Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!umich!samsung!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!auvm!HNYMPI52!GAVIN From: GAVIN@HNYMPI52.BITNET (Gavin Burnage) Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic Subject: More on choir directors Message-ID: Date: 5 Feb 90 21:55:00 GMT Sender: Discussions on all forms of Music Reply-To: Discussions on all forms of Music Lines: 29 Approved: NETNEWS@AUVM Gateway X-Original-To: ALLMUSIC@AUVM, GAVIN > I miss singing in chorale pieces but I don't miss obnoxious Choir > directors (the least popular people on the planet) > (sorry if any of you are) (Choir directors, I mean) > --tD Know what you mean. I hate snotty choir directors (or anyone else I suppose) telling me just how I've got to pronounce this in this way or sing that just so or open my mouth wide enough for a tennis ball. They always presume their musical values are universal. People have told me once or twice to take music lessons or join a choral society but I never did cos it's all so regimented and impersonal. I'd rather learn by listening, asking, and doing. (that should get Micki K going...) Fortunately the "choir" I "belong" to has at most six people in it, and the guy who assumes control claims to have been a punk who went to gigs in an undertaker's van smelling of formaldehyde. Even if this isn't true it does indicate a certain easygoingness. I wonder if maybe the nature of the music is as fault? `Classical music' directors are always in pursuit of the classical ideal: trained voices, vibrato, enounciation, etc etc whatever it is. The idea is always to sound exactly like the composer meant. Whereas in other stuff like jazz, blues, rock, traditional music or whatever the idea is to produce something varied, individual, and different within a general framework. The latter by definition requires its practitioners to have a wideness of vision which the former all but excludes. Hmm. Gavin.