Ahhh...the life of a choir director. You work and work and work to prepare your choirs for a concert. You slave over your singers until they have every vowel perfectly pure, every word perfectly pronounced, and every phrase perfectly structured. You coach them until they totally believe in themselves. The concert date and time finally arrive. Then, in a matter of minutes, the performance is over, never to be recaptured again.
Why do we do it? Why do we choose to spend our lives preparing ourselves and our singers for something that is lost forever after a few minutes of ecstasy? That's why -- those few minutes of ecstasy. We love taking an inanimate bunch of notes on a page and, with our singers' help, turning them into an unforgettable piece of choral music, one that will take its listeners to a new level of beauty and spirituality. One that will never again be sung or heard the same way.
That's the way it is with music. The beauty of music is in its present state -- in its here and now. Unless it is recorded music, it is constantly changing. No matter how many times it is rehearsed, how many times it is sung, or how many times it is heard, it is never the same. No matter how many times you hear the Mozart Requiem, it will never grow old, because each and every time is different in some way. No matter how many times you sing the "Hallelujah Chorus," it will never be boring, for its present beauty is always different than its past. No matter how many times you rehearse your choir for a performance of the Rutter Gloria, the sound that they make the day of the performance will be different than you've ever heard before.
So, we've prepared our singers well, and they give an outstanding performance. What do we do then? We go back to square one, with a totally new repertoire of music, and a new concert for which to prepare. It's time to make some more moments of ecstasy.
Saturday, August 31, 2013
Monday, August 5, 2013
As I See It...Starting My Year
I am sitting at a table at my school's registration. I have a display set up for the music program, and I'm trying to hunt middle school and high school students down and invite them to be in the choir. I don't know if it will do me a bit of good, but I'm certainly going to give it a try.
My school has a weird set up. It is a K-12 laboratory school, so I teach everything from kindergarten music to high school choir. Because of that, I only have room in my schedule for one middle school choir and one high school choir. That means that the middle school choir has 6th graders through 8th graders in it and that my high school choir has beginners in it as well as advanced students. This setup limits me on what I can do with the choirs. If I push the students toward the advanced music in order to keep the more experienced students interested, then I lose my beginners. If I stick with beginning music to help those students who have not been in choir before, my advanced students get bored.
Another problem is that my high school still exists on a six-period day. There are actually seven periods, but one of those periods constitutes the lunch period for the students. With all of the academic requirements that students have now, trying to fit all of the classes you need -- let alone the classes you want -- into the school day is next to impossible unless you give up your lunch or take summer classes. A one-year fine arts credit is required of every student, so I often get students for one year, but after that, they move along, claiming that they can't fit choir into their schedule.
When I first came to the school 10 years ago, a high school choir was not even offered. I have a doctorate in choral conducting, and conducting choirs is my passion, so I immediately set to work getting a high school choir back in the curriculum. It took me a couple of years to do it, but I was finally able to get it set up. However, I soon found out that getting something going after it has been dead for several years is difficult. After eight years of struggle, I am finally confident that I will have enough students each year to constitute a choir, but I never know whether it will be an SAB, an SATB, or an SSA choir.
I am usually an upbeat, optimistic person, so I start each new year hoping for the best. I take what I have, start at the beginning, and push them as far as they can go. Does the choir reach the level that I wish it could reach? No. Do I wish it could sound better? Of course. However, I am usually pleased with the sound that they are able to make. When I think about how little some of these students have sung and the fact that many of them have never been in a choir, I am always thrilled with their progress. I hope that they are proud of what they have accomplished. Unfortunately, the next year, I will get an almost entirely new group of students and will have to start all over again with them. Oh, well, here we go again...
My school has a weird set up. It is a K-12 laboratory school, so I teach everything from kindergarten music to high school choir. Because of that, I only have room in my schedule for one middle school choir and one high school choir. That means that the middle school choir has 6th graders through 8th graders in it and that my high school choir has beginners in it as well as advanced students. This setup limits me on what I can do with the choirs. If I push the students toward the advanced music in order to keep the more experienced students interested, then I lose my beginners. If I stick with beginning music to help those students who have not been in choir before, my advanced students get bored.
Another problem is that my high school still exists on a six-period day. There are actually seven periods, but one of those periods constitutes the lunch period for the students. With all of the academic requirements that students have now, trying to fit all of the classes you need -- let alone the classes you want -- into the school day is next to impossible unless you give up your lunch or take summer classes. A one-year fine arts credit is required of every student, so I often get students for one year, but after that, they move along, claiming that they can't fit choir into their schedule.
When I first came to the school 10 years ago, a high school choir was not even offered. I have a doctorate in choral conducting, and conducting choirs is my passion, so I immediately set to work getting a high school choir back in the curriculum. It took me a couple of years to do it, but I was finally able to get it set up. However, I soon found out that getting something going after it has been dead for several years is difficult. After eight years of struggle, I am finally confident that I will have enough students each year to constitute a choir, but I never know whether it will be an SAB, an SATB, or an SSA choir.
I am usually an upbeat, optimistic person, so I start each new year hoping for the best. I take what I have, start at the beginning, and push them as far as they can go. Does the choir reach the level that I wish it could reach? No. Do I wish it could sound better? Of course. However, I am usually pleased with the sound that they are able to make. When I think about how little some of these students have sung and the fact that many of them have never been in a choir, I am always thrilled with their progress. I hope that they are proud of what they have accomplished. Unfortunately, the next year, I will get an almost entirely new group of students and will have to start all over again with them. Oh, well, here we go again...
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