Program For The Choir You Have, Not The Choir You Want

"It is exactly the unattainability which differentiates a dream from a goal; goals are reachable, when you fight for them. Dreams are not."
                                                                                                -Fabian Cancellara

There's a lot to be said for ambitious programming, and in a future post we'll address the benefits of setting the bar extremely (perhaps even unrealistically) high. But in this post we're going to discuss one of the pitfalls besetting many choral conductors, particularly those in new positions: programming repertoire that your ensemble can't perform well.

We all have our repertoire "bucket list". Britten's War Requiem, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, or any other number of overly grandiose choral warhorses. On a smaller scale, we all have those pieces we've been wanting to conduct forever, and once we get our hands on a competent ensemble, many of us rush into programming repertoire that our ensemble may not yet be ready for.

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KRISHAN: I've definitely been guilty of "overprogramming"; in fact, I'm a bit of a chronic overprogrammer. I get excited about repertoire, and if I have an ensemble that is within shooting distance of a piece that I want to conduct, I tend to throw caution to the wind and go for it. But after several years of doing this, and after consistently walking away from performances feeling that things didn't quite go the way that I wanted them to, I finally drew back and examined this habit of mine. Moving from California to the East Coast for grad school provided me with an opportunity to change my approach, and I made a decision to focus on thoroughly learning a score and teaching it slowly and methodically, rather than flying by the seat of my pants. Although my more advanced choristers may now sometimes grow impatient with the pace, I feel that my ensembles are more confident and more thoroughly prepared than in the past.


KIRSTEN: In my fourth semester teaching after school at San Diego High School, I was thrilled to finally have eight men in my Chamber Choir - four tenors and four basses. This only meant one thing to me as an excited new conductor: I could finally pick repertoire with four-part men's divisi! Quickly, I pulled out There Will Be Rest by Frank Ticheli, and knew that my students would love the challenge. I was sure that with our full forces of Chamber Choir, we could perform this piece very well.

However, I neglected to consider that if, at any point in time, we were missing a tenor or bass from rehearsal, the rehearsal would be exceedingly difficult. The program being an after-school volunteer-based club, including mostly freshman and sophomore students, attendance could be sporadic from rehearsal to rehearsal. Rarely, if ever, did I have all eight men present on the same day. Consequently, someone would be trying to sing their own part, and would struggle through learning the piece.

In the end, the students performed the piece well. However, if I could go back and pick something with three-part men's divisi instead of four, I would in a heartbeat. I wish my students could have left the stage feeling like they nailed the piece, rather than feeling as if they just barely made it through. Was the repertoire choice possible for this group? Yes. Was it the best/most reachable goal, that would make them feel the most accomplished and confident at the end of the day? Probably not.

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It's important to ask yourself if your choir can actually perform a piece well before going ahead with it. This may sound obvious, but it's not always easy to practice. We've all heard church choirs where a single alto is valiantly plowing through her part while twelve sopranos sing the melody. A beautiful unison sound, while perhaps less ambitious than the scenario described, would be a more suitable goal in this kind of situation. This approach takes humility; the conductor must be willing to sacrifice the goal of independent part-singing for the less glamorous goal of an integrated, blended sound. Likewise, the conductor must be able to impart a sense of humility to the more advanced choristers, teaching them to value teamwork and similar abstract concepts over the tangible rewards of independent part-singing. Ultimately, the willingness to work on a more humble scale, at least for now, will lead to greater confidence in the future. As Stephen Covey wrote, "Happiness can be defined.. as the ability to sacrifice what we want now, for what we want eventually."