Dealing with a Large Repertoire

Date Posted: March 22nd, 2008

The Collegium is a repertoire group, meaning that we maintain a large number of songs. Unlike school choirs we don’t do a music changeover every semester or Church choirs who have changeover every week or season. In fact we never do a complete changeover. Some songs the group has sung for a decade. Others we just started a few months ago. Right now the Collegium’s repertoire has around 35 songs + 10-15 Christmas Carols, and it’s still growing (albeit slowly). This has its advantages, namely that we can choose from a large body of music when it comes time to performance and songs that we’ve worked on for months don’t have to be thrown away, but it has some distinct challenges too, the most significant of which are how to handle newcomers and how to handle polishing.

The number of years each choir member has been in the group varies drastically. A few have been in the group for over a decade–like some of our music–and several have been here for less than a year. People can join at any time so the group could be in the middle of learning a new madrigal or polishing a song that we’ve been singing for years when we have a new person show up to rehearsal. Does that mean we have to start going over parts all over again? What about the other 30 songs in the repertoire that he/she doesn’t know yet? How many times have we gone over those before? It can get a little tedious especially for the choir members who’ve been there for a while. And yet, if we didn’t allow newcomers the group would die. So how do we deal? I’m going to illustrate a few ways we’ve handled it in the past and the current way, which I think works quite nicely with our repertoire size.

Option 1: Whatever we feel like singing

This non-method works fairly well with a small repertoire. You can work on whatever songs you want and chances are you’ll have practiced every song within a month’s time. New people slow down the practice time dramatically, but even so if the repertoire is small enough it doesn’t really matter. It’s a review for everyone else too and soon enough everyone will be on the same page. This method doesn’t scale very well though. As the repertoire grows, haphazardly singing songs will most likely lead to mediocre results at performance time. The blend might be OK, but more nitpicky performance stuff–the stuff that makes songs stand out–will get glossed over because it takes up too much time. Or you’ll spend too much time on one or two songs and the rest of the repertoire suffers. Add into the mix some new singers and things get even more complicated. :-/ I’d say once you have more than 10 multi-part songs in your repertoire this method starts to fail. You need to have more structure in order to effectively manage more songs than that.

Option 2: What Needs the Most Work?

There are some songs that you can pull out right after the Christmas season and not have to worry about whether or not the tempo will slow down dramatically or whether the altos know when to come in, and then there are some songs where there’s a 50/50 chance of either a total train-wreck or a passable performance. Clearly songs in the second category need more work, but how do you work on them without alienating new people or making the currently good songs devolve into potential train-wrecks? The short answer is if you’re strictly working on the weakest songs, you won’t be able to avoid these problems and you’ll introduce some new problems as well. For one thing you’ll be stuck in maintenance mode for a long time because there are always songs that need more work. Second you’ll burn out your singers by making them work on hard stuff from start to finish. Working hard can be fun but not if you’re doing it for two hours straight. Third, after a few weeks of this the choir will start to hate those songs.

During my first two months of directing I took this approach and I basically burnt out the choir on Lasciatemi Morire and April is in My Mistress Face. We had intonation problems with the former and tempo problems with the latter, and I was determined to make them sparkle before we switched over to singing Christmas music. By the time Christmas rolled around everyone was very tired of these songs (including myself to some degree), and we were happy to put them away for the next few months. They had improved over that time, but even now they aren’t on the same level as some of our better songs. We didn’t spend much time seriously going over our whole repertoire either, so the person who joined the choir around the time I took over still hasn’t sung every song. Not good! In moderation, though, this method makes sense. Spend more time on the weaker songs and less time on the stronger ones. Just don’t spend ALL time on the weaker songs and No time on the stronger ones.

