The Choral Rehearsal and the Singing Experience as a Conserving Activity

This paper addresses a topic that. in terms of my own reading and experience.rarely gets addressed in the professional musical journals.Having been a member of various professional associations and a reader of their many professional journals.rarely do I find an article that addresses the issue of the wider culture.Articles seem to fall into three broad categories.The first can be said to deal with the practicalities of music teaching; the second seems to be concerned with the historical minutiae of performance practice while the third addresses (usually in a cheerleading fashion) the new technologies.This paper attempts to step outside these categories and deals.in broad strokes.with aspects of the larger culture and its effects on our work and profession.The title of this paper is freely adapted from the 1979 book by Neil Postman entitled Teaching as a Conseroing Actioity.Postman is a widely known cultural critic who teaches at aty University in New York and who has, for the last thirty years or so.written a succession of books-all of which address the wide issues of childhood.schooling and learning in a high technology culture.In his 1979 book.I would argue that Postman is remarkably prescient and far-seeing when he puts the case that: too much change.too fast.for too long has the effect of making social institutions useless and individuals perpetually unfit to live amid the conditions of their own culture ....It is enough to say that we have reached the point where the problem of conservation.not growth.must now be solved.We know very well how to change but we have lost the arts of preservation.Without at least a reminiscence of continuity and tradition.without a place to stand from which to observe change.without a counter argument to the overwhelming thesis of change.we can easily be swept awaY---4n fact.are being swept away.To provide ourselves with such a perspective.we must rely on our education system.It is, after all.almost the only agency in our society which has no vested interest in change itself.... Schools are. in fact, always given a measure of responsibility to serve as a society's memory bank, even in quiet times .... However. in a culture of high volatility and casual regard for its past such a responsibility becomes the school's most essential service.The school stands as the only mass medium capable of pulling forward the case for what is not happening in our culture.(p. 2 I) If in 1979.Postman was describing the then present culture as being highly volatile and highly mediated.how then would he describe today?He might say that the characteristic feature of living in the current culture is that of being bombarded with product---4n advertising campaigns.films.television shows.logos and trademarks. in restaurants.stores.elevators.sporting events.in books.magazines.e-mail messages.phone calls.pop songs and rock operas:This volume of information and imagery produces a sense of deep restlessness or anxiety .. . .Many people have a pervasive feeling of being left behind.These 'advances' take on an

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