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A group of singers, or the refrain of a song.
As a staff label, Chorus names the singers’ staves, usually with voice parts (Chorus: S. A. T. B.); in songs and hymns it heads the refrain after each verse. Context — an orchestral or vocal score versus a strophic song — decides which sense is meant.
A chorus adds text and the human voice, but it needs time to enter, breathe and find its pitches. Give it secure entries and balance it against the orchestra, and set the text clearly. In popular forms the label marks the repeating refrain; write it out or use repeats as needed.
Holst, The Planets, “Neptune, the Mystic”, soprano II, m. 1: “The Chorus is to be placed in an adjoining room, the door of which is to be left open until the last bar of the piece, when it is to be slowly and silently closed.”
Chorus is one of 1755 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
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