Content :
1) What a success! Massive response builds up the theme of “climate change” in Musica
2) Leading article: Programming works by women composers
3) The latest Musica pieces of the month
4) Coming up: two Musica sessions in 2022
5) Help us develop a concert theme - This issue: “space, universe, cosmos”
6) News from our members
7) Reminders
Musica is continuing to grow and develop: as well as the data input by the international coordinating team and a number of (mostly Swiss) publishers and composers following last November’s session in Lausanne, we have refreshed the links to the composer, author and publisher information on our “favorite pieces” pages (since 1998). Most of this information is just as useful as ever – even where many years have gone by since it was first put on the site (https://www.musicanet.org/en/archives-of-favorite-pieces/).
We have also added numerous multimedia links to existing records.
And we have fully reviewed and updated the Auditorium, which contains thousands of links to videos and audio recordings of quality performances (https://www.musicanet.org/bdd/en/auditorium/).
This issue of MusicaMail features the first in a series of articles by experts specialising in a particular area of repertoire. Today we focus on the repertoire of pieces by women composers.
Jean Sturm,
Executive Director of Musica International
1) What a success! Massive response builds up the theme of “climate change” in Musica
We pointed out in our last MusicaMail that we had just one score on the theme of climate
change. Both your response to our call for contributions to augment our records on this theme, and the
work of the Musica coordinators, have gone beyond our wildest dreams! Believe it or not, we now have records for
more than 130 pieces matching this keyword!
Don't forget to visit
our favorite piece every month – the piece no choral conductor should be without on a desert island: https://www.musicanet.org.January 2022 : "Peace" by Martin ÅSANDER (Sweden)
December 2021 : "His Light in Us" by Kim André ARNESEN (Norway)
November 2021 : "Come away, death" by Jaakko MÄNTYJÄRVI (Finland)
… and visit our month-by-month archive of favorites going back to February 1998: https://www.musicanet.org/en/archives-of-favorite-pieces/.
Or you can reach them from our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/MusicaInternational.
After so many months of frustration, we
are delighted that we can now organise Musica sessions again.
A Musica session is nothing less than a workshop involving composers, publishers, documentalists, music librarians and choir directors who want to improve their knowledge of Musica and take an active role in promoting the choral heritage. Anyone with a skill that can help Musica to progress (translation, reading of texts in your mother tongue, etc.) is also welcome.
Working in a friendly and enriching atmosphere, participants
improve Musica in quantity and quality with works of their choice. Those who take part always find these
intense times of sharing and focusing on the choral repertoire to be extremely useful and rewarding.
At present we have scheduled two sessions:
- An international session in France: 24-29 October 2022 at the University of Strasbourg.
➡️ Full details
- In Germany, a session at the Deutsches Centrum für Chormusik, in Wetzlar, date to be confirmed. Let us know if you are interested and when you would be available. We will then contact you for more details!
| Interested? Contact us! |
We are sure you will come up with the titles of many pieces we can link to this theme. Please email your contributions to librarian@musicanet.org, and our music librarian Pierre-Luc Pfrimmer will ensure they are followed up properly.
Alternatively, you can add comments to the February post regarding
this theme on our Facebook page, where you can also follow developments in real time.
+ New member: l’Association Vaudoise des Directeurs de Chœurs (Switzerland)
A warm welcome to the Association Vaudoise des Directeurs de
Chœurs (AVDC) – the association of choral directors from canton Vaud! For the AVDC, membership means, among
other things, promoting the Vaudois choral repertoire. It is also offering all its members full privileged
access to musicanet.org via its own website https://www.choeur.ch/avdc.html.
The first fruits of this new collaboration came in November 2021, with the organisation in Lausanne of a
Musica session that was attended by more than ten composers, publishers and choral directors.
Zoom event on climate change, 10.00 GMT
on 18 February 2022
Sign up for free at https://www.makingmusic.org.uk/event/climate-change-spring-network
World Choral Expo 2022: Save the dates!
Lisbon, Portugal, 3-7 September 2022: http://worldchoralexpo.com
For the second time, The
Singing Network is partnering with IFCM to present EXchange! as part of the World
Choral Expo 2022.
Namur en Chœurs "A city sings", 14-15 May 2022, Namur
A great opportunity to discover Namur’s new Grand Manège concert hall! Around 40 choirs in the regional
federation will also be giving mini-concerts all over the city. All details coming soon at https://www.namurenchoeurs.be
Podium 2022, Toronto, 19-23 May 2022
Choral Conference & Festival: Reimagine, Rebuild, Reconnect.
If you can make it in person, you just have to be in Toronto!
All details: https://www.podium2022.ca/index.html
Leading Voices, Utrecht (Netherlands), 27-31 July
2022
European Days for Vocal and Choral Leaders
A five-day program of workshops, masterclasses and presentations, and many other social, educational and
musical events: https://leadingvoices.nl/
Choralies of Vaison-la-Romaine, France – 3-11 August
2022
All details at https://choralies.fr/en/
Fosco Corti International Competition for Choral Conductors –
Turin – 21-23 October 2022
All details at https://www.facebook.com/feniarco/posts/4739547659496990
- HELP TO REFERENCE YOUR CHORAL HERITAGE ONLINE!
Musica International is a collaborative project that is run by and for people involved in choral singing. We need volunteers who want to share their passion with the choral community by taking an active part in the project. You can do this in many ways (such as inputting and checking records, translating, communication tasks).
Do not hesitate to contact us at office@musicanet.org.
- You can now MANAGE YOUR OWN CHORAL HOLDINGS without needing to input all the data yourself. Just
sign up for a “private field” in the Musica database and take advantage of all the information we already
have, and all the power of our IT tools, to build up your own catalogue by simply adding your locations in
your private field. The field will normally be accessible and visible to you alone, but you can also choose
to share it more widely.
- Are you responsible for a choral federation? We offer global privileged access to www.musicanet.org for all your members, from
your website! An advantage which your choir directors will thank you for: https://www.musicanet.org/downpriv/Global_Privileged_Access_EN.pdf.
- We are also looking to establish a network of NATIONAL CORRESPONDENTS in all countries. Why not you? Even if you’re unavailable to do this yourself, perhaps you know someone who could – in your national choral federation for example. As Musica International is an academic project, this could be a wonderful opportunity for a university professor, a music librarian or similar.
