Chapter 15 - Three Books

Summary

Though I have written many articles for a variety of magazines, for many years I resisted writing a book. But my attitude changed over the years. In 1970, I was asked to be the keynote speaker for the national convention of the Ameri¬can Choral Directors Association in Texas. For many in that state, I was still considered a “Texan” because of my long presence in Dallas, and I was happy to be considered that way. Therefore I became a natural as a guest for several conventions and other musical activities in Texas. At the ACDA convention I maligned the fact that too many choral conductors, at the time, were unable to handle most complicated music—not only scores written in our time but even music from all creative periods. I blamed our colleges who are training these conductors for their lack of skills, and I focused on the instruction books that did not emphasize music but rather focused on conducting techniques. If I were to write a book for choral conductors’ training, I ventured to say, it would be an anthology of music throughout the ages organized so that at the end of the instruction there would be no conducting problem that the student could not solve. I gave all kinds of examples to illustrate the point, and everyone I encountered after my speech praised it and said that it was about time someone spoke up about this lingering problem. One of the people who came up to me after the session was the editor of music books for Holt, Rinehart and Winston. He asked me for an appointment that afternoon, and we arranged to meet in the coffee shop. After a lengthy discussion and many excuses on my part for not writing such a book, I finally agreed to try it.

It took about a year to gather all the examples and the first edition of the Anthology for the Teaching of Choral Conducting was published by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston in 1971. At first, it sold very well, but multiple copies of it were mostly bought by music schools and kept in the choral departments to be used over and over again each year. We had thought that new students would buy it yearly expecting excellent sales.