Chorister Formation Preferences in a Women\u27s Choir

While conductors and audience members are not committed to a single formation, choristers have a clear preference: sectional or mixed. Why is this? Participants in this study included forty-six members of an auditioned women\u27s choir from a large southern university who completed a survey after singing in sectional and mixed formation. These SSAA results maintain previous research findings by James Daugherty, Debra Atkinson, and Christopher Aspaas, et al. from female choristers in SATB settings: most women prefer mixed formation. All 46 of the participants (100%) perceived that formation generally affects the choral sound, so they think formation is important. Women\u27s voices also present unique concerns regarding voice distribution, pitch level, and perception. Perhaps if choir members think they are producing a better sound in a certain formation, they set themselves up to actually produce a better sound in performance