UC Chosen as Home for Choral Scores and Archive

The Dale Warland Singers (DWS), an internationally renowned professional chorus, has selected University Libraries and the College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) as the home for its rich collection of choral music scores, recordings, and archival material following the May 2004 retirement of the Singers’ founder and music director, Dale Warland.

The DWS collection includes its score library (multiple copies of more than 1100 choral works and arrangements, many written for or commissioned by the DWS); first edition copies of all 270 works commissioned by the Dale Warland Singers; valuable papers including all organizational and artistic records; and a media library that includes more than 300 audio and video recordings of the ensemble’s performances. A copy of each score is available in the Gorno Memorial Music Library. The collection has been cataloged and can be searched via the online Library Catalog. Performance sets may be borrowed by qualified groups from the CCM Choral Library. It is hoped that the audio collection will be made available for public listening in the near future. The archival material is housed in the Archives and Rare Books Library, and an inventory is available online at www.libraries.uc.edu/libraries/arb/archives/collections/DaleWarlandSingers.html.

“It is our honor to have been selected as the final repository for this collection, which constitutes one of the great cornerstones of American culture,” stated Douglas Lowry, dean of the College-Conservatory of Music. “We intend to make this a living archive, using the sophisticated technological resources of a major research library in order to make available the message of the Dale Warland Singers archives to a worldwide audience. Our goal is to make sure that future generations of choral conductors and musicians will learn from these testaments of musical insight and knowledge.”

Victoria A. Montavon, dean and university librarian, agrees. “It is gratifying to be involved in a collaborative effort such as this. Choral musicians around the world will benefit from having access to this important collection.” Earl Rivers, CCM’s director of Choral Studies noted, “The DWS Library at CCM will greatly enhance CCM’s professional conducting and voice training programs.”

Eminent conductor and composer Dale Warland earned degrees at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Southern California. After serving as director of choral music in colleges in California and New York, he took a position as professor of music and director of choral activities at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 1972, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis asked him to assemble a group of singers to present a concert of new music. He gathered together a group of 40 community singers, and thus, the Dale Warland Singers was born. The DWS commissioned 270 choral works, presented more than 400 concerts and produced 27 highly acclaimed recordings in the 32 years of its existence.

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