Choral

One of the challenges about running rehearsals is that there is so much to do that you rarely have time to notice how well you are doing. You can get so wrapped up in the needs of the choir and the needs of the music that there is very little attention left over to self-monitor. But we still owe it to our choirs (and our audiences) to improve ourselves, so here are several ways I’ve figured out over the years to address this:

I sometimes feel a bit hypocritical when I skip breakfast.

You see, I go around telling anyone that will listen that just as breakfast is the most important meal of the day, the warm-up is the most important part of the choral rehearsal. It’s harder to say that with conviction if you’ve not eaten anything before noon.

So, we all know why breakfast is important. (If not - well you’re on the internet already, go and find out.) The reason I hold a parallel view of the warm-up is because - like breakfast - it might be a thing with one identifying label and be done at one specific time of day, but it is made up of a varied and flexible number of elements that simultaneously serve several purposes, both immediate and long-term.

It is something that drives all choir directors batty: people saying, ‘Oh, I can’t come next week, because…’ Whatever excuse ends the sentence, the conductor thinks, ‘And why is that more important than my rehearsal?’

A couple of years ago, I did a quick and dirty survey among my students about this. I asked them to write down an event they considered completely unmissable (in the past, in the future, or in their imaginations), and why they felt they couldn’t miss it. About 50 students responded, and their reasons for valuing events showed several common themes. These themes in return give us as directors some clues as to what we can do to put our rehearsals higher up the list of our singers’ priorities.

Note-bashing must be about the most unhealthy concept in common use among choirs and their directors. It evokes an image of rehearsals spent in dull, joyless grind, with frowning singers marking time doggedly as their conductor beats the rhythm to pieces. Pitch errors are punished by repeatedly hammering the correct note on the piano. There is no thought of beauty of tone or of projection of text or of shape in the phrases: all that is deferred until such time as the choir has earned the right to delight in the music by working through the purgatory of note-accuracy.

The idea of note-bashing arises from the notion that you have to learn the notes before you can ‘put in the interpretation’.

Every winter (and some summers too) we can guarantee that a certain proportion of our choir will get sick. If they are struck down with flu, there is no dilemma – there’s nothing for them to do but go back to bed until they feel human again.

But if they ‘just’ have a cold, what then?