Becoming the Choral Poet

An essential guide to developing a healthy choral tone that is both beautiful and musically responsive to the text, this book offers tips and discussion about how choral conductors can guide their ensembles to deeper artistic expression through an understanding of and commitment to the poetic expression and emotional content of the words they sing. The book shows how the poetic elements of a text - punctuation, assonance, onomatopoeia, mood, inflection - inform a host of musical decisions, including dynamics, phrasing, tempo, and color. The author follows with guidance for developing an interpretative analysis of a work, using beautiful literature as examples.