The singing has a wonder-ful pace, with specific attention paid to phrasing and dynamics. 0 Light Of Light is composed for SATB chorus, divisi, soprano, and tenor soloists sung a cappella. Scored for ...SATB chorus and organ, the text invokes parts of the Book of Common Prayer and Genesis 2, to finally the first verse of Psalm 62. Magnificat and Mine Dimittis (Montreal) was commis-sioned by the Montreal Boys' Choir Course, in cele-bration of its fortieth anniversary season in 2000. The tuning between demanding sections of this piece is amplified by the expert organ playing What follows is a fun-filled jaunt through the Book of Common Prayer expertly set by Dan Locklair.
This study presents the first experimental evidence that singing can facilitate short-term paired-associate phrase learning in an unfamiliar language (Hungarian). Sixty adult participants were ...randomly assigned to one of three “listen-and-repeat” learning conditions: speaking, rhythmic speaking, or singing. Participants in the singing condition showed superior overall performance on a collection of Hungarian language tests after a 15-min learning period, as compared with participants in the speaking and rhythmic speaking conditions. This superior performance was statistically significant (
p
< .05) for the two tests that required participants to recall and produce spoken Hungarian phrases. The differences in performance were not explained by potentially influencing factors such as age, gender, mood, phonological working memory ability, or musical ability and training. These results suggest that a “listen-and-sing” learning method can facilitate verbatim memory for spoken foreign language phrases.
Singer recognition plays a vital role in music information retrieval systems. Most songs in the singer recognition system are mixed audios of music and voice. In contrast, there is a lack of labeled ...a cappella solo singing data suitable for singer recognition. Text-independent singer recognition systems successfully encode audio features such as voice pitch, intensity, and timbre to achieve good performance. Most such systems are trained and evaluated using data from music with accompaniment. However, due to the influence of background music, the performance of the singer recognition model was limited. Contrarily, a powerful singer identification system can be trained and evaluated using a cappella solo singing voice with a clear and broad range of qualities. There needs to be labeled clear singing data suitable for singer recognition research. To address this issue, we present Vocal92, a multivariate a cappella solo singing and speech audio dataset spanning around 146.73 hours sourced from volunteers. Furthermore, we use three models to construct the singer recognition baseline system. In experiments, the singer recognition model developed by a cappella solo singing data performs well in both single-mode and cross-modal verification data, significantly improving related works. The dataset is accessible to everyone at https://pan.baidu.com/s/1Pn62DHfal2OOZ_5JqgGBdQ with jnz5 as the validation code. For non-commercial use, the dataset is available free of charge at the IEEE DataPort ( https://ieee-dataport.org/documents/vocal92-multimodal-audio-dataset-cappella-solo-singing-and-speech ).
Collegiate a cappella groups have grown significantly in popularity and prominence; however, there have been few studies that evaluate the vocal health of this subgroup of young singers. The ...objective of this preliminary study was to conduct a multiparametric evaluation of the vocal health characteristics of a sample of collegiate a cappella singers. We further tested whether differences in vocal health assessments exist between a cappella singers with and without vocal training and trained collegiate singers who do not participate in a cappella groups.
Point prevalence study.
Forty-one collegiate singers participated in this study. Participants were divided into the following three groups: trained singers (TS), trained a cappella singers (ATS), and untrained a cappella singers (AUS). Participants were administered a set of surveys to assess self-perception of singing voice health and perceived access and attitudes toward voice-related health care. Acoustic and laryngoscopic assessments of participant's speaking and singing voice was performed and validated vocal health questionnaires administered as a means to objectively evaluate for the presence of voice problems.
Overall, 87.5% of the ATS and 60% of the AUS groups reported experiencing problems with their singing voice. However, no vocal abnormalities were detected during laryngoscopic and acoustic assessments. Furthermore, minimal differences between any of the measured vocal health parameters were observed between the TS, ATS, and AUS groups.
Collectively, a high percentage of collegiate a cappella singers with and without vocal training report singing voice problems. However, our sample of a cappella singers did not have increased singing voice problems as compared to vocally trained collegiate singers not in a cappella groups. We did find that a cappella singers may be more inclined to seek information about maintaining a healthy singing voice from their fellow musicians as opposed to singing teachers or other voice health professionals. Singing teachers, otolaryngologists, and speech-language pathologists may need to play a more active role in educating a cappella singers regarding maintaining good vocal health.
Several meta-analyses have shown that personality traits are associated with creativity. However, different authors have recently raised an issue concerning the dependency of this relationship on the ...used creativity measure. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between personality and creativity on a Pro-c level, in a sample of a cappella singers, using different measures of creativity, and looking at different levels of the personality hierarchy. In total, 128 subjects (64% female) took part in the study (mean age M = 37.93, SD = 10.08, Mdn = 38.00). Participants were members of 18 conveniently sampled traditional Croatian a cappella, klapa singing groups. Participants reported on their personality, with scores obtained on both factor and facet level of analysis, while assessments of creativity and creative achievements were obtained from the participants and two other members of the group. The results showed that openness as a factor and openness facets were significant and the most important predictors across different creativity measures. Self-reported personality explained more variance in self- than in other-reported creativity measures. Personality facets explained more variance than personality factors for self-reported creativity level and creative achievements, although this increase in the explained variance was significant only for self-reported creativity level. The results of this study indicate that the personality-creativity association differs depending on how creativity is measured.
