Choral music appears to be in a state of transition. Previous periods of transition placed a premium on originality, and often the commonly held melodic-harmonic vocabulary was temporarily abandoned. The same sort of thing is happening now. Today and increasing number of choral composers are more or less inventing their own musical language and the means of notating i. This "new" notation is usually defined, often in a great detail, in a preface to each composition. e have examined a body of this material and extracted the notational symbols which appears with greatest frequency. To clarify some of the illustration we added phonemes where none existed in the original or replaced the composers' phonemic notation with letters from English alphabet. While the symbols included here are only sample of those in current use, we hope that the collection may help bring choral conductors an increased awareness of what is happening in their profession. Young composers may also find it helpful. Hopefully their use of this collection may serve as part of an initial step in the standardization of an expanded choral national system. |
