Choosing music - the annual ritual!

After a long absence from this blog, I almost feel like a stranger to my own site and the meandering musings that ceased nearly 8 months ago. Now that the concert season is over I'm trying to convince myself that I have lots of time to get back to writing; I can only offer the excuse of sloth in not doing this on a more regular basis. My focus for the past two weeks on choosing music for next year's Madrigal Singers concerts has only been partially successful - we finally have a longer stretch of fairly decent weather in Edmonton, so I have been working (with rather limited success) on the golf swing and wasting time with other self indulgent preoccupations (Facebook, how I loathe thee). But there are deadlines to keep, and after begging my music librarian for a week's grace on her end-of-May deadline, I have two days left to get this hypothetical list together.

I say hypothetical because for a variety of reasons we have had a fairly healthy turnover in the university choir each of the past two years, and next year looks to be following that pattern again. And I am sure I share the same anxiety with many of you - please Lord, could you send me a few good tenors over the summer? Not that the few returning aren't strong, but two don't make a section. So the rep list has several categories, depending on the turnout in Fall term.

Over a month ago all the ensemble directors at Alberta received a rather ominous email from our librarian stating what we all expected: that the budget for purchasing new choral music is severely curtailed for the coming year. She not so subtly suggested that this might be a good year for us to rely more heavily on our existing library resources than on new purchases. It's been very interesting to go back over old programs and lists, and come to realize that there is a ton of repertoire that I would welcome the opportunity to do again - perhaps with the passing of years and accumulated experience, the pieces I've chosen will graciously reveal new ideas and insights interpretively.

Over the past 15-20 years or so my focus has been largely on music of the past two centuries, mainly in the unaccompanied mode for this choir. It has been a true adventure, and I'm not abandoning that emphasis at all - in fact, next year I am hoping to feature more contemporary Canadian music than I have in a few years. But over the past few days I've also taken time to explore the vast resources of online materials at CPDL and other sites, and I am bowled over yet again by the vast offerings available to us in choral music, under the most generous of terms. This is not to suggest a sudden decision to abandon today's somewhat tenuous (bordering on critically challenged) music publishing industry in favour of freebies, but budgets being what they are, I'm looking forward to striking a judicious balance between free resources and those that need to be purchased. And hopefully the other resources we all need - willing and talented young singers - will show up in September!