A River Rather Than a Road ─ The Community Choir As Spiritual Experience

This book is an auto-ethnographic account of the development of a charismatic community choir leader. It brings together management literature and a survey of the community choir scene with the development of community choir leadership. It provides a useful introduction to the sustaining of community choirs, including the use of English folksong
material in this context. Some useful arrangements of folk songs are included. Community singing events are described with helpful advice on setting up and managing these. It presents a useful model of the range of skills necessary for aspiring community choir leaders. This is linked with the formation of a community that contains spiritual elements; this is theorized in relation to the role of the parish church in communal singing. It also discusses the two aesthetics of choral singing and the relationship between oral and literate traditions. The book arises from the engagement of the University of Winchester in partnership with the local community, which is theorized.

Sarah Morgan DProf, who died from cancer aged sixty-five in 2013, was a linchpin of the English traditional folk scene. She was born in Epsom, Surrey, into an RAF family and worked in teaching, horse-riding instruction, youth training and management training. She founded community choirs in Winchester and Andover with English folk music at the heart of their repertoires – including many of her own arrangements. This book is based on her professional doctorate, which was awarded to her posthumously by the University of Winchester. Material from it was presented at Cecil Sharp House in London, the headquarters of the English Folk Dance and Song Society.

June Boyce-Tillman MBE has published widely in the area of music and education, and her doctoral research into children’s musical development has been translated into five languages. She is a hymn writer and has written on music, healing, theology and spirituality; she is the artistic convenor of the Winchester Centre for the Arts as Wellbeing and the Tavener Centre for Music and Spirituality. She is Extraordinary Professor at North–West University, South Africa. She is an ordained Anglican priest and honorary chaplain to Winchester Cathedral.