A New Canadian Choral Resource

Dr. Beatty presents a description of his new Guidelist of choral music by Ontario composers. He gives a brief history of the guidelist project, as begun by Patricia M. Shand, Director of the John Adaskin Project, with the first guidelist published in 1978. Beatty details the work of his colleagues in B.C. who prepared a guide to recent choral compositions in that province. Dr. Beatty’s process involved an open call to choral music educators and conductors for their repertoire suggestions, and then invitations to respond when the call did not generate adequate response. The new guidelist presents analyses of 20 choral works by Ontario composers, and discusses their appropriateness in various classroom/teaching/performing contexts.