This book represents a timely and excellent contribution to choral music scholarship, and is the first-ever collection of essays on the relationship of chorus and community. Now, when choral music and choral directors get second-class-citizen treatment within musical and educational circles across our nation, this book reminds us of the role that choral singing has played in the advancement of civilization, democracy, human rights, and musical institutions in communities worldwide and throughout history.
Editor Karen Ahlquist has compiled essays addressing wide-ranging topics, which she has grouped in five sections covering diverse manifestations of choral singing, titled "Communal Art," "Grassroots Aesthetics," "Minority Identities," "The Activist Chorus," and "In the Western Tradition." Her concept of what constitutes a chorus is fully-encompassing, requiring a few basic conditions, namely, that the members of the chorus be constant participants, aware of their role as choral singers, and working with a leader. This excludes spontaneous communal singing in social gatherings, but includes choral groups in many traditions, including the ritualized chanting of the Tanzanian kwaya, along with the semi-professional choruses affiliated with symphony orchestras in the United States. The chorus we see examined here, however, is the amateur ensemble, not the professional groups of the Renaissance or the Baroque, or even of the present day. These are editorial decisions that perhaps will be questioned by other reviewers, but they convey a perspective on the foundational nature and cultural significance of choral music in any society. The examination of such wide-ranging amateur choral groups may not surprise ethnomusicologists and anthropologists, but will enlighten those professionals involved with choruses in the Western art music tradition. Conventional musicological study of the Western classical chorus throughout history usually concentrates on how the chorus is financed, what kind of professionals or non-professionals populate it, and how these two aspects affect the composer’s style and the performance practice of the resulting composition. In Ahlquist’s collection, the examination of the Western chorus addresses more thoroughly its role as a forum for the negotiation of cultural, religious, and political values of every persuasion. The chorus, no matter the culture where it flourishes, is examined for its intrinsic merits as a powerful agent of social cohesion or social change.
The collection makes one important point overall, which would seem obvious but is in fact often neglected by those who evaluate the importance of choral music in whatever context this may be: choruses permit the sharing of the highest manifestations of a musical tradition--any musical tradition--by amateurs as much as by professionals. Moreover, given the wide age-range possible in the membership, choruses are vehicles of the transmission of musical values from one generation to another. Choruses are also the breeding ground for complex and expensive musical institutions, as they educate and cultivate the patrons and the donors who will support those institutions for decades and even centuries. This occurs because choruses of all types are embedded in a wider community by virtue of the choral singers, who can potentially come from various social strata. More often than not, the singers in a chorus are joined by a common desire for social action, either through choral singing itself (for the preservation of a valuable musical tradition) or because the chorus permits individuals with specific political or religious beliefs to advance their social agendas.
The essays forge a link between musical scholarship and social understanding. A series of extremely interesting insights arises, such as efforts by choral leaders in Russia and Britain to force political and/or moral concepts on their singers, only to be defeated by a more enduring taste for canonic compositions by Handel and Mendelssohn. Equally fascinating are the statistics of choral societies in German-speaking communities in the nineteenth century, when an early opportunity to practice equality and shared governance between men and women in the choirs became gradually supplanted by conservative values after the revolutions of 1848. An examination of how African-American choirs have promoted Black culture through the cultivation of the spiritual in international concert tours may provide tools for analysis of parallel phenomena, such as recent successes by Latin American choirs such as the Schola Cantorum de Caracas. These cases are useful in addressing the larger problem of identity and critical appreciation of the music of post-colonial societies. It is equally interesting to read the candid description of the ambivalent position of symphonic choirs in the United States, which must demonstrate professional standards of performance, but which receive no payment and sometimes no full recognition, even though the events in which they participate are the most fully attended by audiences and critics.
In short, Chorus and Community is a fascinating and enlightening volume. One laments the lack of examination of professional choirs, but a second volume addressing them can perhaps be expected, and would be most welcome.
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[Review length: 797 words • Review posted on November 14, 2007]