ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on intricate techniques that require careful application, ones that are intended to help singer continue to expand their horizons as they ponder individual moments in the score as well as the music's overall structure and organization. In choral singing, good phrasing is achieved by finding and highlighting its peaks, minimizing its weak syllables, sustaining vowels as long as possible, and generally by singing the words as one would speak them. When studying the music before rehearsals begin, singer should sing each part to decide where all collective breaths should occur. Executing crescendos and decrescendos takes more thought in choral music than in instrumental music. Players conveying crescendos will generally play each note louder than the previous one, with the same in reverse for decrescendos, sometimes considering the normal flow of the measure, with its primary and secondary accents and its weak beats.