Option 3: During Seasonal Work still sing Non-Seasonal Songs

In the past when we’ve worked on Christmas Carols we had a hard time transitioning back into secular songs come January. All the performance notes we’d written out in September were lost after the new year. Tempo markings, intonation, and even what part we normally sing were mysteriously forgotten. It’s important for the director to take note of these things for the purpose of reminding the choir later, but it’d be nice if it didn’t take a whole month to get back on track too. During the 2007 Christmas season we experimented with starting practice by singing non Christmas songs, and then working on more Christmas songs as it got closer and closer to our performance. This method is pretty kind to newcomers since they can become familiar with the other music without having to spend lots of time practicing individual pieces. We’ll get to those songs eventually, and when we do they’ll at least have some memory of what it sounds like.

While a good idea in theory it didn’t work very well in practice. The main reason for this is that a lot of our Christmas Carols also needed reviewing, so the time at the beginning of choir rehearsal which was spent reviewing songs we wouldn’t be performing could have been better spent singing the easier carols while the rest of practice could have been spent focusing on the harder ones. Besides allowing us to have a chance to remember the carols which we hadn’t sung at all sung in the past year, we’d have actually gotten emotionally into the Christmas season a lot sooner. For some reason starting rehearsal with non-seasonal pieces seemed to have delayed this process. Also, the Collegium has a request period at the end of every rehearsal which could have been used to sing songs that are in our usual repertoire, therefore while not explicitly having time devoted to reviewing our normal stuff we’d still effectively have it.

Option 4: Quarterly “Changeover”

This is our current method of high-level rehearsal structure, and so far it seems to be working well. The way it works is we divide our repertoire into three overarching categories + Christmas, and work on one category for three months at a time. Each category has a mix of about ten songs of differing difficulty. Ten songs in three months is fairly reasonable to manage and polish and gives us a decent range from which to pick performance material, especially since our performances tend to be on the short side. The other major benefit is for newcomers. This method enables us to invite people to join at 4 different times of the year. Also since the total number of songs is fairly small per 3 months period, if newcomers join in the middle of a quarter they can work on the current songs on their own without having to invest too much time in it. (We use midis to aid in solo practicing.) The quarter method also enables the group to get immersed in a theme for 3 months. Our current themes are “love” (January-March), “drinking and merrymaking” (April - June), “religious and other”, (July - September), “Christmas” (October - December). Neither the themes nor the quarters they lie in are set in stone–except perhaps Christmas–so if someone can only be in the group during the beginning of the year we wouldn’t have to sing our love songs each time. In addition we use our request time to sing songs which are out of theme. All in all it seems to be working fairly well for us so far.

Projections

I don’t know how well this method scales for much larger repertoires than 30 songs. The more comfortable individuals are on their parts the easier it is for new people to pick up the music, so it’s possible that with greater polishing we could double or triple our current repertoire without either sacrificing quality or making it too difficult for newcomers to join. It’s also possible that there’s an upper-bound for the number of songs in our repertoire, that with our level of commitment isn’t really possible to surpass. If/when we reach it I’ll write about it, but until then all I can say is that with my group’s 35 song repertoire the Quarter system works well and we probably won’t be changing it drastically for at least a couple years.

Posted in Choir Directing at 9:53 am by nique

Directing and Singing at the Same Time

Date Posted: March 12th, 2008

Chances are high that if you’re leading a small madrigal group you’ll also be singing in it. Conducting and singing are complicated tasks alone let alone doing them simultaneously, so what are you supposed to do? There are a few things to consider when you’re getting started. First, don’t expect everything to run smoothly the first time you do it. It will get easier over time just like how playing the piano with both hands gets easier over time, but it does take time and practice. Second, avoid doing both for as long as you can in order for you to both get used to conducting and spend more of your energy analyzing the group. You should still know how to sing the music and if someone else were conducting be able to join in at any time, but don’t stress yourself out if you can avoid it. As you get more comfortable conducting ease yourself into singing as well. At the same time you’ll be weening the choir off of having a fully engaged conductor, which is something you’ll have to do anyway for performances.

