The Well-Tempered Ear
It’s requiem time for the UW Choral Union | October 25, 2023
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By Jacob Stockinger
It’s official.
The UW Choral Union (below), a campus-community singing group with a 130-year history, is dead.
It was killed off last spring by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music.
The death was quietly announced in June but became even more official Monday night. That is when Dan Cavanagh (below top), the new director of the School of Music, and Mariana Farrah (below bottom), the new choral activities director, held what was advertised as a public “conversation” in the Hamel Music Center.
Here is link to a posting about the event by one former self-described Friend of the Choral Union. At the end of the story you will find other background links:
https://welltempered.wordpress.com/
From what The Ear understands, about 60-70 people attended the “conversation.”
Before the post-mortem, some former Choral Union participants held out hope that the two administrators might be open to revisiting and perhaps reversing the decision to end the Choral Union.
They were the optimists.
And they were wrong.
Others were pessimistic and thought that the long-overdue public reply to disappointment and criticism wouldn’t change anything. They said the meeting was designed from the beginning to be a kind of hand-holding and whitewashing to soothe those who had ruffled feathers over the decision, and was meant to use the occasion to make themselves look good to both the public and the university administration.
They were the pessimists.
And they were right.
Unfortunately, The Ear couldn’t make it to the event. But he has heard from several trustworthy sources who did attend.
They agree in their accounts of what happened.
Apparently Cavanagh and Farrah were congenial and patient. They gave lots of reasons, some vague, why the long and popular tradition had to end. The reasons ranged from fiscal constraints and staff shortages to pedagogical practices.
But many who attended apparently remained doubtful, judging from their questions and the answers they received.
The pessimists — or at least the skeptics — said the two were just trying to make the decision more palatable to the same public that has widely disapproved of the move and that has threatened to withhold donations to the School of Music.
But Cavanagh made the future of the Choral Union clear when he said, according to several sources: “We are not restarting Choral Union as we know it.”
Whatever that means besides it is over and done with.
The Ear still suspects that something that fishy is going on and that the details of the process are being withheld. Not only has the School of Music killed off the Choral Union, but it has also killed off the Madrigal Singers (below in a joint concert last year with the UW Chorale Lab Choir).
In addition, the sold-out traditional Tudor Holiday Dinners (below) — dating back 90 years at the Wisconsin Union — have been discontinued in favor of some less impressive celebration of winter called “Frosty Bites” with the Wisconsin Singers and various a cappella groups from campus. (See https://union.wisc.edu/events-and-activities/special-events/frosty-bites/)
Did The Ear get anything wrong? Should he correct something?
What do you thinks explains the move to end the Choral Union after it survived for 130 years, through two world wars and the Great Depression?
Were you there at the Choral Union meeting?
What did you think of the conversation and the explanations that you heard?
Do you have any other reaction to or ideas about the demise of the Choral Union?
The Ear wants to hear.
Tags: #BlogPost, #BlogPosting, #FacebookPost, #FacebookPosting, #YouTubevideo, a cappella, alto, Arts, audience, Bach, background, Baroque, bass, Beethoven, blog, budget, Campus, Choir, choral music, Choral Union, chorus, Classical music, community, composer, Concert, constraint, Dan Cavanagh, dead, death, details, donation, Early music, end, event, Facebook, fishy, Friends of the Choral Union, Frosty Bits, funding, future, Great Depression, group, History, Holiday, idea, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, kill, know, link, Ludwig van Beethoven, Madison, madrigal, Madrigal Singers, Mariana Farah, meeting, Mozart, Music, official, optimist, Orchestra, pessimist, Philharmonic Chorus, public, reason, share, sing, singer, Singing, skeptic, soprano, source, staff\, story, survive, suspect, symphony, tag, tenor, tradition, traditional, traditional music, Tudor Dinners, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, UW Choral Union, vocal music, war, whitewash, winter, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Singers, withhold, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, world, World War I, World War II
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The Well-Tempered Ear 
To SoM Alumnus #2 (25.10.2023):
To correct, or maybe “correct” isn’t the right word, your impression that being a community member of the Choral Union was free – I’m sorry, but yes, you are incorrect in that assumption.
Not only did you have to take and pass an audition, you also paid for the privilege of doing so. Admittedly, you only paid for the 1 credit, but as single credit costs went up, so did membership in CU.
As someone who had to privilege to both play with CU for many years under the leadership of Dr. Fountain, and also had the joy of singing in it for one year, my personal opinion is that the SoM has made a grave mistake, both in killing it off, and in not being clear and honest with the public about the reasoning behind their actions.
