the operation, knowing the law, and finally getting better. He also offers detailed suggestions for creating an executive group to manage the choir as well ideas for repertoire and programming. In addition to a step-by-step guide, Camerata provides a wealth of supplementary material including a prospectus, a statement of goals and means, programs, organizational documents, a singer s guide, documents for organizing a folksong competition, a list of websites for publishers and choral federations, and an annotated bibliography of works on choral conducting. Wenk also includes more than twenty original Christmas carols and carol arrangements for performance by your small chorus. This work will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in starting a new choral organization or improving an existing ensemble. Although the book focuses on chamber choirs, Wenk s practical suggestions, based on more than forty years of experience as a choral conductor, can be easily applied to any choral organization."

In Choral Masterpieces: Major and Minor, historian Nicholas Tarling surveys the landscape of choral works, some standard masterpieces that are commonly performed by choruses around the world, others deserving a second, closer look. As noted in the foreword by Uwe Grodd , music director of the Auckland Choral Society, this work "is a collection of essays about a number of outstanding works, including Beethoven's Miss Solemnis and Britten's War Requiem, but he also invites attention to lesser masterpieces. If the choral movement, which includes both singers and listeners, is to survive, new works must be created and repertory expanded. The book is an easy and captivating read even if you are not a chorister." Choral Masterpieces: Major and Minor features short essays on over 28 works, from major masterpieces such as Handel's Messiah and Bach's St. Matthew's Passion to off-the-beaten path choral works such as Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Hiawatha and Frederick Delius' A Mass of Life. Throughout, Tarling offers assessments that sparkle with unique insights and at the same time ground listener's in the historical contexts of the work's production and performance. Each work is transformed in Tarling's able hands from musical work into a window into the mind and milieu of the composer. Choral Masterpieces: Major and Minor mixes choral mainstays with works that demand revisiting. Choral singers and their audiences, as well as choral societies and their directions and promoters, will find ample food for thoughts in these meditations on the choral tradition.

In Choral Masterpieces: Major and Minor, historian Nicholas Tarling surveys the landscape of choral works, some standard masterpieces that are commonly performed by choruses around the world, others deserving a second, closer look. As noted in the foreword by Uwe Grodd , music director of the Auckland Choral Society, this work "is a collection of essays about a number of outstanding works, including Beethoven's Miss Solemnis and Britten's War Requiem, but he also invites attention to lesser masterpieces. If the choral movement, which includes both singers and listeners, is to survive, new works must be created and repertory expanded. The book is an easy and captivating read even if you are not a chorister." Choral Masterpieces: Major and Minor features short essays on over 28 works, from major masterpieces such as Handel's Messiah and Bach's St. Matthew's Passion to off-the-beaten path choral works such as Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Hiawatha and Frederick Delius' A Mass of Life. Throughout, Tarling offers assessments that sparkle with unique insights and at the same time ground listener's in the historical contexts of the work's production and performance. Each work is transformed in Tarling's able hands from musical work into a window into the mind and milieu of the composer. Choral Masterpieces: Major and Minor mixes choral mainstays with works that demand revisiting. Choral singers and their audiences, as well as choral societies and their directions and promoters, will find ample food for thoughts in these meditations on the choral tradition.

In A Conductor s Guide to Selected Baroque Choral-Orchestral Works, Jonathan D. Green's sixth book-length contribution of guides for conductors, he offers this companion to his critically acclaimed A Conductor s Guide to the Choral-Orchestral Works of J. S. Bach. In this volume, Green addresses works of the Baroque era from Monteverdi through Bach's contemporaries. In addition to brief biographical sketches for each composer, Green includes for each work the approximate duration, text sources, performing forces, currently available editions, locations of manuscript materials, notes, performance issues, evaluation of solo roles, evaluation of difficulty, and a discography and bibliography. Duration information comes from a variety of sources, but Green turns to actual recording times of performances. The purpose of this book is to aid conductors in selecting repertoire appropriate to their needs and the abilities of their ensembles. The discographies and bibliographies, while not exhaustive, serve as helpful starting points for further research. A Conductor s Guide to Selected Baroque Choral-Orchestral Works should appeal to conductors in supporting their concert programming. Librarians and music student will also find this work an ideal reference title for the study of Baroque repertoire."

Along with the "Benedictus, K. 117," this short work is among the earliest of Mozart's forays into liturgical music for the Salzburg cathedral, which would reach its culmination with masterpieces like the "Coronation Mass, K. 317" and the unfinished Mass, K. 427. This newly engraved and researched edition by Richard W. Sargeant has been carefully formatted for maximum useability by condcutors and students of this interesting and somewhat overlooked repertoire.