This, of course, is an ideal situation. There will probably be weeks where an entire section can’t make rehearsal, and the only way to practice a given song if for you to sing too. Case in point, just this past week I had to sing and conduct because all of the altos were either sick or swamped with work. So I handled it in not the most optimal way possible. I tried to do everything at once. It didn’t totally crash and burn since I knew how to sing the music, and the rhythm wasn’t too complicated, but I really couldn’t do anything aside from sing and conduct. Judging the quality of the singing was just not happening. I probably would not take this approach again if I could avoid it.

So what other methods are left besides doing everything?

Here are a few:

1. Have several members of each section learn at least one other part than their usual.
2. Have a choir member sit out and evaluate while you sing and conduct.
3. Turn the rehearsal into a part rehearsal.
4. Focus on other aspects of singing like pronunciation, breathing, sight-singing, etc.
5. Sing pieces that don’t require the missing section.
6. Sing the songs and omit the missing section.

Having some members of each section learn parts other than their own is very useful. Benefits include enabling the choir to be more flexible at performances and rehearsals and the individual developing a greater understanding of the music. The drawback is when choir members forget which part they’re singing and jump back and forth between the original and the new one. Another drawback is that it gives more work for the individual. It also assumes that the song is already learned. Asking the choir to learn two parts simultaneously when a song is introduced is probably unrealistic, but you never know. It never hurts to ask.

Having someone sit out while you’re singing and conducting is a very good technique because it encourages choir members to analyze how the group sounds and takes the pressure off of you, the director, to offer commentary. As a former choir member I’d also suggest that you give the person sitting out some ideas on what to look for. I know the few times I was asked to offer commentary I didn’t have much to say because I didn’t know what to look for. When I sang I was mostly concerned with being on pitch and on time so my analysis rarely went beyond “we sound reasonably in tune”. Chances are there’s at least one person in the choir who is in the same position and probably more. Suggest they look for things like intonation, expression, breathing problems, tempo, etc. Getting the choir involved with analysis is especially good when you’re weening the choir off of your fully focused conducting, so I’d use it at some of the rehearsals when everyone is present too.

If there’s a song that you’re just starting to work on and need to pick out notes for, a good time to do it is when you’re low on people. The reason for that is when the choir is fully present you want to make use of that time by singing together. Spending a large chunk of time picking out notes for the basses is a pain and wastes time for all the non-basses in the room. But when you only have enough people to sing two part music anyway, why not take the time to work out the tricky sections. If you’re prepared enough you can even split the choir into each part and have them work through their parts on their own. This is when midis come in especially handy because it means you don’t have to bring another keyboard with you or record yourself singing the parts.

Focusing on other aspects of singing, while both useful and important, should probably not be the sole focus of a practice with few participants. The main reasons for this are boredom and advanced preparation. Your choir came there to sing, so chances are they will not be amused if 2 hours is spent working on pronunciation. Also, you’d need to come to rehearsal prepared with 2 hours worth of information on pronunciation and breathing and whatnot. Augmenting a sparse rehearsal with more of these aspects of singing makes a lot of sense though. If you’re trying to avoid 2 hours of singing unison or two part songs and you’ve come prepared with ample material, padding the rehearsal with this information ought to be very effective.

The last two options, singing pieces that don’t require the missing sections and just omitting the missing sections on the songs you planning to sing should probably not be the default if you can avoid it. Chances are the two part songs you have don’t need the work and many songs you encounter don’t work without all the sections present. A song without the melody line isn’t much of a song.

So you have many options when it comes to avoiding singing and conducting at the same time or making the most of rehearsals when you have to do both and aren’t fully prepared to.

What if you’re not planning to sing during performance?

If you’re not planning to sing with the choir in performance you should probably not sing during rehearsal unless it’s absolutely necessary. And by necessary I mean a part is either empty or low on people for that rehearsal. The reason you wouldn’t want to sing with a weaker section regularly is that the section may become dependent on you and then at the performance–when you’re not singing–the section is likely to fall apart. If a section is really weak and not likely to improve it’s a much wiser idea to move a strong person from another section or try to recruit a stronger person into the choir or offer to work with that section individually or continue singing with that section but also sing at performance.

Posted in Choir Directing at 9:51 am by nique