Original scientific paper

Choral Singing as a Bodily Regime

Liz Garnett ; Birmingham Conservatoire, Postgraduate Studies, Birmingham, U.K

Abstract

Singing in a choir is a regime of the body. That is, it is a practice that structures the ways in which people inhabit, use and experience their bodies in clearly defined ways and according to ideological imperatives. At the same time, these imperatives seek to disguise themselves by grounding their dictates in discourses of the natural and of the universal. In this paper, I shall read a range of texts from the choral conducting literature as instruction manuals for the production and regulation of choral singers, and examine the technologies of disciplinary power that An exploration of the practice of choral singing draws on the Foucauldian critical tradition to analyse how singing in a choir structures the ways in which people inhabit, use and experience their bodies. Texts from the choral conducting literature are read as instruction manuals for the production and regulation of choral singers, and the technologies of disciplinary power that constitute and maintain the boundaries of this identity are examined. This reading shows how musical practices can be simultaneously independent from and constructed within the power structures of day-to-day social relations: while the mechanisms that regulate choral behavior index overtly political axes of identity such as class, education level and regionality, they do so with an agenda that is more focused on the transformation than on the exclusion of the individual. The study contributes to the ongoing theoretical discussions of music and social identity within musicology, but it also raises practical questions concerning the social and personal values associated with choral musicmaking.

Keywords

Choral; Singing; Conducting; Discipline; Identity; Surveillance

Hrčak ID:

43615

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/43615

Publication date:

1.9.2005.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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