An eye-opening reexamination of Handel's beloved religious oratorio Every Easter, audiences across the globe thrill to performances of Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus," but they would probably be appalled to learn the full extent of the oratorio's anti-Judaic message. In this pioneering study, respected musicologist Michael Marissen examines Handel's masterwork and uncovers a disturbing message of anti-Judaism buried within its joyous celebration of the divinity of the Christ. Discovering previously unidentified historical source materials enabled the author to investigate the circumstances that led to the creation of the Messiah and expose the hateful sentiments masked by magnificent musical artistry-including the famed "Hallelujah Chorus," which rejoices in the "dashing to pieces" of God's enemies, among them the "people of Israel." Marissen's fascinating, provocative work offers musical scholars and general readers alike an unsettling new appreciation of one of the world's best-loved and most widely performed works of religious music.

Otto Taubmann's classic vocal score of Mozart's Coronation Mass was first issued in the early 20th century and has become the standard edition in continuous use by performers all over the world for more than a century. This digitally-enhanced reissue has added measure numbers and is produced in a very handy format designed for choruses. Unlike so many of the on-demand scores now available, this one comes with all the pages and the images have been thoroughly checked to make sure it is readable. As with all PLP scores a percentage of each sale is donated to the amazing online archive of free music scores and recordings, IMSLP - Petrucci Music Library.

This study represents a thorough investigation of a polyphonic vocal village tradition in Bistritsa, Bulgaria. Outsiders describe the narrow intervals of these songs as being "maximally rough", while the singers themselves experience their performance as smooth, beautiful and pleasant. Almost identical polyphonic traditions can be found in places sometimes thousands of kilometers apart. This inquiry is carried out within a very broad and comparative context, whereby historical sources, the origin of different constituents and etymologies as well as electronic sound analysis are taken into account. The results are stunning and ever more relevant - and not just for ethnomusicologists: The babi or grannies of Bistritsa and their songs have been inscribed on UNESCO's List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Mankind in 2008.

Renaissance Music for the Choral Conductor: A Practical Guide addresses the study and performance of Renaissance music in a way that is understandable to the musician at any level. It describes how to find a good edition, mark scores, rehearse, and conduct this type of music. It explains complex ideas from proportion to linear analysis and supplies step-by-step instructions on presenting madrigal dinners ideal vehicles for the presentation of Renaissance music. This guide contains traditional toasts, stage directions, lists of appropriate music, and even instruction on selected Renaissance dances. Summer also includes a large number of musical scores to aid in his explanations on marking scores, conducting, and analyzing polyphonic music. Renaissance Music for the Choral Conductor is the ideal textbook for choral literature and choral conducting classes at the undergraduate and graduate levels. It can serve as a reference for anyone who wishes to program and explore music from this period in greater depth, including church musicians and conductors of professional ensembles. The book concludes with a bibliography, glossary, and selected discography.

An insteresting case of self-borrowing. Bach took music from this work for his own Mass in B-minor (BWV 191/1 corresponds to the Gloria in excelsis Deo, BWV 191/2 to the Domine Deus, BWV 191/3 to the Cum sancto spiritu). This unusual cantata, the only one with a Latin text, may have been written to celebrate the Peace of Dresden (which ended the 2nd Silesian war) and first performed on Christmas day, 1745. This vocal score is a reissue of the one which was originally published to coincide with Bach Gessellschaft edition. As with all PLP scores a percentage of each sale is donated to the amazing online archive of free music scores and recordings, IMSLP - Petrucci Music Library.

Composed at while returning from a concert trip to Italy, this setting of the Latin hymn text was possibly heard for the first time on 21 March of 1767 at the Kloster Seeon in Bavaria. The score offered here is a newly engraved one, carefully edited by Richard W. Sargeant, Jr.

One of a series of liturgical works composed for the Salzburg Cathedral, the Offertorium de venerabili sacramento was first performed there on Ascension Day, 1776. With antiphonal double chorus and small orchestra, it harkens back to works of the baroque era. The score offered here is a newly engraved edition formatted in an easy-to-read convenient size. Editor Richard Sargeant has consulted all available sources to produce an authoritative edition complete with a continuo realization.

This work was once credited to Mozart but later discounted as being by him and attributed instead to the composer Jan Zach (1699-1773). Rcent Zach scholarship has largely discredited the idea of Zach being the composer. In any case, this work has remained quite popular for good reason regardless of who the actual composer may have been. This new, beautifully engraved study score edited by Richard Sargeant will be welcomed by choruses worldwide interested in this delightful piece of Latin church music from Mozart's era.

