Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien

Prof. Dr. Franz Riemer and  coauthors

Organizing choir classes means giving singing in schools a new, conceptually
more professional character, while following and fulfilling the curricular
requirements. In order to strengthen the professionality of choir classes at
public schools, a project is needed that is dedicated to making questions of
networking, continuing education, and research part of the class. The concept
for the choir classes at primary schools in Lower Saxony allows the pupils to
actively make music, rather than simply communicating inert knowledge. Vocal
training, reading music, and musical expression and appreciation as elements
of a music curriculum learned in choir classes offer an effective basis for
subsequent advanced musical training at higher educational levels – in most
cases, this basis has not been available in the past. We would like to see choir
classes etablished in every school primary and secondary school in Lower
Saxony.

Since the project began in 2004, we have initiated and carried out regional
regular meetings, inter-regional seminars for choir classes, and continuing
education workshops (vds, afs). The ifmpf has published two books
summarizing the (preliminary) results – they are meant to be both a report
about the results and a teacher's guide. The first volume was published in
2005, when the project had only been running for one year at a few schools in
Lower Saxony, as a presentation of the project with recommendations for
teachers. The second volume was published in 2010.

Franz Riemer (Hrsg.): Chorklassen in Niedersachsen. Konzeption, Erfahrungsbericht, Handreichung (Praxisberichte des Instituts für musikpädagogische Forschung, Bd. 8, hrsg. v. Franz Riemer), Hannover 2005 - see Publications

Franz Riemer & Silke Zieske (Hrsg.): Chorklassen. Musikunterricht mit gesangspädagogischem Schwerpunkt (Praxisberichte des Instituts für musikpädagogische Forschung, Bd. 10, hrsg. v. Franz Riemer), Hannover 2010 - see Publications