Music at Wichita State – all the way back to the early glee clubs of Fairmount College – has fueled the university’s school of music within the WSU College of Fine Arts through a nationally lauded history right up to today’s offerings of world-class faculty and year-round student performance opportunities in band, jazz, orchestra, opera, music theater – and choir.
"Music is about something bigger than yourself, and there's only so much your one voice can do," says Emily Monrad, a double major in musical theater performance and music education. "But 200 voices together, that's extraordinary."
For almost 120 years, choral students have been energized by members of the university’s choral faculty — from Frank Power, who in 1909 was director of the Fairmount Conservatory of Music, professor of voice and “trainer of Fairmount’s matchless Glee Clubs,” to Michael Hanawalt and Tom Wine, WSU’s director of choral activities and chair of music education, who is pictured here in a practice session with choral students.
“Wichita State has long had a national reputation for being an outstanding school for music performance. When I arrived at WSU, I saw why the choral area was held in such high esteem. I heard the choirs perform on our campus and was thrilled with the standards we hold for our students. I saw the energy and excitement!” – Russ Widener, professor, music school director
Wine and Hanawalt each direct two of Wichita State’s four 2012-2013 choirs: Concert Chorale, A Cappella Choir, Madrigals and Women’s Glee Club. “You really have a true experience, working with a group of people who come together and share their love of music and talents,” says Hanawalt, assistant professor of choral music. “The amount of excitement, camaraderie and goodwill is incredible. That’s what makes choral music special.”
Shocker Singers
All vocal music majors are required to participate in choir while studying for their degree. General auditions are held at the beginning of each school year. A Capella Choir, a group of 60 to 70 singers, includes freshmen and beginners. Any WSU student is welcome to sing with this choir. Concert Chorale (formerly University Singers) is a smaller choir of about 30 students.
With a membership of up to 20 students, Madrigal Singers is for more advanced vocalists, upper classmen and graduate students. And Women’s Glee Club, the longest-running choir at WSU, is for ladies only.
“There is a tremendous sense of community in choral groups,” says Wine. “The choir has a feeling of family, which hopefully helps students make connections at a large university. While a choir needs talented singers to be successful, some people need the choir. It is their creative outlet. It provides a sense of belonging, and it is their place to feel safe to make a contribution.”
Alyson Golladay, the student president of A Capella Choir, says that nurturing relationships and building a feeling of family within choral groups is right on key. “This year we are working to make the choir even more of a family, by planning events like hayrack rides and creating T-shirts,” she relates. “When you know each other on a more personal level, it results in a more unified sound. You work as a united group, and it is a lot more enjoyable.”
Students on the hill have been united in song since 1895, the year Fairmount Institute became Fairmount College, Wichita State’s earliest predecessor. Among the brand-new four-year college’s first nine faculty members was A.W. Sickner, who served as director of the music school, where vocal music training tied in popularity with piano instruction.
In 1896, 23 students were enrolled in Fairmount’s school of music. By 1903 that number had increased to 81, and the first official choral group, Women’s Glee Club, comprised of 18 voices, debuted under the direction of department chair Charles Alfred Ellenberger.
Shortly therafter, a men’s choral group was established. The national music magazine The Etude reported in its February 1904 World of Music news department: “The first private concert of the Apollo Club (male voices), Wichita, Kans., Mr. Charles S. [sic] Ellenberger, conductor, was held December 2d. …Mr. Ellenberger is in charge of music at Fairmount College.”
On the Road
Both of Fairmount’s early women’s and men’s glee clubs toured – the women throughout Kansas and in Oklahoma and Texas, and the men as far away as California, no mean feat at a time when commercial air travel did not yet exist. These were the first choral groups that traveled as representatives of the college, but by no means the last.
When Harrison “Bud” Boughton, WSU professor emeritus of music, joined the University of Wichita faculty in 1961 and then became chair of WSU’s vocal music department in 1971, he saw an ever-growing demand for choral music and continually sought to expand opportunities for students.
