The choral concert can be a rich musical experience for all concerned— the students, the director, and the audience. Every concert needs to be thoughtfully planned more than several months in advance to be the right kind of experience for everybody. The comments regarding concerts are mostly directed to school situations where there is usually more than one ensemble to be included in concerts. There is also an assumption regarding planning that incorporates a longer term study of choral music through performance that should occur in school situations. The same should apply to community choirs as well although the circumstances are not exactly the same. It is hoped that the membership of a community choir remains stable, in which case there should be some planning to allow this ensemble to experience through rehearsal, study and performance more than one type or style of choral music. Sometimes, community choirs will perform only one major choral work on a conert program. Other times the community choir will perform several selections from different periods of choral style. Both are opportunities to bring a greater understanding of the breadth of choral music to the singers. Church choirs have a different role since they are, or should be, an integrated part of the church service. This integration varies from one religious sect to another but the concept is to be a part of the religious service through music. The director can still bring various choral styles to the service and provide this experience as well as variety to the singers.

It is easy for any director, new or experienced, to become so involved with the immediate stumbling blocks of his department that he loses sight of the long range goals for his department. Stumbling blocks refer to such things as a service club performance, a PTA request for a short program ("don't go to any trouble"), a dance sponsored by the choir to raise money, the director's extra work on faculty committees, his work as adviser to a class, and other similar activities.

All of these responsibilities in addition to a full teaching load, make it difficult to devote enough time to programming considerations as they relate to the long-range goals of the department. It is very easy to succumb to these pressures and choose music for a coming concert too quickly and make these choices on criteria of little merit. One must project the concerts of a department according to the goals that have been made for the department as well as meet the immediate demands that are placed on it by the community.

Sometimes administrators criticize secondary instrumental and choral programs for lack of sound curriculum, and sometimes rightly so. Counselors and principals may tell students that they should not repeat choir since it is the same thing twice. In effect, they are saying, "You have taken the course once and received a good grade. What would be the point in taking it again?" It is precisely this attitude that a choral director must be prepared to counter. Good choral ensembles are developed over time and with stability through repeated membership. He can do so by establishing a sound choral curriculum showing a study of choral literature through rehearsal and performance. Once the curriculum is developed, it should be placed in the school handbook and school curriculum guides. The choral curriculum should show that students will, over a three-year period, study, rehearse, and perform both sacred and secular music from the:

1. Renaissance period

2. Baroque period

3. Classic period

4. Romantic period

5. Twentieth and twenty-first century

This goal can be accomplished by the following procedure.

1. Make broad determinations of the general periods you wish to cover and the manner in which you intend to cover them.

2. Select a number of compositions that you believe are representative of those periods. In this stage of the selection, choose more pieces than you intend to rehearse or perform. After broad determinations have been made, examine as much choral music as you can that fits these areas. Make a file for each period to be studied. As you find music in which you are interested, place it in the appropriate file.

3. After a preliminary examination of the music, make some determinations as to which works will be "rehearsal only" works; those that will be studied and rehearsed but will probably not be performed. This might include works that are too long for performance or works that you would consider to be too difficult as a complete work for your choir to present in a public performance. However, the students may gain appreciably from the rehearsal and study of these works even if they cannot eventually perform them.

4. Determine the manner in which you will introduce and study this repertoire. Ask yourself, "How can the musical characteristics of the style be presented so the choir will quickly learn the performance traits necessary to the realization of the music?"

5. If the students are to study a style with which they are unfamiliar, choose works that will be good introductions to that style. A work that is representative of the style but not so difficult that it is inaccessible to the students would be a good introduction. Several of Benjamin Britten's earlier works would be good choices for an excellent choir wanting to sing twentieth-century music. However, choral works that are extremely dissonant would not be good introductory pieces. Contemporary works need to part of the study and performance and the director must decide on the manner of presentation as sight-reading these works is often not easily done. There are several methods of presenting these types of pieces to choirs and these are covered in other modules.

There are several formats that are widely used to present choral ensembles in concert. There are also certain times of the school year when choral concerts seem most appropriate. Almost every choral department presents a Christmas concert and a spring concert. Some schedule a concert earlier in the fall. These concerts can be general in nature related to repertoire to be chosen or can be special concerts for particular occasions. It is convenient that Christmas occurs late in a school semester or at the end of a fall sequence of rehearsals for a community or church choir, allowing time to adequately rehearse a concert repertoire.

The following concert programs illustrate possibilities for the choral conductor.

The concert of Christmas music represents repertoire from the Baroque and the twentieth century, and traditional carol settings.

General concerts (those that are not tied to a specific season or event), allow one to consider a wider range of repertoire. Each of the following concert programs provides certain opportunities of study for the singers and each has its own appeal from a performance and listening standpoint. These programs are selected from concerts actually performed. The first concert program assumes the participation of ensembles of different sizes and perhaps capabilities. The first group of pieces is illustrative of the last Renaissance. The two shorter pieces by Gallus are excellent pieces for a smaller ensemble. The group of twentieth-century pieces are within the capabilities of good choirs; the Dello Joio is the most difficult technically and vocally. The group of American folk pieces are not difficult and can be performed by most choirs.