The article is devoted to the consideration of a polyphonic choral composition as a polycode text, in which literary and musical texts as paralinguistic means contain heterogeneous information and ...add additional shades to the content of the score, i.e., the musical text as a whole. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that for the first time, synthesizing scientific achievements of linguistics and musicology, the polyphonic forms of a cappella choral works are analyzed as polycode texts. Due to the specifics of the choral art form as a musical and performing art, the nature of the perception of a musical text is multimodal. For performers who ‘decipher’ and ‘voice’ a musical notation, a musical text has one visual mode. For listeners, multimodality characterizes the practice of communication in terms of auditory, linguistic, spatial and visual resources, for example, the auditory mode when listening to a work without a visual range, or a polymodus complex when listening with a visual range. This refers to listening to music while simultaneously viewing the musical text of a work, observing the process of public performance, which in modern practice is often accompanied by a specially selected video sequence. The leading paradigm is the synergy of literary and textual sources and polyphonic form in works for a cappella choir by contemporary Russian composers. Based on the differentiation of the structure of a literary and textual source, the attribution of polyphonic forms of motet, madrigal, fugue and fugato is the subject of the work, while the goal is to form a research picture based on a close ‘polyphonic’ connection between word and music. In polyphonic analysis, it is important to determine the content of choral compositions and the composer’s method of dealing with the structure of a text source. A whole poem can be taken as the basis of a musical work (an example is the text-musical forms of motets and madrigals), one strophe, one line, one word (the analysis of fugato and fugue becomes the evidence base). An interesting case is the use as a text base of a polyphonic composition of individual syllables and phonemes (preludes and fugue-vocalizes) and a ‘silent’ performance - with a closed mouth. Thus, it is proved that the musical text is a complex multimodal complex in which the main information is conveyed by semiotically heterogeneous components. It is concluded that, on the one hand, a literary text influences the choice of a polyphonic form, on the other hand, it is often a static text that does not have an external plot development in the context of polyphonic dramaturgy and form and acquires internal dynamics of development to expand its semantic field.
In recent decades, research has shown that one set of individual factors contributing to creative self-beliefs are personality traits, with openness showing the strongest relationship. However, these ...associations have been studied at higher levels of the personality hierarchy and mostly in non-musician samples. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between personality (measured at factor and facet levels) and two types of creative self-beliefs, trait-like creative self-efficacy (tCSE) and creative personal identity (CPI), in a sample of a cappella singers. A total of 128 individuals (64% women) participated in the study. Participants were members of 18 conveniently sampled traditional Croatian a cappella groups. Personality factors and facets were measured with the BFI-2 questionnaire (Soto & John, 2017), while creative self-beliefs were measured with the Short Scale of Creative Self (Karwowski et al., 2018). At the factor level, openness had the highest correlation with both tCSE and CPI. At the facet level, the highest correlations with tCSE were found for creative imagination, an openness facet, and energy level, an extraversion facet, while with CPI for all openness facets, creative imagination, aesthetic sensitivity and intellectual curiosity. In linear regression analyses, the only significant predictors of CPI were openness at the factor level and creative imagination at the facet level. Significant predictors of tCSE were openness and neuroticism at the factor level and creative imagination and sociability at the facet level. Personality facets explained more variance in both types of creative self-beliefs than factors.
Though she has achieved success in orchestral and operatic genres, there appears to be little awareness, even among choral musicians, of her accomplishments as a prolific composer of quality choral ...music. Since her first music for choir was published in the late 1990s, she has written twenty-five choral pieces, three of which are large-form works with orchestra. Most of the texts communicate dramatic, emotional, social, and artistic depth, as in Paul Laurence Dunbar's romantic poetry in Invitation to Love, John Donne's sermon in On the Death of the Righteous, Rumi's writings in Ruminations, Gene Scheer's libretto for Cold Mountain, and Higdon's own original text in Alleluia. ...no matter the era from which her texts are derived, Higdon selects texts that can feel relevant for a twenty-first-century audience. Throughout the introduction, in the version set for chamber instruments, crystal glasses hold the pitches D and A, which establish the key and recall the mystical-sounding open fifths of medieval music.
The development of artificial intelligence technology is a field where all walks of life need to carry out in-depth research in the future, and the introduction of artificial intelligence technology ...in the field of university evaluation has become an inevitable trend. Through the collection and collation of the literature at home and abroad, the influence of chorus education on college culture in China has long remained in qualitative and experiential judgment and the significance and value of chorus education to colleges and universities are relatively single. Therefore, it is of great innovative value and practical significance to establish a scientific, systematic, and comprehensive evaluation mechanism for the impact of chorus education on university culture and to scientifically analyze key issues, establish evaluation criteria, and inject new research perspectives into the promotion of chorus education in colleges and universities in China, combining with the mature coevolution theoretical model of management science. It is of great innovative value and significance to combine the DEMATEL research method with the current practice of promoting chorus education in China’s colleges and universities and to systematically and comprehensively construct the evaluation system and research paradigm in line with chorus education by using the qualitative and quantitative methods.
Kelsey D. Burkett Co-Chair, Show Choirs kelsey_burkett@hboe.org Evolving into Contemporary A Cappella Ensembles Kelsey D. Burkett Contemporary A Cappella Ensembles have firmly been a part of college ...campuses for more than two decades, and we are now seeing their boom within the high school choral community and in some cases, even middle school. First Steps Whether you have an existing ensemble that you want to transition to an a cappella group or you are starting from scratch, it is important that you create clear and specific goals for what this group will be. While it may be tempting to aim to compete or do a big trip in the first year, it is important to pace out your goals over a three- to four-year period in order to ensure buy-in from singers as well as garner support from administration, boosters, sponsors, and parents. Remember, most contemporary a cappella groups are small ensembles, so each singer needs to be prepared to possibly be on a part solo or with only one or two additional singers. Because of this, it may be necessary to start with ba-sic SSAB, SSA, or SAT voicing.
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