I was a student of the SoM for more years that I care to admit to, and even though I am no longer connected with it, I thought that they still had enough integrity to be honest with the public attending their concerts and other events.
I have been proven wrong, and I am very sorry that has happened.
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Comment by bratschespeilerin — October 26, 2023 @ 3:35 pm
I have both played with and sung in the Choral Union – I know it wasn’t free, and that it was an auditioned ensemble. I’m not sure where you got the impression that I didn’t know those things. But I also know that community fees do not cover staff time, faculty salaries, or the myriad SoM resources that are required to support a large and complex ensemble that also makes demands on the UW Symphony (and formerly the Chamber Orchestra). I can confidently say that Choral Union was an expensive ensemble for the SoM to run, although I’m not going to venture a guess at precisely HOW expensive. I don’t see how the SoM has been dishonest; they’ve said that they’re focusing their resources elsewhere, and nothing I have seen or heard contradicts that. It’s not a very detailed response, but vagueness is not the same as dishonesty.
If some enterprising citizen/journalist wanted to file an open records request, I’m sure we could learn all the gory details about this – maybe The Ear will decided to do his homework on this one and file that request, but I’m not holding my breath.
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Comment by SoM alumnus — November 9, 2023 @ 11:34 am
I think it’s high time you did your journalistic duty and actually attended one of the meetings you’re reporting on, or interviewed Cavanagh and Farah to accurately represent the SoM’s reasoning. This has become quite silly to follow with all the hearsay and lack of primary reportage. If you’ve asked them for interviews and been denied, at least say that. It sounds like you’re angry about this decision and want to share that outrage, but that doesn’t really help inform the public about what’s going on and why.
I also wonder if there could exist any possible rationale that would satisfy you that the SoM made the right decision here – do you want them to open their balance sheet to the public? Invite you to faculty committee meetings?
I note that the SoM’s current mission and vision statements emphasize their duty to educate students over their commitment to the broader community, which I think is appropriate and aligned with the approach of other music schools. I suspect this decision is an inevitable consequence of the SoM’s need to focus resources on student ensembles and instruction in a time of ever-increasingly scarce resources.
https://music.wisc.edu/about/
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Comment by SoM alumnus — October 25, 2023 @ 9:44 am
Thank you for your anonymous advice.
Duly noted.
But I remind you that this is a personal blog, not a commercial or professional newspaper or news station.
Maybe you shouldn’t read it.
I did ask for any corrections, but so far none has been received.
The adminstrators don’t owe me a convincing explanation. They owe it to the public and could issue a statement with specifics rather than vague, generic and boilerplate excuses. So much for community engagement and the Wisconsin Idea.
Are we to infer from what you say approvingly that during the 130 years the Choral; Union was active, the School of Music didn’t put its duty to educate students over its commitment to the broader public? We both know better.
I continue to think both are possible unless convinced otherwise.
Best wishes
The Ear
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Comment by welltemperedear — October 25, 2023 @ 11:56 am
I’ll admit that I have mostly stopped reading your blog over the last couple of years – it’s no longer the clearinghouse for local classical music that it once was, since you no longer promote concerts or run reviews with any regularity. I did think, however, that you still held this blog to some basic standard of journalistic integrity, since you were a print journalist for 30 years, which is why I still find it surprising when those standards are ignored.
I don’t mean to imply that the SoM has not previously been committed to educating its students – that’s obviously nonsense. But state support is dwindling ever more rapidly, and it’s possible that the SoM has chosen to narrow its focus as a product of that pressure, paring back offerings that aren’t geared toward enrolled students to conserve resources for their core mission. It’s also possible that their definition of that core mission has changed, and that community-oriented programming is no longer as vital to how the SoM sees itself. You or I might not like that change (if such a change is behind this – and I’m speculating as much as anyone here!), but it’s certainly the prerogative of the institution to set its own priorities and budget and program accordingly.
I don’t know what the UW can do instead with the money and time once spend on Choral Union – or even if that money is still there – but if canceling Choral Union were, for example, the price for funding full-time, tenure-track faculty hires to replace the generation of professors they’ve lost over the last ~decade, that’s probably a worthwhile tradeoff in terms of institutional survival. The reality of academic funding is that it IS a zero-sum game, with every program vying for a piece of an ever-shrinking pie. I’m not happy to see the Choral Union go, but I’m also not outraged about it, because I’m betting that the UW wouldn’t have killed it if there were a reasonable alternative.
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Comment by SoM alumnus — October 25, 2023 @ 1:58 pm