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on the side next to the alto section and the others on the side next to the soprano section. If there are any boys with unchanged voices who are _mezzo_ in range, they may be seated directly back of the bass section, thus keeping them in the boys' division and yet giving them an opportunity of singing with those who have the same range as themselves. [Footnote 23: The essentials of this same plan of seating are recommended to adult choruses for a like reason; _viz._, in order to enable a smaller number of men's voices to balance a larger number of sopranos and altos by placing the men in the most prominent position, instead of seating them back of the women, as is so frequently done.] As will be noted in the plan, the conductor stands directly in front of the basses, the piano being placed on either side as may be most convenient, the pianist, of course, facing the conductor. In directing a large chorus, it is a great advantage to have two pianos, one on either side. CHAPTER IX THE COMMUNITY CHORUS CONDUCTOR [Sidenote: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF COMMUNITY MUSIC] The recent rise of community music has evoked no little controversy as to whether art can be made "free as air" and its satisfactions thrown open to all, poor as well as rich; or whether it is by its very nature exclusive and aristocratic and therefore necessarily to be confined largely to the few. We are inclined to the former belief, and would therefore express the opinion that in our efforts to bring beauty into the lives of all the people, we are engaged in one of the most significant musico-sociological enterprises ever inaugurated. For this reason we shall discuss at this point ways and means of securing satisfactory results in one of the most interesting phases of community music, _viz._, the community chorus. The development of the community chorus (and indeed to a certain extent, the whole movement to bring music and the other arts into the lives of the proletariat) is due to a combination of artistic and sociological impulses; and it undoubtedly owes its origin and success as much to the interest in the living and social problems of the middle and lower classes, which the recently developed science of sociology has aroused, as it does to purely musical impulses. Because of the fact that community music is a sociological phenomenon as well as an artistic one, the director of a community chorus must possess a co
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