The purpose of this study was: (a) to investigate what literature was being performed by wind bands in a sample of large secondary schools in the United States in the academic years of 1994-97, (b) to evaluate the quality level of this literature, (c) to investigate the resources and criteria used by secondary school band conductors in order to locate literature, and (d) to ascertain whether any relationship can be found between the resources and criteria used by these band conductors and the quality of the literature that they chose.
Both a telephone and a written survey were administered to the sample group to ascertain the resources and criteria used when choosing literature for their large concert ensembles. In addition, the conductors were asked to return programs from their concerts performed in the academic years of 1994-97. The Repertoire Evaluation Inventory (REI) was developed by use of numerous experts within the field of wind band literature to determine the quality of the repertoires, and consisted of three quality groupings. Descriptive statistics, chi-squares, and t-tests were used in arriving at the conclusions.
Almost half (47.77%) of the compositions performed by the bands surveyed did not contain a notable level of quality. In addition, 46.04% of the compositions that were determined to contain a notable level of quality were not programmed by any of the conductors surveyed. Only 24 of the 530 compositions included on the REI (4.53%) were performed by 10% (7) or more of the bands surveyed.
When the respondents were grouped by the quality of their repertoires, publisher materials were determined to be utilized more often by those conductors in the low quality group, while college or university conductors and the attendance at clinics, workshops, or conventions were utilized more often by those in the high quality group. The high quality group also valued the criteria of musical quality and knowledge of the composer more than the low quality group.