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 eras and 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 contemporary American music), and that often include works from the African-American tradition, or they focus on more substantial accompanied works (Britten's "Rejoice in the Lamb", Mozart's "Solemn Confessor Vespers", 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 Bach, Haydn, Brahms, Dvorak, Verdi, Gershwin, and Bernstein). The 2010-2011 season will be an unusually demanding and exciting one, as as we prepare for our tour to Spain; we will also be rehearsing two major works by Anton Bruckner and Johnnes Brahms for performance with the Colby Symphony Orchestra at the end of the spring semester. Our year will thus prove 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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