David:  I'm not teaching that, so I'm not up on current textbooks, but do you really think you need one?

 

When you say "one semester of instrumental conducting," is it actually "instrumental" conducting in any meaningful way, or is it basic conducting (starting, stopping, and patterns) taught by an instrumental conductor?  If so, and if you really have to include choral literature (which strikes me as an overly broad combination), you might want instead to select 5 specific works for in-depth score study and conducting practice, one each from the renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic, and 20th century periods.  (You certainly can't do a full survey and still cover conducting techniques!)

 

In grad school I personally combined these two and found that the combination of intensive score study and practical application in front of a conducting class choir was very beneficial.  They won't REALLY learn to conduct until they have their own ensembles, of course.

 

All the best,

 

John

 

 

David,

I have used Abraham Kaplan's Choral Conducting published by Norton, which includes many exercises for starting, stopping, patterns, etc. It may be out of print by now but I found it very helpful for beginners.

 

You may also want to consider James Jordan's Evoking Sound published by GIA. It certainly has more material than you could cover in a semester, but would be an excellent resource for your students and it contains a number of choral literature excerpts.

 

Best wishes,

 

Brandon Mullet

Might I suggest "Choral Conducting:Focus on Communication" by Harold A. Decker and Colleen Kirk. If your students are like mine, they have come from their first semester's basic conducting class. This book begins with a quick review of the basics and continues from there. There are also chapters on score study, rehearsal technique, choral vocal development, and selecting rep and building a concert program. There are many other practical helps as well. It is a good text for their personal library after graduation as well. You will want to supplement with choral lit as it relates to your class enrollment and makeup. (I go with one from each style period as John suggested.)

 

John Scott Herrington

Here's a related ChoralNet resource category.