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EXAMINING SHIFTS IN REPERTOIRE PROGRAMMING PRACTICES: PRE- AND POST-PANDEMIC

Racial and Ethnic Representation Black composers by only programming their spiritual
As a result of the evolving conversation in the choral and gospel arrangements, but instead to program mu-
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field and in the broader culture surrounding issues of sic by these composers in a wide range of styles. This
diversity, equity, inclusion, and representation, it was study tracked whether each work performed belonged
hypothesized that composer diversity and representa- to certain specific genres, including gospel, spiritual,
tion would increase between the two sample periods. and world music categories that would be considered
Figure 1 displays the percentage of works performed idiomatic under Garrett’s framework. These genre cat-
by composers of various races and ethnicities across all egories were cross-tabulated with racial/ethnic group-
schools. ings to determine what shifts may have occurred in the
It is immediately clear that performed works skewed performance of this music.
heavily toward White composers. However, the share The author coded works into these categories based
of White-composed works decreased by nearly ten on the following definitions: Spiritual (any work that
percentage points (from 89.6% to 79.8%) between the uses as source material the traditional texts and tunes
two study periods. At the same time, the percentage of of the enslaved African peoples of North America and
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Black-composed works doubled (from 6.6% to 13.1%), the Caribbean), Gospel (any work based upon the Black
the percentage of Latin-composed works increased by gospel tradition, either through the use of pre-existing
roughly 50% (from 2.0% to 3.1%), and the percentage gospel songs or new works based on the styles of this
of Asian-composed works nearly tripled (from 1.3% to tradition), Folk (any work that uses as source materi-
3.7%). al the traditional folk melodies and texts of Europe,
Within the discussion of increasing racial and eth- as well as those people of the United States, Canada,
nic diversity in choral repertoire, recent literature Australia, and New Zealand of European descent), and
has promoted the increased performance of non-idi- World (any work that uses as source material the tradi-
omatic music by non-White composers. For example, tional texts and tunes of cultures not included in the
when working to increase the performance of music above categories). Note that for the spiritual, folk, and
by Black composers, writers such as Marques L. A. world categories, the work must feature a traditional
Garrett have encouraged conductors not to pigeonhole text and melody that fit these definitions. Completely

Figure 1. Total Performed Works by Composer Race and Ethnicity

2017-2019

2021-2023

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

White Black Latin Asian Other/Unknown

14 CHORAL JOURNAL September 2025 Volume 66 Number 2