Haydn's "Grosse Te Deum" was probably composed in 1800 for a performance given at Eisenstadt in the fall of that year. Scored with a full orchestral accompaniment, it was first published in 1802 by Breitkopf und Hartel. The score here is a newly engraved vocal score edited by Richard W. Sargeant - in a format specially designed for maximum readability for choruses.

Mozart composed this offertory to the Virgin Mary in the summer or fall of 1777, not long before his departure on a concert tour to Paris - and his resignation his position at the Salzburg Cathedral. The study score offered here is a newly engraved, researched edition by Richard W. Sargeant, Jr.

One of a series of liturgical works composed for the Salzburg Cathedral, the Offertorium de venerabili sacramento was first performed there on Ascension Day, 1776. With antiphonal double chorus and small orchestra, it harkens back to works of the baroque era. The vocal score offered here is newly engraved and specially formatted in an easy-to-read size for today's choruses. Editor Richard Sargeant has consulted all available sources to produce an authoritative edition.

In the late fifteenth century the newly built Sistine Chapel was home to a vigorous culture of musical composition and performance. Josquin des Prez stood at its center, singing and composing for the pope's private choir. Josquin's Rome offers a new reading of the composer's work in light of the repertory he and his fellow papal singers performed from the chapel's singers' box. Comprising the single largest surviving corpus of late fifteenth-century sacred music, these pieces served as a backdrop for elaborately choreographed liturgical ceremonies--a sonic analogue to the frescoes by Botticelli, Perugino, and their contemporaries that adorn the chapel's walls. Jesse Rodin uses a comparative approach to uncover this aesthetically and intellectually rich musical tradition. He confronts longstanding problems concerning the authenticity and chronology of Josquin's music while offering nuanced readings of scandalously understudied works by the composer's contemporaries. The book further contextualizes Josquin by locating intersections between his music and the wider soundscape of the Cappella Sistina. Central to Rodin's argument is the idea that these pieces lived in performance. The author puts his interpretations into practice through a series of exquisite recordings by his ensemble, Cut Circle (available both on the companion website and as a CD from Musique en Wallonie). Josquin's Rome is an essential resource for musicologists, scholars of the Italian Renaissance, and enthusiasts of early music.

Choral music is now undoubtedly the foremost genre of participatory music making, with more people singing in choirs than ever before. Written by a team of leading international practitioners and scholars, this Companion addresses the history of choral music, its emergence and growth worldwide and its professional practice. The volume sets out a historical survey of the genre and follows with a kaleidoscopic bird's eye view of choral music from all over the world. Chapters vividly portray the emergence and growth of choral music from its Quranic antecedents in West and Central Asia to the baroque churches of Latin America, representing its global diversity. Uniquely, the book includes a pedagogical section where several leading choral musicians write about the voice and the inner workings of a choir and give their professional insights into choral practice. This Companion will appeal to choral scholars, directors and performers alike.

The fusion of text with music is one of the most powerful methods by which a composer can express emotion to an audience, yet, all too often, the diction of choral groups is lacking to such a degree as to make the text unintelligible. So argues Duane R. Karna, who in The Use of the International Phonetic Alphabet in the Choral Rehearsal brings together 30 essays by experts from around the world to describe how the character symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) can be used by singers in the choral rehearsal. In an effort to conquer one of the greatest challenges facing choral directors and their choirs, contributors explore the use of the IPA system in a vast range of languages. Readers will find essays devoted to the use of IPA on matters of lyric diction for the following tongues: Baltic Languages, Basque, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, Dutch, Ecclesiastical Latin, English, Finnish, French, Georgian, German, Germanic Latin, Greek, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, and Swedish. Holding firmly to the belief that basic instruction in IPA character is part of a choir's training, Karna and his contributors see enormous potential for choirs to expand considerably their foreign-language repertoire and save considerable rehearsal time. The Use of the International Phonetic Alphabet in the Choral Rehearsal is the ideal primer for choral directors and choirmasters as well as choir members.

This work was once credited to Mozart but later discounted as being by him and attributed instead to the composer Jan Zach (1699-1773). Rcent Zach scholarship has largely discredited the idea of Zach being the composer. In any case, this work has remained quite popular for good reason regardless of who the actual composer may have been. This new, beautifully engraved vocal score edited by Richard Sargeant will be welcomed by choruses worldwide interested in performance or study of this delightful piece of Latin church music from Mozart's time.

Composed at while returning from a concert trip to Italy, this setting of the Latin hymn text was possibly heard for the first time on 21 March of 1767 at the Kloster Seeon in Bavaria. The vocal score offered here is a newly engraved one in a very easy-to-read and convenient format designed for choruses, carefully edited by Richard W. Sargeant, Jr