When Paula Gottlieb arrived at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a philosophy professor in 1988, she set her sights on the university’s Choral Union. Having been part of choral life during her undergraduate years in England, she loves to sing but was nervous about making the cut for the Choral Union.
“I had the impression that there was no point trying to get into the choir, I wouldn't be good enough and didn't think I had any voice left,” Gottlieb told The Daily Cardinal.
After enough convincing from her friend and colleague Jeanne Swack, a UW-Madison musicology professor, Gottlieb decided to audition anyway.
She passed and spent the next three decades in the Choral Union before deciding to hang it up at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. When Taylor retired, Gottlieb was so inspired she wrote Choral Union Director Beverly Taylor a letter thanking her for the memories and her “imaginative” spirit.
“Bev[erly] created a kind of community among all these people, and I am still friends with a number of people that I met in the Choral Union,” Gottlieb said.
Stories like these are littered throughout the Choral Union’s 130-year history.
Founded in 1893, the Choral Union brought together students, faculty, alumni and community members who, at the end of each semester, performed master works with the UW Symphony Orchestra.
Performances took place in Mills Concert Hall on campus, and for much of its history, the Choral Union drew North of 100 members. For those it touched, it was the “Wisconsin Idea” personified.
But in 2023, that all changed. Over the summer, the Mead Witter School of Music announced on its website it would no longer offer the Choral Union in an effort to “allow the School of Music to devote resources to our core mission of serving UW–Madison students as well as to focus our public programming around new goals.”
The news came as a shock to members like Janet Murphy.
“For many of us, it was our entry into the university and certainly the School of Music. It was our connection,” Murphy said. “I think a lot of people now feel like as a community, we’re losing all of our connections to the university, and this was a big one.”
A Michigan native, Murphy moved to Madison as an adult. Before long, she found a home at the Choral Union. Murphy sang in the Choral Union as an alto for roughly 15 years from 2008 to its disbandment in 2023. Like other members, she first heard the news online.
“People were pretty upset, obviously, that the choir wasn't involved in that decision, nor were we even told about it,” Murphy said. “Somebody discovered it on the website.”
Murphy said she felt “blindsided” by the move.
“Disbanding a 130-year-old institution that somehow made it through World War I and II, and the Depression and the riots in the 60s and The [Great] Recession and the pandemic — why?” Murphy said. “This is a pretty important institution that had long roots and really meant a lot to the community in the way the Wisconsin Idea means a lot to the whole state of Wisconsin, and I really thought it was unwise to just end it like that.”
Still, the Choral Union shuttered.
In search of answers — and without any way to contact her choirmates — Murphy took a pad of paper to a sight singing event at the First Unitarian Society that July. By fall, she gathered 150 names for a mailing list: Friends of the Choral Union.
In August, Murphy met with School of Music Director Dan Cavanagh, who was hired just months after the administration canceled the Choral Union. In October, Cavanagh hosted a town hall for members to share their concerns and expressed his sympathy in an email, saying Choral Union was a “stalwart example of the Wisconsin Idea in action.”
Murphy said she applauds Cavanagh’s “professional attitude” and doesn’t blame him for what happened.
“Not everybody felt that way,” Murphy said. “But I thought he told us the truth as best he could and as best he knew. He only started in July.”
The Friends of Choral Union tried to keep their choir alive in the months that followed, even floating the idea of creating an independent “Madison Choral Union.” But despite their best efforts, Murphy said they couldn’t find someone to administer the group, and Choral Union members went their separate ways.
Life after the Choral Union
Today, members are scattered throughout the Madison scene. Murphy spends her time in the Madison Community Chorus and other smaller vocal and instrumental ensembles. Along with Kathleen Otterson, she helps run Bach Around the Clock, an annual festival held in March to celebrate the music and life of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Otterson was an alto in the Choral Union through the 1980s and 1990s under Director Robert Fountain. She joined shortly after graduating the School of Music and in the process said she made lifelong friends.
Otterson went to the October town hall. She was sad when she heard the news, and as a former member, was curious to see what was going on. It didn’t take long to see the frustration.
“People were still very upset. It was difficult,” Otterson said. “If you didn't understand it before, you really began to understand people's devotion to the group and to their participation in it.”
As a UW-Madison alum, she hopes some of that “frustration” and “ill will” toward the School of Music can dissipate. “It's my alma mater. I'm proud of it," Otterson said.
And as a music educator, Otterson said she sees the decision from both sides.
“University decision making processes are — what little I know of them — they're very difficult,” Otterson said. “It’s never just one person, and sometimes the person who's going to be most affected by it doesn't have the final word.”
Still, Otterson said she appreciated Choral Union’s “town and gown” dynamic, connecting students and community members around large, orchestral works. The only other outfit in town that can pull off those works, Otterson said, is the Madison Symphony Chorus, directed by former Choral Union director and School of Music professor Beverly Taylor.
That connection, students and the community working with an orchestra, drew Taylor to UW-Madison almost 30 years ago. Choral Union made the School of Music unique.
“The opportunity for townspeople and students, it's something that's lost, and it's one more thing that just isolates one group of people from the other,” Taylor said.
What isn’t fully appreciated, Taylor said, is the amount of active and former faculty members that participated in Choral Union through the years.
Some alumni even had the Choral Union in their will, she said, a testament to its legacy and impact.
“Times change, and I just have to trust that the administration made the decision they wanted for reasons that are theirs,” Taylor said. “I may not agree with it, but since I was not in the room when those decisions were made, I just have to say their decisions took them in another direction.”
Nick Bumgardner is a senior staff writer at The Daily Cardinal covering state news and politics. You can follow him on Twitter at @nickbum_.
