Choral

Circles of involvement: increasing levels of engagement as you head inwardsIn my last post on this subject, we had got as far as feeling sympathy for people who don't volunteer for jobs to keep the choir running, as part of an understandable desire to husband one's energies and attention. Now we need to figure out how inveigle them into making the effort.

I should add that one of the reasons I am finding this a valuable subject to write about is because it is one that doesn't come naturally to me. I have phrased it as 'daring' to delegate, because my first instinct has tended to be to hope people won't mind my asking. I am much better at this than I used to be, but I still feel like this is a work in progress in my own life. So I am writing to consolidate and develop what I have learned as much as to help those who find themselves in similar situations. But then, you knew already that's why I keep a blog, right? It's not just for you...

Our goal, then, is to create a culture of volunteering, that encourages people to move inwards on our diagram of involvement. It is worth revisiting Kotter's model of organisational change here, as this is a classic case where you need something to build urgency to motivate the change before the transformation can happen.

I was in an online conversation recently with a director who is very new in post. She was asking advice about a particular administrative task, and my contribution to the debate (since other people had already helped out with useful advice on the specific question) was to suggest it was something she could usefully delegate. She wasn't going to be short of things to do without this task, after all.

Her reply was one of those that I knew choral directors across the globe would empathise with:

I do appear to have taken on a great deal of other jobs as a job lot, but on the other hand haven't asked if anyone else would volunteer, so will bring this up at this week's rehearsal or at the first committee meeting (or music team meeting). Is it your experience that smaller choruses find it more difficult to field jobs out or is it the usual scenario of 'ask a busy person' regardless of the size of membership? A good proportion of members are in the 'elderly' section and I know, are not too keen to take on any responsibility. Committee and music team meetings appear to have been very few and far between so am working on making these more regular, at least until I get more of a 'feel' for the position and its commitments/what I feel comfortable delegating!

One of the truisms in choral conducting is the importance of eye contact. When being coached myself, I have been given exercises such making sure I look round at every individual, with the chorus instruction to raise their hands if they feel lacking in director attention. And as a coach, I have spent time with other directors intervening in habits such as dropping the gaze just before bringing the singers in.

At the same time, though, I have to note that some of the best sounds I have heard directors elicit from their singers - the most unified, in tune, resonant - have come when the director was not making eye contact, but was instead listening intently.

Last Thursday I went to see Victoria Wood’s That Day We Sang at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester. I didn’t go with the idea that I would come back with ideas to blog about - the plan was merely to have a very nice time. That main mission was accomplished, but we had the bonus of a question-answer session with the cast after the show which brought up two things that piqued my interest beyond the pleasure of a beautifully-written and beautifully-performed show.

See main post for enlarged image...

I wrote back before Christmas about the principle of singling out individuals in rehearsal - when and how it is useful, when and how it may be counter-productive. As I worked through the different scenarios and examples it got me reflecting on, I realised I was mapping the focus on individuals vs group onto the Yerkes-Dodson curve that charts arousal and performance level.

A focus on individuals makes everybody feel slightly less psychologically safe - not just the people singled out, but everyone else too as they become more aware that they too are individually visible. This results in an increased level of arousal.

If the choir is being a bit dozy or passive, then this is exactly what you need: a bit more alertness and focus in the brain, a bit more energy and readiness-for-action in the body. If the choir is anxious or floundering, though, this is the last thing you need, as adding adrenaline to an over-stressed performance just makes it worse.

Like many choirs, Magenta has had a busy Christmas season, and I always find myself heading into the holiday replete with the satisfaction of how the ensemble consolidates the year’s achievements through this intensive period of activity. I am sure every director feels this wonderful mixture of gratitude and pride when plans come together and the hours of rehearsal translate into delight on the faces of those to whom we sing.

So my Christmas eve post this year is to say thank you. Specifically to the collection of people who form Magenta, and generally, on behalf of choir directors to the singers without whom we could not make music.

I recently heard a choral director comment that, ‘I was told, good naturedly, not to single people out in rehearsal this week.’ This made me stop and think, particularly in the context of my recent posts on raising the stakes. The conversation moved on and I didn’t get a chance to follow up the exact situation that elicited this request, so I found myself having an imaginary debate with the person who made it over the rights and wrongs of addressing individuals in a choral situation.

Now, the people who don’t want to be singled out would say, in a general sense, that they don’t like being put on the spot. They choose to sing in a group because they feel safe there.

And the rapacious director who replies that this exactly why people should be singled out has a point. Many choirs suffer from a certain sheep-like tendency for everybody to hide behind each other, vocally and expressively. In these circumstances, having everybody feel a little more individual responsibility for making the music rather than just singing along with it is a Good Thing.

This post started out as a paragraph in my account of the Zemel workshop on singing and movement, but grew into a post in its own right. It concerns an insight I had during the workshop that - as these things so often do - feels a bit obvious now I write it down, but felt like quite a penny-drop moment at the time.

It concerns the cognitive challenge of fitting gestures to lyrics when your part of a choral texture is singing something other than those lyrics. Lyric-based gestures, when designed to fit naturalistically to the concepts in the narrative (i.e. paced like natural speech in their frequency and not unduly pantomimic or literal in form) actually help you remember the words, once you have got over the shock to the system of operating hands and voice at the same time.

But choral arrangements don’t always give everybody all the words. Sometimes you have oohs or ahs or individual words picked out of the longer narrative. Singing these while doing gestures designed to go with the lyrics is a rather more demanding task.