I meant to blog about this yesterday, but I forgot.
I heard the Canadian Chamber Choir sing at a noon-hour concert on Friday. It was spectacular. It reminded me of how good choral singing can be.
Often, it seems that all singers have the sole intent of being soloists. I wonder why it isn't more like orchestral instrumentalists who have the intention of being in an orchestra. If more young people heard groups like the CCC, or if there were more choirs of that caliber, then maybe singers would aspire to be a voice within such a choir. The power of such a group is incredible.
Anyway, enough fawning.
It has inspired me to write differently for choir, whenever I next do that. It also brings to light the influence that the above mentioned bias against choral singing has had on my music. Not that it's bad, but let's look at the Baking with Momma piece I wrote.
I wrote it with a specific choir in mind, and with that came the premise that a choir would be made up of a bunch of budding soloists. That is how I wrote it - 8 separate voices, very independent. It was effective, but I don't think that the piece could be successfully performed by a non professional-ish level choir. I don't necessarily want all of my music to be elitist (more on that later).
I still think that the piece was quite successful, but I missed out on the power that the choral texture can achieve. I'm not saying that I'm not happy with the piece, in fact I will probably still write music in that style, but I want to also try the other side of things.

I was talking to my roommate earlier and he reminded me of how elitist classical music is. I need to keep this in mind as I attempt to not become overwhelmed by elitism.

Anyway, I'm rambling, perhaps I will stop.