Critical Perspectives in Canadian Music Education

Six: Looking Back at Choral Music Education in Canada: A Narrative Perspective

S I X Looking Back on Choral Music Education in Canada: A Narrative Perspective Carol Beynon To provide a definitive accounting of choral music education in Canada , particularly within the scope of just one chapter, is an impossible task. Such an account would assume that there is a set of data that could be gathered, analyzed, assessed, and reported accurately as an extant body of knowledge. And while there are some researchers who might make an honest attempt to accomplish that task, there is absolutely no means by which one could amass all the relevant and definitive information on this topic. The result of such an attempt would, at best, still be simply one view, and still a subjective interpretation of this topic. That being said, it is important to examine some aspects of choral music education with the understanding that this is one writer’s attempt to make sense of a complex phenomenon. What follows in this chapter is a narrative accounting of what I know to be a somewhat accurate and experiential history of choral music education at a local, provincial, and national level in Canada from its earliest inceptions in public education to the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. Narrative, as a recognized and accepted form of research methodology, has been part of the qualitative research paradigm for the past twenty years (Clandinin & Connolly, 2000); this chapter 8 9 9 0 C a r o l B e y n o n attempts to provide a different perspective on choral music education in Canada than the norm. My experience as a singer and choral music educator spans seven decades from the 1950s through to the present, mainly in Ontario. My experiences have been rich and varied: as a singer in church and school choirs in my early and adolescent years with devoted and well-meaning, but not always well-trained, music teachers;1 as an undergraduate music education and voice major at the University of Western Ontario; as a singer in the elite Faculty Singers at Western; as a student of choral conducting under Professor Deral Johnson; as an elementary and secondary choral music teacher in the public school system; as a competitor in local and international music festivals as singer, chorister, and as conductor with my own choirs under the intense scrutiny of the all-knowing adjudicator; as a teacher of music education in the University of Western Ontario’s (UWO) Faculty of Education for twenty-five years; as a choral conductor of the Amabile Boys’ and Men’s Choirs of London, Canada; as an adjudicator   –   though certainly not an all-knowing one   –   of school and community, children’s, youth, and adult choirs around the world; and as a lifelong student of learning about music through working with many renowned national and international choral conductors. These experiences have brought me into both formal and informal ways of knowing that have had a profound effect on my life and every life experience I have had. I provide this overview because it is critical that the reader have some sense of the lens through which I view choral music education   –   as an intense, personal experience, one of the ways in which I make sense of the world, and likely the most significant defining element of who I am as a person. Early Choral Music Education in Canada: Singing and the Empire As an elementary student in a two-room schoolhouse in the late 1950s, I became aware, at least in later years, of the limitations and expectations of public education for the masses. My father, a local farmer, was one of the trustees who hired the teachers for our school; these well-meaning farmers with a Grade 8 education decided who would teach their children and how much they could afford to pay them each year. Our itinerant music teacher travelled many kilometres daily from school to school across the townships. Miss Hall was bigger than life, with dyed black hair and a huge, pleasant singing voice. There were always at least three different grades in one classroom and she taught all of us once a week for about thirty minutes ; we sang a variety of songs   –   some that would be considered quite politically incorrect these days   –   from the Highroad of Song and practised our sight-singing to tonic sol-fa from the Highroad Sight Singing Series. My L o o...