Repertoire
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The Chorale's repertoire ranges over a broad spectrum of European and American choral music, accompanied as well as a cappella, from the 17th to the 21st centuries. The general principles which guide the choice of repertoire for the Chorale are that works performed should provide a technical challenge appropriate to the ensemble, that they should exhibit musical depth (or be frankly light-hearted), and that any student during her or his four undergraduate years as a member of Chorale will be exposed to a variety of styles from different national traditions, and will encounter texts in several different languages. The particular selection of works for any specific program often depends on the nature of the performance. On International tours, for example, music from the country visited is included (Italian sacred music when touring Italy, English Romantic part songs in England, 20th century French sacred works in France, Greek folk songs for Greece, Latin American dance music in Argentina, and so on). The Chorale's on-campus performances either present shorter (often unaccompanied) works that relate to a programmatic theme (e.g., "Musique du coeur"- French love songs, or 20th-century English music), and which often include works from the African-American tradition, or they focus on more substantial accompanied works ( Handel's "The King Shall Rejoice", Bach cantatas, etc.). Finally, each year the Chorale joins forces with the Colby-Kennebec Choral Society and the Colby Symphony Orchestra to perform one of the major masterworks of the European/American tradition (by composers such as Haydn, Brahms, Dvorak, Verdi, Gershwin, and Bernstein). The 2008-2009 season will be an unusually demanding and exciting one, as as we prepare for our tour to Argentina and rehearse Leonard Bernstein's 20th-century choral masterwork "Chichester Psalms" (in part, in honor of the 90th anniversary of the year of his birth). This year will thus prove to be richly rewarding both musically and experientially. A very brief, representative list of some of the works recently presented by the Chorale follows:
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