Choral

Choral discipline encompasses many things, from remembering pencils, to learning notes at home, to watching the conductor closely. But the archetypal sign of a choir’s level of discipline is how much talking goes on within the ranks during rehearsal.

This dimension of discipline is often seen as having a moral dimension – as, indeed, the word ‘discipline’ implies. A hub-bub of chatting is seen as rather slovenly, the choral equivalent of frayed cuffs and dandruff. (Alternatively, sitting up straight and paying attention is seen as overly prim, a form choral OCD.) This discourse takes us back to school days, evoking a traditionalist’s model of education, with desks in rows and all children silent and on task.

I have had a conversation with choral conducting students on a number of occasions over the years in which they confess to anxiety in taking rehearsals because their sight-singing is a bit variable in accuracy. Now, feeling overwhelmed by the responsibility of taking rehearsals I can perfectly understand – I tend to think that anyone who starts out thinking it’s easy has not grasped quite what the level of the challenge is. And wanting to improve your sight-singing is always a good idea.

But if the source of your rehearsal worries lies in intermittent sight singing, there is a simple and obvious solution in your preparation.

Earlier this week, Tim Sharp posted an entry on ChoralNet’s blog with this title. ChoralNet’s daily digest is one of the few regular emails I sign up to, and most days I get a ‘Hm, looks interesting – might pop over to that’ moment. This time, though, I had a real ‘ooh goody, gotta go there now!’ moment when I read that title.

As ever, though, Tim wrote the blog post he wanted to write rather than the one I wanted him to have written. Not complaining – it’s a good post and well worth going over there for a read – but still it remains that the main reason you become a writer is because other people insist on writing to their own agendas instead of yours. So, this post is about what I thought he was going to say when I read that title.

Back in 1996, when Highcliffe Junior Choir won the title of Sainsbury’s Youth Choir of the Year, I heard their founder-director Mary Denniss make a comment in an interview that has stayed with me ever since. She was asked if she ever had children join the choir who couldn’t sing in tune. ‘Well, yes, of course,’ she replied, ‘but they pick it up after a while.’

It wasn’t just that she was so pragmatic that struck me, it was the fact that she said it so kindly. It occurred to me that much of her success in turning ordinary school children into one of the country’s best choirs lay in this calm and confident trust in her singers’ ability to learn.

In a comment on Thursday’s post on the Cheltenham Festival, my friend Sarra remarked on the subject of staccato singing:

… it's possible that in a very echoey space with many singers unused to such an acoustic, and preparing a performance in three days, it might be what you need. Just about.

On reflection it's a bit like running a car with vital bits tied on by string. :)

This reminded me that I’ve been intending to blog someday about the relationship between performance styles and the typical venues in which they’re found. Looks like someday has arrived.

Cheltenham Town HallI spent last Saturday afternoon at the choral classes of Cheltenham Festival of Performing Arts. This isn’t the famous Cheltenham Festival that brings lots of big name classical and jazz performers to the town, but the community festival of music, drama and dance with two weeks of competitions for amateur performers. But while it may look more small-time in its level of artistic ambition, it’s still an event that has more than just local interest, attracting entrants from around the South of England and Wales.

In a post about ‘The ‘C’ Word’, Chris Rowbury opens up the thorny question of cultural stereotypes as they relate to choirs. He identifies a handful of stock images that leap to mind when people hear the word ‘choir’ and talks about he finds them limiting – both because they focus on a hackneyed subset of actual choirs, and because they carry somewhat negative connotations with them. He finds himself, not unreasonably, rather wearied with the assumptions people make about him as a choral practitioner, since they are both rather inaccurate and presuppose a rather less interesting musical life than the one he experiences.

The strategies he proposes for dealing with the limiting stereotypes of the word ‘choir’ are all sensible as far as they go.

Carfield Community ChoirI had a fun evening on Monday with Carfield Community Choir in Sheffield. They started a few years back as a choir of parents of children at a local primary school, and have gradually taken on an independent identity – though they still rehearse at the school, they have gradually acquired members who are not associated with it. They are directed by Liz Nicholas, who stepped out to keep things going when their original director moved on. Liz, like me, started out as a pianist (in fact we both studied with the same teacher, though not at the same time), who gradually moved through accompaniment to leading singers as she discovered how much more fun you can have making music with other people than alone in a practice room.

The workshop for Carfield was a bespoke version of my sessions on Developing the Ensemble and Aural Skills for Choral Groups. These are clearly related themes, so it took its focus in the overlap areas, with an emphasis on the listening dimension of developing togetherness as a performing group and the mutual responsiveness dimension of aural skills.