Sofia Zapico

Professor Stack

Literacy Activity Report

23 January 2024

Literacy in Choir

Introduction

Many interpret literacy as mainly the reading and writing you learn in school, but when

investigated, literacy is how one uses those tools to engage with others and express thoughts.

“…[The] notion that reading and writing can be defined and understood differently depending on

the context is central to learning how to adapt your writing to new situations” (Fishman 9). This

furthers the idea that different communities will interpret and express literacy in several ways. It

is not only our community that affects our interpretation, but also how we apply it. “Lehoux

Z012) claims that the best understanding of dance movement is through notation systems, which

describe the movement of the body through symbols on a staff, and act as a form of

documentation for choreography” (Halvey 28). Although this quote is talking about dance,

people who sight read music have similar techniques, such as small notations on the music, as

reminders of certain things they must do while singing a piece. This is how singers connect some

of their writing to their body, as a lot of notations are about placement of the voice in the throat.

With this information, I will look closer into the literacy activities in choir.

Methodology

For this report, I observed my rehearsals and mass on Sunday. This gave me the ability to

observe what activities took place, but also how we utilized those activities to make our singing

better. The rehearsals I observed were on January 22 and 24. The masses I observed were on
January 28. Each rehearsal and the masses were about an hour and a half each, this gave me, in

total, about 6 to 7 and a half hours of observation. I investigated how two different sections took

note of things our director said and how quickly they reacted to the changes. I also tried to think

about the changes in the eyes of my director to see what they were trying to achieve. I paid

closest attention to how the literacy activities affected our performance. To collect data, I looked

at small notes that directors would have us write in our music.

Results

The main rhetorical situation of my observation is between communicator and author, the

directors being the author and the singers being the communicator. You can see the rhetorical

situation of text within our music, audience and participants between the audience and the choir,

and our purpose of communication is to inspire and sing with emotion. An instance in which we

are reading is when we see the symbols and annotations in our music that the writer input to

show us what they wanted.

For example, in Figure 1 you will see the words “Molto Tranquillo” and “siempre mp”.

In this piece, the writer was kind enough to include the definition of the Italian words, but most

do not. These words are telling the sopranos to sing their descant very softly and lightly above

the other parts. Below the first staff, you will see “mf” written across the 3 bottom staffs, this is

telling the altos, tenors, and basses to sing stronger and louder. We also utilize writing with our

small annotations throughout our music. In Figure 2a you will see a poorly drawn pair of glasses.

A lot of musicians use this notation to remind themselves to look at the director. It tells us that

this part of the piece is constantly changed in the moment by the director, so in order to avoid

having an embarrassing solo, we draw those glasses, so we look up and follow what the director

wants us to do. In figure 2b, you see a section of the music circled and then another section that
has bold lines in between every note. The circle often reminds us to read that section more

carefully because it is often messed up. The lines show that the director wants those notes to be

choppier than those around it, therefore having more emphasis on those words. In figure 2c, there

is a drawn line followed by the letter “k”. This is the singer reminding themself to wait until the

very last beat to sound the consonant and spend more time singing the vowel.

These literate activities make it easier for singers and directors to pay attention to the

technicalities of a piece so that there is more mind space available to portray the emotions we

wish. I decided this because before my choirs went through and added these small notations, our

pieces sounded monotone and emotionless. After we added our notations, our pieces were full of

emotion, and we were told that the pieces were inspiring to listen to.

Figure 1:

Figure 2a:
Figure 2b:

Figure 2c:
Discussion

I believe that the most notable take away from my observations is that literacy is not always

straightforward words. It is also expression and interpretational. If literary activities were purely

reading and writing, there would be little variety in forms of communication. If it were not

interpretational there would be no expression of emotion. Not only in music, but also in dance,

video games, and sports, there are so many different types of literary activities that do not

involve reading and writing. These would include talking, body language, and many other forms

of communication.

All this goes to show that once again, literacy is not just what you learn in school. It can also be

what you learn to do outside of school with different groups of people in different contexts.

Through my observations I learned that in the choir community literacy is used to make it easier

for us to express our emotions within a piece while also concentrating on tons of things at the

same time. As Halvey says near the end of her paper “...notation systems are essential to the

description of movement” (Halvey 34). As I also found through my observations, musicians use

our notations to describe what we are supposed to do so we don't have to think about it and can
focus on our expression instead. Fishman also says, “Through understanding their worlds, their

definitions of literacy, and their dilemmas, not only will we better help them make important

literacy-related decisions, but we will better help oursleves do the same” (Fishman 17). While in

this quote Fishman is referring to a children’s prespective, I believe we could apply it to looking

at something in any context’s perspective. We will never truly understand another groups literacy

unless we put ourselves in their shoes.

Works Cited

Halvey, Madeline. “Simple Forms of Dance and Movement Literacy.” The Journal of the First-

Year Writing Program at the University of Central Florida, vol. 6, no. 1, 2015, pp. 28–36.

Fishman, Andrea. "Becoming Literate: A Lesson from the Amish." The Right to Literacy, edited

by Andrea A. Lunsford, Helene Moglen, and James Slevin, Modern Language

Association, 1990, 29-38.