A life for a lifetime: Hendrik D. Loock and the Tygerberg Children’s Choir

Abstract

The Tygerberg Children’s Choir (TCC) is rooted in South Africa’s Afrikaner culture. Its transition to a multicultural children’s choir, within a drastically changed political dispensation, furnished a rich subject for a historiographic choir identity investigation. From its establishment in 1972 until 2019, Hendrik D. Loock was the conductor. Since then the choir has continued under Karina Erasmus. The TCC is one of the oldest existing mixed-gender regional children’s choirs in the country, directed by the longest serving conductor of such a choir. The choir’s identity and Loock’s forty-seven-year directorship are interwoven, his work perceived as a significant cultural contribution. With his late wife Theresa (TCC accompanist, choral trainer, and arranger of choir music for thirty-two years), Loock confirmed a uniquely familial leadership profile amongst children’s choirs. This qualitative biographic report about the life and contribution of Loock and the TCC merges thematically analysed data from the TCC’s archival collection, non-participant observations, face-to-face interviews, and contextual information.