Directing the Choral Music Program, Second Edition, is a comprehensive introduction to developing and managing choral music programs from elementary through high school to adult levels. Broad in scope and practical in orientation, the book is structured around three basic units-the administrative process, rehearsal and performance planning, and choral techniques. In addition to core topics-including recruitment and auditioning, classroom management, vocal development, and curriculum and performance planning-it covers singing pedagogy and its relationship to physical anatomy, the philosophy of choral music education, the history of choral conducting, and the new National Standards for Music Education (2014). The author also presents material on directing show choirs and musicals, teaching sight-reading skills, working with adolescent singers, and organizing choir tours, festivals, and contests.

This textbook prepares Music Education and Choral Conducting majors to be effective middle school and high school choral music teachers. It fully integrates the choral field experience for hands-on learning and reflection and allows the student to observe and teach the book’s principles. It covers the essentials of vocal development, auditions, literature, rehearsals, classroom management, and practical matters.

Hours of college methods can only begin to prepare you for the realities of the music classroom. Only experience will teach you some of the material never mentioned in methods classes, and this handbook will be an enormous practical guide to help you with

This is a compact and comprehensive overview of the many teaching methods, strategies, materials, and assessments available for choral sight-singing instruction. It takes the mystery out of teaching music reading. Topics covered include practical strategies for teaching and assessment.

This essential text provides choral music educators with a well-organized, practical introduction to directing choirs and managing choral programs at the middle-school through high-school level. It offers step-by-step advice on designing and administering a choral program, from curricula to repertoire to performance, and helps instructors develop a personal philosophy of music education. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.

Choral Music: A Research and Information Guide, Third Edition, offers a comprehensive guide to the literature on choral music in the Western tradition. Clearly annotated bibliographic entries guide readers to resources on key topics within choral music, individual choral composers, regional and sacred choral traditions, choral techniques, choral music education, genre studies, and more, providing an essential reference for researchers and practitioners. Covering monographs, bibliographies, selected dissertations, reference works, journals, electronic databases, and websites, this research guide makes it easy to locate relevant sources. Comprehensive indices of authors, titles, and subjects keep the volume user-friendly. The new edition has been brought up to date with entries encompassing the latest scholarship, and updated references and annotations throughout, capturing the continued growth of literature on choral music since the publication of the second edition.

This is an annotated bibliography to books, recordings, videos, and websites on choral music. This book will serve as an excellent tool for librarians, researchers, and scholars in sorting through the massive amount of new material that has appeared since publication of the previous edition.

Rooted in the experience of a professional choral conductor, this book provides a guide to practical issues facing conductors of choral ensembles at all levels, from youth choruses to university ensembles, church and community choirs, and professional vocal groups. Paired with the discussion of practical challenges is a discussion of over fifty key works from the choral literature, with performance suggestions to aid the choral conductor in directing each piece. Dealing with often-overlooked yet vital considerations such as how to work with composers, recording, concert halls, and choral tours, A Practical Guide to Choral Conducting offers a valuable resource for both emerging choral conductors and students of choral conducting at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

"The book is organized into two parts. Part I, "The Young Singer," is an introduction to 90 sequential singing exercises detailed in Part II. Here, Phillips provides historical and philosophical perspectives on procedures of vocal training for children and adolescents. Included are discussions on the physiology of the singing voice, proper vocal techniques, the vocal parameters of pitch, registers, and range, and a special section on common vocal disorders and proper vocal hygiene." "Part II, "Vocal Technique for Young Singers," examines aspects of vocal technique by grouping the exercises into five major areas: respiration, the foundation for good singing technique; phonation, developing children's speaking voices as a natural part of voice training; resonant tone production; diction, emphasizing uniform vowels and rapid consonant articulation; and expression, studying how phrasing, dynamic and tempo variation, and mood lead to meaningful interpretation."

This resource is designed to help those in the parish who direct church choirs but have no formal training directing.

As the landscape of choral education changes - disrupted by Glee, YouTube, and increasingly cheap audio production software - teachers of choral conducting need current research in the field that charts scholarly paths through contemporary debates and sets an agenda for new critical thought and practice. Where, in the digitizing world, is the field of choral pedagogy moving? Editor Frank Abrahams and Paul D. Head, both experienced choral conductors and teachers, offer here a comprehensive handbook of newly-commissioned chapters that provide key scholarly-critical perspectives on teaching and learning in the field of choral music, written by academic scholars and researchers in tandem with active choral conductors. As chapters in this book demonstrate, choral pedagogy encompasses everything from conductors' gestures to the administrative management of the choir. The contributors to The Oxford Handbook of Choral Pedagogy address the full range of issues in contemporary choral pedagogy, from repertoire to voice science to the social and political aspects of choral singing. They also cover the construction of a choral singer's personal identity, the gendering of choral ensembles, social justice in choral education, and the role of the choral art in society more generally. Included scholarship focuses on both the United States and international perspectives in five sections that address traditional paradigms of the field and challenges to them; critical case studies on teaching and conducting specific populations (such as international, school, or barbershop choirs); the pedagogical functions of repertoire; teaching as a way to construct identity; and new scholarly methodologies in pedagogy and the voice.