“In the 1970s and 1980s choral festivals abroad were seeking choirs to perform American music: folk music, spirituals and so on,” recalls Boughton, who retired from teaching in 2000. “I took choirs to Europe 14 times. We performed at a 200-year-old choral event in Ireland – the granddaddy of all vocal music festivals. We also had the marvelous luck to be invited to sing in Ecuador. We had to get to Miami on our own, but from that point on all of our expenses were paid by a wealthy South American patron who was passionate about choral music. It was a great life experience for all involved.”
Brushes with Greatness
One of the many students who benefited from traveling as a choir member is Karla Burns ’81/81. After earning two bachelor’s degrees, one in speech/theater and the other in vocal music education, Burns went on to enjoy an international singing career and much adulation, including a Tony Award nomination, a Drama Desk Award and an Olivier Award, the first presented to an African American actress.
“I was able to take my first trip to Europe while singing in the choir,” Burns says. “I got pinched all over Europe, from Italy to Switzerland, and enjoyed the attention of people who had never met someone like me. I gained from the education and the awareness. It was an astounding opportunity that opened my eyes and changed my life forever.”
Boughton, too, fondly remembers travel adventures with WSU choirs as some of the best times of his life. “Everywhere we went we sang – in restaurants, on buses and airplanes, on the street,” he says. “And the most amazing of all was singing at St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice. The acoustics were magnificent and the environment chillingly beautiful.”
Many talented directors have led the university’s choral groups, including Harold Decker, who joined WU’s music faculty in 1944. Decker’s choirs that first year “consisted of 72 choristers,” according to a book about his work as a choral music educator.
Decker began growing choral activities in earnest during the later 1940s under the leadership of Walter Duerksen ’31, a WU instrumental music graduate who later served his alma mater as dean of fine arts. The campus building addition in 1955 of the Fine Arts Center (later named in honor of Duerksen) provided the choral groups – and all music majors – a state-of-the-art facility for practice and performances.
Over the course of the past 60 years, choral students have studied with – along with Decker, Boughton and Wine – Robert Hines, who specialized in large choral works; Ronald Staheli, who excelled at teaching a capella vocal performance; and Rene Clausen, widely noted as a consummate perfectionist.
Guest artists, too, have made their mark on the department. Legendary performers and conductors from far and wide, representing a broad range of styles, have performed and shared their knowledge with vocal music majors in choral groups through the years.
Choral arranger and composer Ward Swingle, avant garde composer and theorist John Cage, pop music favorite Barry Manilow and Polish conductor and composer Krzysztof Penderecki are just a few of the noted talents that have shared the stage with Wichita State choral groups at Boughton’s invitation.
“I am most honored to have worked with Robert Shaw, who was the best choral man in the world at one time,” Boughton says. The respect was mutual: “I’ve never been anywhere where musical qualities have received so thorough and loving a preparation,” Shaw wrote to Boughton after the first of three collaborations at Wichita State.
Fueled Up
This holiday season marks the 50th time members of WSU’s choral groups come together to perform at a Candlelight Concert. Boughton, who founded the concert series, will join Wine and Hanawalt in directing. Three concerts are scheduled, including one that will feature choir alumni singers. The first concert is slated for 4 p.m., Sunday, Dec. 2, in Wiedemann Recital Hall, followed by a 7:30 p.m. performance to include alumni. The final performance will begin at 7:30 p.m., Monday, Dec. 2.
Music major Golladay is looking forward to the Candlelight Concert performances, and on a wider note, she says, “I’ve always had a great love for choir. I’ve noticed at Wichita State my love for choral performance just grows.”
Hanawalt, who joined the WSU music faculty in August after serving as Visiting Instructor in Music at St. Olaf College, is excited about helping continue “a really wonderful tradition. The legacy of this institution is well thought of, and I’m thrilled to be part of it, working with students on all levels: from conducting the Concert Chorale, the premiere audition choir on campus, to turning Women’s Glee into a non-audition group – for the simple love of singing.”
It was Hunter S. Thompson who wrote, “Music has always been a matter of Energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel. I have always needed Fuel.”
WSU’s school of music is fueled up and ready for the future.
