From the original Preface (1935)

The ardor of your true a cappella singer is equaled or surpassed only by that of the chamber music player. Both these amateurs (we are speaking of a love of the art) belong to the innermost chapter of the noble order of music-makers, though the skill of the singer so blessed may be comparatively very simple. It is true that he can grow unceasingly in skill and understanding through all the years of his singing. A poor art or craft it would be that did not allow for a whole lifetime of growth, and still more. But it is one of life’s best gifts that, with ordinary intelligence and a normal degree of musical responsiveness, even the untrained singer can soon enter through a cappella music into as keen and stirring a delight as is open only to the artist in any other art, or to the skillful instrumentalist in chamber music.

Accustomed to the sort of accompanied choral singing which we have for generations been having in our oratorio societies and the like, most of us had forgotten, if we ever knew, how beautiful and how incomparably expressive the singing of a chorus can be. In a cappella music the ear, more alert and sensitive because undistracted by instrumental support, soon learns to hear and to prize qualities and blendings and subtleties of intonation, diction, and phrasing that in accompanied music are unrealized and unstriven for or else are covered over by instruments.

Furthermore, the comparatively small size of an a cappella chorus and the independence and interplay of voice-parts in its typical music make each singer’s contribution more telling than in the usual sort of accompanied chorus. He has an unusually keen and welcome sense of responsibility and a most engaging consciousness of the music as coming fully from within himself. From outside himself and his fellow-singers there is nothing but silence, no guiding note of instrument and one to divert attention form the music which is in him and them. He must therefore have an unusually clear and firm conception of the music before he can sing it. This is incidentally as effective a process of musical education as can be had, for being musical consists mainly in having much good music clearly and firmly in one’s mind. And the sense of inner power and of craftsmanship that it van give is a boon such as few people ever gain in these days of mechanized work and play.

It is no wonder, then, that a rapidly increased number of leaders in high schools, colleges, churches and communities in all parts of the country have started a cappella choruses or introduced such singing into their already established choruses. And it is not at all hard to understand why one finds so many more really ardent choral singers than there were ten years ago. But the greatest cause of this ardor is the music itself which most fitly belongs to a cappella singers. Madrigals and Ayres with all their grace, wit and lyrical charm; the ineffably lovely and truly religious music of the great Tudor composers, of Palestrina, Vittoria and other medieval masters, and of the modern Russians; the more forthright but still deeply religious music of Bach, Brahms and other composers nearer our own times; and fine arrangements of folksongs: this is an endlessly rich field containing most of the best choral music in the world.

The series of books of which this is the first is designed to bring much of this music in most engaging variety and excellence into schools, colleges, clubs, communities and, best of all, into homes. This volume is unique in providing richly for girls’ or women’s voices alone. The choruses of women in the Music Clubs, Women’s Clubs and Parent Teacher Associations alone probably outnumber all the mixed choruses, excluding church choirs, that there are in the whole country. Yet they have heretofore had no collection of a cappella music of their own that offers so delightful and inspiring a field to explore again and again through all the years. To wish such a volume Godspeed comes very close to being the same as to wish the whole country Godspeed toward the musical destiny of which it seems to give promise. For that destiny lies mainly in the hands of the women, especially of the mothers and other teachers of children. Wherever the music in this book is sung with the love that it is its nature to evoke, there will be the best kind of musical growth and enjoyment as surely as a living tree will blossom where there is warm sunshine and rain.

Augustus D. Zanzig
August 29, 1935