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To: "'VOCALIST'" <vocalist>
Subject: RE: starting round sing group
Date sent: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 15:46:38 -0500
Send reply to: VOCALIST <vocalist>

I'm very interested in knowing how you developed your audience. What kind
of publicity was done and were any specific groups targeted?

Ruth Anderman-Lanza
732-302-2160


-----Original Message-----
From: Karen Mercedes [mailto:dalila-at-radix.net]
Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2000 3:37 PM
To: VOCALIST
Subject: Re: starting round sing group

On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, Katherine Craig wrote:

> I love to sing rounds and am interested in starting a community round
> singing group that would include whole families of all ages. (I have Sol
> Weber's book of 340 rounds for material).Has anyone done this and would
you
> mind sharing what worked, what didn't work, etc. Would monthly be about
> right? Thanks.


I'm not sure a round/canon/catch singing group would be able to sustain
itself for long. How about expanding your potential scope to include
folk-songs and/or madrigals. I belonged several years ago to something
called the Dupont Vocal Circle - it was a group of people, singers and
instrumentalists, who loved to sing folk-songs, INCLUDING
rounds/canons/catches. The main repertoire started as Anglo-Celtic folk
music, but we soon added American and non-Anglophone folk-music, and also
some early music (songs and madrigals). It was a wonderful chance to sing
repertoire we all loved, but which we didn't have much opportunity to sing
otherwise (ditto playing, for the instrumentalists). A few of the more
ambitious of us spun off a performing group that had a two-year career
before "professional jealousies" (and the hammered dulcimer player's acute
stage fright) led us to disband. Unfortunately, similar unpleasant
dynamics eventually caused a rift in the Music Circle, which broke off
into two separate groups, neither of which was big enough to sustain
itself (particularly as many of us remembered the "good old days" when it
was all one group).

In any case, I do know that even with the entire potential Anglo-Celtic
folk repertoire (everything from Clancy Brothers type pub-songs to
traditional melodies "collected" by Cecil Sharp and Jean Redpath), after
about a year we started feeling constrained by our repertoire, which is
when we happily started dipping into other nations' folk-music, and also
early music.

This all to say that while the idea of bringing together people to sing
for the joy of it is very good, I fear that limiting your repertoire so
much will sow a seed of destruction before you begin. 340 rounds sounds
like a lot, but the round is, frankly, a pretty simplistic musical form,
and after 5 or 10 or them, I suspect your singers will be craving
something different.

Karen Mercedes
=====
There is delight in singing,
tho' none hear Beside the singer.
- Walter Savage Landor
-----
MY WEB PAGE: http://www.radix.net/~dalila/index.html
MY NEIL SHICOFF PAGE: http://www.radix.net/~dalila/shicoff/shicoff.html