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students would have had direct contact, whether as a (2) The approximate date of performance
singer, conductor, or rehearsal assistant.
2
These data were tabulated in a database. In order (3) Whether the work was conducted by a faculty mem-
to mask the identity of the participating schools, each ber or a student
school was assigned a letter A–P. The following addi-
tional data were stored for each school: (4) Whether the work was performed by the school’s
top ensemble
(1) Whether the school issues choral conducting de-
grees at the master’s level only or whether it also has a (5) Whether the work was performed by a treble, ten-
doctoral program or/bass, or mixed ensemble

(2) The region of ACDA in which the school is located
Results and Analysis
(3) Whether the school is public or private A total of 3,757 performed works were reported
across all sixteen schools, with 50.3% (1,891) from
(4) Whether the school experienced any change in its 2017 to 2019 and 49.7% (1,866) from 2021 to 2023.
choral faculty during the study period, and if so, during The number of submitted titles varied substantially
which year between the schools, from 133 works at one school to
409 works at another. Much of this difference is likely
Each composer appearing in the database was cod- attributable to school-related factors such as program
ed according to the composer’s race/ethnicity, gender, size—a larger choral program may have more singers,
and nationality. more choral ensembles, and more graduate student
Each work appearing in the repertoire database was “recital choir” performances, for example—but may
coded according to seven characteristics: also result from variations in record-keeping practices
and differing levels of completeness in the repertoire
(1) Approximate year of composition data submitted by each school.
This created a need to control for program size so
(2) Approximate duration that programming practices of a school submitting a
large number of titles did not weigh too heavily when
(3) Sacred/secular status examining the complete pool of repertoire. For this
reason, although some of the percentages reported in
(4) Language of text this article reflect the percentage of the entire pool of rep-
ertoire that meet the given criteria, many of the reported
(5) Accompanied/unaccompanied status percentages instead reflect the average percentage of reper-
toire at each school that meet the criteria, thus giving each
(6) Difficulty rating according to three distinct resourc- school’s repertoire equal weight.
es that catalogue works by difficulty
Frequencies of Distinct Composers and Compositions
(7) Whether the work belongs to the spiritual, gospel, Across the 3,757 performances of works recorded in
folk, or world genres (or none of the above) the database, there were performances of 2,527 distinct
works by 1,093 distinct composers. Of these, 1,902
Finally, each performance of a work was coded ac- (75.3%) of the distinct works and 567 (51.9%) of the
cording to five factors: distinct composers received only a single performance,
which itself indicates considerable variety among the
(1) The school performing the work works and composers performed by the participating

CHORAL JOURNAL September 2025 Volume 66 Number 2 9