A total reference for producing a show with inexperienced actors from ages six to fifteen.

It is a truism in teaching choral conducting that the director should look like s/he wishes the choir to sound. The conductor's physical demeanour has a direct effect on how the choir sings, at a level that is largely unconscious and involuntary. It is also a matter of simple observation that different choral traditions exhibit not only different styles of vocal production and delivery, but also different gestural vocabularies which are shared not only between conductors within that tradition, but also with the singers. It is as possible to distinguish a gospel choir from a barbershop chorus or a cathedral choir by visual cues alone as it is simply by listening. But how can these forms of physical communication be explained? Do they belong to a pre-cultural realm of primate social bonding, or do they rely on the context and conventions of a particular choral culture? Is body language an inherent part of musical performance styles, or does it come afterwards, in response to music? At a practical level, to what extent can a practitioner from one tradition mandate an approach as 'good practice', and to what extent can another refuse it on the grounds that 'we don't do it that way'? This book explores these questions at both theoretical and practical levels. It examines textual and ethnographic sources, and draws on theories from critical musicology and nonverbal communication studies to analyse them. By comparing a variety of choral traditions, it investigates the extent to which the connections between conductor demeanour and choral sound operate at a general level, and in what ways they are constructed within a specific idiom. Its findings will be of interest both to those engaged in the study of music as a cultural practice, and to practitioners involved in a choral conducting context that increasingly demands fluency in a variety of styles.

This Handbook summarizes the latest research on music learning consisting of new topics and up-dates from the New Handbook of Music Teaching and Learning (Oxford, 2002). Chapters are written by expert researchers in music teaching and learning, creating research summaries that will be useful for practitioners as well as beginning and advanced researchers.

A Guide to Library Research in Music introduces the process and techniques for researching and writing about music. This informative textbook provides concrete examples of different types of writing, offering a thorough introduction to music literature. It clearly describes various information-searching techniques and library-based organizational systems and introduces the array of music resources available. Each chapter concludes with learning exercises to aid the students' concept application and skill development. Appendixes provide short cuts to specific topics in library organizational systems, including Library of Congress Subject Headings and Classification. The concluding bibliography provides a quick overview of music literature and resources, emphasizing electronic and print publications since 2000, but including standard references that all music researchers should know.

Vocal Technique: A Guide for Conductors, Teachers, and Singers is the first book to connect the disciplines of vocal pedagogy, vocal science, and choral technique. It fills a need for accurate, well-researched, and easy-to-read information on how to teach and learn singing in both solo and choral contexts. This concise yet comprehensive guidebook offers numerous, practical voice-building and problem-solving suggestions and exercises, as well as clear photographs and elegant illustrations. The authors thoroughly address important topics such as breathing, onset, resonance, vowel modification, vibrato, register transitions, range extension, intonation, changing voices (both adolescent and aging), and vocal health. They integrate the perspectives of renowned artists, choral professionals, vocal pedagogues, and the latest in vocal science. This is a must-have for conductors, voice teachers, and music educators, and will benefit solo and choral singers of all ages and abilities.

New to teaching chorus? If so, you may be filled with anticipation and anxiety. Getting Started with Middle School Chorus is here to point you in the right directions. Like other books in the Getting Started series, there's enough specific information here to get you started and on your way! This second edition of Getting Started with Middle School Chorus gives you new information on working with young adolescent changing voices, designing optimal rehearsals for middle schoolers, managing growing choral programs, and helping youngsters gain musical skills they can carry with them for a lifetime of making music. This practical outline will help build your confidence as you take on the new responsibilities associated with teaching middle school chorus.

A History of Western Choral Music explores the various genres, key composers, and influential works essential to the development of the western choral tradition. Author Chester L. Alwes divides this exploration into two volumes which move from Medieval music and the Renaissance era up to the 21st century. Volume II begins at the transition from the Classical era to the Romantic, with an examination of the major genres common to both periods. Exploring the oratorio, part song, and dramatic music, it also offers a thorough discussion of the choral symphony from Beethoven to Mahler, through to the present day. It then delves into the choral music of the twentieth century through discussions of the major compositional approaches and philosophies that proliferated over the course of the century, from impressionism to serialism, neo-classicism to modernism, minimalism, and the avant-garde. It also considers the emerging tendency towards nationalistic composition amongst composers such as Bartók and Stravinsky, and discusses in great detail the contemporary music of the United States, and Great Britain. Framing discussion within the political, religious, cultural, philosophical, aesthetic, and technological contexts of each era, A History of Western Choral Music offers readers specialized insight into major composers and works while providing a cohesive understanding of choral music's place in Western history.

Designed for Introduction to Music Education courses, this textbook presents an overview of the profession and illuminates the many changes that music educators need to know about - technology, teaching methods, curricular evolution, legislation - and a range of societal needs from cultural diversity to evolving tastes in music.