SUN ETD - Theses and Dissertations

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Browsing SUN ETD - Theses and Dissertations by browse.metadata.advisor "Muller, Danell"

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    Putting choral music to work in the e’Bosch Schools Choir Festival: a descriptive case study
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2022-04) Reynolds, Brent; Muller, Danell; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences. Dept. of Music.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The e’Bosch Schools Choir Festival (e’BSCF) is one of the flagship projects of the e’Bosch Heritage Project (e’Bosch). As one of the biggest inter-school gatherings of school children in the greater Stellenbosch municipal area, the e’BSCF seeks to achieve the objectives of e’Bosch through the implementation of a school choir festival. In doing so, choral music is used to serve a purpose beyond its intrinsic aesthetic value and gets ‘put to work’ to the positive transformation of individual and community lives. This study sought to describe how choral music is put to work in the e’BSCF. As the first academic study of the e’BSCF, the study was designed as a qualitative descriptive case study and data was collected by means of semi-structured interviews, a questionnaire, and document analysis. The study took place in three research phases. The first was to understand what it means to put the arts to work in the context of community music, a praxial philosophy of music education, and artistic citizenship. By considering relevant literature in these three fields, a conceptual framework was formed which was used as a set of a priori codes to organise and analyse the data collected. The second phase sought to provide a comprehensive description of the e’BSCF. The third phase explored the relationships between the conceptual framework and the data collected. By inductive reasoning, the initial conceptual framework was adapted and expanded to effectively describe how choral music is put to work in the e’BSCF. Findings suggest that the e’BSCF plays an important role in e’Bosch achieving its objectives. A particular challenge for the e’BSCF is getting as many schools as possible, from all cultural backgrounds, to participate. The e’BSCF is uniquely positioned as it does not have a competitive nature and as such can focus entirely on the process of putting choral music to work instead of a focus on perfecting the musical product. This study opens the door to many possibilities for further research and takes one step in closing the gap between community music research and community music practice.