Conducting

One of the biggest challenges that novice choral directors face is learning how to listen to the singers at the same time as directing them. It sounds so simple, written like that, and is clearly fundamental to the conductor’s task, but as people new to the activity invariably discover, it is easier said than done.

You see, we each only have the one brain each. And if that brain needs to pay a lot of attention to unfamiliar motor skills in the context of complex musical content, it doesn’t have very many cognitive resources left over to dedicate to the sound coming into it. As one acquires experience, the raw panic of overwhelm subsides, but the challenge remains. There is a lot going on when you conduct a choir – all those people singing at once, each with their specific musical and personal needs - and we still have only the one brain with which to process it all.

I had a message from a friend recently that looked like a blog post waiting to happen. In fact, she was rather hoping that it was a blog post that already existed, but as it happens she’s the first person to ask me this. But it’s one of those situations that you know other people will also have to deal with so worth us having a think about it for future reference as well as the immediate need.

Her question was this:

This new group I've joined, the MD has confided in me that she's not well and is going to be away for some considerable time between the June and December concerts while she has, and then recovers from, an operation. She wants me to mind the shop for the (not yet fully specified) time she's away. Do you have any pointers for how to keep things going musically and striking the balance between contributing something useful while I'm in charge and changing/breaking stuff so she can't come back easily?

Analysis of one of the MD's four roles: the others are leader, musician, and teacher

I spent Saturday up in Manchester leading a day course for the Association of British Choral Directors entitled, ‘Choral Conducting: A Beginner’s Guide’. As the title implies, the participants were mostly conductors in the early stages of their journey – all already good musicians, but with varying amounts of experience leading choirs, and little or no prior formal training in technique.

There is of course far more to choral conducting than you can cover in a day (opportunities here to plug the longer abcd Initial Course which does a great job of laying solid foundations for onward growth!), but you can get people up to the point where they can be confident they can get a group of singers safely into the music and out again, which is the heart of the job.

Warming up with clapping games

On Thursday I went down to follow up on the session I did with Fascinating Rhythmand their director Jo Thorn back in February. They have spent the intervening 10 weeks or so embedding the shift in dynamic between conductor and chorus, and the singers reported feeling both more secure and more personally expressive now that Jo is doing less, but with greater precision and nuance.

We started off by building on this work by clarifying some of the ways to think about the conductor-choir bond. Rather than thinking in terms of Jo ‘displaying’ how the music needs to go, we thought in terms of the chorus throwing the music into her hands for her to shape. The singers experienced this as being given more ownership over the expression, while Jo developed a concept of the music as a ball of energy in her hands. This shift in attention away from what her body was doing to what she was doing with the music helped her both relax more and hear more.

I always dither over devising titles that could encapsulate a whole day’s work with a chorus and their director, but rarely more than this time. Joining the Dots with Norwich Harmony? Finding the Flow? Making Life Easier? Taking the Muscle Out? All of these would be true of our musical adventures together, which were deep and satisfying.

We had two songs to work on. One was relatively new to the chorus and was basically coming into shape, having got to the point where it would benefit from refinement of the detail. The other was established in the performing repertoire, but had rather got stuck; they had a vision of the kind of flow they wanted from it, but had been struggling to achieve it in practice.

I forsook my own chorus on Wednesday evening to visit my friends at the Belles of Three Spires. They were in a new venue since last time I coached them, and there were some new faces to see as well as some long-standing friends. We had a dual focus for the evening: work on a couple of my arrangements – one they had commissioned a while back, and another they have recently picked up – and to work on refining the conductor-choir bond.

This latter theme is one that a number of directors are grappling with at the moment – myself included. When we came back to live rehearsing after covid, it was worse of course – as was everything else – but it seems that for quite a few of us it improved organically to a certain extent, but then kind of stalled at a fairly generalised level. The result is music that has an overall sense of shape and shared purpose, but lacks the clarity of detail to really come to life.

When, as a coach, you participate in a process that sees a radical transformation, a real shift in skill level in a short time, it is tempting to feel like you are a superhero. But the real superheros on these occasions are the people who have made the leap. It is their combination of motivation, clarity about their needs, and trust in each other that sees the new skills crystalise as if out of a super-saturated solution. ‘Learning readiness’ is the key driver here, though the term itself doesn’t convey the magic of what it can achieve.

I spent last Thursday evening with Fascinating Rhythm, their director Jo Thorn having asked me to come down and work with them on refining the communication between conductor and singers. They were collectively finding themselves frustrated not to attain the clarity and precision they aspired to, and as the overall sound of the chorus improved, this need was coming more and more into focus.

I’ve been thinking on and off about something Jay Dougherty said in his session on rehearsal pacing at BABS Directors Academy in January, to which I had a classic ‘yes but…’ response. Always good for learning, these!

He made the point that if you want your rehearsal to keep moving, you need to be engaging. And if you don’t feel that you’re outgoing and energetic as a matter of course, this may require some acting, but that’s okay, it’s all part of the conductor’s role. Put some extra energy into your walk, make sure you vary your tone of voice, and everyone will be more alert and attentive.

At one level, this is very apt advice. A lacklustre demeanour will suck energy out of the room and will struggle to keep people focused. But at another, it has the potential to work out quite awkwardly for some people. Pretending to be Tigger when your personality is better suited to Owl could very easily come over as trying too hard and/or inauthentic (and thus not entirely to be trusted) – all of which would be counter-productive.