Conductor and Scholar
Textbooks
Conducting Choirs: The Promising Conductor (Roger Dean Publishing) is a practical guide for beginning and student conductors. Topics covered include gesture, expressive conducting, analysis, repertory selection, programming, and more. Its companion volume, Conducting Choirs: Music for Classroom Use, contains a selection of music for use in conducting classes. A study guide and a CD with recordings of all the music assist the student in his or her preparation and practice. The third volume, Conducting Choirs: The Practicing Conductor, explores subjects like working with an orchestra, conducting musicals and opera, the psychology of conducting, stylistic practices, commissioning music, and using movement in the choral rehearsal. (For more information, go to www.conductingchoirs.com)
"An altogether pragmatic and useful addition in the arena of choral methods...The author has been singularly successful. His presentation is clear, concise, and eminently readable." -- Choral Journal. (To read the full review, please click here.)
Varied Carols: A Survey of American Choral Literature
(Greenwood Press, 1999. ISBN :0-313-31051-3).
The only comprehensive survey of choral music in the United States from colonial times through the twentieth-century.
Forging America: New Lands and High Culture
(Praeger Publishing, 2003. ISBN: 0-275-98055-3)
Offering a fresh perspective on the making of the American nation, this volume shows how the various "new" portions of the country--the Northeastern wilderness, the West, and later the South and Midwest--were assimilated into the national and intellectual consciousness of the young nation. DeVenney examines the ways in which the arts helped achieve this assimilation, primarily through music and painting, but also through literature and architecture.
Source Readings in American Choral Music
(College Music Society, 1995. ISBN: 0-9650647-0-0 [hardcover]; 0-9650647-1-9 [paper]).
A compilation (with commentary) of composers' writings, reviews, essays, and other source material that illuminates various aspects of America's long tradition of choral music.
Reference Books
The New Broadway Song Companion
(Scarecrow Press, August, 2009. ISBN: 0-8108-6943-8)
In an expanded and updated version, this annotated guide to Broadway song literature surveys the vast repertory of the American musical. Nine indexes allow users to access this music by voice type and song style. The revised book catalogs over 100 new shows, listing thousands of songs from over 300 musicals.
The Broadway Song Companion
(Scarecrow Press, 1998. ISBN: 0-8108-3373-5)
The Chorus in Opera (with Craig R. Johnson)
(Scarecrow Press, 1993. ISBN: 0-8108-2620-8)
A guide to excerptable, performable opera choruses. Contains nearly six hundred choruses, with annotations listing duration, performing forces required, difficulty level, and a brief synopsis.
Bibliographies in American Choral Music
19th-century American Choral Music: An Annotated Guide
(Scarecrow Press, 1987. ISBN: 0-914913-08-5)
Early American Choral Music: An Annotated Guide
(Scarecrow Press, 1988. ISBN: 0-914913-09-3)
American Masses and Requiems: A Descriptive Guide
(Scarecrow Press, 1990. ISBN: 0-914923-14-X)
American Choral Music Since 1920: An Annotated Guide
(Scarecrow Press, 1993. ISBN: 0-914913-28-X)
An important bibliographic guide to the vast trove of American choral music. Together these monographs list specific information on thousands of compositions, both large and small, including many important works that had lain forgotten and neglected, only to be recently re-discovered and performed.
Links
www.scarecrowpress.com
www.greenwood.com (also Praeger Publishing)
www.lorenz.com (Roger Dean Publishing)