Chorus and Community. Edited by Karen Ahlquist. 2006. Urbana and
Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 336 pages. ISBN: 0-252-03037-0
(hard cover), 0-252-07274-7 (soft cover). Compact disc attached.


Reviewed by Carmen Helena Téllez, Indiana University


[Word count: 797 words]


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.